The Stoic practice of seeing yourself clearly, without flinching and without cruelty.
Seneca described a daily practice that Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus both reflected in their own writing: at the end of each day, sit with yourself and ask three questions. Where did I go wrong? What did I do well? What could I do better tomorrow?
This was not self-punishment. It was information gathering. The Stoics treated the self as an object worthy of honest study, the way a scientist studies a phenomenon. Curiosity rather than judgment. Precision rather than performance.
The fearless in the step is significant. Fear distorts the inventory. If you are afraid of what you will find, you will avoid finding it, or misinterpret what you see to make it more comfortable. The Stoics cultivated equanimity precisely so they could look at themselves clearly without the distortion that fear produces.
"Every night before going to sleep we must ask ourselves: what weakness did I overcome today? What virtue did I acquire?"
Seneca, On Anger
A moral inventory is not a list of your failures. It is a complete picture of your patterns: where you have caused harm, where you have been harmed, what fears have driven your behaviour, what resentments you carry, what you have avoided seeing.
The analytical mind is actually well-suited to this step if it can stay honest. The same capacity for rigorous self-assessment that serves you professionally can serve you here. The risk is intellectualising rather than feeling, analysing the inventory rather than experiencing it.
The Stoic practice helps: you are looking for what is true, not what is comfortable or what makes you look worst. Both selective self-criticism and selective self-justification distort the picture. A searching inventory is one that settles for nothing less than the most accurate account you can produce.
Try the Stoic evening review tonight: write one thing you did well today, one thing you would do differently, and one pattern you can see in your behaviour that has served you and one that has not. Keep it factual. Keep it honest. Keep it kind.