Step Ten

 

When I was about halfway through Step 9, I noticed that the problem I had been having with alcohol, and with life in general, had gone away. My life was no longer unmanageable, I no longer suffered from an obsession of the mind where drinking was concerned, and I was actually enjoying life instead of shying away from it. I told my sponsor about this. He didn't seem too surprised.

“It's perfectly natural,” he said. “The 12 steps are a spiritual way of life and they have 2 purposes. The first is to expel your obsession to drink and the second is to help you to become happily and usefully whole. It seems they are working for you.”

Ever the skeptic, I questioned this. “But, what do I do if the problem comes back?”

My sponsor just laughed. “Oh don't worry. If you do steps 10, 11, and 12 every day for the rest of your life, the problem will never come back.”

I've been doing that for slightly more than 23 years and although not all of my days are priceless, none of my days are worthless.

Step Ten suggests that we “continue to take personal inventory”. I do mine before I go to sleep. I do shift work so that's not always at night. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, on page 86, there are some questions we can ask ourselves about our day. The passage is actually during the discussion on Step Eleven but I find it is very appropriate for Step Ten. I am not going to quote it because I am going to reword the questions. Just imagine it's the end of the day. Ask yourself the following questions:

Was I resentful today?

Was I selfish today?

Was I dishonest today?

Was I afraid today?

Do I owe someone an apology?

Have I kept something to myself which should be discussed with another person at once?

Was I kind and loving toward all?

What could I have done better?

Was I thinking of myself most of the time?

Or was I thinking of what I could do for others?

I find that I don't always get the answers I would like to get, but that my answers always help me strive to be a better person the following day. If you can remember when we did Step 4, we ended up with those 2 columns. Our liabilities and our assets. We can just look at that list, see where we were wrong today and try to do better tomorrow. The second half of step ten says, “when we were wrong we promptly admitted it.” It doesn't say, “if we were wrong.” You see, the guys who originally wrote these steps, they knew we were going to make mistakes. We are all human. None of us are saints. The idea is not to keep beating ourselves over the head with that big bat. We just keep taking stock of ourselves, we keep up the honest analysis, take what corrective measures are necessary, keep trying to live up to our chosen ideal.

So, if you continue to do this, then you are doing Step Ten.