Fourth Step and Root Cause Analysis – Milestone Step Workshop – Part 4 of 5 – Chris

Okay, we are back. Marty is amazing, isn't he? Yes. Have you ever seen a four-step presentation like that? No. Oh my God. I should have been caught on video. So the thing that's amazing about it is there... I believe that the spiritual exercises that are in our book, there's an economy to them. And as complicated alcoholics, We'll find every way possible to make it deeper or change it or rewrite it or something. And I think there's real, there's spiritual virtue in just doing what it says. Just doing what It says. And that's what Marty gave us. So I'm just going to read a couple of things here because I like the way I read them. on page 71 it says we hope you are that you are convinced that god can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from him so much of that inventory it was emphasizing this selfishness the self-centeredness the self seeking that really is what's causing what's causes our self-sabotaging of the quality of our life our life it's causing us spiritual and emotional damage we're doing it ourselves our problems aren't coming at us they're coming from us and when you start to really look in deeply into this into this inventory process you you start you start you start just see that if you've already made a decision third step in an inventory what marty went through of your grocer handicaps you've made a good beginning it says that being so you've swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself and that's the point of this we you know we don't need to know what we already know you know, we we need to uncover and discover and then get about the business of discarding these things that have really been blocking us they're blocking us off from a quality of life they're blocking us off from from recovery which is going to include release from alcohol you know it's blocking us all from all that stuff so so you know was was i skeptical of this thing called alcoholics anonymous the recovery program when i first looked at it yeah you you know um i think i don't know one person that walked into aa and saw those and said oh my god finally finally there's answers none of us are gonna none of this did that so we so we have to come to we have to you know we have we have surrender we've got to come to believe we've got to make a decision to believe you know we've gotta take some action we've to start the first thing you do that you know i'm from the business world right and if something's really screwed up let's say staffing staffing turnover is outrageous it's like 60 percent a year in your business the first thing you gotta you gotta do is is you know you you got you gotta to do an assessment you got it you got to do it in analysis and look at everything that has to do with personnel to really be able to see what is the problem it's usually the goddamn manager and the managers gotta go that's usually what it is but businesses don't like to hear that so there's dancing all around and there's more turnover and everything's a nightmare for another two years, but if you really want to see what the hell's going wrong with an organization, you do a root cause analysis. And I'm telling you that's what the fourth step is. What is wrong with you? Well let's do a Root Cause Analysis. Let's look at step four. Now, I'm going to do something very heretical here. I am going to read out of the 12 steps and 12 traditions a couple of paragraphs. Can you imagine? These are sections that I read a lot because they encapsulate what we're trying to talk about here today. What is our problem? Why are we completely failing at life? why can't we stop drinking? Is there anybody that just can't, can't stop drinking or trying? It says here on page 174, unless each AA member follows to the best of their ability our suggested 12 steps to recovery, they almost certainly signed their own death warrant. So this is Bill Wilson's writing. He's basically saying if you haven't done the steps, you're supposed to drink. Has anybody ever told you that i'll tell you that if you haven't done the steps and you're an alcoholic you're supposed to drink um your drunkenness and disillusion are not going to be penalties inflicted by people in authority they result from your own personal disobedience to spiritual principles so what is disobedience the spiritual principle what does that look like And it looks like, well, you know, I'm going to do that four-step someday. You know, they've been talking about it. I think I need to go to more step meetings and hear more about it before I get started. You know? It's like, Well, I am not going to make that amends. I don't care. I don' t care what anybody says. I am NOT making that amens. You know, there's a lot of different ways that you can have personal disobedience to these recovery principles. And that is what the fault's going to be. You know I go to a beginners meeting, I love this beginners meeting and I never name the beginners meeting because they really kind of deserve some anonymity. All right, it's the best you're going to get on Monday night. And what the format of this meeting is, there's usually 80 to 100 people there every Monday night, and a lot of them are early on in their journey in recovery. And the formatof the meeting is people with less than 90 days are encouraged to share first, okay? And then after they're all done, people with six months to a year, and then when they're all done the meeting gets opened up to anybody that wants to share experience strength and hope now when you're listening to the people with less than 90 days the self-centeredness blows your hair back like like you ever see that RCA commercial you know where the guys like like, you know, getting his hair blown back. He's like, it's all of my parents did it on my job and the cops are on me, I'm just running, got like, DUI, I've been thrown, nobody understands, nobody understands. Oh, thank you. And if you're anything like me, you're like, wow! And then from six months to a year, you know it's like well, life kind of really still sucks but you know my God, my sponsor's got me looking at some stuff, and I'm looking at stuff you know i'm starting really starting to see you know some things in my life and then when you get to people with like a year it's like well i did my fifth step the other day you know and you know my girlfriend's back talking to me and my parents are inviting me over to sunday you start to see the progression of healing you know you you start to see the actual power manifesting in the people in in the in the fellowship and and it it's a it's amazing and uh you know in in some of my old areas it really has become um it's become orthodox to to uh work through the steps with someone that you're sponsoring that's not the way it was when i first came in you know and and i think i think that's that i think that really does increase your odds of surviving this this progressively fatal illness called alcoholism folks in the the american medical association the dsm it talks about alcoholism as being a chronically relapsing condition so everybody goes tell tell your doctor you're an alcoholic well if you do that he's going to want payment up front because he understands that alcoholism is a chronically relapsing condition but we know that it does that doesn't have to be true that doesn' t have to b e true many of us many of us recover you know marty and i together have about 70 years of sobriety just marty and i for god's sake so this thing does work so if you if you fail to uh if you fail to do the best you can with the suggested 12 steps for recovery you're expected to relapse and it's going to be your fault it's gonna be your fall because we've shown you you, we've shown you what the recovery process is. And for one reason or another, you are stubbornly disobeying those spiritual suggestions. Now, that's the bad news. The good news, I'm going to jump to the forward of the 12 steps and 12 traditions to read this. A's 12 steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which if practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole that's a beautiful paragraph and i'm gonna i'm going to unpack it a little bit at least this at least how i see it today so the 12 steps are principles and they're spiritual in nature what does spiritual in nature mean well one day i was asked to uh ask to give a talk on spirituality and i did what you would do i went to the google to find some uh find some definitions and i found a google definition that i liked and uh and they define spirituality like this spirituality is an inner personal pathway to connection with the divine that's how that's How They Define Spirituality so these 12 steps what are these 12 Steps they're a personal inner pathway to connection with the power with you know you can you can use whatever terminology you want for God I don't care and I know God doesn't either you know but but we've admitted that we're powerless and and that's gonna lead us into seeking power it just does it has to where are you gonna go if you don't have any power and you need power to survive you're to look for power and and and these 12 steps what they do is they connect us they put us in unity with this this power and this power solves the problems that we can't solve you know i don't quit drinking i you know I haven't escaped drinking I've been released from alcohol and that happens as a result of these trip steps it's a it's a release it's not even in alcohol is not even an issue in in my in my life today if i keep in fit spiritual condition but it says so they're spiritual in nature and if which practiced as a way of life now here's the way i see everything today tomorrow i'll see it different this is the way i see it today uh i know there's some i know that some veterans in here right and uh and to be able to get into a branch of service you have to go to boot camp and what boot camp is it's it's an extreme experience of discipline what happens is they push you as far as they can push you they march you as far as you can march they keep you awake as long as they can keep you awake they make you crawl through mud you do all kinds of stuff and what it does is it sets the stage for a disciplined way of action so now you're now you've prepared you're prepared for adversity and danger and all this other kind of stuff and i believe today that's what the first nine steps do it's it's it's like it's an extreme series of exercises that are gonna they're gonna discipline you to to spirituality, understanding how to live and how to react. And then we're offered steps 10, 11, and 12 where we turn this thing into a way of life. So when it says that Alcoholics Anonymous needs to be practiced as a way of life, it has to become our operational methodology, the spirituality that's explained to us in the steps and the exercises that we take and we go through the steps with our sponsor and it's like a spiritual boot camp and none of us do any of this stuff perfectly no one among us can maintain anything like perfect adherence to these spiritual principles but you know what we claim? we claim progress If we continue to be consistent with this stuff, we can claim progress. I can claim process. I can't claim perfection. But I'll tell you what, God damn it, I can Claim Progress over the years. You see the changes in me year over year. So all of that will expel the obsession to drink. Expel the obsession. That's why I call it a release. that whatever goes on in your head that allows you to put alcohol back in your body, or I'll say drugs, that allows me to put it back in my body, that allows us to put that stuff back in our body. Something goes on, right? Because you've made a decision. I'm done. I'm not drinking anymore. I don't want to ever smoke crack again or any of that stuff, right ? You've made that decision and you were serious about it and it goes back in their body. These 12 steps are going to expel that state called obsession that moves us into drinking or using. That's what these 12 steps do. And they do a whole lot more, but that's an important thing. You know, if you're dying from alcoholism or you're drying, dying from, from a drug addiction, it's important information how not to. and uh and so all you have to do is is turn the 12 steps into a way of life and this is a promise and it will allow you to become happily and usefully whole so whole with a w there was something missing in me and i knew it from when i was five years old you'll hear this so often from people sharing or from the podium that I felt different I felt I felt like I was on the wrong planet or you know the best way I can describe what was missing in me is I had what I see today as a spiritual vacancy there was something missing in me I knew it was missing I just didn't feel right I didn't feel good. I didn't feel comfortable. And when I discovered alcohol, I started using alcohol as a means of filling this spiritual vacancy. And it worked sometimes until I became a vomiting pig, you know, after like the 30th drink. But there would be that, ah, there would be that ease and that comfort. And I'd be worrying all day long about, you know work tomorrow or having to go to court motor vehicle or whatever whatever i'd be like four drinks in and be like hell with all that you know i mean i mean uh i i just i all that stuff dropped off and i saw that uh you know I saw alcohol as being the solution for this internal condition which is in me and I see it today as a spiritual vacancy if I'm not if I m not living a spiritual life i am going to have a spiritual vacancy and all manner of sprees are what is going to come next i may not drink you know i may act out by by spending money i shouldn't i may i may do it with food i may do it gambling i may deal with sex i you know I might need the new corvette stingray with the special chip marty i because i i think that idea there's this uh this friend that we we lost just recently in texas he would call me up every morning and we had this running joke he called me up and go you go chris chris man i just got the brand new humvee oh my god you guys see this thing it's got every bell and whistle it does this it does it does amazing amazing vehicle and i go i go yeah that sounds really good he goes then he'd go that wasn't it either you know what i mean like like we're forever trying to fill a spiritual vacancy with externals with toys and behavior and stuff where where to feel whole this hole with a w it's only going to be filled spiritually it's always going to be filled spiritually and and i'm doing all this stuff so i don't die of alcoholism and i find out as i'm moving through that this is the secret to my quality of life this is the secret being happy joyous and free and knowing a new freedom and a new happiness and being rocketed into the fourth dimension of reality and all the promises that they talk about in this in this book you know that's that's what i find as a byproduct i would have to do this just not to drink myself to death and and in this and this is an answer i was looking for since i was five you know to feel whole so you know am i grateful for alcoholics anonymous you you're damn right i am so marty did a great job with uh with step four we've got our inventory uh and somebody showed up at my house with like a 600 page inventory it was two and a half days i had to hear him like and he was not he was got so so marty showed us the true economy to the four-step right it it doesn't have to be long and drawn out and and and now it's time now it some i have this now it is time now is time to sit with someone and share it with them now i i knew somebody who was uh who was so specific about the instructions in the book alcoholics anonymous because it says we share this with with god ourselves and another person he would go to a church and share the inventory he would sit in front of a mirror and share your inventory and then he would share it with another person because he wanted to follow exactly the instructions i'm not that militant uh i think there's a little bit of latitude in this anyway so uh so uh s so anyways it's time to really be honest you know I have identified the causes and conditions of my failure at life my failure in relationships my failure in family my failure and business I've identified all these things and there is there is a spiritual virtue to being honest with with someone else about what I have discovered. Now, personally, I can tell you what the benefit was for me. I was always convinced I was a scumbag. I just, listen, I could show up like a nice guy. I could pretend to be a nice guy, I'd be your friend, but I knew deep inside if you really knew who I was, you'd stay the hell away from me and I felt that way about myself. If I could have stayed away from myself i would so so i came to you with that you know with that that crushed spirit with that crippled spirit you know really having low self-esteem and everything they talk about right just knowing i ain't right and i remember the first time i shared inventory uh with fish food phil i remember walking out of he took me to a park where he could walk his dogs too because He believed in multitasking. And so he's listening to my fifth step while he's walking. And I got to tell you, I went into the park, you know, I'm resentful with my brother and sister, you Know, my head down. And after I got done, he goes, huh? You're done, huh?" I go, yeah, Phil, I'm done. He goes, that's not so bad. we can work with that and I was dumbfounded by that response I was dumbfounded but when I look at the inventory I wrote it wasn't that bad I had created something that I was in the middle of existence about that wasn't true you know there's so much delusion that comes with alcoholism. We believe so many things that are wrong. We have the wrong perspective on so many things, and I came out of that, and he convinced me at the end of that inventory that I'm not a bad person. I got caught up in some stuff, and He explained it to me like this. He goes, Chris, I believe you were an alcoholic before you started drinking, and what happened when you started drinking, you were like a campfire. The coals were smoldering, right? They were red and smoldery. And that was you before you took your first drink. And you take your first drink and it's like throwing gasoline on that campfire flames burst into the air and they burn you and everybody near you. And he goes, you're trying to put that out now. You know what I mean? First of all, it's an illness. And second of all you're taking action to put that fire out so it doesn't burn anybody including you anymore you're really you know there's not a lot of people in this world that are making that kind of effort to be better people and more helpful and I remember walking out of there and I didn't feel like a scumbag anymore I had a way to go you know I was you know I before I really felt good about myself but but there was shift there was a turn and and I believe when I walked out of that park I was an Alcoholics Anonymous member all right up until that point in time I was auditing AA and when I when I got done with that fist step you could not you could not have told me I'm not a good AAN member and this is a long time ago I've done many fifth steps. I've heard even many, many more. And I'll tell you what the hardest thing I have listening to fifth steps today is staying awake while they're being read to me. I'm being honest with you. Listen, we're all the same. I've hurt it all a million times. You know, and you're going to come to me with a fifth step and you are going to lay it all out and I'm going to pretend like it's an extraordinary thing. We're way more alike than we would want. We don't want to be alike. We don' t want to become scumbags but we don't wanna be run of the mill, you know, alcoholic status numbers we need to be special in some way and and what i've learned in these fifth steps is you know we're just you know we did the best we could under the circumstances you gotta understand we were suffering from alcoholism we're suffering from alcoholism now i'm gonna say something now that that i don't expect you to believe but i've come to the point where i absolutely believe this stuff now i've gone through all my inventory i've done my fist out and all the wrongs all the harm that i caused all that i am not responsible for and do you want to know why because alcoholism is an illness i'm powerless over alcohol it would be my fault if i had some power i'm powerless over a alcohol and i'm being driven by a hundred forms of fear self-centeredness self-consciousness all these character defects you know i'm unrecovered and i'm out there trying to do the best i can and i've caused a lot of trouble and i am not responsible for any of it it's a goddamn disease but here's the thing here is the magic in Alcoholics Anonymous i must be accountable for it Alcoholics anonymous tells me i must be accountable i'm i must make amends where i've caused harm i must i must be accountable for all this stuff and therein lies the spiritual virtue of alcoholics anonymous we you know we need we need to act like we were responsible for this stuff you know what i mean but come on so so i'm going to move a little bit into step six and seven for a few minutes and then i'm gonna then i'M going to hand it over to Marty to fix everything all right so I've done my inventory I've shared my inventory with everybody okay you know like I did this and I did that okay okay bless you my son i actually tried to listen to that this time and uh and i've shared it all and so so now i'm confronted with step six and step seven there's no better place in the world to be for step six at step seven than to have just done inventory and just on a fifth step no better place in the world because you have identified the things that you find objectionable especially you've just identified them all and step six asks are you willing to have god remove these these defects of character are you are you're willing to to move away from this type of life and and almost always we are you know almost always we are we've just identified why we've screwed things up why you know why we'd been in 700 relationships why we had 3,500 jobs you know why would we have to move every six months we've identified all that stuff so am I am i willing to have God remove it yes and in step seven in an act of humility, I ask God to relieve me of these shortcomings. Now my first experience with step six and step seven was, that's pretty irresponsible. You know, where's all the things I need to do? I might need to get removing character defects for dummies. I mean, you know, don't I have to go to some seminars like on character defects? Tony Robbins, you know, stuff. Don't I have to get dunked or something? You know, it can't be that easy. And today, I want to just read something. When ready, we say something like this. My creator, I'm now willing you should have all of me good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding amen then it says we have then completed step seven period that's what the book says all right now that just seemed irresponsible to me there's got to be all kinds of stuff I've got to do I gotta do this I go you know what I gotta do I got to move ready to step in and I got to put a list together where of people in institutions with these defects of character of harm. Why do I go to God with this stuff? Why is it God's job to remove these defects of character? Because there's nothing else. Haven't you tried? Oh, I can't believe I've done that one more time. I know I promised you like six times that I would not do that anymore. I know. Haven'T you tried maybe just maybe these character defects are bigger than we are and we need to just like our alcoholism we need go to the power so that's right that's what i believe today and marty will come in and repair all this we uh we sure enjoy talking about this stuff the thing about it just i'm not going to repair anything but i love i love the idea of the fifth step being um like confessional has been a part of theology from the beginning of time it's a part of every sort of major theology that there is uh sitting down and sharing with somebody your foibles and your defects character and your wrongdoings that's been a part of this well that's a big that's big piece to this thing and the we admit it to god to ourselves and to another human being in that order the order is very important because and and it's it's it's almost like the order of difficulty as well it's easiest admitted to god harder to we admit it to ourselves, and it's the most difficult to admit it to another human being. You would think somehow it was another way around, but this other human being piece is about the double standard of life. It's about the outside character that we want to present to the world. That's why we tell other people. That' s why we look at other human beings and do this stuff, so we can get rid of that character, that stage character. And God in ourselves can't do that. we can't hold ourselves to that level of accountability and that's why the fifth step is so important I just talked really quickly about setting up these steps when you start writing your inventory you make your appointment for your fifth step that's that's an important piece to remember the minute you start right in your inventory make an appointment for your fifth steps you know why so you'll actually do it the funny thing is if you could sit there and you got a sponsor and says yeah I get working on that four step okay I'll see you next week you see him next week and say hey how's that four-step coming I said, well, yeah, I got to the dollar store and I got a caillé and a couple of pencils and I'm getting ready to do it. And you see him a week later and says, how's that four-step gone? Well, you know, I've been trying to free up some time and that caillcé I got last week got lost and the dog ate it and all that. That's what happens. But if you set a date, the person most likely will have it done. And this is how it works. If you give a person, which I do, 10 days to two weeks to do a four-stepped inventory, when does the alcoholic start writing their inventory? last day yep day nine day nine inevitable unless you're perfect like nicoletta and uh you probably have one prepared long before your ass what you do is start working on it on day nine and then you come in with this tripe this absolute crap sitting this is my experience you know you got this little matchbook of inventory and stuff okay let's try this again now i'll give you a few days that's it and you're You're going to do it, like I said. The economy, I think, is important. The economy of a fifth step is important too. That 600-pager, this is what happened to me. Our book says things that are very interesting and can sometimes be twisted. We have to be prepared for a long talk. Well, long is a subjective word. Would you agree? I'm an alcoholic with four kids, grandkids and fishing, and I do shit. I got a full life. So long is subjective. So I had a guy, one of the guys early on, his name's Jeff. He's our delegate. He's a great guy. lot of people know Jeff Stevens he's a wonderful man and Jeff comes to my house to do his fifth step and 13 hours we were doing this fifth step we smoked three packs of cigarettes each my kids had a family pet a rabbit named Martin and Martin died from cigarette exposure we killed the rabbit he had this massive asthma attack and had to go to the hospital at hour 13 and i'm telling you that never happened again and the idea here is is that is that if you here's here's my here's policy now if a guy came to me and he wrote 600 pages guess what i'm going to say buddy you overshot the mark but let's sit down you had took the time to write it i'm gonna respect you enough to listen to it but that's not what happens if you're a fifth step listener this is what happens you cheese out in the whole thing you put points and like little cues and all that kind of stuff and then you want to come to my house for a day and a half and do your inventory it takes you eight minutes to write it and you want to talk about your inventory for two days that's not happening if you didn't write it i ain't listening to it it's just the information we get in the book this is my new policy and it works great you know how long it takes me to hear an inventory maybe two and a half hours i get bottles of water i get soda i get bananas and apples and i got a fireplace there and we sit in the room i said you mind if i ask god into the mix they say yes and i say well i'm doing it anyway i get on my knees i say a prayer i really ask i want god here with us because i don't want to judge or go to that awful place and then what i do is i take a piece of paper every time you say selfish dishonest self-seeking or frightened every time u say the word i write it down i'm just sitting there i said i'd say make sure they know i'm not writing what you're saying to me i'm writing down every time you say that word because what are we looking for in our inventory where are we selfish dishonest so seeking and frightened that's what we're looking for so i'm going to write it down every time you see the word if somebody's been thorough about their inventory at the end of the inventory two and a half three hours in you know it's like this you ready yeah i'm ready you're selfish selfish self-seeking selfish self is dishonest self-self seeking dishonest dishonest it's on Self-seeking, frightened, frightened. Dishonest, self-seekings. Selfish, selfish, selfish. DishONEST, self seeking. I give it all back to them. So how do you feel? Not that great. I say, alright. And we go into step six. And that's it. That's what it looks like. And there's no judgment. There's no, I love what Fishwood Phil said. I love how he handled that. He says, that's not so bad. Here it is. This is you. Alright. You want to live your life like this? Or do you want to take this somewhere else? and we ask God to come into the mix. Now, I'm not against this whole drop-the-rock bullshit. I didn't mean to say bullshit. I'm Not Against This Whole Drop-The-Rock Phase that's all these meetings that are starting up for people who are sober for a little while. Don't start a meeting and invite new guys to the drop-de-rock meeting. Don't do that. It's not fair. We have step six and seven that Chris just read to you. He read to exactly what it is we're supposed to do. I learned that my last column is my mistakes and faults, that the nature of my wrongs is discovered as i just explained in the fifth step and in steps six and seven the defects of character and the shortcomings are what we're asking to be removed these things are all the same words bill just used different words to describe them we need this stuff gone or we can't proceed the drop the rock stuff is going to belabor the whole issue around defects of characters shortcomings it's going to ask you to discover more truth about yourself and that's not fair for a new guy because in respite care and we look at you got to look at alcoholics anonymous in a couple different ways in respit care we need to get the person to this to this place of helping others which is really our medicine and in order to do that we have to clear it as quickly as possible that's my that's my two cents worth it might be a little opinionated I love the book that I've dropped the rocket read it myself I'll never knock a book today I don't read it'll never happen but I know it's an art area in my area these groups have sprung up all over the place everybody wants to be different and have something new to talk about and this drop the rock stuff was never intended to replace what's on page 76 here is never meant to replace that we it helps you to cognitively and do an analysis of your difficulties and then it brings you back into the management role it's giving you suggestions on how you can just like the Living Sober book how you treat your alcoholism this way and that's not what we need God in the next year and then that's what the The prayer Chris just read is there. So, what does that do for us? Got all this stuff down on paper, shared it with another human being. I've asked God to take these defective characters and shortcomings because I can't do anything about them. And people think that that sounds irresponsible. But if you were just going to sit there on that, I would say yes, you're probably correct. That is irresponsible. But we're asked to do something very deliberate and very responsible in doing an 8-step list. That is a huge responsibility, and it's very hard to talk about the 8th step without talking about the 9th step, but it's mandatory. You have to recognize that there's a difference between the two. If you have a separation from the kinship of others, if you have separation from your love above the man and what you know people and you just you just always feel separate this eighth step is for you not the ninth step the eighth step is from you these defects of shortcoming these defects character shortcomings are what have kept me separate from people and now i'm asked to make a list of all persons i had harmed and become willing to make amends to them all they use the word all twice grammatically erroneous they use it twice to emphasize how many people how many who does that besides Nicoletta who does it who makes amends to them all you know what I mean like that's a heavy word and you've got to become willing to make amends for the mall I will set right those wrongs that I cannot make immediately I will do that now in the eighth step our mind is open to the harms done others we have a list that's come out of that last column that I was showing you when I'm talking about the guy that diddled me and I get in there and we're talking What did he do? He betrayed me. He manipulated me. He lied to me. And on the column, I've got my mother, I got my sister, I got ex-relationships, I have got my friends, the closest people to me, that list comes out of there. And I've go these... That's where it comes from. How does that even happen? Like this guy wronged me when I was an 8 year old kid and now I'm getting a list of persons I had harmed. And it just goes, that's how it looks. So I've get this massive list of wrongs that I've done others. In that list, I'm going to sort of discern who's worthy of amends and who isn't I will discern that in the eighth step and the problem with that is is it is that that's where you need your sponsor more than any other place in AA you need to sponsor in the eight to nine steps more than any place in Alcoholics Anonymous any other person in Alcoholic Anonymous can help you through the steps one through eight but you need a sponsor right here right now because you are going to have questions about amends. And if you have ever sat at a meeting where amends was the topic, you know that most of the conversation is driven towards not making amends. Somebody out there right now is going, yeah, but what about such and such in their head? You know, and if I said anybody, people would bring it up. Do I have to make amends to them? The answer is yes, only 100% of the time. So shut up. Not you personally, but just don't do that to yourself. Don't do this idea that you're going to pick and choose or have a rationale behind who's getting these amends made not amend means to change to alter to repair if it came into your consciousness that came up in your last column of the inventory their names go down it's that simple and writing them wrong isn't about saying sorry writing the wrong is addressing the issue it's both being there and showing up it's about being a parent it's a boat not hiding shucking jiving and weaving you know that's what it's above and I can do this stuff I can make So in a change room in high school, I busted into the change room when the guys were all out doing their athletics and I stole a bunch of stuff out of pockets and stuff like that. Years later, I'm doing my inventory and that stuff comes up and I think some of these guys were my pals. Some of these guy's were my friends. I helped them look for their shit. You know what I mean? Like, if we catch this guy, you know, it's like... I got to tell you, it was pretty embarrassing. This is inventory two, I might add. Didn't come up on the first one. Imagine that. didn't come up on the first one came up on a second one now what happens is I got to start but I put some of these names down here that I'm aware of and I am devastatingly embarrassed and humiliated that I have to make this amend so I go to this guy norman I start telling him that I took his wallet he took his watch and all that kind of stuff and goes you helped me look for man I know I know and I talked we talked about and he said you don't want just just stay away from me cause like just don't know and this hurt it hurt me this is sober and i've been sober for a while and this hurt me years later uh we run into the set of circumstances where he needed a place to stay and i gave him a place staying we lived together for a year and we became like this and it was only because i stepped up and was willing to address the issue that's the thing that's power here is about this denial about about what i did or what i didn't do has no place in any of this it has to do with just executing the proposition that's put in front of me. We became willing to make amends to them all. The ninth step amends, or the ninth step itself, in and of itself, is we make direct amends wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. Now in this ninth step I come back into this sort of idea about rationale, right? I come back into this sortof idea about who's going to get my amends and who's not. Has anybody in here ever made a list in eight steps and said, oh, I'm not making amends to that person? I had a never. My dad was a never, and I talked earlier about him. He was a Never. There was another couple of people that were Nevers. Now here's the interesting thing about the Nevers, and you guys have been around here for a while, you wouldn't have this experience yet, or you would probably have had this experience, is I'll be sitting at home one night, it'll be 10 or 11 o'clock at night, and I get a hankering for a Magnum ice cream bar. You guys ever have those Magnum Ice Cream bars? So we got a Shopper's Drug Mart there, and I'll go to the all-night Shopper'S Drug Mart, and I'm running around the shopper's drug mart loading it up with black licorice and Magnum ice cream bars and all the stuff that's good for you at midnight and all this stuff alcoholics eat and run my cart, come around the corner bang, slam right into a guy I was never going to make amends to now I've got two choices do I clean it up or do I act like I've never seen them and if you've done a lot of damage in your hometown ask yourself that how many times have you crossed the road went around a corner and all that kind of stuff and thought I'm not ready for this right now there are times where God will make a bank shot and I ran into a guy and I just laid it out there right at midnight waiting that right in the store and put it right on the table and and Chris was saying earlier about I think it was here who's either here or somewhere else we were talking they're the people who end up sending people to you didn't stay on me the people that you had long-standing resentment with her or long-staying dissension or long standing they're the people when you make this stuff right when you amend to change to alter to repair is what a man means when you amen the relation they're the people who start sending people to you for help and it doesn't matter whether you want to do it or do you think it's a good idea or you like the idea you know and I've had better and more experience I've got two very powerful immense stories that haven't got time to tell you right now but I'm going to tell about one that comes as a result of working with others times our next break okay so if you put yourself in a position to be of service you end up working with a lot of guys and some of them you you don't hand pick them anymore you know what I mean you're not hand picking them there there's some real dickheads that come and ask you for help you know I mean I don't know how else to say it but dickheads so there's this massive guy this guy's massive he's like seven foot six he's a big man is of the biggest men i've ever seen and he starts coming to my meeting everybody's terrified of him and he's an angry pissed off guy and in his sharing every once in a while he would open up and talk a little bit about all the women in his life that he had hit okay whether it was his mother or sister his daughters or his wife and he put his hands on women his whole life and one day him and i are talking just the two of us in a little side room and he starts weeping and he and and i'm sitting beside him and he dwarfs me i'm just sitting here and And he starts weeping, and I put my arm on his shoulders, and I said, play, it's going to be all right. How the hell am I supposed to make that right? How am I suppose to make this right? How am you supposed to do that right?" And I said,"You give me a few minutes, I'll come up with something." And we're talking, and we talk about it, and I say,"Okay, I got it." You know this story, JJ? You hear me tell this story? I said--"Okay, so, listen, 9 o'clock Saturday morning, I'm going to pick you up, and we're going to go down to what's called Mary's Place. We're going down to this shelter, and you're going write a check and give it to these women, these abused women and kids. And all of a sudden his head comes up and he goes, I'm not doing that. And I said, what? He said, I didn't do anything to those people. I'm Not Doing That. Screw you, man. He gets up and turns around and says, hey, who are you telling me what to do? And I say, I'll be there at 9 o'clock. He says, I'M NOT DOING IT. And he walks out. So 9 o´clock in the morning I get down to his place and got ACDC cranked and just bang, having a good time. And he jumps into my car and he says, this is bullshit. you know but he's got his checkbook with him right he goes this is i ain't doing this right and uh i said yeah yeah whatever brother and we go down and we get we get in front of this place i pull up out front and he gets out of the car bangs on my hood gives me the finger and now this guy does not want to do this but look what's happening no and i just turn the tunes up more when he's complaining and he just walks by my car and he goes up the steps to the door and when he standing at the door you see this big back nothing else and you see the little aluminum door open up just to just the top of the door opens up and a couple seconds pass and then these arms come up over his shoulders now in the car he says how much should i give him i don't know how much you guys about 300 i said 300 is good and his pencil's going right through the check you know like right through the check and uh he goes and he hands a check and the arms come over his shoulder now when this guy turned around to come down the stairs it was a different man he was like skipping and he came out in front of my car and he jumps in and he says where next contrary action this thing about making amends is not whether you think it's a good idea we made direct amends wherever possible not wherever comfortable wherever possible only when it would hurt somebody else do we have an option to have a conversation and I'll tell you i've got a lot of guys running up i can't do that because it'll hurt something within 10 seconds that theory of theirs is dismantled almost always the ego here's the problem here here's the problem and this happens in the fifth step too the eagle does not want you to be sober it wants you to suffer it might even not want you to drink again but it wants you to suffering doesn't want you to be content and happy without it the ego wants to run your life and it's the The ego is that voice in your head right now that's saying, what voice? That's the ego. It's constantly in dialogue with you, telling you what to do. And when you do this stuff, you are in contravention of what the ego wants. Because if you go and do a fifth step with somebody, the ego, oh great, now what am I going to play with? The ego doesn't play with solutions, it only plays with problems. So if you sit down and share all of your problems and all your difficulties with another human being, the ego's got no teeth. but what will happen is to my good friend Brian he's got this huge inventory well written good inventory some awful stuff in there and he's going da da da da da da da and he gets to this one piece and he goes I'm not saying that and he keeps going it was shoplifting a ten dollar memorabilia card from a from a store but the eagle strapped onto that and said don't tell him that that's embarrassing and when he went over it and when we got there and when you left and it says if we can answer to our satisfaction if we look back and we say okay i'm clean here i've said everything he looked back and said i left that out i left that why and the question is why would he leave that out and the answer is the ego seized onto this really lightweighted thing that you thought wouldn't even matter grabbed on to it so that he would almost do a fifth step so he would always be sober and this is what happens in the ninth step this is why you need your sponsor i drive my guys to the hard ones i take them there you know and this is probably and this is the one everybody knows about the ninth step is the one that's all over tv and all of my name is earl and all those shows like shameless all the nine step stuff is in there right but to live this way to live this way in an honest earnest attempt at setting rate the wrongs is indeed i believe that is alcoholics anonymous steps four through nine that is our life we inventory we look inside we tell somebody about it we go and set right the wrong and our world becomes a world of safety and security because of that and when you do it once you want to do it twice that big guy I couldn't reel him back he started cleaning house like you wouldn't believe he started cleaning up like you wouldn't belief that one he see this is the problem is it it's the same with you know when you got a guy coming for your fifth step and you say with them okay just tell me the one thing you weren't gonna tell me on your way here you've heard them you try that before that's what you tell the person tell me the thing you weren't going to tell me when you were driving here because we get that on the table the rest will be a piece of cake it's the same with the amends let's go make the amens that you think you're never going to do let's work on that let's try to do something about that and when you realize that that power is available to you that you can do the very thing that your ego is telling you you can't do there's nothing that'll stop you here from growing and steps four through nine is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Step one, two, three, get us sort of in that place to do this stuff. And step 10, 11, 12, which we're going to talk about is the stuff that holds it all together. And the best stories in AlcoholicsAnonymous and some of them are yet unwritten the best studies in AlcoholicAnonymous are the immense stories. Just to synopsize this relationship, I grew up in an Irish Catholic alcoholic home that was wrought with violence and sexism and be tough and don't cry and all that shit. I was raised in that. It's not uncommon in alcoholics, not in my generation. But what ends up happening is I got an older brother, a younger brother and a younger sister and they're citizens. I was not. I Was the bane of my parents' existence. I was an embarrassment to them. I caused a lot of calamity and difficulty in my family and my family are good people. And my father was a raging alcoholic and an angry, bitter, violent alcoholic. But I love my life. How did Sandy used to say? I said to Sandy at dinner, we were having dinner one night, he says, no Marty, the older I get, the better my childhood was. And if you think that personality can't change here in AA, it changes. Your perceptions change. They legitimately change. That's what shifts. It's a shift in perception. It's to shift in how I see the world. I told you about that didlet. Like I was hiding behind that for many years in secrecy and self-contempt. That's how it worked in my life. And now all of a sudden it becomes this tool that I want to pull out every time I'm with a great big group of people to sit and talk about setting people free and being free of this stuff. We retain. It's like being freeofthisstuff is what matters. It's not about deciding what's right and what's wrong. It's about being free. So my old man, he dies in the bed, and I'm the executor, and I've got my arm underneath his head. And I told you, these are citizens, my siblings. They're good people. But I'm the guy that I'm to go to in the family. And that's what happens with AA members. You become the go-to in your family. And I got my arm under my old man's head and he passes away. And my older brother who had been out drinking somewhere, he comes in and he's angry. He's angry because my father's dead. He didn't get the call in time. And he starts losing it. And he's slamming the bed up and down in the room. He's having a tantrum. My old man is bouncing around dead and everything. And I'm trying to hang on to him. And my younger brother, they all hated my dad. And guess what? My dad's been gone since 2001. They still hate him. They bristle with antagonism. You bring up the name at Christmas or anniversaries or parties and they get angry and they start spinning war stories. And I had a relationship with my father for the last seven years of his life that was like this. And he'd run up to me at every function. He was all smashed up from car accidents and violence. and he'd come up to me, couldn't talk, and he would say, hi, how you doing? And I'd say, hey dad, and I'd give him a hug and he asked how all you guys were doing. He saved this boy's life. And my old man was, we turned up, we were lovers at the time of his death. We were very close. And my brother, my square John citizen two brothers and sister, their legacy is hatred. My legacy is everything we talked about this morning. My legacy is my father did the best he could with what he could. He was a sick man, you know? And so am I. And on that premise, we met. I was no longer a victim of my father's anger or rage. And I could laugh at him and hold him and this amend stuff goes... When Chris says it's a thousand miles deep, I think this is what they're talking about. We enter into this place right now where who's that guy going out setting right the wrongs when he was rejecting the idea of doing inventory who's that guy that's a different man i don't care if it's two weeks ago you wrote your inventory the man that sits down a woman that sits out and writes her inventory is not the same person that's going out knocking on doors they are changed and we have all of this experience in steps four through nine and it's sort of synopsized for us at the beginning of step ten we're gonna talk about that in a little bit and i believe step 10 has all the secrets to a good living. I think it's undersold in AA, I don't think we talk about it enough I don' t think we hold each other accountable to it enough. People who've been around here for a little while. If you're not feeling the joy and the bliss of being sober in Alcoholics Anonymous I'm going to suggest to you it's tied into a 10th step living. And we'll talk about it and my fidelity to this book is the same in the 10th step as it is in the 4th step. You'll sort of understand that practice is a way of life. Just like Chris just read, practice is away of life This tenth step can enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole and never return to the abyss of selfishness and self-centeredness. It's quite spectacular, I think. We'll share some stories about that, and we'll talk about that in a bit. Okay, good? We taking a break? We're good. Thank you. Thank you very much.