How to Land Your Sobriety Without Crashing – Ted H.

It's unfair for me to go through all these lists because you have it in the third or fourth or the last page of your pamphlet. So if you want to take a look at the things that we... Does anybody have a question about anything up here? Yes. It's both. Both fear of success and it's that failure is comfortable. We just feel like we don't deserve the goodies in life, most of us, when we get to AA. Yeah. And you can tell instantly where somebody is with themselves by giving them a compliment. It's a real interesting thing. Nice suit you're wearing, George. Oh, it came from the Salvation Army. Got a little burn hole right here if you look close and it's not my size. And the guy that says thank you feels pretty good too. He's okay with himself. If you want to know how the gal is, say your hair looks nice today, Melinda. Thank you. Thanks. Fear of death. Figure out what death really is is what I would do. The yogis put out a little book on life beyond death. Anything that I'm afraid of, I've got to study it. I've got to figure out why. I've got to write about it. I've got to ask questions. Like I said, finding the fear of life came to me when I remember my mother telling me I died. And fear of death was the same way. The way I look at death today is death. Life is simply a bridge between birth and death. But the curious thing about a bridge is it's connected at both ends. And so what was going on here before I was born, probably something else keeps going on here. And there is just too much irrefutable proof of people that have died and come back. And if you don't believe that, you haven't done any real serious... Read some of Shirley MacLaine's stuff. She's got a bibliography in her books that's incredible. That lady has done... She's done some incredible research. And the more we understand, in the early days of civilization where nothing was understood, there was an incredible amount of fear about all of this stuff. And this is how the church has ruined a lot of people for a lot of years, was through fear. And so, yes? That's the fact we'll put to the fear of success. So that would be a direct proportion to our level of self-worth. Exactly. Fear of success is in direct proportion to our self-esteem. Exactly. And finally, I've got an exercise in the workbook, on the first page, and we'll cover that before we're through, that's guaranteed to rebuild self-esteem. Because it is so severely damaged. Anybody like to cover anything else? Yes, in the back. Depends on how... The question was, in the grief curve, as you enter anger, how do you keep that from... becoming rage? It depends. It's in direct proportion of how quickly you can pick up the pencil and paper. If I'm driving down the street all by myself, thinking why I'm allowed to put my car through the divider rail before I can get to a pencil. So I'd better do what the 11 steps tells me, I'd better hesitate and ask for God's guidance. Okay. Now, I'm glad you brought that up, because what happens is, with the grief curve, when the grief curve is that, once one of the basic instincts is threatened or damaged, we only have two instinctual responses, and they're survival responses. And one of them is fight, and the other is flight. Fight translates itself into damage to others, and flight translates itself into fear. And we have the two basic character defects, harm to others and fear, okay? Now, if one of those basic instincts, if we become obsessive in any area, and let's turn to that page of the diagram of the basic instincts, if we become obsessive, damage to others and resentment. Okay? So we have our three basic character defects, resentments, harm to others, and fear, because we only have two basic instinctual responses, fight or flight. Now, if we become obsessive in any area of social instinct, security instinct, or sexual instinct, think about this, it results in all the other character defects. We become selfish, self-centered, dishonest, inconsiderate, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum. Any obsession. So we begin now, after we've gotten to this point, to be able to work the program backwards. And this is very interesting. If I'm about to get engaged in a business deal, for instance, I ask myself, is it selfish, self-centered, inconsiderate, dishonest? Is it going to harm anybody? Am I going to have to call my damn sponsor about it? Am I going to have to make amends to this fool? If the answer to all of those is no, it's probably... It's probably a good thing of God's thinking to go ahead with it. But if I'm going to end up with any of these character defects as a result of it, I better not do it. And so I can apply those steps kind of backwards. I can apply them as a test as to whether it's God's thinking or mine. Do you understand what I'm saying? If it's a relationship, is this honest? Is it self-serving? Okay, is it of free will and volition? Is there no obligation on either side? Or is this whole thing built on expectations and performance on the other part? What's really going on? And am I going to have to make amends? Am I going to have to write an inventory continually the rest of my life about this thing? So the character defects can be used as a test. In flying, when I go to land, I've got to get... I've got to continually watch... I've got to watch this plane all day long. How do I look? And that does not mean egotistically. It means this. When I go to land a plane, I've got to ask myself, how do I look? Let's say that the landing field is here, and the numbers that I'm aiming for are right there, and here's my plane up here. I've got to ask myself six questions. Am I too fast? Am I too slow? Am I too high? Am I too low? Am I too long? Or am I too short? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then I'm going to have to ask myself, am I too fast? Am I too slow? Am I too high? Am I too low? Am I too long? Or am I too short? If the answer to any one of those questions is yes, and I try to land, I get to die. Cold fact. I get to die. Usually the VASI lights down here are going to tell me. I'm going to see a red or a green, or I'm going to see a combination. It's going to tell me whether I'm too high or too low. But I've got to visually know from practicing the principles, every time I go flying, it's going to tell me, am I too fast? Am I too slow? Am I too high? Am I too low? Am I too fast? Am I too slow? Am I too fast? Am I too slow? Am I too fast? Am I too slow? Am I too fast? As to whether I'm too hot or too slow, too fast or too slow. If I'm too fast, I'm going to overshoot the runway. I'm not going to have enough rollout. If I'm too slow, I'm going to land short. I have to be just right. And then I'll touch down at this runway number, and I'll have enough space on the runway for the run out so that I won't even have to touch the brakes. It'll just quit. So, the same thing goes in the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. We've got to watch ourselves all day long. How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How do I look? Is this deal okay? Am I being selfish, self-serving, self-centered, inconsiderate of this other person? Am I being dishonest? Am I going to have, you know. And it's perfectly all right to say that it makes me very uncomfortable when somebody's doing something. Talking loud, yelling at me, pointing a finger. me name-stepping on my foot because what my book tells me that we no longer need to be a doormat. Any questions up to this point? So remember that the grief curve when we get into that is the direct result of giving the power away and results finally in in our basic character defects of resentments, injury to others, and fear. And so this is the reason that when we keep current with the feelings through a continuing inventory where we're going to get we kind of get okay with all of that. Once you finish the inventory and you have this list on the sex part of it and it covers adultery, incest, and indecent exposure around them. and it covers adultery, incest, and indecent exposure around them. and it covers adultery, incest, and indecent exposure around them. abortions, masochism, and so forth. I don't see anything about small farm animals. You should add small farm animals there. And then we have a couple sentences about what happened. Okay? And we've got to get into serious amends. Now there's a number of things that we can do that are not... A couple things aren't covered in the book. If we're really angry at somebody and they're dead, we can make amends to somebody that's passed away. And what I suggest is this. Write a letter to these people in the first person just like they were there. Say all those things you always wanted to say and never could. Share all those things you never had time to share. And when you're finished with that letter, no one gets to see that. That's between you and this other person in God. And when you're finished with that letter, go to some quiet place. You can go to their grave, but it's not important. Go to some quiet place and read it out loud just exactly like they were there. In the first person. And when you're finished, burn it. I sponsor a little gal from Torrance who's been sober now about 12 years. She lost her little boy when he was four. And I can kind of tell every time she's written a letter to him, because she kind of keeps him updated. See, he'd be 14 now, and he's going to be 18. And she shares what's going on in her life. And she reads that letter to him, and then she burns it. And she kind of keeps current with him. I sponsored another gal through the steps who, and I went out to March Air Force Base with her one Sunday. And I just kind of stood guard over her off to the side while she sat for an hour and a half on her father's grave and read letters to him and burned them that she'd been writing for quite some time. It's a way of setting yourself free. I am not one of these people who believes in closing books and throwing them away. I think that as we evolve in the program, our memories become gentle and loving. And we can look back in the past with a gentle, fond memory rather than guilt and shame. And through the power of the program, we can look forward into the future without any fear. Because fear is always in the future. And guilt and shame are always in the past. And so, if we can look in the past in fond memory and look in the future with brave anticipation, that leaves us in the one place we've always wanted to be. Right here now, with you, this moment, in the present. And that's where we end up. And so, what we need to do is write down our goals every year and give ourselves a guideline as to where we want to go. with our life, because no captain of any ship ever got where he was going without having a course plotted, nor did any pilot, a destination in mind. And every morning I've got to get up and make sure the little boat isn't leaking, and I've got to make sure that all the sails are not torn, and I've got to make sure it's on course. And then I've got to leave it up to God to get me to the destination in his time, knowing that I'm going to be becalmed at times and in storms at times, and I can't live in the destination, because that is living with expectations that will always damage me. Is the question here? Yes. Are you meant by that metaphor? By that I mean that in reading this letter, the burning of the letter is kind of symbolic of the ether, really truly giving it to them. And in not saying goodbye, we leave the book open so that another letter can be written at any time. Okay, because you're not going to cover it all. You can't cover everything with a relative that's died or a loved one that's died in one letter. And so what I'm saying is keep the book open and give yourself the opportunity of doing that any time you want to, okay, because we truly never die. And if you don't believe that, that's okay, too. I'm not here to preach any religion at all or anything like that. It has nothing to do with it. It simply has to do with the fact that I've done a lot of study. I've done a lot of thinking in that area. Any question? Yes. I mean that the soul goes on forever. You know, there's so many interesting things that, and you can't talk to very many people about that stuff. So, who else? Anybody else have a question? But as these fears begin to leave us and we begin to get more brave, we can investigate areas that we had no idea about before. We've covered just about everything in the inventory. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You make a note that when you finish sharing the inventory, you need to come home and tune to page 75 in the big book. There are 10 promises on page 75, and it's really, in my opinion, the beginning of the whole program, because that is truly where it all starts. On page 75, it says, once in the middle of the book, once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. Now, you won't know that until some time later you screw up the courage to take the risk and find out it's gone. Okay? We begin to feel the nearness of our creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel as if we are on a broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. You will brush the face of God. You will have established a conscious contact with a power greater than yourself. All right there on page 75. And it also goes on to say, we thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know him better. That's the ninth promise. And the tenth promise is, we are preparing an arch through which we will walk a free person. And how free do we become, really? Really, I think that I, I made a note up here to talk a little bit about page 100 in the big book. It says this. And most people don't believe this. But this is part of the promises. Assuming we are at the bottom of page 100, assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to do. People have said that we must not go where liquor is served. We must not have it in our homes. We must not, we must shun friends who drink. We must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes. We must not go into bars. Our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses. We mustn't think or be reminded about alcohol at all. Our experience shows that this is not necessarily so. We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them still has an alcoholic mind. There is something the matter with his spiritual status. Okay, and it goes on to say, I believe at the bottom of the page. So the rule is, not to avoid a place where there is drinking. If we have a legitimate reason for being there, that includes bars, nightclubs, dances, receptions, weddings, even plain ordinary whoopee parties. To a person who has had experience with an alcoholic, this may seem like tempting province, but it isn't. But it isn't. You will note that we have made an important qualification. Therefore, ask yourself on each occasion, have I any good social, business, or personal reason, for going to this place? Or am I going to steal a little vicarious pleasure? So as long as the tests are applied, we are okay. As long as the tests of the character defects are applied to anything we're about to get involved with. As long as we ask ourselves if we have a legitimate reason for going there. I might mention medication. If you have a legitimate doctor's reason for taking the medication, look at your motives. When I had that open heart surgery, believe me, I took plenty of pain pills. So I can deal with that. I took them to relieve the pain, period. And when the pain was gone, I simply stopped taking them, and they tapered off very, very rapidly for me. So you need to look at your motivations for any of that stuff. Anybody have a question? Yes. It means rule of thumb, general indication. I escaped from that one. Of course, there's about 75 musts in the book, too. 57, whatever. Any guess? Why broad highway is capitalized? Because they're using probably a connotation that would mean heaven. Okay. Proper noun. Anybody else? Okay. We have a few minutes left. It'll be 4.40. I'm going to go over this one page. Practice the principles in all our affairs. That's, I think, the first page. Hmm? Yeah. Oh, excuse me. Yeah, the question is, where is the step 11 prayer? You might make notes of this, because Bill kind of mixed up step 10 and 11. And on page, the middle of page 84, it says, this brings us to step 10, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory. So that means every night, before we go to bed, we look back over our day, and we ask ourselves, have we been selfish, self-centered, inconsiderate, dishonest, or fearful? And if we have, we must write about it. Now, the book does not tell us we have to write about it. But I've got to tell you that if you had a job in a warehouse taking inventory, and the boss came up, and he said, you've done a good job, continue taking personal inventory, and you threw away the pencil, I assure you, you would have thrown away your job. So I don't want to argue about it. What I'm going to tell you is there's a magic that happens between the pencil and the paper that will never, ever happen between the mind and the mouth. There seems to be a spiritual connection between the mind and the paper. So write it. It comes out of your mind, it goes onto the paper, then share it with somebody, become willing to ask God to help you with it, and then ask him. This is how you actually turn it over. It is the only way to effectively turn it over. Most of the people that say, turn it over, or I turned it over, I can't tell you how many hundreds I've asked what they mean by that. And they say, well, you're just not working your program. And thin little narrow-lipped boob. And they can't give you the right answer because they haven't read our book. Separated by the little word and, when you're wrong, promptly admitted it. And so in step 10, I've got those magic tools I can take out there on the bricks with me. Okay? Keeping current with my feelings, that's what that whole deal is about. And then step 11 says, thought through prayer and meditation to improve the conscious contact that you made somewhere back there between step 5 and 6 when you brush the face of God. Praying only for his thinking for us and the power to carry that out. And then the program sweeps up into step 12, having had a spiritual awakening which is defined in the appendix of our book as a personality change sufficient to recover from the disease of alcoholism. We tried to carry this message of how our personality changed through the application, of some gentle, loving, God-given steps. In practice, these principles in our daily affairs, what principles? The principles of continuing to take personal inventory every morning, every night, making amends promptly during the day, whenever necessary, seeking through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact in the morning, every morning, in prayer and meditation, and throughout the day, okay, and carrying this message. And the loop is closed and it's round and it's perfect. And it goes, and it goes on and on forever. The question was, where is step 11? Over on page 85, in the middle of step 10, is a paragraph, right in the middle of page 85, that's step 11. And it says, Thy will be done. Now, wherever you find thy will in the book, I would suggest that you put thy thinking. And then in step 11, on the middle of page 86, is when we retire at night, we constructively review our day, that's the major part of step 10. So, he has part of step 10 and 11, and he's got part of 11 and 10. And it gets a little confusing. Step 11 really starts in the second paragraph on page 86. And it says, On awakening, let us think about our 24 hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Now, this is where this sheet of paper begins to come in. It says, gives you instructions, each evening at the bottom, make a list of the things I want to do tomorrow. Okay, you all see that? The reason for that is, along with my inventory in the evening, I make this list of things I want to do tomorrow, and my mind doesn't have anything to worry about. Now, I can go to sleep. And I keep a flashlight, a pencil, and a piece of paper by the bed, and if something does wake me up, I force myself to turn the light on and write it down. My mind says, oh, screw it, he's put it on paper. You can go to sleep real easy. Now, when I wake up in the morning, I've got a plan for the day. How can I go over my plans for the 24 hours unless I have some? That will be my plan. Next morning, it says, each morning, under number two, go over the list of things I want to do today. And massage it, and change it, and so forth. Now, we look at the prayer. And it's scattered throughout the next four paragraphs. And it says on page 86, We ask God to direct us in the right direction. We ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives. That's part of the prayer. Under these conditions, it says it's okay to employ our mental faculties with assurance that after all, God's gave us brains to use. Then it goes on in the next paragraph to say, here we ask for, in thinking about our day, we may face indecision, we may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God, isn't that a prayer? We ask God for inspiration in intuitive thought or decision. We relax and take it easy. Okay? And then another promise comes true around 87. What used to be a hunch or occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. And then the prayer continues. There's three more premises there. And it says, we usually conclude this period of meditation with a prayer that we, and here's the prayer, another part of it, that we be shown today what our next step is to be. That we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will. Okay? And at the bottom is probably one of the most important tools that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous to keep us at peace. At the bottom of page 87 it says, as we go through the day we pause when agitated or doubtful, we ask for the right thought or action. And this is where, again, thinking and action become well in line. We constantly remind ourselves that we are no longer running in a shell. Humbly asking, or probably humbly saying to ourselves many times each day, thy will be done, thy thinking be done. You know what I like to do? I like to kind of walk along with thinking God's right beside me and he's my coach. Like an athletic coach. Or maybe he's a teacher I had a lot of admiration for when I was in school. And I'll be about to do something or say something, and I'll just turn to him and say, is this something you'd have me do, coach? The answer's quite clear, let me tell you. Oh, no, I don't really think you ought to rip off all your clothes and run down the street yelling, Jimmy Dean's alive. I don't really think that would be appropriate. There are too many Al-Anons around. So I kind of drive along with him sitting beside me and he says, what do you think about this, coach? Should we do 95 miles an hour? And you kind of know what his answer is going to be, don't you? Or maybe it's your father or maybe it's your mother. It really doesn't matter what you see sitting next to you or what you feel. You kind of get the idea. We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, angry, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves. It works. It really does, is what it says. And so now, let's turn to this page, Practice of Principles in Our Daily Affairs. And again, this whole thing is in a circle and everything is interdependent. This lifetime priorities is immutable. It cannot be changed because without God in my sobriety, it cannot have my sanity and without my sanity, I cannot be of any use to anybody. Secondly, I've got to put myself. That's all of the things that make me a going concern. Physically, mentally, morally, emotionally, financially, socially, and spiritually. And I've got to look at each one of those aspects of my being and make sure that they're okay. If one of those is separated from, I will feel pain. And when I feel pain, it means that something's broken. And I have to pick up the pencil and paper and find out what it is. Usually I am fearful or angry at something. Also, there's a note there that can be used as a guide to set personal goals periodically. What are my physical goals for this coming year? I started swimming every morning. I want to build up my lung power again and my heart. My goal for this coming year is I want to enter the senior downhill races. I'd still like to live dangerously. Okay, what are the mental goals that you have? Are you going to go to school? Are you going to do something to improve your mentality? Morally, how do I look? How do I look? Am I doing things that are okay with the way I feel? I make no moral judgments. Get clear on that. Your morality is yours. I have no argument with a cannibal in Africa. I mean, he's got to stay alive. He does that using his own practice of cannibalism. I don't have to judge that. I don't have to practice any because it doesn't fit into my morality. But my morality is not yours. You may believe in multiple marriages or duplicity of relationships. That's fine with me. It doesn't fit in with my morality. But I do not have to judge you. Not at all. So it's whatever you are comfortable with yourself. Emotionally, the emotions kind of start straightening out. If you're on an emotional roller coaster, and here I would like to mention drug addiction. If you are a combination user of drugs and alcohol, you will go through withdrawal for better than two years. If you wake up one morning absolutely suicidal and some fool tells you it's because you do not have a program run from him. It is because you woke up. And most people do not realize it takes a long time to readjust. An alcoholic will go through withdrawal for probably six months. By withdrawal I mean spikes in the emotion. A friend of mine that I sponsor is an airline pilot went through withdrawal from Valium for one year. Everything was okay as long as they just changed runways. But if they changed airports, he went to the restroom. The co-pilot had to find it. He could not face it. So if you are a combination user, you will have some problems for a long time. Roll with it. Just bundle up in a ball and bump along until you stand up in the sunshine again. It's like getting wiped out on a wave. You can fight it. You can deny it. Or you can just roll along the bottom of the ocean in a little ball until you finally stand up in the sunshine one more time. Because it ultimately just runs out of gas and you are out of breath. So what are my goals socially? Do I want to join another group? Do I want to do something else? Spiritually, what are my goals? Do I want to go back to a church? All of those things begin to work out a whole lot better once sobriety becomes our main thrust. And curiously enough, these elements are kind of the stepping stones of sobriety as well. We get sober physically first. And then our thinking kind of straightens out a little bit. And then our morals, our emotions stop spiking. And we are able to balance our checkbook maybe and not do what sometimes my wife still does, which is the ex-wife. She thought as long as she had checks she had money. And then we kind of begin to act a little bit more socially acceptable. Except in my case when I knocked a guy out six months over. And as we grow, we begin to grow spiritually. And the whole thing again is in a circle. My job becomes whatever becomes next because I've got to take care of those obligations. They allow me to maintain my self-respect and my self-esteem and allow me to take care of the things that I have to take care of in this society I've chosen to rejoin. And then other things in the order of priority. I mean, putting gas in the car may become number two tomorrow after God and your sobriety. But if that job gets inserted anywhere above it you will feel pain. If a relationship gets inserted between your moral well-being and your emotional well-being or between your job and your sobriety you will begin to feel pain big time. But if your significant other puts you forth in her life or his life then you're all even again. That's okay. And I think one of the greatest tricks in life is if you can have no expectations. And the Eastern philosophy says that if a man does not want anything there will be no pain. That's a little bit too stoic for me. But if I can try to practice not having expectations like I don't expect my car to start any morning at all. So when it does, I'm just grateful. But when it doesn't I'm not disappointed. And I don't have to kill it again. You see the difference? I don't expect dinner to be ready when I get home. If it is, I'm just thrilled. But if it's not, I'm not disappointed. I don't expect my paycheck to cash. But God, if it does, I'm really excited. You know. It's an interesting trick. Expectations kill us. Well, I expected her to do that. God damn it. Well, lots of luck. I expect you'll kill yourself later too. So we've covered each morning. Get up an hour earlier. I don't care if you get up an hour earlier or 20 minutes earlier. I don't care if you get up at all. As long as you spend some time doing each one of those things sometime during the day. Okay? Spend 20 minutes reading one page of the big book. Believe me, there's enough on that page to keep your mind busy for a whole day. And by the end of the year you'll have read the whole book. 20 pages plus the doctor's opinion. You'll have read the book twice and had time to review it. And then you can give workshops on the steps. And then you might want to read something else of a spiritual nature. About 20 minutes in prayer and meditation and, oh yeah, exercise for 20 minutes. The exercise kind of this whole thing's in a circle. The exercise kind of takes care of the physical part of myself. It also tends to straighten me out a little bit mentally. It kind of flattens out the emotions. Okay? Reading something in the big book spiritual takes care of G, the spirituality. It might help with my sociability and my emotional stability and my morality. And about some time in meditation. There's whole books and courses you can take on meditation and some of them are very interesting. The important thing is to just try to do some of this. When I do it, well, it's about 18 minutes of exercise and about 4 minutes of reading and about 1 minute of prayer and meditation because I just can't do it any other way. But it'll set up your whole day. If you do these things tomorrow morning, I can guarantee you you will have the best day that you have had so far in your life. That's a promise. Starting tonight if you make your list of things and then there's an interesting thing in number 2. Make a list of 10 things that I did today that I feel good about. And slowly you will find your behavior changing. In other words, if you didn't run this guy into the center divider when he cut you off you put that on your list. If you opened the door for some little old lady you made your bed this morning and you stood back and said I'm glad I did that. I feel good about that. Write it down. And you'll find out that the subconscious begins to start doing things differently because it knows, damn it you're going to have to put something on the list tonight. And all of a sudden your behavior starts to change. All of a sudden people are noticing that your personality is changing according to the definition of sobriety. And all of a sudden you start feeling better about yourself and somebody compliments you on the way you look and you're able to say, thank you, I feel good too. Instead of making excuses and putting yourself down and being less than not measuring up to not being a part of just one more time. And then of course finish up with the inventory. Now I would recommend strongly that you take this worksheet the daily program and make about 30 copies of it and start filling that out every day with the things that you did that you want to accomplish do that in the evening the good things you did today. Write down the eight. These are only guidelines. If you do the things on this page this page is all you will need to run your life from now on. You will need nothing more. And if you do the things on this page on a daily basis you will be happy, joyous and free I promise you. And the minute you feel despondent suicidal, unhappy I will simply say one thing to you. You are not doing the stuff on that page are you? And the answer is invariably well no. Because we go along and we do stuff and we start to feel good and we think well I got it now you know and we quit doing the stuff that works. So if you want to feel and experience the way you are feeling keep doing the things you are doing. If you don't want to feel the way you are feeling stop doing the things you are doing. And so I would like to ask one more time are there any questions? In the back of this workbook I put some other things that are a daily inventory and that comes from Joe and Charlie's workshop and we are kind of going down the middle of that between those little squares and the road doesn't get narrow and nobody is out changing the geography and what is happening is that we become more sensitive to what we are doing. And so the way we pray for this stuff is we move over onto the positive side. If I am feeling fearful I do not pray and ask God to remove the fear. I pray and ask him to make me more courageous. Move over to the positive side. There is no way I can stop driving 95 miles an hour but I can ask him to help me drive 62. So I move over onto the positive side. If I am being envious I just ask to be more grateful and so forth. This prayer on page 552 freedom from bondage if you have a resentment read that page in your big book. If you have a resentment you just can't get rid of when somebody is sharing their fifth step with me invariably we will end up with 4, 5, 6, 10, 20, 10 names to put in that prayer every day for two weeks and you will be surprised about how you feel. I love Charlie when he said the best he could do with his next door neighbor was to say I hope the son of a bitch gets everything that is coming to him and today they are best friends and so that is the way this thing works. I put a deal in the back I don't know if it is in years I think for goals and how to arrange those because without a plan we are not going anywhere we just kind of suit up for life and say what is happening and I always said that because I really wanted to know what was happening because there was nothing to do there does anybody understand and ask for something I'm sorry did you question the negative did everybody hear that when we ask for something more positive than negative I think it has a far better chance of happening a whole lot faster if we do that that way because there is no way that I can stop doing something but I can do something The what? The 10th and 11th and 12th step? Okay, well, what do we have here? We've got really the first nine steps here. Then we have 10, 11, and 12. That's a circle. Because the minute we share with somebody else, it's time to go to bed, and we start with our inventory at the end of the day. Okay, so that's a circle. Well, when you take the elements of a human being, a being, all atoms and molecules are round, so a being is round too. I can't have my physical hanging out over here and my mental over here. They're not going to be connected. So I've got physical, mental, moral, emotional, social, financial, spiritual, also in a circle, a going concern, as long as I'm doing these things on the outside to keep it together. Okay, does that kind of explain? And everything that's perfect seems to be round, like a raindrop. You know, and God's tears are all spherical. Okay, and so it all seems to just go as a going concern, just a round circular formula instead of a linear formula of steps 1 through 12. Anybody else have a question at the back of the room? Can I recommend some other readings for spiritual advancement? No. No, I wouldn't want to do that. You can go to any spiritual library, and I'll tell you, a curious thing will happen. You'll be walking there, and all of a sudden, your attention will be directed to a book. I don't know why that is. But if you walk into one of those religious libraries or spiritual libraries, and you've been doing this a little bit, just a little bit, and your mind's kind of free, all of a sudden you'll pick up a volume, and if you pick it up, I would take it home and read it. There's an... Ah, tremendous. ...amount of stuff. Yes. Do I... That seems... The question is, do you continue to talk to your sponsor? I kind of sponsor my own sponsor now. He's getting a little old and senile. And I find that periodically in my life, there will be three or four people, or maybe one or two, that become confidants. And my very, very best friend died, ah, two years ago. And, ah, all of a sudden another one's appeared. And, ah, and I share a lot with him. And, ah, all the book says is with another person. Sponsorship, primarily, is to sponsor a person through the steps, to help them straighten out these elements of their being, physically, mentally, morally, socially, financially, giving advice occasionally, you know, looking at the whole deal. I remember guys that I've sponsored come over with a carton of unpaid bills, you know, and we've gone through all of that and found a little stack. Finally, they were all duplicates. But there was more, so we could worry more and drink more. So, does that answer your question? Yeah, okay. Anybody else? Yeah. How do you deal with depression and sobriety? And, unfortunately, I have first-hand information because, ah, about two years ago, I was just tailing off a real serious depression that lasted about ten, about ten months. The problem with the depression is that most of the time you don't know you're in it until it's too late. You know, what usually happens, and this is why they call them manic depressives, is that just before the depression, there's usually a manic stage. And, and, God, I found myself wandering around like I was independently wealthy, you know, and everything was just great and we're going along here and, God, I'm showing up at the office on Wednesday and then I'd leave town on Thursday to go speak somewhere and get back on Tuesday or Monday and I was too tired to go to work so I'd show up on Wednesday and there just wasn't a whole lot happening business-wise, you know. And then it begins to tail off and the depression starts to come. And all through that, why, you know, I was making my bed and I was suiting up and all the rest of this, there just wasn't anything happening. And, finally, somebody told me that I was in a depression and I did not honestly believe it because I thought that it was all this guy's fault up here that had really done me wrong. I went down to Riverside three years ago to build a $3 million self-storage facility. I saved the man a quarter of a million dollars and he stiffed me on a $25,000 bonus. That's the fact. And that's what put me in the depression. But I had plenty of money when we quit. And I got right here and I just thought, well, screw it, you know, I'm sober 19 years if there are 22 years at that point. I have no problem here. And I was living on my savings, okay. And I did not realize when this turned down because to outward appearances it looked like everything was fine. And so this is why we need to keep in touch with our people on the program. We need the feedback. We need the honesty of people that are not running popularity contests. They are busy saving lives. They are busy saving lives. I'm sorry, Jane. You have been acting really strange lately. Let's sit down and talk about it. I'm sorry, Ted. You've been acting really weird lately. Let's sit down and talk about it. And the longer you're sober, the more dangerous it gets. Because I've got to tell you honestly, there are very, very, very few people that will come up to me and tell me something like that. Because I guess I intimidate people. And they think, what can I tell him? Twenty-five years sober. Well, I want to tell you, I am as vulnerable as anybody to this type of thing. It is one of the most deadly types of things that invades the psyche of a human being. So stick close to the program. Stick close to the people that you can understand. And once you find out that you're in a depression, that's when you really have to pick up the pencil and the piece of paper and say, what can I do? I had to move my office. I had to move my equipment out of the house because it was a joke. I wasn't doing anything there, but it looked good. I moved my computer and everything. I reorganized my whole business life. Okay? I took a whole bunch of clothes to the cleaners. I went and got a haircut and started looking like a reasonable human being again. I started feeling a little better about myself and it started to swing out. And that's what we have to do. We have to write about it and share it and write about it and share it until people are just sick of it. Does that help? But the secret is being with people for God's sake that care enough to be honest and tell us, how do I look? Am I too fast? Am I too slow? Am I too high? Am I too low? Am I ready to crash and die? And all I ever wanted to do all my life was just step out easy. And this program has allowed me in the final promise in the big book on page 164 to do just that. Because the final promise says surely we will meet some of you as we trudge the road to happy destiny. I went to an old, old dictionary because this book was written a long time ago. One that was seven inches thick and unabridged and I looked up the word trudge and it said walk with purpose. And what that means for me and should for all of you is that through this magic formula we can find out where we're really going and we can get there by just stepping out easy. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm John. I'm an alcoholic. Please remain seated for a moment. We're going to pass the basket for the seventh tradition. We were self-supported through our contributions. Dinner will fall in several moments. If you have any tape needs, Priscilla in the back can help you with those. You can see Jim up here. But I think Priscilla can pretty much handle it in the back. We're selling the tapes for this workshop. We have a regular meeting following the dinner at 7 p.m. We encourage you to attend and we have coffee afterwards at Carol's around the corner. And let's give Ted another good hand here. And after a moment of silent meditation if we can stand and to the Lord's Prayer. After the baskets are finished being passed.