Step 10 continues adding Spirituality to our minds by saying “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 have flushed many of your secrets away that were weighing so heavily on your mind that you felt bogged down by life. Now, you own up to your decisions, good and bad. Life is becoming 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 a quick inventory to see if you offended or hurt them the last time you met? 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 going and make the good times continue to roll. It just continues without the long process of Steps 4, 5, 8, and 9 that had to be 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. If we have, we take care of it IMMEDIATELY. We don’t 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?
I have discovered another reward of the 10th Step. If I have continually worked the 9 Steps leading up to this to the best of my ability 24/7/365, and then work the 10th Step as written, I NEVER have to take another 4th and 5th Step again! Think about it! When working Step 10, we own up for our decisions and take care of our life AS IT HAPPENS, not what could be much later. If something comes up that we remember that happened when we were in the madness, Step 10 has it covered. What do we do? We IMMEDIATELY take responsibility for it, correct it, atone, and move on. We can do this because we work the Spiritual angle by saying “God Help Me” and then letting Him. This is very simple and only as hard, though, as you want to make it. Simple program for complicated folks.
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 admitting it and taking care of it immediately. 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!