the inventory phase.
NOW WE ARE REALLY READY TO GO TO WORK!
We are now at Inventory Steps, 4, 5, and 10.
Step 4 states “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
This step contains 9 words that stopped many who were trying to work the program dead in their tracks. Why? FEAR entered the equation.
Many thought “If they knew the real me no one would want to be near me.” The thing about most, if not all, fears is that for every fear there is an underlying kernel of truth hidden in it.
In this case, if I were the same person that I was when I committed some of these acts it might be true and no one would probably want to be around me.
The saving factor is that I am not the same person that I was then and neither are you.
Once I started working this amazing program to the best of my ability, starting with the shortened version of the 3rd Step, “God Help Me,” I discovered that I was no longer alone with my thoughts and actions.
Step 5 says “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
Others had committed similar acts and are now Happy, Joyous, and Free. The important word here is FREE! I am free of thoughts that “If they only knew” and “Nobody else thinks like me.”
We are only as sick as our secrets and, when I keep them in my head, they are my secrets. How do we rid ourselves of our sicknesses and fears? We bring them out by sharing them with others.
The others in this Step that we share with are God and another human being.
If I place a telephone pole on the ground, I can do nothing with it. If we all grabbed it, we could carry it away. The fears in my head are my telephone poles. By myself, they are just too heavy.
When I air them out, they disappear because they are no longer secrets. Some may have secrets of the nature that an AA meeting may not be an appropriate place to share them.
These may have to be shared by a professional such as your sponsor, an attorney, or a therapist. Just choosing which method to share with eases our minds. Now, as Nike says, “Just do it!”
Whoever you choose to share with, it must be shared or it will just do what that telephone pole will do if not shared — sit there and rot.
Step 10 states “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”
If you have gotten to the 10th Step you are probably feeling much better about yourself and life in general. You’ve flushed the secrets away that were weighing heavily on your mind. You were bogged down by life.
Using Step 10 releases us from the bondage of our own minds. We no longer carry our problems and sins around in our heads like a load of stinking garbage. We dump it and clear our minds as soon as it appears.
Life has become more of a joy and less of a drudgery. Isn’t it great to wake up and not have tossed and turned all night over a real or imagined problem that you had caused?
Isn’t it great to see someone and not feel you have to do an inventory to see if you offended or hurt them the last time you met? Because you took care of any wrong immediately at the time it happened.
Isn’t it wonderful to have people who had feared or hated you actually like to be around you?
The 10th Step is one way to keep this feeling and make the good times continue to roll. Now it is without the long process of Steps 4, 5, 8, and 9 that had been done before any semblance of normalcy could return.
By the time we can get to the 10th Step, we will usually know immediately if we have harmed someone and so we take care of it IMMEDIATELY. And not wait until we go through the earlier processes.
We are only as sick as our secrets and this way we have no secrets. What a concept, huh? With my mind free from worry or fret, it is available for anything else that I choose.
Remember, if we didn’t drink or take drugs today we have a choice. If we drink or drug today, our ability to choose took a poof pill and is LG, long gone.
Step 10 is best worked by doing it exactly as it says, when wrong promptly admitted it and took care of it. Don’t think your way out of it — JUST DO IT!!!
You now have choices, do you choose to be miserable or do you choose to be Happy, Joyous, and Free? The choice is yours and nobody else’s. Choose wisely! Thank you, God!
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