Step Ten, “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it” helps keep us honest. In the steps before we honestly worked through our history in a process of “Awareness, Acceptance, Action”: – Awareness of our feelings; of our motives; of God’s will. (4 & 5) – Acceptance of who we […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: In step nine, “Made direct amends to such persons we had harmed wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others,” we complete a process that we began in step four, a path out of darkness into light. A member summarizes what we are doing: “In step four, we […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: We make a list of people we have harmed in step eight, and become willing to make amends to them all. Whether we actually make amends or not is irrelevant at this point. Our willingness is what matters in this step. We start by reviewing our fourth step, where we discovered our […]
Continue reading →Step eight is: Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. By now we should have identified our shortcomings and their impact in our lives. If we aren’t ready for this step, we can go back over the preceding steps (starting with step 1) to […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Step seven is: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Humility is knowing of the truth about yourself, that you are not the center of the universe, that you are not God, and that other people are just as important as you. We humble ourselves before the “Ultimate Other”, unburdening ourselves of […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: Some call step six “the desert”, and for good reason. The way can be blurred by pride and fear. What happens to us in a world without our favorite defects of character? What if I surrender everything to God – the good and the bad – to do with as He will? […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: They say you are as sick as your secrets. We were so alone, our secrets were many. No one knows how many of us hid our true financial situation from immediate family members who had a right to know. Then we took Step 5: “Admitted to God, ourselves and another human being […]
Continue reading →Thought for Today: Resentment – the re-feeling of old wounds – was our #1 problem. Full of pride and self-justification we would lash out at an unjust world in anger, sometimes passive-aggressively, other times with outright aggression. Taking a fourth step inventory was essential for recovery from compulsive debting, overspending, and under-earning. Before Step Four, […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: A member shares on Step 4: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” “When I was ready to take Step Four I made the list just like in the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, chapter 5), using five columns: ‘Who’, ‘What’, ‘Affects My’, ‘Exact Nature of My Wrongs’, and […]
Continue reading →Thought for today: A central idea of DA is that of the Higher Power. In Step 2, we sought strength beyond ourselves, accessible, that we can turn to in need. The But how could we reckon our lives with that power? At DA meetings, you can hear a lot of financial horror stories – bankruptcy, […]
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