Step 11 and Conscious Contact – AA SA WORKSHOP – Part 1 of 3 – Tim M.

step 11 um don't be misled by the wording of step 11 on page 59 of the big big book where it says sort through prayer and meditation uh let me want to read it out precisely here um um sort through pray and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understood him praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out it's just like with all of the other steps that's the summary uh but it's not the detail the detail is the full contents of pages 86 to 88 um the key element of step 11 uh something my sponsor always talks about is where it says praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Now, in a little footnote later on, on page 87, it says if we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, I think if they said afternoon and evening devotion, that might help as well, we attend to that also. and it also says there are many helpful books also now these are footnotes in step 11 so with the with religious observance what i've always been taught is that's a tiny little bit of step 11 it's not the main business of step eleven the main бизнес of step eleventh is far more frightening uh it's this line where it says we consider our plans for the day because it's all very well going off and praying in the morning. And then you come back, I come back to my life. This is my life, I'm going to do what I want with my life of trouble is in step three, you've just said it's no longer your life, you're just giving it to God. So the job of step 11 is to take your relationship with God established wherever you've established it, and to bring it right into the concrete tasks of the day and if you did nothing in step 11 but this it would be sufficient god what do you want me to do today hour by hour and in each of those actions what spirit would you like me to carry out carry out those actions in kind tolerant maybe firm maybe decisive it was it's going to vary from situation to situation so although step 11 looks very much as though it's encouraging you to go further into religious observance actually my experience with step 11 it's about bringing god out of religious observants into every other part of my life and it's very concretely about making sure that my plans for the day are based on what I can give not what I can get what can I contribute to each situation not what can i get out of it and and then at the end of the day it talks about a review on page 86 when we retire at night we constructively review our day and so the reason to look back at the day to see what went wrong is only to plan what i'm going to do differently tomorrow and as an addict and an alcoholic my instinct is to be most concerned with how i feel and then i construct my actions and my day and my world and the people in it to change how i feels and this is where i need the 180 degree turn and i've decided that i'm going to let god take care of how i feel and i'm going to take careof two things getting my thinking right and getting my action right because those are the only two things i can change i can't change how i feels directly i can' t change other people i can change the past i can''t change the truth there are lots of things i cant change but i can change my thinking and i can change my behavior and that's where the willpower comes in so step 11 uh uh i think my experience when i'm doing extra things like the religious or other observance to expand my spiritual life that's great but that the purpose of that is to give me tools to actually bring god into my everyday activities that's all i've got on that you want to say something i'm okay do we want to given time And do we want to do questions? Yes, let's do that. Let's see, are there questions? My sponsor gave me to do five minutes quiet in the morning and I was playing my day with God and get my answers. And it was mentioned before also, get the answer. It's just recently, I've tried it a few times. It's risky. Recently. Recently, I've done it. Oh, recently. No answers. You haven't had any answers? No. I don't know how to get answers. What questions have you asked? I'll let you... I'm inviting God in. I'll get you direct my thinking, and to... I'm planning for the plan for the day. I'm accepting you should direct me further on the day, whatever you will, and quiet for a few minutes. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Thank you all. Thank you also. Thank you to all of you. Thank you too. Thank you as well. Thank you everyone. Thank you again. Thank you everybody. Thank you... your will and quiet a few minutes how many days in a row have you been doing it not much I've just started what it says in the big book is the right answers will come after we have tried this for a while it specifically verbatim says that I usually ask God ok, what do you want me to be today and the answer is because I'm a New Yorker and I have a foul mouth the answer comes back as don't be an asshole that's the first one you know it's I know the basics of what I have to do every day and some days it's when I'm struggling with something significant when I ask that question something intuitive comes it just feels like intuition a thought from left field some idea will come to me And it may not come in that moment. It might come when I get on the bus I Found for me the step 11 has been really really like practical What am I actually going? The first thing you know, what am I going to do that day? So I wake up Well, okay, you know go do my do my prayer meditation God will you have me be what should I be doing and It's actually quite simple it's okay we get dressed and you go to work and at work you are respectful you're loving you work diligently you then fill it finish work maybe there's that cool I need to call my mum see how she's doing I get back home I've got to cook something I'm they gonna spend some time with my wife I'll then do my review in the evening go to bed and so for me often it's actually really just quite practical what am i going to do in my day and my experiences has been particularly because i often work at home that if i'm not very clear on what i'm gonna do during my day i'll get to a point where i think oh you know i get a bit bored not quite sure what i m gonna do because i haven't really done my step 11. i haven t really seen what i' m gonna be doing in that day go online maybe look at a bit of youtube maybe see facebook oh suddenly i see that pretty girl that i fancy you know what, maybe a bit of porn will be alright an hour later and I've been engaging in pornography whereas if I'm very clear about what I'm going to do during the day God's will for me is to do what I am supposed to do in that moment during the date realising my obligations so for me often it's not even that abstract it's literally what I'll be doing that day I don't have a lot to add simply that um it took me a while to build up my practice and um it's very important for me to consciously and deliberately make contact with god in the morning and um the truth is doing steps four and steps nine that can feel like the kind of the work but really the work is in steps 10 and 11 and 12 because that's what i'm going to be doing for the rest of my life and my day is really structured it's bookended if you like i ask god what to do in the morning i go through the day and do it and then the evening i review how effectively i did it and i go to bed and then i go sleep having made a couple of pointers for the for the following day and it can feel a bit like whoa actually all I do is step 11 all day long that's all I ever do but that's what I'm supposed to be doing I'm no longer running the show thy will not mine be done it's as simple as that and you know these instructions are incredibly clear it's taken me a long time to kind of really bring them into my life but it's all there so I would just say read it and do it that's all i've got hi my name is honey i'm a sexaholic addict um sorry i missed your earlier stuff this is quite amazing and just a quick question i mean you touched the topic a little bit over there but i went through rehab and then rehab they gave me a sheet where i had to fill up every hour what i'm going to be doing and i remember before i left rehab coming back to london i was told by my counselor even when you go to toilet write it down what time you're have everything written down that will be your key of your recovery what happened to me is that eventually when I lost a little bit sometimes I went oh I missed it and I just gave up on the whole worksheet like every day working what time what I'm gonna go to the meeting where I'm going to work that's number one second point is you mentioned about asking for guidance in the morning for you daily ahead and I had times where I felt like when I know I'm gonna try to do a business deal today let's say and I'll ask him out God help me to help me whatever decision you want me to do if this thing should happen make it happen if it doesn't happen give me the strength to accept that it's not supposed to be happening and then two days later I found myself a few days ask God to do me a favour today just today let me do this deal and when it doesn't go I just get really resentful you know why didn't it go I'm not meditating enough then I'm off and I feel like I'm asking for lots of favours all the time do me this you know I make conditions in my head if God will do me this I will I will go to a meeting tonight or I will pick up the phone and come and I'm basically making This has happened like later in recovery, because beginning of recovery I was really whatever happens you know I came out of rehab the whole community was talking about me and it was really embarrassing But I was so powerful so strong myself. I said this is who I am I don't care what people think about me down the line I can see that I go to a wedding and say oh Is he looking at me? Does he not want to talk to me? My recovery is a little bit slipping backwards and my question is for you guys is What am I missing? I know I'm missing some stuff but when I pray in the morning I just want to tick that box okay, I've prayed I want to feel like more than I'm doing it as like I used to do it like really asking for guidance for the rest of the day which I'm struggling at the moment stop it okay you're touching on several things one of which is if I do the same thing for step 11 forever it will lose all meaning I have to change it around I have two mix things up I have do something slightly different to keep myself engaged in it so I need to look at different tools there are the basic tools that I do but I tried different things so I'm not always doing the same thing. Now, to your specific point, I don't ask God for anything specific. And some days, I mean, look, I expect God to speak to me the way a human being does. So, God, what do I do today? And I expect a voice to answer very clearly and distinctly. But it doesn't work that right so the answer might come three days later the answer my come when I wake up one morning the answer I might hear when a sponsee calls that night I never know where I'm going to get the answer but your point about it you're indicating to some extent that your step 11 might be getting stale or that you're losing the desire sometimes it helps and I mean sometimes we go back to what it says in here right and just do exactly what it says for 30 days and see how we do it doesn't mean you have to take notes on every hour what you're going to be doing unless you find it helpful but the plan for the day can just be three lines that you write on a piece of paper but if you if you're struggling sometimes going back to the very basics can be helpful okay can I just add something as well because i had a really similar similar situation um and my sponsor told me a very you know very simple prayer that kind of captures a lot the essence of this program god take my life it's what i've been practicing for a while each morning very simple um and the more i started practicing i realized one thing i was doing in my steps uh step 11 was it was it was all about me it was yes i had to write you know ask god about my day and what i should be be doing. And then, oh God, I've got this thing coming up. How should I approach that? Every question, every request, even if it was God worked through me, it was all about me. And recently I've been thinking, I mean trying to, if I've handed my will and my life over to God,I don't need to worry about my little plans and designs. Once I know what I'm doing each day, the outcome is immaterial. It's in God's hands. And once I really appreciate that okay god's gonna gonna guide me now i can actually start thinking about other people and i found it really helpful in my step 11 to for once i've got it's clear what i'm doing in my day to start praying and thinking about Other People um and that's been a really helpful practice for me because you know as we've been talking about all of today for me anyway my problem lies within myself um and my solution to that is to connect to a power greater than myself and ultimately take myself out of myself to be useful to be thinking about other people to be living in service and so to start actually in my step 11 in the morning and evening to be praying and thinking about other People you know that bus driver how kind of him to to get me safely to my place to from A to B today I hope he's well you know what awful news uh I read the other day you know please can everyone find peace and love and happiness and I found taking myself out myself praying for other people has has kind of helped with that kind of god well you know if i do that well you know then everything will be okay you know the dependency thing um so yeah giving space to really pray and think about others um has been helpful for me in this state god take my life I think if you have any doubt pick one simple thing and just do that so um you might decide that you're going to read pages 86 to 88 every morning so rather than trying to do 18 good things every day in a in essay pick one and just do that and then but once you've got that established then you build up if you place too much pressure of getting everything right all at once then it all goes to just on that little note is my prayers I haven't stopped not even once recovery but my prayers are getting shorter and shorter I usually like meditate and pray for a few minutes and now my prayers is out and that's where it bothers me that I can feel like I'm sliding backwards a little bit and there was quite a good idea actually just to sometimes I have to say stop a second every single wait for a minute let me finish my prayer then I'll start my day for six and a half years 15 minutes every morning and I don't alter that 15 minutes minimum and even if I do nothing in that 15 minutes and there are some days it's better than others it's 15 minutes where I'm trying to spend time with God 15 minutes never less because I have to do that there's a way of tricking yourself as well you've got a way of trickling yourself into doing it the way is this I've got a lot of pressure in my life there are lots of people, there are lot of things to do when I turn all of the electronic devices on in the morning there are so many different ways I can be communicated with you know I have six email addresses and I have this app and that and things are coming to me from all directions and then there's a thousand things I need to do and my mind says to me you haven't got time to pray you haven't Got Time to Meditate you've got things to do you need to And what I decided, and I started doing this at lunchtime actually, is to take an hour where I say I'm going to turn the computer off. I'm gonna turn my work phone off. I'm gunna turn my personal phone off I'm not going to turn the radio on, I'm not going turn TV on. I don't have to pray and meditate, but I don't need to do anything else either. And I think, I'll do what I want, so I sit there. About five minutes later, I go, I am bored now. I might as well pick up, and I leave a spiritual book next to the comfortable chair. I think well, I might just read that. I discover myself 20 minutes later having done a form of meditation by reading the book. But I give myself that hour and say, I don't have any obligations. I don' t have to do anything in that hour. So I'm now free. And it's the same idea. Abraham Heschel talked about the Sabbath being a cathedral in time where you create... It's almost like a physical space that you go into. And you can adopt that same idea of creating times in the day when you are under no obligation no one disturbs you you are allowed to have that time separate from back from the world and then you'll discover yourself praying and meditating because you're bored and you'd rather have someone to talk to morning and night I do at night I pray we'd get up half an hour earlier and do it should go on step 12 you can pass you want me to do step 12 he starts off in oh dear um how about how about we we do we could do topics sponsorship service in a a service outside a a and then I could pop questions mm-hmm you don't I'm going to do sponsorship. You've got more on service, actually, than Nico. I do AA service. Nico does sponsorship. John does... Service outside AA? Yeah. Okay. So, Nico, do you want to start sponsorship? Sponsorship. Central one. Yeah, so in step 12, we get to share with other alcoholics and addicts the solution that has worked for us um to get us sober and um this is absolutely integral to me staying sober because it's in giving to others that i receive the message um it's been giving away the experience that's been given to me that keeps me sober as well so it's no sense um in no sense does it cost to me anything. In fact, by doing step 12, by sponsoring other people, I gain more. So what does that look like in practice? I make myself available to other alcoholics and addicts guide them through the steps all the way from 1 to 12. That means at my home group and at other meetings I make an active effort to say hello to anyone who's new. I try and have a policy where people can't leave my home Group without me at least having said hello to them. I arrive half an hour before it starts, I hang around afterwards until the clearing up has been done, I often go out for dinner and fellowship so I'm making myself available to people if they want me um I give my number to people, if they call we chat about any problems that they've got and some people ask me to sponsor them. At that point I kind of gear them up with a pack of information um I say this is what here are my expectations this is if you're being sponsored by me this is what I'm going to ask of you here are the guidelines you can call me anytime you want if it's if i don't want to pick up i won't pick up uh i'll call you back when i can and we start going through the steps and what does that look like um i i expect them to have a big book and we go through that and i use outside materials worksheets and commentaries to support that work and you know i've heard someone say you know a person isn't really a sponsee until they've taken step three and they've turned their will in their life over to the care of god until that point they're just uh they're just someone who you're helping so um you know until people are really on board and committed i'm just a kind of guide for them um so there's some practical stuff they call me up with problems disturbances i take them through step four um i listen to their step five um i help guide people with um the harms that they've done and how best to make amends i encourage my sponsees to be doing as much service as is appropriate for their level of expertise and and sobriety so my sponsees all do service um if they're not doing service then they're nicht doing the program as far as i'm concerned and the time that i'm putting in for them um they should be putting in for other people um i might do it in a slightly different way because i'm sponsoring whereas they're putting out the chairs but you know three years ago i was the one putting out the chairs so so that doesn't change um i have a sponsor too i refer problems that i have responsibilities to him and take guidance from him and so that's how that works um i don't know if i've got much more to say on that um i think there's one thing if i can add Dr. Bob was a co-founder of AA in the 1930s. It was Bill Wilson and Bob Smith who founded AA. And Dr. Bob says in the big book, it's the second, is it the first or second story? It's the first story. He said he sponsors, or the way he puts it is, I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learned to others who want and need it badly. I do it for four reasons. Number one, a sense of duty. number two it is a pleasure three because in doing so I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me and number four because every time I do it and it's probably the most important because every time I do I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip so those are four very good reasons to engage in sponsorship the one thing I'll add is that says you know nothing so much ensures immunity from alcohol as intensive work with other alcoholics and that word intensive is quite interesting what does that even mean it means you know it's not necessarily quantity although quantity is relevant, it's quality and intensity. And I've also found it particularly useful to have it pointed out to me that if I'm not being inconvenienced by my service work, if it's not forcing me to move things around creatively in my diary, if I'M not devoting time which I would otherwise be devoting to other things to that, then I'M NOT doing enough. it has to be intensive in order for it to have the desired result um okay practice these principles in all our affairs the other kind of side of step 12 now obviously i don't spend all my time in aa meetings or even speaking to other alcoholics when i come into an aa meeting for me personally it's quite easy but i can you know i can be kind consider ask people how they're doing i'll do my service commitment For me, the real challenge is when I leave AA, when I leave my alcoholic friend and I go back home. It's when I'm with my wife. It's where I'm dealing with my in-laws. It's wherein that boss is being annoying. And for me, that's when the real tasks begin. The majority of my life, I live outside of AA. And I have to take the principles that I've learned in AA and apply those to my life in all of my affairs. Now, the principles being, I think fundamentally, particularly with step 12, is service, thinking of others, putting their need, usefulness. How can I be useful to the person that I am interacting with? Whether that's my wife or my in-laws, whether that's at my place of worship, putting their needs and desires above my own to the best of my ability. And of course, that kind of notion of service and of usefulness is kind of the basis of this whole programme, You know, moving ourselves away from ourself towards God's will, towards service to other people. So for me, you know, making sure that I'm practicing these principles outside of AA is absolutely essential to my recovery. And, you Know, through the steps, I have written out how I should behave in my various roles in life. My various affairs, well I'm a friend, I'm a husband, I am a brother, I am a son, a member of a community and making sure that I'm living up to those ideals through service. So yeah, I won't leave you at that point, that's it. Okay so here's what I do. Let's put it this way, when I came into 12-step recovery I was dying physically and I was dead spiritually therefore I know it is my obligation to give of myself to recovery and that is in a variety of ways and one of those ways is doing service in AA doing service in the 12-step fellowship of our choosing and so I am I have two home groups as Tim says it's because I'm selfish and greedy I need two home groups not one and in one home group I am the GSR and treasurer and another home group on the chairperson and secretary on I do work at the inner group level which is the next level up for in in the organization of a a it It goes group, then intergroup, then region, and then York, which is the general service office. So I go above the group, and I do service at the intergroup in East London, and I participate there. And I do these things because what has been given to me in recovery is so far beyond what I ever expected of recovery and so much more than I deserve to have gotten. And so from that standpoint, I owe it back to AA. The other thing I find is the last time I was sober, when I was six, seven, eight years sober, the first time before I relapsed, and I only see this when I look back. I wasn't doing any service. I wasnít sponsoring. I came to AA, I got what I wanted and I became very effective sober at getting better at what at getting what I want it because when you're sober and you've learned these tools and you're not drinking or you're not messed up because you're engaged in your addiction you become much more effective at getting wouldn't want um and what happens when I don't give is is recovery turns to ashes in my mouth, and it poisons it. And it doesn't work anymore. Recovery only works when I give it back. And so for that reason, I spend more than half of my free time engaged in AA activities or engaged in service or sponsorship of one form or another. So that's what I thought I'd say on that. I've got a couple of little things to add. It says around page 18, I think, most of us spend much of our free time engaged in the kind of work we're going to describe. Now, there are two parts of that. There's, well, what do you classify as free time? And what do classify as much? Now, what you classify as free time will depend on whether you have 5 to 10 children, 10 to 15 children, 15 to 20 children, above 20 children. How many children you have will affect how much time you have for service work. The type of job you have, whether you Have one business, two businesses, three businesses, four businesses, all of these have an impact. The first point is that I think it's probably the case that because of the amount of work I do in AA, which I do out of choice, if I weren't an alcoholic, if I wasn't in recovery, I might be spending more time on my career. I might have a different career. I might been in a different position in my career The price I've decided to pay is to pay the price in terms of my career a little bit. My career is going fine, but I would rather have a life where I'm balanced between giving to my career and watching people who are almost dead come alive again in AA. I mean, an extra few hours a week in the office, it's an obvious choice to make, is to spend the time doing the sort of thing that we do in AA uh the second point i would say is um that made you feel guilty um the second points is that now i don't know about your community but in our community we have a lot of difficult people um and the great thing about sponsoring is that just anyone can become an addict. Therefore, just anyone can get into recovery. Therefore if you're sponsoring, if you sponsor enough people, you'll come across every single character type in the world. The first hundred people are the hardest. And in learning to handle and the thing that's interesting about sponsorship is you're playing a game really where you're offering them help of a certain sort but you don't want to become the one that fixes them with everything so this one hand held out and there's another hand pushing back at the same time so that people become reliant on the fellowship of aa and on god and on the universe generally and not just on you so it's a tricky thing to handle uh to to to be close to people and to keep the boundary at the same time and i have to say if you can handle if you get through your first hundred sponsees over the course of a number of years you can hand anyone out there because you will have seen the behavior in a sponsee of yours and you'll have learned how to deal with it now when you find a particular difficult behavior pattern maybe you'll get it wrong with the first five people with that behavior pattern but eventually you'll crack it and as soon as you've you've learned that lesson you're on to the next lesson. And because of that, it's huge fun. And it's not just a matter of, it is not the same thing every time because the person in front of you is different every time. But I think the last point I want to make on step 12 is that it's no just the actions you take, it s a general attitude and mentality towards the world where you are constantly maintaining a connection to God saying by the way if you ever want me to do something you let me know and the reason we're all here today was because I was at an AA meeting about three or four miles away a few months ago and I saw someone come in at about 730 and then it was about 3 minutes to 8 the meeting started at 8. Three minutes to 8, the person ran out. Now I didn't know why they ran out, I didn' t know if it was their first meeting, are they waiting for the meeting and they got scared and they thought they were going to go, I thought this person might never come back. So I go out and ask that person, are you okay? And he said, oh no, I'm just taking a phone call, I'll be back in a minute. But a little voice said to me, make a connection there and because of that i built a relationship and now we're all here today so if i hadn't had that converse if i haven't listened to that voice on that day which said go and find out if he's okay we wouldn't be here today. So you never know what is going to come of listening to that little voice which is why it's so important that i not be so concerned with my own worries or desires or ambitions that that radio is the god radio god fm is playing the whole time i just need to be quiet enough to listen to it so um any questions on step 12 i have a number of questions sure i'm sure number one i just want to clarify it's not really a question just to clarify that understand what you're saying that when you're a sponsor the guideline that you make for yourself is that you help them with the program specifically but you don't become the therapist and you're not there for helping them in their crises in life that they're going through etc etc it's like is it limited that you helped them specifically work in the program is that the guideline i i tell people that there are several reasons you can call me reason number one is because i've given you an assignment in aa or whatever fellowship here and i sponsor people in other fellowships too I've given you an assignment and you're stuck on the assignment and you need help. Fine. Or, you finish the assignment and we need to meet and go through it. Or now the crisis calls, we do take the crisis call. You know he's kicked out of his class and he needs help, he needs support. It happened to me. And my sponsor was there for me. I just want to know what would be the normal guidelines that normal sponsors would make? The crisis call, you want to use the word healthy not normal. knows what normal is i can tell you what healthy is healthy is when you don't become if they're cold you don' t become the sweater if you're cold you help them knit or buy a sweater so when they have a crisis the question to me is but they say i have this crisis i show them what tools of the program are available to apply so that they can solve the crisis with the fellowship and with god so i don't become the problem solver i become the person who gives them the tools to solve the problem what's the fourth was there a fourth mm-hmm a fourth reason people can call you four reasons um i've reduced it to three i think it's three okay just another two quick questions number one um the first step in step 12 i think even before you become a sponsor, to share with the addict that is still suffering, to share them what we receive. Is that appropriate before I've finished the steps? Let's say now, personally, I'm up towards the end of step four in the program for about eight months. I have a few relatives that I know are an active addiction. Is it appropriate at this point to try to, so to say, share the message with them, or is it inappropriate until I actually finish and get up to step 12? What I tell people is, if you've been sober five days, you know more about staying sober than the person who came in yesterday. So I have people reaching out. I have newcomers talking to other newcomers to help them. It doesn't have to be formal sponsorship. So I've got a couple of sponsees in my home group, And if I see some broken-down drunk walk in, I point to that sponsee. I snap my finger and I say, go talk to him. Right? And they exchange phone numbers. So not actually, you know, you don't become a sponsor until you've finished the 12th, until you got up to step 12, but you can have the other. Not quite step 12. What I do with people is as soon as they've made their first amend and they're in step 9, they're ready to sponsor. Really? Yeah, so I was about two-thirds of the way through my amends when I began sponsorship. You're saying to carry the message to those that are still suffering, you can still do it even if you're before them? Carry the message now. Because I'm worried maybe I'm codependent, maybe I'M trying to control them and, you know, I care so much. It's relatives of mine and so I'm wondering, am I being codependant? Am I being controlling or maybe I don't know? i i would keep the focus on the people who are turning up at your home group they're not the last ones too right so you said after yeah yeah so you you offer the help to the people who are overtly asking for help um there's a danger with trying to help people who are still in the addiction my sponsor talks about don't don't pick apples that are still too green um that you need to wait till they're ripe and then their relatives oh especially especially if they're relatives that his one of one of the one of the difficult rules is the closer you are to someone the less able you are to help them which is why in under some circumstances sometimes you might be a part of the jigsaw puzzle but you won't be the whole jigswore puzzle Which is one of the reasons why you generally need to maintain a certain distance to sponsees. Because if you become emotionally involved, you become useless. Because you need to be able to say things to people which could sacrifice the relationship. Because it's more important that they hear the truth than they hear something which binds them to you. So, Louise says, you might as well tell them the truth because they're going to die anyway. Now, you can do that with complete strangers or near strangers. Much harder to do that and often not helpful to dothat to people who are relatives. Often the best thing is... You know those adverts on the television for slimming guides when two women are talking And one of them says, oh, you've lost so much weight. How have you done it? And the other one says, well, I've been using this special slimming whatever. It's just like that with recovery. It's only if you become visibly happier and more comfortable and more effective in your life and people say quietly, what are you doing? How are you dealing with this? That's the point at which you become most useful. Just a short one to you, John. More of a clarification than a question. you're talking about service outside of AA just being helpful in all different areas of your life again how does that balance with not becoming a people pleaser so I think I got the answer I just want to clarify that you do limit it to your free time and you don't let it take over your life because I'm in a place in my life where I don't really I'm trying to actually build up my life my job is very flexible and the whole day I'm helping my wife and the baby and then I have no life left of my own so is that the guideline that you keep it to your free time is that well i don't own my life anymore um because i've given it's not my as well i try and take it back um constantly but it's not my life any more i've giving it uh i've give it over to god um but you know i i see the dilemma i suppose with that recognition that it's not really my time um to use as i wish it's for god to tell me what i should do with my time time, often then it's about the mental attitude that I have. If I'm going into these various facets of my life, whether it's work, whether its at home, whether in the community, whether it's a place of worship, if I'm gong into those areas of my live with the desire to be useful, with the aim of serving and thinking of other people, then I feel I'm practising these principles uh in all of my affairs um but as much as i wish that for that like little time to myself it's not it's no really mine to hold on to i leave that to god to tell me or when do i need how do i divide my time does anyone else have clarify that the one thing i would add as well is the balance between uh different areas of my life how much time goes on work how much time goes on meetings, how much time goes on sponsorship. It changes hugely over time. So there are times when at the moment I'm going through a period where I'm doing paid work a lot more than I was let's say a year ago. There were times when I, there was one year when I was teaching almost all of the time. Not in AA, in another area my business was very small that year. So it's something that has to change the whole time and a good thing that someone said once was it's like having a pack of dogs and you haven't got enough food for all of the dogs so you have to give that you you give the most food to the dog that seems the thinnest right now not necessarily the dogthat is barking the loudest but the one that looks the thinNEST and it's so there's a constant awareness and adjustment going on yes I'd like to ask regarding I'm struggling, not struggling, I won't say struggling, but subconsciously in my brain I'm coming up to three years of recovery and I'm only up to step 11, 10, 11, whatever I just done last weekend. And I've still got amends to make and I've been sitting on each step, you can imagine how long, especially step four took me a very long time, changed sponsors in between and there's some amends to be made which at the moment one of the people is impossible to make in a certain way, and other people are saying like my wife or my family are telling me we'll see change this will be the biggest amends. Which in a setter way they have seen this head up changed tremendously but it's an ongoing process it's never ending. And sometimes I'm thinking to myself no I haven't yet finished that step, I haven'y done the how can i go to the next one and i'm constantly thinking that i'm gonna have to start the steps again in a year's time or an half years time that's my first question is there a normal decision people feel like oh i haven't done step four properly i can do one more time properly and start over again i've left this out i remembered about this one i've never shared it with my sponsor this guilty conscious and then step 12 my sponsor asked me last week when i thought was him the step 10 11 whether he asked me are you ready to sponsor And I said, no, I'm not ready to sponsor people. And I don't know if I'll ever be ready to sponsor people because my previous sponsor was a very rigid person. He told me, call me 9 o'clock. If I called him 9 or 1, he didn't pick up the phone. And every time I called them about a problem, he said, do a step inventory on it. Can you see your... It was always me, always me. There was never no one else. I was always to blame for everything that's going on. Like you said, I had to be an hour before my meeting home group. I had stay another hour after the meeting. it took me like four hours every Saturday evening my meeting, because I had to travel an hour to get to the home group. It was very controlled and he let me go for therapy all different kinds of things which I had to let go of in exchange for a different sponsor but what I feel is if I'm going to sponsor someone, I can't have a sponsor call me at 11 o'clock in the morning I'm checking in, I'm busy I'm working. It's going to have to be like my previous sponsor said, 9 o' clock, you call me 9 o 1 and I can see people living with that and my question The question is, basically, do I have to sponsor? Is it good enough to pick up the phone or when a member calls me and recovery just wants to talk to me and be available if I can't take the call, I'll take it. If I can take it, I will call you back later on. Is that good enough? Or recovery...the 12 step is only if you sponsor someone. If you don't sponsor someone, if you're only helping people in recovery, that's not called doing the 12 step. I think the word ready doesn't help. I think there are two words. The first one is prepared and the second one is willing. Now, to be prepared to sponsor someone is to have had the experience yourself of going through the first 11 steps. That prepares you. You're now prepared. Being prepared is not a matter of opinion. You can't ask someone, are you prepared or not prepared? Either they've done the first 11 steps or they haven't. If they've don't the first eleven steps, they're prepared. The question is one of willingness. Now, willingness, again, is sometimes an unhelpful word because you've got two different words. You've got willing and whether or not you want to do it. I love controlling people. I love that. now being willing to do something i may not want to do it but i'm i'm committed to doing it wanting often comes later it's often only once you're doing it that you think oh i quite like this this is all right i think the real question is how are you allowed to sponsor people differently than how you've been sponsored i think you absolutely because the re one of the reasons that we're all so different in every meeting even, let alone across the fellowship. Is it possible that God needs that amount of variety and difference within the fellowship in order to reach the people coming in through the door? Which is why I don't understand groups where everyone does everything exactly the same way, particularly when it comes to sponsorship. I mean the mechanics of the steps are the same whoever you are but the results of the steps are different and it's like that with step 12 and just a little tip I don't schedule phone calls with sponsees because my life is too fluid if I scheduled lots and lots of phone calls in I'd have this schedule artificially tied up with phone calls that could happen at any time really. So what I say to people, if you want to talk to me, you call me. If I can't pick up, you text me and I call you back as soon as I'm free. And sometimes sponsees don't like that. They say, well, I want a specific time. I say, when you're sponsoring more people than I'm sponsoring, then I'll fit around you whilst I'm sponsoring morepeople than you than you fit around me so you you have to people's timetables vary if your timetable is such you can only be spoken to at a certain time as long as you do it kindly it's fine you work out what times you're available you tell them what times are available and when you're available you make sure you pause before you answer the phone so you sound more pleasant than you might otherwise I only take sponsee phone calls at night because i work right so so basically between the hours of 9 and 10 30 on weeknights and the afternoons on the weekends um i take calls so i've trained sponsees to know when to call me i mean i said i get that my i'm really rebellious when it comes to this my ego is constantly i don't have the time i've got you know work and i work in different jobs i've got a wife I've got to go home to, I've got to see my family, I'm going to see friends. And you want me to give all of this time to AA and to sponsoring and that's one of the excuses I have. The other excuse I often have is well, like you say, I am not ready. I'm not ready and you know two things is as Tim said once you've gone through the steps, you are ready. And if you think you haven't quite done step four right, step five right. In my experience, the best way of holding on to this message. And the best way to deepen your understanding of this program is through sponsorship. So that excuse doesn't work for me. The busyness thing, again, you know, as I said to you, I have to remind myself, hang on, this is not my time. You know, this is, I've got to ask God, what can I do? How can I meet my various commitments? You know my infinite self i'm sorry my finite self my final my finite itself i can't balance it all you know i can do it on my own i'm powerless over everything around me um but with god you know he's infinite he can help me he can helped me balance my time um and for me ultimately it comes down to you know do i really want to do it and you know often if I'm really honest not always but I recognize the absolute importance my life depends on doing this stuff and I also know that when I do do it it's the bright spot of my life it brings bring what brings my life alive makes it really meaningful so I have lots of excuses but they they all melt when I really think things through. So I've got that answer, basically. You finish the 11 steps, you start the 12 steps, you start sponsoring. Yeah. You are ready. The other thing, just quickly, that I found very helpful was before I was sponsoring, I created time in my week for sponsorship and I used that time to help other newcomers. And then when sponsees started to come along, they filled those slots. So one thing you could do, this phrase, build it and they will come. create the time now and it will be filled if your life is so full already that there's no time then you might find that there is no space for those people to come in but create the first time and people will come into your life to fill it there is also the understanding of what a full life means so if you have got a pot and you get lots of potatoes and you put the potatoes in the pot until you can't put any more potatoes in. And you say to someone, is that full? And they say, yes, it's full. You can't get any more. You can' t put anymore potatoes in it. Then you get some rice and you discover that when you pour the rice in, it goes in between the gaps. And then you say, well, it' s now full. You can'' t... It' s full of potatoes. It' S full of rice. You can '' t get anymore potatos and you can''t get anymoer rice in it . Is it full? No, because you put water in. the water is now it's right up to the surface can you add anything else? salt even if you put salt in it will it's so you know the surface of water tiny little thing it will spill over heat is the one is the last ingredient that you add and that changes everything it changes all of the ingredients in the pot and so my experience with sponsorship is it's amazing how much more you can fit in the pop when you don't think you can anything in the port and the whole thing is transformed by the heat that God provides anyway and the question one mustn't view sponsorship as a sort of, it's not like paying taxes where you don't sort of get anything. You don't feel as though you're getting anything back. You're just paying the taxes. I have to pay my 40% or 20% or 10%. The question is how much joy do you want to have in your life? Do you want joy? Well, you sponsor people then. There you go and the more joy you want the more people you sponsor I always try to tend to connect with people with the same sobriety amount of me not lower not too much higher just about the same and I feel like that's why I'm having very difficult in sponsoring, which is my feeling, I don't know. We'll get over that. Anything, any last question before we wrap up? If not my last question, just a few words on relapse perhaps. I know there's differences in different types of addictions, but if any of you have any experience in sex addiction and any words of wisdom on relapsed, Well, relapse with alcohol I have a lot of experience in. I actually have a black belt in it. Relapse with sex addiction I don't have experience in and I think the main thing is relapse occurs when we pull away from recovery so I'm listening to a speaker tape right now and the speaker named Mark Houston, says that if you want to see people who have never relapsed and who've been sober or free of their addictions for many, many years, they have a couple of things in common. They have a home group. They show up at the home group, they do service at the home group they have a sponsor they sponsor other people and they try to and they practice the principles of recovery specifically steps 10 and 11 to the best of their abilities and if you follow those six things you're probably not going to relapse as long as you have the momentum of continuing the steps you're protected that's what I've witnessed so you keep doing keep moving keep going forward one thing I would say about behavioral addictions I've sponsored I have problems with sex addiction myself I've had problems in the area of romance and all of that side as well so the more of the slur stuff perhaps I've had problems with food specifically not eating I've have problems in all sorts of areas now the first thing is that until step nine is completed and by completed I mean I have done everything I can do to complete every last amend Maybe there are people I haven't found, but I have done everything to find them. Until the first nine steps are complete, everything else is, the term is firefighting. Now some people successfully, when joining a 12-step fellowship which handles a behaviour, they're given the grace from day one never to break any of the bottom lines. But that's not always the case. People come into recovery with different degrees of emotional and psychological and spiritual damage. And the greater the emotional and physiological and spiritual damaged, the longer it might be before all of the acting out, all of behavior stops. So is it a sign that I'm doing something wrong or not necessarily? in my experience not necessarily the because the acting out is an ego response to emotional pain sometimes people when they hit step four acting out in food let's say they're in aa they start doing step four their food problems are all over the place very very common thing for happen to to happen uh sometimes challenging the ego through the steps will create discomfort and the discomfort can be fueled for the acting out um my experience though is this you've got two phases there's the recovery phase which is everything up to the end of step nine and during then i've never found it helpful to keep putting back at back at step one back at step one bucket step one backup step one every single time someone has acted out because they'll never get to step 9. You've got to get through to the end of step 9, once you get through the end step 9 you have power now. Now this isn't the end of the story. With the behavioural addictions they're very like defects of character. No one in AA for instance has got to the end of step nine, discovered their anger is almost entirely gone. But then you ask them 40 years later, does that mean you never got angry again? Does that mean You've never been frightened? Does that mean? You've Never been selfish? No, it means there is massive improvement. The massive change happened in my life when I completed step nine. I think it was the same for you as well. That is the key point. After then, if my behaviour in food, with sex, with romance, with fantasy, I had money problems, I've had workaholism problems, there's barely an addiction. Gambling is the one thing I don't care much for. I'm not interested. But I've have problems in every other area. Now, when I am prone to acting out behaviour in any area, now it's not at the level, it doesn't cause major problems now when fantasies about my food for instance start to come up in my mind. It's nowhere at the levels that it was many years ago but it is a sign, when I act out post step 9, it is sign that one of five things needs to take place. The first one, there might be someone I need to forgive. There might be a relationship in my life where there is tension where I need to take action to resolve it. There's some unfinished business in my interaction with another person. The third thing, if I let negative thinking run through my mind for a day, two days, three days, four days. I shouldn't be surprised if on day six I'm acting out. So I look at step 10. How am I marshalling my own thinking? What am I doing? Am I monitoring my own thing like John talked about or am I just letting my mind think what it wants? Step 11. Am I spending time every day to sit with God? And step 12. How about going and helping someone else and honestly uh with the my solution to when i've had phases when there's been acting out in this area or that area is to look at those five tighten them up and every single time the behavior has stopped forgiveness amends basically so if you've got an ongoing tension, and then steps 10, 11, and 12. So just to sum up the kind of stuff correctly, if a person has a relapse after step 9, it means that he's doing one of those five things wrong. Yeah. If he has a Relapse before step 9 it's not necessarily, could be yeah, could be no, depends on... Yeah, pretty much up to step 9 just keep pressing on with the steps but in either case never ever beat yourself up. What if I'm white please come here. there's another program for that you say bless you and you bless yourself at the same time good now my number is on there and I think you've given your numbers to some people as well but if you want the numbers of any of the people here just give me a buzz and we'll be happy to help you with anything to do with the steps, anything to deal with recovery tell your friends Thank you, everyone. Our pleasure.