STEP 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
How It Works
This thought brings us to Step
Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal
inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as
we go along. We vigorously commenced this way of living
as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of
the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in
understanding and effectiveness. This is not an
overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime.
Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty,
resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at
once to remove them. We discuss them with someone
immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed
anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone
we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.
-A.A. Big Book p.84
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The emphasis on
inventory is heavy only because a great many of us have
never really acquired the habit of accurate
self-appraisal. Once this healthy practice has been
groomed, it will be so interesting and profitable that
the time it takes won't be missed. For these minutes and
sometimes hours spent in self-examination are bound to
make all the other hours of our day better and happier.
And at length our inventories become a regular part of
everyday living, rather than unusual or set apart.
- Twelve Steps and Twelve
Traditions, p. 89-90
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The Tenth Step can be a pressure
relief valve. We work this step while the day's ups and
downs are still fresh in our minds. We list what we have
done and try not to rationalize our actions. This may be
done in writing at the end of the day. The first thing
we do is stop! Then we take the time to allow ourselves
the privilege of thinking. We examine our actions, our
reactions, and our motives. We often find that we've
been "doing" better than we've been "feeling". This
allows us to find out where we have gone wrong and admit
fault before things get any worse. We need to avoid
rationalizing. We promptly admit our faults, not explain
them.
We work this step continuously.
This is a prevention, and the more we do it, the less we
will need the corrective part of this step. This is
really a great tool. It gives us a way of avoiding grief
before we bring it on ourselves. We monitor our
feelings, our emotions, our fantasies, and our actions.
By constantly looking at these things we may be able to
avoid repeating the actions that make us feel bad.
- Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text,
Chapter 4/Step 10
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Steps 10, 11, and 12 are sometimes
called the maintenance steps. They repeat many of the
points outlined in previous steps, but they emphasize
the value of continuing to "work the steps" on a
day-to-day basis.
Step 10 encourages the taking of a
personal inventory, which, for recovering persons,
should be a daily process...
Our daily inventory certainly
needs to assess the status of our relationship with God.
Are we still yielding our will to Him? Bill Wilson
emphasized how crucial this evaluation is, especially
for addictive personalities, which tend to be willful.
Our need to surrender ourselves to God on a daily basis
will go on throughout our lives, and we shall explore
the means of that continuing spiritual surrender in Step
11.
- Serenity, A Companion for Twelve
Step Recovery, p. 67, 69
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Step Ten is a spiritual pocket
computer to help us keep tabs on our behavior today and
a cleanser to help keep our spiritual lenses clean. In
this method of keeping an inventory every day, we ask
ourselves questions like, Which of my character defects
popped up as uninvited guests today? Am I using the
tools of the program? Am I praying? Am I thanking God
for all the good things he has done for me this day, and
for any positive things he's freed me to do? ...
The reason this is so important is
that the Sin-disease, which its denial and delusion, is
always hovering "just a decision away" to throw us back
into fear and confusion. Its tactics are to convince us
in various ways, "You're 'well' now and don't need a
stupid program to lead a normal life. You can and should
operate on your own as a mature adult." The disease's
"strategy" often works like this: When we begin to feel
a little secure and happy and our relationships are more
comfortable, many of us "forget" to have our quiet time.
We forget to go to meetings and don't call our sponsor.
We're busy again, because the pain that drove us into
the program has been alleviated. This is a dangerous
place to be, because it is one of the major delusions of
the spiritual life that we can "do it ourselves" without
daily contact with God and a daily look at the reality
of what is going on in our own lives.
- A Hunger for Healing, by Keith
Miller, p. 164
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