Step 4 Inventory and Sponsorship – The Big Book and Steps of AA – Part 3 of 3 – Local AA Speakers

it's about how to write about principles they're really self-defeating beliefs that become principles because because they're buried so deeply in our in our psyche or uh personality um so do you have any other questions it's it's just like writing the The book talks about people, institutions, and principles. And so you write it all the same way. You answer the same questions. So just put the belief in the first column and answer all the questions. Yes? Hi, I'm Alice. I'm an alcoholic. Okay. I have a question about when we look at our part. I always get tripped up the difference between self-seeking and selfishness. A lot of people have that problem. And you can do any definition you want. I'll tell you what mine is, but selfish for me is it's mine and you can't have it. All right? Self-seeking is I don't give a damn whose it is. I'm going to take it. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. well simple is the best and you you don't have to abide by those decisions you know if you want to go look it up in a dictionary and do what you want there are there are if you're pursuing spiritual principles if you want to live a life that's pleasing to God if you want to live a life that's based on spirituality go live it and you get to choose the only thing i'm doing is telling you what i did and uh and what you're doing does not have to look like that and i can tell you find following exactly the same directions in inventory you can write that inventory a dozen different ways at the very least and that the real thing is are you pursuing getting closer to God in your life. And if you're doing that, there's no wrong way to do it. Okay? Yes. Hi, I'm Julie. I'm an alcoholic. Julie. I have a lot on my plate right now. I have lots of resentment. I have lot of discouragement. I was put down a lot through school. I have alot of mental disabilities and I'm just like confused. This is my second time around in the program, and I want to make it stick this time. Sure. And I need to know how to start out with it. All right. And you may have already done this, but you go find a sponsor who is familiar with the recovery process, with the 12 steps, okay? and then you sit down with them like once a week and you start it forward to the first edition and when it tells you to do something, you do it. And you do everything through at least working with others and you can continue on and do the other chapters But the 12 steps are primarily in those chapters that end with working with others. And you just follow the directions and see if God will work in your life. And I know you've mentioned that you've had some difficulties, but the real truth is that God can work through the difficulties. I have a very strong belief in religion. I was brought up a religion Methodist when I was growing up. Sure. And I still have that strong belief, and I strayed away from it. Well, in the big book they talk about people returning to their religions and that the thing about religion is like AA is that it forms a basis of spirituality for your life and that it makes God a primary consideration in your life. And once you've done that, your life can truly change. the question is do you have the courage to go follow the directions and if you do have the courage I can tell you no matter what kind of disabilities you've had or whatever kind of obstacles that you've faced that your life will change and I know that for a fact because I've been watching it with a clear mind and open eyes for a long time alright thank you that's all I have thank you Do you have any questions about principal inventory? One of the things that I get concerned about, because I used to do the Saturday night talk for Joe and Charlie. And all those people would come to those Joe and Charlie things, and they'd all bring little highlighters with them. And they'd sit there with their big books open, and they highlight all the things that Joe or Charlie talked about. Then they'd go home, and they wouldn't do a damn thing. So you can hear all this information, but the information is not going to change your life unless you do something about it. This is a program of action. It's not a program of knowledge. Self-knowledge will not cure alcoholism. So the real issue here is are you willing not only to listen to this and to consider it, but are you going to do something about it? Because if you don't do something about it, the points moot. If you don' t challenge yourself, you're wasting your time. And that's true about even going to AA meetings. You know if you're not willing to change your mind, if you are not willing to grow in understanding and effectiveness, hanging out in AA meetings is a waste of time. And if you aren't willing to engage in the recovery process, follow the directions. If you're real drunk, you will not be successful here. And I don't consider success not drinking and being crazy. Okay. I can speak loud enough, but that speaker can't hear me. You're a speaker. Well, actually there's someone back there. So if you want to do that, you're going to have to stand right behind her and speak next. Go ahead. Hi, I'm Beth. I'm an alcoholic. When doing your inventory enlisting people that you had harmed, and I know not to include people that it would injure yourself or others, i don't mean how far do you go back as far for instance like an ex-husband who could care less if he ever hears from me again what would be the benefit of the i mean for myself to to clean my house regarding that issue is it necessary for me to go face to face with him to make those amends as part of that of that step if you can sometimes we're unable to and that can be finances or location or a whole bunch of things but if there's a way to sit down face to face with them that's always preferred i did write some amend letters uh for people that i couldn't visit because i didn't for one reason or another have the capacity to visit them um the whole business about can't i just put this off to the side because it really doesn't have to you know it's not relevant to anything, that's not right. That's not true. Anything that happened to you that made you angry has relevance. So there are some people that I was unable to make amends for because I couldn't find them. And so I just become willing to make commence i don't know whether i even brought this up i was a bill collector in chicago and i was the 240 pound psychopath this was after i got out of the military and i was already crazy as a bed bug so it was uh so i was the perfect bill collector i was big i could kick in a door and i terrified people um and my sponsor told me that I had to go back and make amends to those people and I went, oh, no. Because most of those people would just as soon shoot me as look at me and I'm not going to go get killed trying to do stuff you're telling me to do. And he said, well, God either is or He isn't and the hardest thing about trusting God is trusting God. So I did. Now, is your ex-husband's, is any harm or resentment relevant? Yes, it is. Just do this and trust it, and it'll work out. And you may not find an opportunity to make amends to him, and you may. So the thing is to be willing. The thing is to engage in it. You want to know that this is what I think is the truth. These are all exercises, and they're exercises about getting closer to God. I don't make myself sober. I don'T have the capacity. It's God that makes me sober, and I think that God is probably amused watching us go through all these exercises. And we're out there, you know, making our amends. And we'RE out there kicking ass and taking names. And we'Re out there hunting down the active alcoholic. And weRE being a general pain in the butt by trying to recruit people into Alcoholics Anonymous when we hit our evangelistic stage. And you want to know the truth is that God does all this stuff. And he keeps us really busy in the middle so we think we're doing something. But it's all God. And sometimes the danger in that is that we conclude that we're somehow keeping ourselves sober because we're such good step workers. And the truth is that all we're showing is willingness. And that's what Wilson wrote in the book, is that willingness is the key. And so all this effort that I make in writing inventory and making amends and doing this stuff every year is nothing more, at least in my view, than showing a willingness to do something that's contrary to what I would like to do, to get closer to God. Your question is, yeah, it's relevant. So go do it anyway. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. That probably doesn't come as good news. All right. So let's talk � oh, you're going to step up there? Yeah. Great. Hi, I'm Barb. I'm an alcoholic. Barb? I guess for almost a year, I've been trying to do the fourth step. And I even printed out little nice charts with each column and spoke with my sponsor. But when I sit down and try to do it, I just stare at the paper. And it's like nothing's coming to me. So does that mean I'm really not quite ready? No. no and a lot of people do that they kind of get writer's block because they don't want to start scary process isn't it so so here's what i would suggest you have a sponsor right and that sponsor is interested in you writing an inventory so what i do with people who are who have that sort of writer's block or are scared or reluctant or whatever, is I'll sit down with them. And at least for the first few resentments, I'll set down and coach them. And then that sortof breaks the ice. And once the ice is broken, it's a lot easier to write because you don't have that initial fear involved anymore and you're already kind of getting in the swing of things. And then on a lot of occasions, what will happen is it will just pour out. And then you can't write it fast enough. Okay? Try that. See if it works. One other thing is since I've been in the program, I'm like the queen of I don't have any resentments. Yeah. But I will admit that I did find one. Yeah. And so I'm like, I was real glad because I am moving on a little bit on this. But I will work with my sponsor and do what you said. Do you know that when your life is one great big resentment, it's hard to see that you have any? And really, we set up all kinds of emotional mental blocks to keep ourselves safe. and uh in so doing we bury that stuff and sometimes just unburying a little of it will let it all out so my guess is if you are an alcoholic that you have more resentments than you even would consider because that's pretty normal all right thank you you're welcome okay now let's talk about fear inventory in the fear inventory some people write four column fear inventory i write just fears and answer two questions i just went through this this week with a guy that i'm sponsoring and he said so you don't write four-column inventory and i said no i just list the fears and then there's two questions in the fear inventory, and we ask ourselves why we had them and wasn't it because self-reliance failed us. So that's what I do. It's fairly simple. You just write down anything you're afraid of. We sometimes face the same problem with people that we're working with that we face with the resentments, and that is I'm not afraid of anything. Is he right? So the book says fear is an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence is shot through with it. That doesn't sound like I'm now. I'm afraid of everything. That sounds like I'm afraid of everything. So let's talk about that a little bit. Is it evil? Yeah. Fear is evil. Fear will rob you of everything that you can have. It'll hold you in place. It will prevent you from trying anything. It will steal your future. It will steel your present. It will take away any opportunity that will present itself. And fear is an evil, evil thing. And living our lives in fear, as most alcoholics do, is a terrible travesty because it just locks people up. You might as well put them in a jail cell because they can't do anything. They can't go anywhere. They're afraid to do anything is it corroding yeah you want to know the truth i believe that that fear causes cancer causes heart disease causes all kinds of things when you go watch people who live in fear you don't believe that when you watch people that live in fear and it will start manifesting itself in their physical body and then all of a sudden they get really sick and they wonder why their health goes to hell and uh i'll give you an example from my own experience when i the second time i was married that marriage went to hell pretty quickly and um well fairly quickly and um and for the last eight or nine years I wouldn't leave because we had three kids and when I married her I was making way up to $700,000 or $800,000 a year and then I got really sick because I never stopped working and finally was debilitated to the point where I couldn't work at all and she told me I had to leave and I said why and she said if you can't make all that money there's no basis for this marriage and I went whoa is that the basis and when I wrote inventory about it I went to my sponsor and I asked her and I said I need to fifth step this and he said what's it about and I told him about this marriage And he said, I said, that whole marriage was about money. I thought it was about love and we were all, you know, tangled up with each other and couldn't get enough of each other and the whole damn thing was about money. And he says, no kidding, what were you trolling? And I said excuse me? He said, what where you troling? And I say are you asking me what kind of beta I was dragging? And he said, yeah. And I said, money. And he says, well, that's what you caught. Why was I telling you that? Oh, okay. So what happened was there were several years where I didn't make as much money. And every time I went home, I was treated with indifference and contempt. Don't live that way. You know what happened? I got cancer. And then I had a triple bypass. And I honestly believe that those eight or nine years gave me both of them. And we cannot live in an atmosphere where we are treated like substandard goods. And especially by our significant other, or we will start believing it and we will startsuffering physical problems as a result of it. Now if you don't believe that, look around. Take a look. and I will tell you that do you know that I started my business the business I'm in now while that was going on and I built a business so I was gone at night because that's when she came home and I built a whole business out of avoiding my wife that's sick but I did that And every time I did show up, it was just like, what the hell are you here for? You're probably going to have to leave. Just don't live that way. You live in fear. You live feeling like you have no value at all. And as soon as that happens to you, bad things start happening to you physically. and if you stay there long enough I honestly believe that if I would have stayed married to her for three more years or two or three more year that it would have killed me that I would die trying to be there just because I didn't want to have an adverse effect on my children I didn'y really care about being there with her, I didn''t want that anyway but I did want to be with my children do you know what happened? I got divorced. I mean, finally, she just went out and had an affair with some guy and was doing it right in front of me. And I went, well, shit, that's enough. You know, I will try to stay under almost any circumstances but not those. So I left, and I was afraid that my children would, for whatever reason, and not want to be with me, that they would dislike me. And I can tell you that I have a better relationship with my children today, the children I had with her, there's three of them, because I'm not preoccupied with how much I dislike her and that all that resentment that I had about her was preventing me from becoming the father that I could be to these children. And one of the things I had to do was go back and make amends to them for not being focused on their welfare when I was so caught up in my distaste for the relationship I was in. Okay? All right. So I was a bill collector in Chicago, and I was crazy, crazy. And I kicked in doors, andI would put people against the wall. Sometimes I had a baseball bat, sometimes other stuff. And I was so good at it that I started collecting loans for criminals because I was just good at it. And I was, for all practical purposes, sociopathic, which meant I didn't care if I scared her. It was just about give me the money. And I don't care If you get hurt and if I need to encourage you by threatening you, So then you just had to do that. So I used to go home at night, and, I mean, I've been shot at, stabbed, swung at, all sorts of confronting behavior. And you never knew if you were going to get through the day. You didn't know if you were going to get home at night. And I'd get home and some mornings I couldn't even get out of bed. I would be so locked up in the fetal position, and it's fear that does that to you. And back then my wife called the doctor and said, I can't get him out of bedtime. I can' t even get his knees off of his chest. And the doctor came over to the house and started talking to me, and he said, all right, well, when this happens, you go make some hot tea and put a couple of shots of whiskey in it. And that'll get his knees off his chest. So, I mean, I'd be so locked up that I couldn't even unwind and uh and that's all fear it's it happened the same kind of thing can happen to you if you're in a war too long you just you just get to a point where your whole body locks up and when i was collecting bills in chicago it was so likely when you went out to do that that something violent was going to occur, that that's the way you lived. And people in that business have a tendency, like cops, they have a tenancy to die early. There are some statistics that have to do with armed officers of any stripe, parole officers, police officers, probation officers. If they're armed, the likelihood, and especially if they're aggressive, the likelihood is that they'll never live long enough to reach retirement. That has terrible effects on you. If you want to live long and happily, like Spock, if you wantto live longandhappily, don't live like that. Don't live in fear. So anyway, when my sponsor asked me to do a fear inventory, he said, I'd written a resentment inventory, and he said now we're going to do fear. And I said, all right. And he said what are you afraid of? And I'm not afraid of anything. And he says really? And I went huh? And I say you know my history. I was a bell collector in Chicago, and, you know, I spent a lot of time with people trying to take me down, and I just am not afraid. And he said, well, humor me. And I said, all right. He said, how about snakes? And I says, what kind of snakes? And he says, how abut rattlesnakes? And I said, well, you wouldn't want to be in a closet with one. And he said, you're right. So write down snakes. So I wrote down snakes and he said how about spiders? And I like black widows. And he says, yeah. And I say, you'd have to be a fool to want to get bit by one of those things. And he say, yeah, so write down black widowers. And I said, all right. And he said, how about failure? Oh, cheap shot. So he said write down failure and he said how about inadequacy and I said well, I never thought I was as good as other people. See the beliefs coming out? and he said write down inadequacy how about the police and i said you know i have a checkered career with the policeand he said yeah you do uh write down the policehow about the courts and i did well i didn't think it was really neat that they sentenced me to prison when i was 17 and he said, I agree. You write down the courts. How about women? And I said, and he said, just write down women. How about children? And I said, just the little tiny ones. I'm always afraid I'm going to drop them or something and he said write down infants how about death and I said well I don't think I want to die right away and he says yeah write down death how about how about injury and I say And any normal person wouldn't want to break an arm or something. And he said, yeah, so write down injury. And he sort of sat there and looked at me for a while. And I'm trying to figure out what's going on in his head. You know, he didn't say anything. He's just sitting there looking at me. And he says, is there anything you're not afraid of? And I said, I guess not. now that's an example of the lady that stood up and said i don't have these i didn't think i had them either and i found out that my whole life was being ruled by fear and that i truly was afraid of almost anything and the reason why i had those was my experience that almost anything represented a threat the lady back there in the corner says she doesn't trust anybody. And you want to know the truth? I didn't either because I thought that I was being set upon by the world and that the only thing that would save me was self-sufficiency. And what I found out was that that was one of the greatest lies of all and that it was God's sufficiency that would save me and not self-sufficiency and that my life was an example of self-sufficiency not working. So, you know what? See, today I'll run into some difficult circumstances in business in particular, I suppose, or with a family or whatever, and I will run around solving problems and I get more and more frustrated and then at some point the light will go off and I'll sit down the book says we relax and take it easy we don't struggle that is counterintuitive to what we do see when we get all frustrated we want to run around in little tight circles and scream the sky is falling and what I need to do is I need to sit down and relax and not struggle and I will finally sit down and say God I honestly don't know what to do here I really need you to step in I need you to show me what my next action should be and pause when agitated or doubtful and ask for the right thought or action See, it drives my ex-wife nuts when one of the twins, my 17-year-old twins, when one OFM acts up, which they do. And it's a problem because they are very large kids with very big appetites. And she'll call me up and she'll tell me about some transgression that they've committed. and she'll say, what are you going to do about that? And my answer is, I think I'll take a nap. Oh! See, that sounds like I don't care, right? But it's not. I think i'll clear my mind. and see i only did that once because i got such a nasty response to it so i don't tell her i'm going to take a nap now i say i'll take that into consideration see if i can find a solution and then i go take a lap all right so so we write down all these fears and then we ask ourselves why we had them and and then wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? What's that got to do with? Wasn't it because self reliance failed us. The real question there is if I am standing without the presence of God, do I have a reason to fear all these things? Yes. If God's not in the equation, I ought to be afraid of all that stuff. Snakes, spiders, failure, women, everything. I ought to be afraid of it because life's serendipitous and I can get blindsided by any of those things. If I am standing in the presence of God, do I have any reason to fear those things? No. You see, if I have God as the central fact in my life, I have no reason to fear anything unless my will and God's will are not in concert. Because the only thing that can touch me when I have God as the central fact in my life is what God wants, and I already agreed to that in the third step. I already told God, take me where you want, do what you want. Do all the rest of this stuff. So present me with whatever circumstances you choose, and I'll try and do the right thing. And so wasn't it because self-reliance failed me? Yeah, because my self-reliance is not God reliance. My self-Reliance says I'll take care of her. and even though I can delude myself into believing that I can take care of it most of the time or all of the times, it's God who takes care. So the whole business about... The book says at once we commence to outgrow fear. That's kind of a convoluted sentence. and in some so some people look at that and mistakenly say i'm going to outgrow fear no you're not fear will always be a companion in life it's what you do with it what happens is it says we commence to outgrow it it doesn't say we outgrow it. It says we start to outgrow it. So my relationship with fear changes. One of the greatest antidotes to that is what we talked about before which is things are rarely what they seem to be. So I will look at a set of circumstances and instead of going off at right angles and going to the worst possible conclusion my mind will say things are rarely what they seem to be and what i'm looking at here is probably not what's really going on and maybe i ought to consider it before i fly off the handle do you know that most people have anger problems uh anger is a response to fear fight or flight and and it's when people get afraid or frustrated that they reach out, strike out. And if you can moderate fear, which is what happens over time, those kind of angry responses become less and less. They occur less and more often. Less and less over time. and you can deal with some serious anger problems. So that's what I do with fear. That's what a fear inventory looks like for me. Do you have any questions about that? Huh? Some fear is normal. What you're talking about is a rabid dog. so if some rabid dog is chasing you down the street you ought to be afraid don't let him bite you right but that's not what we spend most of our time with we spend our time with ungrounded unfounded fear and we dream up all kinds of things to be afraid of It's a form of self-abuse, okay? So, you know, sometimes I don't think I'm normal if I'm not afraid. Sometimes we spend so much time in fear we want to stay in fear because as uncomfortable as it is, we're comfortable with it. Does that sound convoluted? It's true and it is. Yes? Hi, my name is Karen and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. I have two questions. I hear a lot of new people sharing at meetings about their fear surrounding doing the inventory, and also I've had a lot experience with women that I'm working with just dragging their feet at doing the inventory process. And just, again, it's all wrapped around fear. If you would share some comments on that or any suggestions, that might be helpful. And also, when sponsoring somebody, do you set a time limit for them as to how long do you give them to do the inventory? I've, you know, I try to set a timelimit, which for me, my sponsor says you have two weeks and you will have it done and you won't be here at this particular time. And, I mean, she just doesn't mess around. And so, you know, I try to be fair with women that I sponsor and like I ask them, how much time do you need? You know, usually I get two or three months. And I said, no, maybe two or 3 weeks. And, you Know, so, You know it's we kind of come to, you Know what I think is a fair amount of time. But a lot of times, you Know they don't have it done. So it's, you Know, it just drags out and drags Out. So if you could share any comments on that. What was the first one? Just fear around doing inventory. Oh, okay. In regards to that, I would still do what I had mentioned that other lady, which is I'd sit down with somebody and coach them through the first couple of inventories. It's really like log jams. Once you get them moving, it's almost like the law of inertia. Once it's moving, it has a tendency to stay moving. Once it stops, it has tendency to say stop. So what I would do under those circumstances if they really get locked up is sit down and help them get started and work with them. Just coach him through the first few resentments and it seems to have a really positive effect of breaking the log jam uh how much time do you give them that's really that's where you got to use your intuition let me tell you something about my sponsor some of you knew who he was his name was don pritz he was my sponsor for 32 years he he played this trick on me which was not unusual so he i'd call him up and i'd say i I just got a letter from my boss, and it must have smoked all the way out here because he's telling me he's really unhappy with me about this, this, and this. And he said, okay. And I said, what do you ought to do about that? And he says, well, what are the rest of the circumstances? And so I would say this and that and this and we'd have this long, drawn-out conversation. and we could be talking for 30-40 minutes and then when he got tired of talking about it he would say well Bob why don't you pray about it and do what you think and I'd say okay Don and then I would call him up and go my wife's just driving me nuts and then we'd have this 20 30 minute conversation about that and i'm asking him what i ought to do and he'd say why don't you pray about it and do what you think that went on for about three or four years before i caught on that every single conversation was going to end with why don'T YOU PRAY ABOUT IT AND DO WHAT YOU THINK you know he would not make decisions for me. And asking me to pray about it and do what I think was an exercise in developing your intuition. So what's that got to do with your question? It has to do with look at it and let them do what you think they need to do. You know, for me to say give two weeks give them three weeks give them three months does not address the real need the real need is who you dealing with and how much inventory they're going to wind up in what is your intuition say if your intuition says give them 3 weeks and bear down on them do that the intuition is kind of funny in that respect because because I if I go work with someone then I pray before I meet him, and I go, God, please make me an instrument of thy will. Allow me to help the man who still suffers. And then I go in there, and I don't know whether I'm going to be Genghis Khan or Mother Teresa. And if it's Gengis Khan, it makes me nervous for the same reasons it would make you nervous. but I know that maybe there's no other way except to just jump in somebody's stuff and that can be in the order of giving them a short period of time to do their inventory but allow your intuition to answer those questions for you because you're the person who's dealing with them alright thanks hi i'm sonderman alcoholic before you move on i wanted you maybe to talk a little bit about worry about what worry worry and how it how you see that excuse me I don't worry a lot we keep falling back in the same answer here which is you're talking about symptoms of the disease and as long as I'm willing to challenge the disease in any respect that I can through the recovery process, those things diminish over time. I know how my mind works to some real degree. I know that it has a tendency to catastrophize. I knowthat it hasa tendency to believe something that isn't even close to the truth and uh but i don't do that all the time and i am more likely to challenge what i'm facing if it's troublesome than uh than i ever was before so what do i do about worry uh one of the if i'm kind of caught up in some immediate circumstances i can't step it now hopefully we'll have time today to talk about 10-stepping, but we have 10-step buddies. We go out and recruit people out of our groups that are willing to listen to us at almost any moment. And what we do is say, will you be available to hear a 10- step if I have to call you? And if they say yes, then I could. I've had some of the same 10-Step buddies for over 30 years. And they know exactly who i am and i call them up so what do you 10 step with selfishness dishonesty resentment and fear and that when i'm in any one of those i have a reason and worry is fear so i'll call somebody up and say i'm i'm afraid of i rarely say i worry but fear is the same thing I'll say I'm in fear about this and then they'll ask me a series of questions which are in the book did Jay ask God to remove it have you harmed anyone have you made amends have you resolutely turned your thoughts to someone you can help those are the questions in intensive and then sometimes what they will do is they will offer me a different perspective when you have an uninvolved third party this is just good business stuff when you haven't uninvolve third-party listening to what you're worried about they can generally lend you a better perspective because they will not show the same the same tendency towards catastrophizing that you have. So they'll go, I can't imagine why you'd be afraid of that. Doesn't sound like a problem to me. Have you considered this? So normally, I 10-step usually about once a day or maybe sometimes two or three times a day, but most days I'll tent-step something. And the reason why is because I don't want to carry that around. I have become used to having a clear mind and not have it cluttered up with a whole lot of nonsense. And so when that starts happening, as quickly as I can try to get rid of it. And the reason why is it's uncomfortable. If I can get rid of it. The reason why most people don't 10-step, by the way, is because they're protecting their egos. They don't want to look bad. So they're terrified that they're going to call up and talk about some little chicken shit thing they just did and that they'RE going to look BAD. and that people will reject them out of hand because they just did something that was not very nice. You know what? The people that I 10-step with know me emotionally, intimately, and they know that I can do silly little things that are out of keeping with the way I'm trying to lead my life. and they don't say, well, I don't want you 10-stepping with me anymore because that's really dumb. They just ask me the questions, and the trick there, incidentally, and hopefully we'll get to it, is about resolutely turning our thoughts to someone we can help. That is a marvelous tool because it gets me out of myself. okay does that answer your question okay all right um you have any other questions about fear all right i'm going to look in the book here about this next thing because i just want to read it uh because sometimes they don't tell you about sex it says we we all need an overhauling there so it's almost like everybody's got to get put up on the lift we need to change the oil we try to be sensible about this it's easy to get way off the track and it talks about human uh opinions running to extremes and it talks about some people don't want any flavor for their fair and other people want to be on a straight pepper diet and it's all that stuff and bill wilson was just trying to be cool about talking about sex so because our opinions run to extremes do you know that I sponsor a lot of people and I have sponsored a lot of people and I've sponsored people of every conceivable sexual persuasion that you can imagine and the real question is does it work for you um we are not the arbiter of anyone's conduct okay which means i don't get to make those decisions if it works for you if it really works for you which means that you're not harming anyone and that that's what you want to do and you are pleased and not guilty about what you're doing okay i sponsored heterosexuals homosexuals swingers uh um people with really odd but unharmful proclivities jesus and it's just fine um okay so how do you do that uh it says uh we all have sex problems we uh we'd hardly be human if we didn't what can we do about them we reviewed our conduct over the years where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? So you write down. You start with the first column with the person's name because this is really about who you've been intimate with. And you say, where have I been selfish with that individual, dishonested or inconsidered? Whom had we hurt? That's an interesting question because it has a ripple effect. I can hurt them, I can hurt me, but I can hurt other people in the process. I can harm others and I can hurt their children if I am so callous as to be having a relationship with someone else's spouse. I can hurt the spouse. I can hurt a whole number of people on the periphery we think actually I'm sponsoring a guy who's having an affair with a married woman and he said so what do you think about that and I said I don't make any judgments on it because I've done it I won't do it now but I had done it And what I can tell you from a practical sense is that it's probably not spiritual and that it probably won't work. And that any time you engage in a relationship with someone who is married, someone who has engaged, someone in a committed relationship, someone who is legally separated someone who has some connection with another relationship it will rarely if ever work and nobody's leaving anybody to hang out with you sometimes people who get in marriages over an extended period of time want to see if they're still attractive both men and women and so they will go out and test the market and sometimes those things advance into a physical relationship but the likelihood of that ever becoming any more than that is pretty remote and so what you have is an unworkable situation that probably won't end well and he said, what should I do? And see, my answer is pray about a Jewish thing. From a practical sense, if he truly loves this woman that he is in a relationship with, he can sit down with her and say, I truly love you and I truly enjoy being with you and you are a huge benefit in my life, but this isn't going to work. And it's not because you're not attractive or everything I've ever wanted in life, but it's because you'RE married. And so what can we do to try and salvage ourselves without being really hurt? How can we extricate ourselves from this without harming each other? That's reasonable. Okay? So where were we at fault? What should we have done instead? You write down here, where have we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? Whom had we hurt? As I said, that can be a whole lot of people that you just never get in touch with. Then there's an interesting question, and that is did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? when i was seven years sober i was writing inventory and i read that questions i was you know just going through work and filling out the answers and doing all that stuff and the light went on now i have had as many self-defeating beliefs as you have had and one of my self-defeating beliefs was that any woman that ever got a really good look at me was going to just bail. And it was because of my truly diminished self-esteem that I just didn't think I was a worthwhile person to be with. And so I used jealousy, suspicion, and bitterness as tools to keep them up balanced. You know, I'd go hang out in a bar someplace drinking and if they had dancing there, I'd do it. Or I'd just go dancing with some ladies and I'd wind up with makeup or something on my shirt and I get home and my wife would look at that and she'd go, what's that on your shirt? And I'd say, makeup. And she'd say what were you up to? and I'd say, oh, it's dancing in a bar. Nothing happened. And she'd start looking at that and I would use that to keep her off balance, to work harder at trying to be with me. It was just all bullshit. It was. But I had such diminished self-esteem that I didn't think I could ever let her get a good look at me. And so I'd always keep her off balance. And it was mean. That's a mean, ugly thing to do to people. And I'd do that because I didn't think I was worthwhile. So I found out that jealousy, suspicion, and bitterness were tools that I used in relationships to keep women off balance, and it was frankly a horrible thing to doing. and as soon as I saw what I was doing, I'd stop. Because that does not lend itself to long-term relationships. In this way, we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. We subjected each relationship to this test, was it selfish or not? So we answer that question. We ask God to mold our ideals and help us live up to them. We remember that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good neither to be used lightly or selfishly nor to be despised or loathed. About three years ago, I'd been in a relationship, four years ago I'd be in a marriage with this wonderful lady for about three years. And it was truly one of the best things that ever happened to me and she was an enormous gift in my life. And one night we were going to bed, and she Was a woman I just wanted to be with her so bad I could just taste it. I just Wanted to hold her all the time. And I knew what was going to happen, and I said, you think we ought to invite God into this part of our lives? And she looked at me kind of funny. And she said, okay. So we both prayed and said, God, please be part of her life. Be part of my sex life also. And hell of a deal. we have a tendency because of our upbringing to think that sex can be dirty or something that should be hidden or whatever. And I found out in the book talks about it that that's a God-given thing, that that was a part given to us by God that should be appreciated and enjoyed without harming someone else in the process, but not something to avoid or hide or whatever. And taking joy in that part of our life is an enormously wonderful thing, a wonderful benefit to living in this world. So there's a curious thing because, and I mentioned it yesterday, and that is placing someone else's welfare above our own. Trying to make someone else'S life enjoyable. Trying to improve someone else' life and spending our time thinking about what we can do to make their lives better. How to make theirs more enjoyable or more fulfilling or whatever we can do. And losing the where's mine in that part of our life also. There's a lot of joy to be had in making someone else truly happy, and whether that means listening to them or holding them or whatever it means that's uh that's something that that's another portion of our lives that we can act spiritually in in something you may want to consider now the book keeps talking about ideals uh whatever our ideal turns out to be we must be willing to grow towards it we can't grow towards it if we don't have one right so when we sponsor people we ask them to write an ideal now that can go from the ridiculous to the sublime I mean this guy's right I said write a sexual ideal and he goes okay and he comes back and he He goes, about 5'4". And I'm going, you missed a point. A sexual ideal is what you're bringing. All right? Sexual ideal is not a physical description of what you want as a partner. the sexual ideal is what am I willing to do to make that relationship work what am i willing to negotiate uh... what kind of an attitude in my bringing towards it am i will willing to to sit down and discuss any challenges that occur in that relationship without trying to run away, am I willing to come off a position, some kind of position that I've taken and just said, well, I won't do that under any circumstances? Am I willing for me to give and take in a relationship? it's all about what can I do to enhance what's going on is it all about me or is it all about them or is some of each so when I write an ideal it looks like this loving communicating placing my partner's welfare above my own doing everything possible that I can do to make their life more pleasant working out problems being tolerant you can make up your own but if you write a sexual ideal you have something to work towards and i i'll tell you if you have if you have reasonable things in that sexual ideal that aren't all selfish and self-centered that are really about what you're trying to bring your relationship's going to be more successful if you don't have a relationship with you have two people that want to be together because you work it out now if you're with someone that doesn't want to be with you, you can have all the sexual ideals in the world and it isn't going to make an ounce of difference. But if you're in a relationship with someone who loves and respects you, he will do some really positive things to enhance your relationship. Any questions about that? Barry Alkoholik. Barry? you mentioned uh for the resentments four column resentment inventory three column fear inventory what is the beginning part of the fear i mean the the sex sex inventory look like on paper is it list names and what happened because it has to be about the people that i'm intimate with okay um and every you know i'll run into people who don't have sexual relationships and you know They'll, you know, they'll say, and I should probably add fancied or real. Uh-oh. Because some people will fantasize a great deal about a particular person and then nothing happens. And so they go, well, I don't have to write inventory on that because nothing happened. But their mind is occupied on a regular basis with that person. And if that's going on, I'd write about it anyway. So what was your question? Just kind of how it looks mechanically. Just the person, and then you answer all these questions that I just said. So you answer each question. You put down the person's name, and then in the second column I would start answering the questions. Was it selfish or not? yes. I mean, I never had a relationship where it wasn't selfish. So the challenge there is that we have an inclination if we really want everyone instinctively seeks intimacy. That's one of the one of the basic things that we all seek is intimacy to find another person that we can love and hold and do all the rest of that um so i just put the name in the first column and then i just answer the questions and i just write that all like a great big second column okay thank you um i've been married twice um i i have five kids that love me and two grandkids that love my life and they just they'd love to spend time with me and they think uh old grandpa bob or dad or whoever is uh is just a really neat guy i have two ex-wives that don't feel that way well i you know i'm not at serious odds with either one of them and the last one that we have three children in common uh we we are almost have a business relationship where we do everything we can to enhance the lives of our children uh would i like to be married to him again oh god no um i've been married twice i'm uh i uh um would i'd like to get married again i don't know i'm getting a little long in the tooth for this uh and i'm Getting A Little Ambivalent Frankly About The Whole Thing because I've lived alone for quite a while. And I still date and do all that stuff, but I'm very careful. The last woman that I dated was just like a week or two ago. There's no way to say this but to say it. And she said, we should be intimate. And I said, no. And she says, why not? I said because I don't know whether I want this to go any further. And I don' t want to have sex just to have sex because sex for sex's sake for any rational person is a hollow experience. If you're a sociopath, you can go have sex with anybody and think you're getting away with something. But just to have sex so you can have sex? I don't know very many people that walk away from that experience and feel good about it. So I said, I don' t want to do that. And she believed that all guys would step up if they were given the opportunity and i'm not one of them so i said if i'm going to share that kind of experience with you i want to be hopeful that our relationship will last over time and failing that no no see when i was 20 years old that would have told me that i didn't think I was masculine, that something must be unhooked there somewhere. And the truth is, I don't want to engage in it unless I know that there is some opportunity, yes. Yes, in this section, I need an alcoholic, I had wrote does not apply to me. But when you were just talking, I do not know, my husband had an affair. And I've been, it'll be 23 years that we've been together. I would never do that. It's just not even, I was never promiscuous. My father always called me a whore when I was little, so it was something that I just wouldn't do because I didn't want to make my dad right. Right. But while you were talking about this, my husband, when he came to me and told me, I forgave him and I had to forgive her because I Didn't, you know, it takes two, how can I forgive one and not forgive the other? Now, her and I aren't friends anymore, but she was my best friend. But it's the first time I thought, sitting here listening, I'm angry. I'm really pissed off about this, and I've never said that before. Good for you. I mean, I am really mad. All right. But will this section help me? Yes. Yes. I'm going to cuss. Just follow the directions. Okay. All right. We're going to take a break. Thank you for listening.