Sponsorship and the Fourth Step Edwards House Big Book Workshop Retreat – With Nate F. and Chad A. – Part 3 of 7

welcome back everyone so we do have a few questions that were submitted to the ask it basket out back so I think maybe for the sake of trying to address those as they're coming in maybe we'll just when we open the next session kind of a thing right now well just we'll walk through these real quick and just see what we can uh what we can offer um go for it so this one says how do you deal with the situation where as you grow in recovery you notice your sponsor has some glaring character defects that cause harm to you and potentially to others. And although I feel like we could all have a fairly lighthearted, humorous response to that, I think that's also a very valid question that can lead to real... There are many situations. I mean, Alcoholics Anonymous is not a hotbed of mental health, right? We don't all come here because we're well. Usually we have some things going on and we don't necessarily play well with others, right, we're all just human right there is no pedestal there is no there's none of that going on in essence we're all in this together and the relationship with a sponsor can be one that is somewhat intimidating to navigate if you're the one being sponsored especially if you feeling like I feel like it really maxed out the walk with this person right and and I think everyone to some degree will have character defects for sure but i think there's a hard there's a hard line where it it drifts over from being a human and facing challenges and walking through them and then being abusive in a lot of ways that's very possible i've experienced that where you know uh if those defects are something that basically i want my sponsor has things going on at any given time right same way that that's the large part of why I'm attracted to him as a sponsor, because he's got life happening and he's dealing with it. He's working his program, walking through those things, but there's never been anything that's come up with this particular sponsor. There have been for me in the past where, just for example, a sponsor prior to that that I had was sarcastic and condescending all the time, right? The origin of the word sarcasm is to tear flesh. That's true, right? So sarcasm, I don't really have much of a tolerance for that when we're talking about the fabric of my soul, right. So that became a situation where I just couldn't participate in that relationship anymore, you know. God bless him. I'm not judging that. That is his journey that he's walking. But sometimes we have to be the ones that say, I need a new experience here. I need to grow. I need ask someone and I can almost guarantee because that's been my experience. I've changed sponsors a few different times throughout the course of being in recovery. If you ask the question of God, he will provide the answer. And I think to Chad's earlier point, unless you're scared of getting the answer, right? Because what if it's you need to walk away from that sponsor and get a new one? that's scary right presents confrontation none of us like that but at the end of the day if I'm not being fed I'm starving right has nothing to do we talk about principles versus personalities it has everything to do with the principle of being well and of wanting to grow and of wanting to work the program and nothing to deal with the personality involved in it right thank you for what you've done for me I've been inspired to go a different direction right and I'm not saying that's always the answer that's just kind of my experience with that but there is no one should ever need to apologize for continuing to grow closer to God so that's how I would answer that I don't really have a whole lot more to add other than I've been in the same situation and I I I think by my nature I'm a seeker so I'm constantly trying to grow and i had a sponsor that just was kind of didn't have a sponsor didn't do the deal did the deal i mean helped a lot of people but it's kind of like a mountain stream or a mountain lake right there's got to be fresh water coming in and water going out or the pond becomes stagnant and stale and disgusting so if i don't have something feeding me and I'm not helping feed others, then I'm stagnant. And I don't want to be downstream from a stagnant pond. I want there to be flowing. So my sponsor has a sponsor that he meets with regularly. And so I had a sponsor at a time that didn't, and the message got old. and um and it's about my soul not theirs so i got to take responsibility for my own recovery and move on if that's what i got a conversation you know do that um did you want me to yeah you this is yours right here what about this one we can go there first so this one is uh what do you think about the saying meeting makers make it I changed it to coffee makers make it is what my first home group they made me the coffee maker I mean I think meetings are important but I think that if I'm putting my reliance upon my sobriety on an AA meeting I'm going to be sorely disappointed I'm in a position in my life where I can't go to 3, 4, 5 meetings a week it just wouldn't be I mean I could but it wouldn't be fair to my family you know it wouldn'T be fair to my son who's got soccer practice and baseball practice and my daughter's got piano practice you know what I mean it wouldn'T be fair to them it wouldn''T be fair to them it wouldn ''t be fair to my wife to just become an absent father hanging out in AA meetings The truth is I like to hang out in AA meetings because I get attention in AA meetings, right? I get love in AA meetings in a way that I don't get in other places. I get camaraderie. But that's not why I'm here. So I think that's a tough question because I do think meetings are important. I think it's important to go to meetings. I think especially when things are going the way they can go at times, it's sometimes good to step up the meetings and go to more meetings. What I love, one of my favorite things to do, and I live in a big city so I can do this, is I like going to meetings where there is not a soul in the room that knows who I am. And it's why I like being here. Because when I hear you talk, I can take what you're saying at face value. I don't know who your sponsor is. I don'T know who YOUR girlfriend is or your boyfriend. I don't know who you used to hang out with or who you're used to sleep with or who are used to whatever with. All I know is what you're saying. And I'm able to eliminate all that. You know, you go to your home group every week and it's like, oh, if I got to hear that guy talk about that thing one more time, I'm going to make him drink. We get in this groove. And I am sure there are people in my home group that they call me the grim reaper of recovery because I just sometimes tend to just don't carry a real flowery message, you know? This stuff's hard. And I think it's important to remind ourselves it's hard Do you have anything to add about that? I would just say I think at our very nature we find or we think we can find security in black and white answers, right? There's gray. Meetings are important but other things are too, right. What we have here is an inside problem. It's an inside dilemma. Spiritual sickness happens from the inside out. And to compare that to, I think George Carlin said it, it's like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body. Right? You're going to have a hard time actually satisfying any true hunger by just being submerged in meetings and never actually taking a look within. So it's multiple things, but I don't think we can exclude really any part of it, right? Because going to meetings is important. But if I were to just go, if I had just been going to meeting since I had gotten here and not done anything else to address the absolute insanity that lives within me, I would not be making it very well. You know, that's my own experience. However, I try to never be the judge of to what extent someone suffers alcoholism either though. I don't know if everyone's as nuts as I am. I don'T KNOW IF EVERYONE NEEDS TO GO TO THE LENGTHS THAT I DO TO BE WELL. I JUST DON'T KNOW. SO, YOU KNOW, I KNOW PLENTY OF PEOPLE BACK HOME THAT THEY COME, THEY GET THEIR MEDICINE, THEY GO TOTHE MEETING EVERY DAY AND THAT'S WHAT THEY DO AND THEY SEEM TO BE OKAY. I don't know. They could be going home and kicking the dog and this, that, and the other thing. I don' t know, right? But it's also none of my business, right. So I think what really, it flips inward. What's my responsibility to take care of my own situation rather than saying this is the blanket statement for everyone. Great. And then the last one we have here is a really good one going into what we're doing. Regarding step three, I often look at things as black and white. I am trying to live in the gray. Why am I afraid if I submit, I won't do anything at all? How do you know the right amount of action to take and when to let go? If I could answer that question as it's written, man, my life would be so different. I ask my sponsor that all the time. When he says to me, you need to let go and trust God, I just say, how? Like what are the mechanics behind that? Do I take the job, not take the Job? Do I do this? Do I confront this? Do I say that? Do I, do I, and that's all self-management. The question is self- management. I want to manage the outcome, so I've got to figure out what action I need to take and in what order rather than just being. And what Nate said is, and it sounds completely counterintuitive to pause. I have a person I work with who has razor blades for a tongue that come across in her fingers in email and she can tear me apart like that. Tear me apart's a little extreme. She can jab at me in a way that really can take me from having a great day to a really bad day. But what happens is, is I pause. Tense step. I don't react. That's what that looks like for me in that situation. and so i think that the management of self is what we're trying to get away from so sometimes i think we need to just sit and be and live in that pause and the right thing will come the right answer will show up or um or will appear if we're honestly seeking it I find that with my kids my oldest son is I don't like to call him gifted but it's kind of what they call him he's intelligent and he has the other day I walked into his room and he was watching the science channel about an underwater lake, river and its impact on the ecosystem in Africa. He's nine. I'm like, what are you doing? Like, where's, like, that man? You know, he watches that stuff too, but his emotional maturity of about, at times, he's getting better, of about a four-year-old. He loses his mind really quickly sometimes. And as his father, I have a lot of ideas about how my wife doesn't know how to be a mother and about how I know howto be a father. Because I have vast experience, much greater than hers. And that stuff starts to come out. And what I have to do is, and this is an area I don't believe God's going to show up, is I have topause and ask God how tobe a dad. and not react, sit in that pause. The other night he was, and it doesn't happen as much anymore. He's really maturing. It's really beautiful to watch, but he was having a meltdown over some homework and, uh, being really smart and really intelligent. You're, he's very much a perfectionist. It'S gotta be perfect. And it wasn't perfect. Then he was really struggling with that. And he started to melt down. And, um, one of my, like I would absolutely, um. My kids would never bathe if my wife wasn't their mother. Cause I like, that just doesn't even come into my like thought pattern of like, oh, the kids need a bath. Oh, she was gone for a week last week. And I think they'd bathed like two times. I mean, it's like, I just like, I just, it's just, I'm horrible at it. And I like volunteered to give the girls a bath. Like I'll go give the girl's a bath I'm done. But I had to pause and I was able to, at the end of that pause, the intuitive thought came to go in and sit down with him and just tell him, I love you. And it doesn't matter. None of this matters. I'm right here with you. And he said, you think I'm stupid and you don't want to be my dad. And I said, that's not true, buddy. But the place he was at, it wasn't about a lecture. It wasn't About anything. It was just about, I love you and your dad. I'm here. I'll write by your side. And by morning he was all fine. We'll have many more of those, but what I want to do is go in and manage and tell them how we could have done this, that And to answer the question, it's about letting go of the outcome and trusting that you'll be guided in the right path. Do you have anything to add about that? Yes. I think, again, living in the black and the white, to suggest that we would submit takes out the possibility of any action. right if i submit i will not be taking any action forgetting the fact that you know i i envision the the alphabet of possibilities right and i forget the fact there is an alphabet beyond my comprehension of infinite possibilities in god's world right i can't draw conclusions it's not going to be option a a lot of the time submitting is all about that like our book says we pause when agitated or doubtful. My knee-jerk response to that situation is not to pause, right? It takes a level of self-discipline, but it also takes that level of submission. You know, asking in the morning, God, there will be times that come up throughout the course of the day help me to be willing to pause rather than lash out. Pause isn't necessarily for two seconds either. There have been things that I've had to pause on that have been going on in my life that have lasted a period of weeks, sometimes months. I'm not a fan of those kinds of timelines, right? Pause, I think, deep breath, now I know what to do, right. That's what I envision God's service to provide me with instant action. And the beautiful thing about pausing is usually when I'm pausing, I'm also 10-stepping with my sponsor, right, because without fail, whenever something's going on in my life, it's equal parts emotion and principle, right? There's usually something that needs to be addressed at a principle level, but my emotion weighs so much stronger on my initial response that that's usually what flies out. And I don't know about anybody else in the room, but to the extent that I experience the phenomenon of craving and the compulsion to drink alcohol, I experience that same insane twist with words flying out of my mouth. Right? It's like I almost don't have a say with what's coming out of my mouth. I'm watching from the outside saying, what is this guy saying out loud right now to this person? More often than not, it's my wife. We're in close proximity. That's usually where that stuff comes up. But to be able to step away and say, okay, I'm not in a position to have a conversation about this right now. I need to take a breath. I need To step away. I need TO get my own house in order before I can come back and talk about this because I don't want to hurt you. I just don't, but I will. That's the guy I am if I do not step away, pause and go to God. So for me, a lot of that time is, how was that worded exactly? The right amount of action to take and when to let go. For me, pausing and stepping away to take action, to do a 10th step with my sponsor is in fact letting go. So two exist at the same time, right? So it's not, I don't think there's a magic answer to any of this. But I do believe that both can exist at the same time in a way, right? So whether that's clear as mud or it actually helped, that's okay either way, I suppose. Yeah. So as we're going to look at this third step, my hope is that people have some time to think about that. And if you've done a third step before, it would really just more or less be like, am I willing, as Nate said, to make a new decision to change the course of my life today? that I'm going to try and live under this new regime. The book talks about that he's going to be the father and we are his children. He is the principal and we're his agent. Becoming a dad really changed my ideas of God. Because like I said, my son can lose his mind, my daughter can lose her mind, and I have no less love for them. And I'm able to discipline and move on and exist with them lovingly, much like I think God does with us. I also think that we put a lot of human ideas on God and I really don't have any idea how He's going to work. Because I want to understand how He is going to work because then I can manage the relationship it right so one of the hardest things for me to do in writing inventory now my first inventory i was like a sheep going into the wolf's den i had no idea what was going to happen and I wrote it all down honest and now I the challenge is I know what Mickey's gonna say hey if I write that down I know what's coming from that comment or that thing or that right so I have to if it comes to my mind I put it on the paper it comes to mind I put it on the paper so I can't have control of the outcome but I want control the outcome and this is a process of where we're letting all that go and making a decision to live under a new new leadership I did a workshop years ago, and we did the third step, and like a few people lost their jobs. You know, and it was like, to me it was kind of funny. Like, oh, I guess God wanted you to work somewhere else. You know? The book does say we get a new employer. You know. And, but that's really not the point of this. Right? Because believing in a God that's going to do that is not something to believe in. But trusting that I'm going to be under new management. And what does that look like? Who is this new person that's going to come in and manage my life? Because there's a lot in my life I want to manage. There's all of us, right? So how do you want to do this? Circle up? Sure. Is everybody good to do that? We'll just circle up, hit our knees. People okay with their knees? And we'll all take a moment of pause and then we'll just go ahead and say that third step prayer together. If you don't know the prayer, don't feel intimidated by that. I would just encourage you to join in silence, okay? Or grab somebody's book too. You can do that. Are we kneeling and holding hands? Doing the whole thing? Yeah. Okay. Do you want to kneel? Are we kneling? Oh, we don't have to. Are you sure? We're all about the kneel. Huh? were about that i'm about the meal would you guys mind if we if we knelt okay is that a word can be okay is everyone touching oh we got one more no it's okay let's take a just a moment of silence and then i'll just Get us started, and we can all go together. God? God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt. Believe me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always. Thank you. I've got to transition here for this. You want to take it? I'm going to run to the restroom. Yeah. Are you okay with that? Sure. it always that's a good feeling to do that as a group i think it's always nice to kind of bring the cohesion together and know that we're all on the same path and it's just so important to remember that it's never about the words right it's so much more than that it is the emphasis and the power that's behind it what is the intention that's why when given you know even more time what what i would usually do with the men that i sponsor is we would we would get kind of set up to do this and then they would take a week to think well as it says in the book think well and then we'll come back and we'll execute the the you know the action so to speak together and we will get you sent on your way into the fourth step um but there's something to be said for that you know because i used to get so wrapped around the words themselves that it was about saying the prayer right because if i were to ask someone point blank are you are you ready to take the prayer are you there without fail we'd all say oh yeah yeah let's do the prayer let's move on let's take some action right the temptation's always there but i think there's a great great opportunity to go into a place of pause and to really go into the discomfort without any true direction to say what does this look like for me god right and the way that we transition uh into this and i'm just going to read this little excerpt just because it's i mean they write it so well i don't need to make up my own version of it um so right after the the language about the the prayer itself in the book it says next we launched out on a course of vigorous action the first step of which is a personal house cleaning, which many of us had never attempted. Though our decision, third-step decision, was a vital and crucial step, it could have very little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. Our liquor was but a symptom, so we had to get down to causes and conditions. so again the decision itself can feel invigorating and it can feel like they're okay something happened right i felt the shift i feel more in than i've ever felt but it can have very little permanent effect unless it once followed by a strenuous effort and again just trying to process what the word actually means strenous to me that means there's that's a fair amount of effort involved there right so it shouldn't take me a year and a half to write my fourth step right and that's not the expectation that was set for me and it's not necessarily about the timing per se it's about the willingness to be working on it consistently right um and as far as i think we were going to kind of shift a little more to some of the mechanics of what this actually looks like and so on and so forth because that's kind of the only way to go from a certain perspective with the four step is what What has proven to be the best way to write inventory, right? I spent a period of time in the halls of AA pursuing different, what I would jokingly call gurus or experts of how do you do it, how do your write that, how you write that. The book has already done an amazing job of outlining exactly how to write four column inventory in a way that is very, very effective, right. The first inventory I ever wrote in AA was a two column inventory and what that looks like is, so the first two are the name of the person I'm mad at and the reason why. That was it. That was all I had done. I just basically made a list that fired me up more than it did anything else. And that was it and that was the guidance I had at the time. bless that man because I don't know again it didn't work for me needless to say but so as far as resentments go for me it's really important you want to just kind of bounce back maybe I'll take resentments you do fears kind of a thing or whatever so oh I know you do I know how you do yeah but in looking at the resentment right really start out with making a list right I sit down make a list whatever that comes to we look at people institutions and principles right I feel like people and institutions are fairly the most they're the most obvious ones to me at least most of the time principles yeah I could probably pick out a few but what was very very helpful to me is to approach that from the perspective of old ideas that I have right the principle of what a good son looks like right the principal of what good father looks like the principle what a Gooda a member looks like because they think we can all get lost in the weeds with those things at times based on the principle that we've set within ourselves that makes sense so really kind of pushing that is very helpful for for me to be able to really dig into not only just you know yeah i'm mad at at you know jim for x y and z reason but what is it within myself what are the belief systems that are established in me that are actually no longer working right that are causing me more harm than good uh a good aa member never never admits that they're actually having a hard time right that's that's a principle that's belief system that will kill me eyes wide open stone cold sober in the halls of Alcoholics Anonymous so if I don't get honest about that and look to see the truth of what's truly motivating me and going on in there I'm gonna be I'm going to be in a tough spot right so starting with a list right starting with the list and I do my best to get that list as complete as possible and then transition into an actual piece of inventory and honestly there's no real magic I used to really really love inventory it was my favorite part because it just was so much action and now it's like the pen weighs 5,000 pounds because I really don't want to necessarily take a look at what I know I need to right I don't wanna go within I don' t want to go within myself to really start to flip over some stones and uncover some truths about my life real time that aren't necessarily points of pride right so to be able to sit down and start one by one and walk through that process and it basically we I suppose you don't need to get super granular with it I'm happy to talk at length with anyone that would like to talk more about this outside of the sessions or whatever but really just so we've got the first piece the name right the name the institution the principal at the top of the page and then we move into the cause right why am i mad that's easy I love those two pieces it's the best because I can stay mad and I can stay angry and my second column per I say we say column but the way this usually flows on a page it's more of a row right it's for paragraphs but the way that it's shown in the book is more of a column structure so that's what I'm saying when when I say column some of you probably know that but I love to be angry and I'll usually be pretty colorful with my language in my second column just because hey it's me and my sponsor talking about this I might as as well be honest right and then what we do is we would transition into the third column the third piece which would be what does it affect within me right what does it effect and I've seen instances where there it's just a check it's like a yes or no thing but for me what we what we do is, we just we elaborate a little more about what exactly it is right is it my is it my my personal relations my sex relations my ambitions my security my self-esteem right I miss anything pocketbook good one yep and so basically looking at all those things and you know what I do is I just walk through that with the people that I work with and say what does that actually look because sometimes I think we could say, okay, I should know how to elaborate on that. But sometimes it's not that clear, right? What do you mean when you say self-esteem or ambitions or security? And for me, the security and the ambitions are very tightly aligned usually because the way that I view security is what do I need to be safe? What did this person do that threatened or hurt what makes me feel safe, right? And it's easy to get way big picture with this. I really try to have God help me to stay focused on did what they do in the second piece that I wrote, the cause of why I'm resentful, did what They Do There hurt or threaten my security, right, my ambitions? What do I want? What Do I Want? Did What They Do Hurt or Threaten What I Want. A lot of the time what I want is to be safe, right? So if you threaten my security, we're already off to the races, right, and without fail those things are always flared up. The only two things that are not necessarily present on every single piece of inventory that I've ever written are sex relations and pocketbook because they're not – those are the two that aren't necessarily related. All the others are almost always there, right. and then it would transition into the fourth column which is the least favorite part for anyone that's avoiding truth right where have i been selfish dishonest self-seeking and frightened right a lot of the time i can still be angry up to that and what was pointed out to me is that if my second column is spilling over to my third and fourth i'm missing the point right The point is to not stay angry when you walk away from the piece of inventory. And sometimes I'm hanging on so tight that I just have a hard time getting through it, right? I want to stay justified. But we have the prayer in there, the four-step prayer, that basically just says this is a sick person. Help me to just resolutely look for my own mistakes. We're not saying that what they did was okay or even that it was right. We're saying what are my mistakes in this, right, selfishness, dishonest, self-seeking frightened. Selfishness for me a lot of the time is how am I relying on myself and not God, right? That was kind of a squirrely concept for me to get my head around. I had a really hard time writing inventory with my now sponsor the first time because I was so used to kind of the format and the mechanic that I had put together. I knew how to write a piece of showboat inventory that would just, if I read it to you, you'd be so impressed, just to say, right? Yet it was what I thought you wanted to hear and not the truth. To truly go within ourselves and to try to put that onto paper is much harder. It's just so much harder. So to really look into that from the selfishness perspective how am I relying on myself and not God? Anytime I'm looking to myself to manufacture my own security, my own happiness I'm usually not relying on God and dishonesty I also find yeah sure I could lie outwardly what's the lie that I'm telling to myself right how am i being dishonest with myself about what's going on what's narrative that I've placed to that person institution principle that makes it okay for me to be justifiably resentful because if that story is strong enough I'll be I'll be locked into that cycle right if I put the story to it they don't deserve forgiveness right why would I ever go there so it's real important for me to get honest about the lies that I tell myself and not just the lies that I'm telling to other people right why don't you take those last two and bounce around that's fine a couple things I wanted to say about inventory that is important for me. My first inventory I wrote, I had 286 names. No more than three resentments per name because my sponsor limited me to that at the time. I wrote my first inventory in five and a half, six weeks. All four columns, fear and sex. My sex inventory was not nearly as large, um but just as important um when i got here and i heard there was a inventory and then there was fear inventory and a sex inventory i was like this is not for me but again i was i didn't read ahead like it my sponsor and i got together when i was done with fear and it's like okay now we're gonna write this sex and we're like sex inventory what are you talking about where did that we don't need to go i don't need to get involved in that part of like this that's got nothing to do with drinking so the things about inventory that are important for me is and the analogy I use is we got to be like seal team six we are in and out we're in we're flipping stones shooting bad guys and out of inventory sitting in inventory is a death sentence. It is absolutely a death sentence. And I've done it. I sponsored a guy for many years and this is a guy that I swear to you is like salt of the earth. Just an amazing guy, super great guy. And we, you guys probably never heard of him, but we have a baseball team in seattle called the mariners they're like a b league horrible right i learned about insanity by watching the marinners i would every spring i would be like this is our year and i'd watch for like a month and then i wouldbe like i cannot waste any more time on this horrible team but in 1995 kids if you can remember back there we had this like incredible experience of going to the playoffs for the first time. The city was, I mean, I remember going to Costco and walking in and there's just like, they got all the TVs and there're just 50 people standing around watching the end of the Mariners game. And we're all standing there together, hugging each other when they won. And it was amazing experience. And I had this guy, Mark, I sponsored. And Mark was a big baseball guy, coached baseball. We coached his kids' baseball team together. and Mark got into inventory and you know you can't write inventory and watch baseball at the same time and then like the season was over and then he bought a hot tub and he had to fix the hot tub and then you had to build a deck around the hot tube because you can not have a hot tube without a deck and then he painted the house because sitting in the hot tube looking at your house it's not me I paint the house right are you seeing where I'm going converted his garage into a bonus rec room beautiful carpenter did his great stuff and uh mark is currently serving an 18-year sentence for drinking and driving at four o'clock in the afternoon and killing two people he ran over uh grandparents an 11 day old baby and the mom and killed the grandparents and um telling you he is a salt of the earth man he just could never ever get through inventory and he struggled to stay sober his whole life. And so it's so important that we get in and we get out. We write it, and we be done with it, and we move on. You're going to write more. If you stay in AA long enough, you're goingto write more inventories. If you miss something, it'll come back up. It's okay. If you didn't quite dot the I across the T, it's going to be okay. If you did not have your grammar correct, it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter. It's about getting it down. The big book is really clear and it says that resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. I believe we are to take that sentence literally. That would include, it kills more alcoholcs than alcohol. It destroys our lives. And I watched tons of people, and I'm not going to get involved in the particulars. Tons of people get drunk over the election because they stood on a political stand regardless of what side of the aisle it was on and they were angry about the other side and they Were right. But it's politics, Chad. It's not AA. I have a right to be mad. There's an injustice. That's all great. It's still a resentment. And if I'm alcoholic, I'm going to die over resentments regardless of how justified they may or may not be in my mind. I have to be clear on that. And so the other thing it says that I don't like that my sponsor reminds me of, I don' t know if he reminds you of it. Maybe you're not as bad as me. But it says when the spiritual malady is overcome, We straighten out mentally and physically. I want to straighten out mentally and physical and then we'll talk about God. But the book's really clear that God's got to come first or I don't got a shot. The other thing I wanted to just touch on that Nate touched on and then I'm going to jump into fear is in the third column, for years I wrote third column and I never understood what was going on in the second column. the third column and it was explained to me by this thing this guy made up a long time ago called the theater of the lie i don't know if you guys know about the theater the lie and joe h and all that and i'll i'll give a real brief synopsis of it and the way i write inventory today is kind of a variation of that where we actually dive into the third colon we don't just write the words we dive into what's happening in the third colin because what i found is is that i was just talking about this this morning. What's going on in the third column is my belief system. So when you walk in the room, I already have a set of belief systems categorized as to who you are in my life and how you should behave to others and me. And if you don't, if you operate outside of those guidelines that you don'T know about, by the way, then I get a resentment. So the resentment is born in a third column. It's not born in the second column or the fourth column. It's born in that third column because I have a belief about who you should be and how you should act. Right? So that's what needs to be changed. I used to work in landscape, and they had this machine one day that came out, and they lift like you know they move trees and they have this giant thing that kind of goes around the trees and goes all like these huge shovels they're like I mean they're huge and they go in and they get the root of the tree all of it because if you don't get all of it you're going to kill the tree and then they pull the tree up and then they move it and put it in a hole so that's what I'm doing when it comes to resentments I need to get at the root of what's going on. And by writing out the third column, writing out how my self-esteem is affected, how is it that I feel about this situation or feel about myself that this is threatening? What is it about my security? What is It that I need To be okay? We just take the definitions and turn them into questions. What is The I need TO be okay ? I need you to act right. that's not that much to ask. My ambition, I want this. My personal relations. Friends should never see someone treat me like this. In sex relations, my wife or potential sex partners or someone I may think thinks I'm cute treats me or knows about me or sees me be treated, right? It doesn't have to be about sex. It can be about just my image. So it's hugely impactful to really write that stuff down, and I find a lot of value in that, getting to my core beliefs, because my core believes are insane. Nate and I were talking. My daughter, she's my little artist, and she sings, and She Colors, and she plays piano, and Shazam is amazing. she's the life of the party God help me when she's a teenager and she was singing at the kitchen table one day and I snapped at her to knock it off and then later in a sane moment I asked myself why that was a problem because I have a core belief that singing atthe kitchen table is not appropriate you shouldn't do it which goes back to Children should be seen and not heard. It goes back to a core belief that I don't believe, but obviously I do. It's still in there somewhere. So I've got to dig to uproot that, or I'm going to continue to live in the same cycle, have the same resentments, the same stuff. So now we get to fear. Just if I could, Chad, I'd just like to say one more thing that just popped up for me and that has been very, very, very vital as of late and as I was introduced to my now sponsor. He was the first person that had ever challenged me regarding writing a piece of resentment inventory against myself. Oh, that's good, yeah. That was so taboo from where I came from. You just don't do that, right? And you don't write resentment against God because it's disloyal, right? But what if I have a resentment against God? Does it make it any less of a resentment? And does it suggest disloyality? The lie is that it does. The truth is absolutely not, right. And some of the most fruitful pieces of inventory that have started to really change the course of my existence have come from looking at just how devastating the resentments that I have toward myself and toward God. And that's a tough one to dig into, right? That's a rough one to dig into but I would suggest it strongly, you know, not even as a supplement but as a vital component of truly getting to the root of what's really going on. And that has just been my experience with that. I think it is extremely important. so fear um when i got to alcoholics anonymous i heard people talking grown men grown men were talking about being afraid and i was like you guys are insane you need to get a pair of you got fear what are you afraid of when i Got into inventory i found out exactly what they were talking about. Fear walked me like a dog. I was afraid of everything. Everything. And the way I write fear inventory, the way i've written fear inventory has evolved. It's changed. I've written it a couple different ways. I really, really like the way that I write theory inventory today because it just answers the questions kind of out of the book. And it's, the way we do it today is it's just a paragraph answering kind of the three questions that it talks about. And on page 68, it says, if I can find it here really quick. So we ask ourselves why we had them. So why do I have the fear? I'm afraid of. what's a really good one i'm afraid of um i'm i'm afraid of falling afraid of heights why do i have that fear so i'm afraid of heights why do i have the fear i'm afraid of falling and getting hurt okay and i also grew up in the naa where you don't write about fears of spiders and falling and because that's normal everyday fear well great it's still going to kill me i still got to find a way to get god in there somehow so how do i how do I do this so the fear um we ask ourselves why we have them I'm afraid of getting hurt is it wasn't it because self-reliance had failed us yeah I'm trying to manage my life so that I don't get hurt. I'm not experiencing life. I'm nicht going and doing things that normal people would do. Now, I'm niet saying I need to hang off a building or go bungee jumping, right? My wife wants to go skydiving. I think she's nuts. My dad says there's two things that fall from the sky, idiots and bird shit. And so like, I get it. Like I'm on board with that, right. Terrifies me. There's no way. No way. Right. I used to want to go skydiveing. That's the truth. I used to want to do it, and a gal and I were going to go do it together for our AA birthdays one year. And she went ahead and did it like a couple weeks before, and her chute didn't open. And she's alive today. I mean, she, you know, I sat in an AA meeting with her, and she looked right in my eyes, and she said, God has a reason for me to be here. I just fell 10,000 feet, and I'm alive. Right? Like, that's amazing. I'm still not doing it. Right? Um, that ended it for me. So self-reliance was good as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough. Some of us once had great self-confidence, but It didn't fully solve the fear problem or any other. And when it made us cocky, it was worse. Isn't that the truth? I can watch myself get into fear and shift into being cocky. It's like the weirdest paradigm. Why is that? And it's self-protection. And then it goes on to talk about for now we're on a different basis, a basis of trusting and relying upon God. So the last question is in what I write repeatedly in my fear inventory is I'm not trusting and relying on God to care and protect for me. because that's the end of every fear inventory it always comes down to that i didn't miss anything did i got all three right self-reliance and how it's self-reliant yeah um and the the way the reason that i like that is it it's very simple and i can walk right through each fear and how It how it goes right i have a fear that my wife doesn't love me Why do I have that fear? Because she doesn't love me, we're living a lie, and I'm going to be alone. And now what do I do with these kids? Is it self-reliant? Yeah, I rely on myself to manage my marriage most of the time. I'm not trusting and relying upon God to care and protect for me in my marriage and my wife. Right? Do you want to add anything to that? I think maybe we should do sex. I think, yeah, we need to probably bump that to the beginning of the next session just to not rush through it for the sake of rushing through it. But the fear component, too, it's always – sure, there are the fears that seem – we could dismiss as trivial, right? Fear of heights, fear of spiders, fear or whatever. But then there are really, really core fears that I'm afraid someone I love is going to die, right. I'm afraid of what you think or how you view me. I would submit at some point in time everyone has experienced that fear, right? So what is that, you know, for me, I'm scared of that. What's the cause? Why? Why do I have that fear? Well, I want to be liked and accepted, right. I want it to be validated by people. So what do I do when I'm relying on myself to get to that third question? Because that's always how basically I try to look at that as how am I attempting to play God in an effort to mitigate that fear. What do I do, right? Well, I'm terrified that you won't like me. So when I'm relying on myself, I basically say things I don't believe. I compromise myself. I go to things that I don'T want to go to. I go where I, you know, my wife sent me this little joke the other day that said if it requires fake smiling, I'M not going, right. True. I mean, that's really true. But if I'm paralyzed by the fear of not being liked or what you'll think if I don' t show up, I'LL show up to things THAT I DON' T WANT TO, right I'll not show up for my family, I'll show up for strangers that I'm more concerned with, right? For some reason and I don't know how that all ties out but at times I'm 100% more concerned with a stranger's perception of me than the people I actually love and care about and it will paralyze me the same way. So I will bend over backwards and compromise myself and my family at times to try to appease this fear of what other people think of me, right and I tie that out the same way, right? I'm not trusting and relying upon God to care for me and protect me. Because there was a time where, you know, I was kind of prompted to say, well, what would God-reliance look like? I have no idea what God-reliance would look like. I think drawing the line and saying that I'm simply not relying upon god to care för mig and protect mig, that is exactly what that needs to be for me, you now. I don't know what it would look lik. I could assume it would be the opposite of what i'm doing on my own but i really don't know and i think that place of humility is the best place for me right but um fears flow a lot easier i find than resentment they move a little quicker as far as the page flows uh and they usually speak for themselves pretty loudly it's not a whole lot of commentary or stone flipping that usually needs to take place it's a very very good format i find um so yeah maybe we'll we'll dive into sex at the beginning of the next session and i don't want to be the guy that pushes us over the lunch start time so let's uh hang it up there for now yeah let's do it yeah we'll come back i don't know what time, but we'll look at the schedule and we'll be here. Thank you.