The Mechanics of Amends – Big Book Workshop – Montgomery – Part 8 of 8 – Local AA Speakers

Can you guys hear me okay? All right. All right, we're going to move a little bit quicker through a bunch of this. We've got a bunch Of stuff that we want to talk about. This stuff at step 12, at the end of this, we just want to spend a little Bit of time. The primary reason that we came was to talk About this stuff that We're getting ready to talk About. We always want to just talk About the stuff we talked about first thing this morning, but this idea of 12-step stuff that gets kind of spread out and there's no area of our book that gets more goofy than that area right there. We just kind of get sort of strange with it. And so we want to spend a little bit of time talking about that. And so, we're not going to rush through this other stuff, but I want to look at this one more time. I want the eyes of sponsorships, through the eyes of what it looks like to get guys through the rest of this deal. Now, I'll say for a whole lot of us, once we begin to see and uncover these character defects and we begin zu see this stuff, God begins to deal with us. Some of this stuff goes away overnight, seems like some of this step doesn't go over overnight and we have to keep kind of dealing with it. Sometimes there are defects that God, for some reason or another, seems to think that we need to keep. And it's an interesting thing. At the right time, they seem to go away and it all kind of works out. Our job is simply to recognize them and then ask God to remove them and then get on down the road and do what the deal was. So we get past 6 and 7 and then we're faced with this little block of stuff, 8 and 9 where this amends process is and then 10 and 11. We want to do this in one little piece because I want to separate everything else on this 12-step stuff in a minute when we come back from break. So if you stay this long, you've got it whooped, man. If you're not butt dead by now, you're going to be in great shape. I don't know of anything that seems to bring up more... Well, let me put it this way. How many of you remember going to an AA club and seeing the steps on the wall? Maybe you didn't have a book yet even like this and you were just reading the steps off the wall and you'd go like, okay, I could do that. I could go like that. I could get down around this inventory thing and you start pushing back a little bit and you get around this amends thing and you go, oh, not no, but hell no. I'm not going to... And it just gets real weird like this idea because we're coming from a place of ignorance on a lot of this stuff that we simply don't know and understand that there's a factor in the middle of this that most of us just dismiss and that's God in the Middle of This Thing. We've spent a bunch of time in the steps getting to a place to where we're getting closer and closer to God's will to a relationship that deepens as we go through this kind of stuff and this is the stuff that sometimes we don't understand. So let me ask you this, just for the example. What do you think would happen if we had step one and then we just skipped step two, the rest of it, we just flopped it around and we went straight to eight and nine? I mean, can you imagine what a disaster that would be? Can you imagine how bad that would have been? Can you even imagine what kind of train wreck that total thing would be, yeah. Because we're still coming from a place where self-control is this deal And frankly, from that perspective, I would never feel like I owed you an amends anyway. Because my head is already rearranging the story, minimizing it or maximizing it to a point that you deserved everything that you got and, you know, that's just the way life rolls. That's the way it is. And I'm going to say this, to some extent, even with the steps worked in order, we'll still play that game. How many of these have known maybe in your own experience or how many of us have come across people who did an active step three, an active inventory, and then after the inventory they did six and seven and then they did nothing but just sit and sit and set. We talk a lot of times like in AA land there's a whole bunch of thoughts around this. A lot of sponsors will tend to just let you go at that stage of the game. They just simply back off. It's kind of a hands-off situation. will kind of steer clear and then let you go do your deal. Okay, now you're ready to go out and make those amends. The problem is there's always a load of fear around it. B, you're still convalescing. And C, there's still this ego that's in there a lot of times that's trying to rearrange this story so I don't really have to do anything. I don' t care how egregious the situation is. Left in your own devices, give you enough time and you will talk yourself out of making every amends that you can make. Has that not been most of our experience like this? We'll just simply recast it enough times until... Or another one of my all-time favorites is, if you just share the crap long enough in AA, somebody will finally validate it and say, you know, I don't think you owe anybody an amends for that. You see? And it happens. I'm not being mean. But it happens like that. It just, just, and sometimes it's an extreme. I killed somebody and if I just share it enough in enough meetings like it eventually goes, you know, maybe the guy deserved to be killed. I don't know. Maybe you don't need to make that amends at all. Maybe that would harm you if you made that amens. Wow. Wow. So here's the deal. It takes true courage, but most of the courage is not going to come from you just being courageous. Most of the courage is going to come based on what you're doing in the disciplines of 10, 11 and 12 And that continued work around this stuff And the power there will be what you need to go ahead and try to make these amends Which I always think is simply fascinating So let's look at this idea In the beginning, this eight step thing This eight step stuff was pretty innocuous There's just not much to it We made a list and became willing to make amends to them all like that. We made a list. It didn't say, it didn't say we made a list and then we laid awake night after night after night trying to figure out how we were going to make the amends. It didn't say that because left on your, I mean, that's a nightmarish place to be. I'm going to, I'm going to relive all of this situation like this. It didn't say that. How hard would it be just to make the list? Your list starts when you do the inventory. You'll have stuff on there like this. So let me ask you, how many, is it possible that there would be names on your eight-step list that you didn't even cover in your inventory? Sure. Sure. Because there's people that I didn't resent, that I had no truck with, but that I feel like I owed an amends to, that i slighted. Let me give you a great example that happens all the time. It's called grandparents. Most of us don't resent our grandparents. And yet how many of us treat our grandparents like they're disposable? A lot of us, I mean, we're just sort of MIA. We're not in their lives. We're not involved with them. This is not everybody, but this happens a lot. But it's the example that I want to throw out there, how it is that we could discover people that we owe an amends to that didn't end up on our inventory. And so we might have to go back and look at other sources, look at yearbooks, look at just people that you don't know. People that we've known in the past, friends that we... How many times in the middle of your addiction did you let a friendship just kind of die on the vine? You don't resent them. You don' t hate them. You just forgot that they even existed like this because you were too busy doing what we do in the middle of our addictions. And I get that like that, but is it perhaps that we owe some of these guys an amends? I think it's fair because I think the question gets asked often enough is how do you tell who you need to make an amens to? How do you tel that? And so there's some absurdities out there around this thing. You owe an amends. I heard a guy say one time, if you knew them, you owe them an amens. I mean, I understand why they say that. I just don't quite agree with that because I just think that there are folks that we didn't slide out there. Let's put this in perspective like that. If for the sake of this example like that, back there where Amanda is standing right there, if we for a moment imagined everybody that we knew one at a time walking through that deal, Walking through the deal. If my initial reaction is to look down and hope that they don't see me, pretend we're in a restaurant. If I'm eating and they walk in, do I eat faster so I can get out of there like this? I'm trying to go straight to, I'm tying to take the intellect out of it and just look at the emotion involved around the deal like this. If I found myself eating quicker so that I could get out of the room faster without them seeing me like this, then they would be suspect and I would write their name down for an inclusion on a list. In the end, you may discount it and say, no, I don't really need to do that. But I would certainly start there. And that's pretty easy to do, isn't it? That's pretty easily to do. And then you can see. Some of you guys made amends, but you made such a mistake, you made a disaster out of the original amends that some of these things you've marked off the list. I made an amends to him ten years ago. Oh, really? Well, how come it is you get jumpy every time I mention His name? How come you're still not going over there to eat dinner with Him at Thanksgiving? How come You're still avoiding these people? Could it be that the amends didn't take, that it really, really, really didn't get taken care of? Because remember guys, this is all about freedom. This is about being done with all of that kind of stuff. How many of you were in situations where your world got really, really small towards the end when you finally came into the rooms? How many of you had, I mean my whole existence was a bedroom, a garage where I drank myself silly every day and worked because I had to keep an income stream coming in like this and I would do that. But I couldn't go to most of the town I had alienated. I can't go To That Cleaners because I was pissed at him. I can'T go to That Grocery Store because I made an ass out of myself in there. I can'T go to the school anymore because I mad a fool of myself at PTA. And our world just goes click, click, click,click,click and it gets down to I just got a little bitty microcosm of what's really there. And guys, that is what we're trying to get clear of. We're tryingto get this freedom to know that we can actually be out there again and be free to go anywhere in the whole wide world. If you're rearranging your day to avoid seeing people, why? Why? These are bona fide questions, I think, that need to be asked. And unfortunately, they need to ask for some of us that have been in the rooms for long periods of time. Because sometimes we'll develop a big old case of vote-up, you know, stoic arrogance that just says, you know... Screw them. I don't owe them shit. Rock on. You can... Listen, guys. You can always, always adopt that attitude if you want to. You can. But in the end, who pays the price? You see? There is no freedom in that deal. We're either going to be free or... Well, I don' t know. That may not be fair. You don' d necessarily have to. But I think the way the book sets up from a sponsorship standpoint, the way The Book sets up in this piece is starting on page 76 and moving to 77, 78. The bill will separate this thing in paragraphs depending on what it is that they're going to do. They talk about relationships. They talk About legal stuff. They talkabout money. They talkAbout all of these different areas. And he's covering a whole ton of this stuff. They're covering a bunch of this. This is about balancing things. This is what I'm trying to do. The step said specifically in 9 that we make direct amends. That's dollar for dollar, face to face. So let's just get clear on some ground rules. When I'm working with somebody and we go through this stuff and he looks at a list, I say, bring the list to me. Do not, underlines, do not make any of these amends without letting me see this list first. Guys, that's not arrogance on my part. That's prudence because I've seen too many situations where a guy says, you know what? I went out and made half my amends yesterday. And then we go back and look at what he did and I recognize, buddy, you didn't make amends. All you did was stir up a freaking hornet's nest because you still had... How many of you have ever made an amends and in the middle of the amends started to say something to justify your bad behavior and pretty soon you're right back in the same kind of deal? He's sitting there looking at you going like this. Although he's not saying anything, he's looking at você going, see, nothing's changed. You're still an arrogant little pissant. Yes. Yes. Let me see the dadgum list, and we're going to look at it. I'm going to help you divide it up. Did anybody have a list that wasn't a bit overwhelming? I mean, most of us will look at this and go, holy cow, did I really harm that many people? Yeah. Yeah. But listen, it doesn't have to be that dawning like that. Let's look at the list and see, and We'll divide the money out here. You've got no job, and you're living in a halfway house under somebody else's money, and you've got not money. How effective are you going to be at paying the financial amends? You're not. So let's move all of those over here like this. I'm just trying to get the thing organized like this, half my amends were in Europe and I live in the United States. How do I go back and make those amends right now? Right now you don't, you don' t even have a job, you can't get to Europe. Well, I could call them. No, you can' t. Direct amends means face-to-face, dollar for dollar. In following the truth thing of the deal. So God knows if Bill had realized what the Internet was going to do. I cannot tell you. Listen, can we be really clear about something like this? It is not okay to make an amends on Facebook. And yet there's not a week goes by that I don't listen to somebody telling me about an experience and how cool it was that they could read. Can you use the Internet or social media to find where somebody is? Absolutely. It's one of the greatest, one ofthe big reasons why I stay on Facebook and social media is because I can get a hold of people and it's super like this. Have you ever sent a text message to somebody and had it read wrong where people would look at it like this? Or you would look AT it later and go, shit, dang, I didn't mean to say that like this, but we do that stuff. You cannot make an amends like that. What does that scream? I want to make the amends. I'd like to get this thing square with you and me, but I didn' t care enough to actually come see you in person. I'm just going to send you the most shallow, incomplete way to approach another human being on a text message or on an email. Quit it. Quit it, quit it, quite it, quiet it. It's too hard to misread somebody's intent. It's to hard to miss read the emotion. And I think in some ways, I think God is all powerful and I think that He could be in the middle of this thing, but in the bigger picture, I think there's nothing cooler than you, the God of your understanding and the man that you harmed in one spot talking about this deal, giving him a chance to also heal as a direct result of doing it. Y'all cool with what I'm saying on this deal? Just a nuts and bolts deal when I'm working with men. They do six and seven. I ask them, I said, okay, in the next time that we meet, which will be in another four or five days at the latest, bring me an eight-step list and let's look at it and see if there's anything we need to add to it. I'll help you organize it, and then let's rock and roll. And what I ask them to do is pick three amends that they can make right now, three amens that they're in a position to make, and then we go do that kind of stuff. A successful amends will spawn another successful amens in terms of just the momentum of doing it. Once I realize what an amazing experience it was to get that piece of crap cleaned up finally, then I'll be motivated to do it like this. If I make this here and six months later I try to do It again, I've got to regenerate all of that. I've gotta remember how cool it was again. And some of us will never be able to, with sufficient force, bring up that coolness again. And so once you start, it's kind of like getting on a slope and usually start running downhill. And if you'll just keep going, what you'll find is that pretty soon you've got amends flying and you've Got everything done and pretty soon you'll be just blown away. Regardless of what the deal was, if it's financial amends, we're gonna work out the books as we work out the best deal we can. I've got a guy that I've sponsored for 10 years or so like this that owed $286,000 in real estate deals that went south. He had got a bunch of investors involved in the deal like this and he felt like he owed them the money on this deal. $285,000. I also got a guys that owes $600 that he's owed it for five years and he can't seem to figure out a way to get rid of his money. I just have a hard time spending my money. I'm going to listen you arrogant little piss ant. That's not your money. They don't want your money. They want their money. It's not your money, and then we, and it, so let me ask you this question. This guy's an attorney. The guy in the real estate deal is an attorney, and he's got, he makes a pretty good whip, and so he was able to, over a period of time, he sold some real estate. He did some other stuff. He put this thing together like this. About five years ago, he paid the last investor off of this $286,000 debt. how tall do you think he was when he walked back into that room? How cool do you thing it would be to finally be done with a nut like that? Wow. Wow. An amazing deal. And the weird part about this stuff is sometimes we discount the idea that God's hand is in the middle of this. Because some of you guys are pretty transparent with your experiences and it's what I love about you the most. How often have we seen situations where you didn't see how you were going to do something, how you weren't going to pay any debt and then all of a sudden money just started turning up. The willingness to do it was enough to get the ball rolling and pretty soon money was coming in, an IRS thing that you didn't know you were going to get or a raise. It comes in a thousand different forms, but all of the sudden you're sitting there holding a check going, I could just endorse this over and send it to those people and be done with that deal. And it happens over and over and again. I'm going to tell you a quick story like that and then we'll move. I want to give you the Reader's Digest condensed version of this, but there was a guy that I had met at a treatment center. It was a long-term 90-day deal in Texas. Sometimes they kept him a little longer than that, but there were a lot of people there. There was a kid that got there that when I met him, the first night that I met Him, I thought, you know, I don't think I've ever met a man that I want To be in the room with less Than that man right there. He just got out of prison. He was an Aryan Brotherhood guy and he had tattoos all over him and he hated everybody. I mean, if you were black, gay, had a beard, it didn't make any difference. If you simply were different than this guy, he hated you with this visceral kind of I'll kill you if I catch you in the room by yourself kind of guy. It was horrible to be in theroom with him. Well, guess who ends up sponsoring him? And so we worked through this work and this guy has this experience that's pretty profound like this and we look at his amends. Jim had been physically abused by his dad in a bunch of different ways and I used to think that he was making it up and so he said, you think I'm making this story up about my dad? And his dad used to beat him with a belt, one of those great big old Texas Western belt buckles like this, used to beating senseless with this belt and he was just bleeding and then he would hold him into a bath of salt water until the little kid just passed out. And this is a little kid that he's doing this stuff to. This guy was carved out of the hinges of hell. He was so evil. And the thing that comes into this deal like this is that he is going to have to figure out a way to make amends to this guy. And I'm thinking, man, where do you go with this? You see, did his dad deserve to die? In my book he did. But that's just me being judgmental about the deal. But we get close to the end of this guy's stay there and he's trying to deal with this stuff. And he said, listen, he's in Lubbock and I'm in Dallas. And I said, I'll tell you what you do. When you get clear, you come get me Saturday and we'll drive to Lubboc. It's a five-hour drive from Dallas. We'll drive out there. I'll go with you. We'll make the amends and I'll sit with you and you go make the Amends and then I'll drive you back and it'll be okay. And I thought we'd have time to kind of get right and this kind of stuff. Saturday morning rolls around and I don't get any telephone call from him and along about 10 o'clock I called him and I said Hey, I thought we were going to go to Lubbock today. And he said, Oh, I'm already in Lubboc. And I went, Oh that's not the plan. I mean what are you doing? And he says, I am alright. I will deal with this. I will call you back after a while. And I said, Jim, Jim and he hangs up on me. And I think, Oh this is crazy. Because I got this feeling that this is just not going to work out really well. And so about four hours later he calls me and we talk for a little bit. I say, Are you okay? And he goes, Yeah, I did. I am okay like this. and I'll see you when I get back in town. And he hangs up the phone. About an hour later, I get another call from him and I go, where are you? And he said, well, I'm on the road back. He said, but I kind of told you a story and I need to come clean with it. And I said, what's the story? And he says, well... The reality of this thing was that I went out there to kill him. I just decided to deal with it my way because I didn't really believe that this was going to work. And so I knew that this guy had perpetrated a lot of things on me that I would have been a victim in some of this kind of stuff. But I'd also, I don't know, when I met him, I had a gun in my waistband of my shirt, in my back, and I was just going to shoot him on his front step and leave. And I went, no wonder you didn't take me. I'd have sure messed up that plan. So what happened? And he said, Myers, I'm not even sure I can talk about it over the telephone. I said, well, why don't you come see me when you get back in Dallas? And so he did. He pulled in and we had a chat and I said, well, so what happened? And he said, Well, I got there and I got out and I checked my gun and I had it in my pants and I walked up to the door and I knocked on the door and I prayed about this thing for a second and just as I hear the steps coming to the deal, I had this feeling inside that I was making this huge mistake. I just had this feel and it was like loud and clear, don't do this. And so when the guy opened the door, what I had imagined my dad to look like because I hadn't seen him in 10 or 11 years, part of this that he'd been in jail, and he said I just hadn't seen him. And the man that came to the door was this old kind of humbled over guy that had gotten old on me and he just didn't look. He looked at me for a second and then he recognized who I was and then He just reached out His hand and He shook my hand and we started talking for a little bit like this. And He said, I just felt compelled to tell Him that I regretted the fact that I treated Him as a bad dad and that I had discounted His role in my life as my father and this kind of stuff. All he did, guys listen to me, all he was doing was owning his stuff. He just owned what he could own based on what he had seen. And in that particular moment, in that second, he was free of the need to have this guy because what he always said was if he'll apologize to me I'll be okay. How many of us do that? We all do that. I'll just be okay if they extend the olive branch I'll meet them halfway. Guys, this guy was too old too sick, too messed up. He wasn't going to do that. But it didn't matter. Jim did what he was going to doing like this. And he left and when he got home he told me, he said, Myers I don't think that we're ever going to be sitting down to Christmas dinner but I've got to tell you I'm clear. I'm okay. It happened. I've passed it and I'm done. And I said I forgave him as I drove off. I just forgave him. He was dealing with his own demons and his own nightmares and I just simply am okay. Now, so stick with me because I'm really... That's not the point of the story. The point ofthe story was he... I'm glad that he did all that. I'm glady got where he got. Guys, here's the pointofthe story. That was on a Saturday. On the following Friday, he was coining out of this treatment place like this and he's in a room with probably 80% black guys and a couple of Latino guys. There were only two white guys in that program at the time when I was out there carrying the message like this. So he's in a room full of men that he has been diametrically opposed to the whole time that he was there like this. And so Jim is right here, and we're doing the Lord's Prayer at the end of the deal. And Jim is Right There, and I'm two people down from him. And we do the Lord'S Prayer, and then we drop hands. And I hear this horrific kind of snuffle over there. And I looked over there, and Jim was on the floor. And I look over there like This, and he's just weeping on the Floor. He's weeping. And this great big old black guy came over and picked him up like This. and another guy came over like this and set him up and he's holding on to him like this. And those guys loved on that guy like this and I'm trying to get you to see this picture here like this We have an Aryan Brotherhood guy that hates everybody in the world and he has collapsed in this room full of gratitude full of absolute love for these men that nurtured him through this deal like this and let me tell you something right now I've known Jim for a long time I still know him to this day and Jim would take a bullet for the men in that room how do we get that kind of transformation you don't will yourself into it you don' t just say I'm not going to hate people anymore good luck if you can do that this was simply a transformation of who he was and what he was based on the fact that the only part that he had to play in it was that he was simply willing to do what it is that we did y'all get that right pretty amazing kind of stuff I just, we could spend hours and hours, days and days talking about our experiences around this kind of stuff. We must always never get to a place to where we discount the power of God in the middle of our lives. Chris was talking about it last night. I would never, ever, ever not recognize the trauma that's in this room right now. Some of you guys have had some amazing things done to you and at you. And I just God love you. But there is a way to get from point A to point B. There is a way to get clear of this thing. This process of this amends is going to go on while you're doing the rest of this kind of stuff. It's not going to be, there were, years ago there was a guy out there that was from a speaker guy that was banging a pulpit talking about the fact that you had to have every amends done before you could do 10, 11, and 12. And I just simply, the book is clear that that's not the case, that sometimes it's going to take you guys a while to get into the presence of some of these people. Some of you guys are going to have to get a little healthier before you approach these people It's just going to take some time. My job as your sponsor is just to make sure that there's continuing a burn underneath you to keep you wanting to be motivated to get out there and do this other kind of stuff. This 11-step step, I'm going to tell you real quick, I can't tell you how often I completely diminished this idea. For years, I thought it was just simply rhetorical statements that Bill did to kind of connect it up and make it look spiritual. I didn't really believe that you could follow a discipline and that you would have this sort of transformative deal based on prayer and meditation. And it would take me years within the room to begin to take it seriously and to begin realize that a prayer life is indeed something that's miraculous, the disciplines of being able to sit still. I just want to ask a question just for a second. How many of you guys had your lives transformed by the idea of just being able to sit and meditate and be still with God in the mornings. There are so many of us that it altered everything. It's one of these areas where you want some tangible results of what it is that you're doing. Simply step up and do what the book asks you to do. Simply do this. I had an experience with it that was quite embarrassing and I'm not going to get into... I want to leave you guys some time to talk about some of this other stuff, But I was finally embarrassed. I did some things that embarrassed me tremendously in the program, and it shone a great big light on the shallowness of my spiritual path and what I ended to do. There was no special reading. There was not special deal. What I had to simply do is recognize that if I would just simply hit my knees and do what they asked me to do, things would be transformed. Am I the only man in here that feels goofy getting on your knees? I'm just saying, it blows me away. I mean, I can stand up and pray in the shower as I run through my day and God, please help me with that. I can do this. But there was something weird about just simply being still and getting on your knees and having a conversation with God. And the moment I got past that, the moment I did it, I was completely transformed, electrified. And it changed everything about what I do. I might miss a shower in the morning, which is never. But I would never, ever miss prayer time. I would never, ever miss a time to be with my creator for a second or two and have a chat. This is huge, huge, big stuff. A lot of times they talk about this stuff, these disciplines of 10, 11, and 12. If you ever want to know if the guys that you sponsor are active in the work like that, pay attention to what they're doing around tradition about step 10. Are these guys calling you when the shit hits the fan? Clifford had been sponsoring me for three years, And he asked me one time, we were having just this one-on-one conversation. He said, Myers, do you ever do anything stupid? And I said, well, you know I do. And he said, do You ever disappoint Londa? And I went, yeah, I do Do you ever reckon you ever get in a squabble with your kids? And I go, yeah And he says, do YOU ever reckon that maybe those were opportune times to call me with a tent step? Now, stick with me I want to be clear I'm not even really sure that I knew what he was talking about I'm not even sure. And I went back and I got my book out and I read it again like this and I went, holy crap. Holy crap. And let me tell you something. I became a convert. I became one of these guys that got obsessed with the idea. If I have a conflict with somebody like this, they give you some instructions there and I have an ideal where I'm just simply not going to do. Look at this deal. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. What did that sound like? It sounded like a little piece of inventory, doesn't it? When this stuff creeps back up again, they give you specific directions. We ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately. We make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone. And then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. Could there be any better way to live your life than that? I mean, talk about spiritual directions. If I have a conflict with somebody... How many of you guys get mad at somebody at work like this and you'll say something that you immediately regret saying? I mean, guys, if we get to a place where I'd be on the telephone in the bindery, I'd been on the phone with a purveyor or somebody that didn't send something. I'd go, what do you mean you didn't sent it? Oh, God, what an idiot clunk, and I'd hang up the phone. And then because I've been trained this way, I knew because of what it said right here, when these crop up, I got to deal with this kind of stuff. And so I just hold the phone for a minute. And I just relaxed a second. Most of the time, this is when my wife would walk back in and she said, you pissed somebody else off, didn't you? And I went, yeah, I did. Because I'm not going to let go of the phone because I don't want this to pass. I'm going to deal with this kind of stuff. And so I hit speed dial, called Clifford. And I said, Clifford, yeah. I fucked up again. I made a mistake. I did it again. And he said, all right, you know what to do. Hang it up like this. I sit there for a minute, say a prayer. And then I call the supplier back that fast. I call him back. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't hang up. Don't do to me like I did to you, okay? Listen, I deserve to be hung up on if you do, but I'm just telling you, you didn't deserve what I dished out. I got way too much on my plate. I said what I shouldn't have said. I certainly understand your situation. Please, can you forgive me for being an idiot? Absolutely, Myers. Man, we just packed your order like this and we're going to pay the shipping out there to you to get it out there. But it's resolved. I've got a supplier that I've had for years that I'm going to get to keep because I'm not pushing them away. I'm nicht demanding that they do certain things, you see? And this happens in every area of your life. When you step in it, and you will, when you step it, fix it. Fix it right then. They gave you everything that you need. Y'all cool? Chris, you want to share a couple things real quick? We'll do this. I keep looking at that donut. He ain't ate it yet. A couple of real quick little deals here. And any current problems I'm having in my life, relationship, money, nine times out of ten, I can connect back to unresolved amends. We'll talk about it for just a second and I won't beat it to death because some of you don't believe this kind of nonsense. This whole deal about what goes around comes around as far as I'm concerned in my life is absolutely true. If I push it to the universe over here it's going to come back and kick me in the butt over here and so you're over here taking care it's exactly what Myers was talking about with this guy I go make an amend with somebody that I hate and all of a sudden all the resentment and hate that I've got for these guys over here dissipate and it's like you wouldn't think it's all connected but it's so connected it's not even funny I watch so many people guys I work with in the program who are having financial difficulties. And when I get out and sit and visit with them, we find out that there's still a bunch of financial amends they haven't made. See? So we're going to go make these amends and then we're gonna get this other stuff taken care of. All of a sudden, the money starts coming in and everybody just rolls their eyes and oh yeah, it's like tithing, huh? Yeah, it is. You know, I don't know what to tell you there. There's some spiritual principles that we're dealing with. And again, it's to repeat something Meyers said. So many of us, we want to let everybody off the hook. Remember I told you earlier there's two places that we stall out in the steps. Around the fourth step is one of them and around the amends process is the other because we feel great, we've done this work, we see some truth, the obsession to use is already lifted, we've made a couple of easy amends, we've told mom, dad, we cleaned up some little wreckage and then we're sitting on all of this other nonsense and it continues to affect us. I was talking to a guy in Canada not long ago and he's talking about wanting to come to the United States. He's been sober about 10 years and I said, buddy, come on down. We'll hook you up down here. Come on down to Texas. He says, well, I can't come because I've got some stuff, you know, like legal stuff. And it's like, buddy, you've been sober 10 years and this stuff is still out there. All right, all right. I can't dump this back on his plate. I understand the deal, but I mean who's around here holding him accountable? Again, I'm going to say it again. We're not going to beat it to death. How free do you want to be? See, if you're still jumping every time the phone rings, if you can't buy a new house or a car on a signature, If your credit's messed up, what is this? We're not doing you any service when we sit there and allow you to do it. It just takes some time to get it cleaned up. And then you don't have to do IT by yourself. We're going to be right there to help you. We're gonna walk you right straight through it. And it may take time. Guys, it took me years to get the IRS paid off. I can't tell you how good it was not to have those guys knocking on my door 24-7 looking for their little dab of money. It took me YEARS to get them paid off, but you've got to start someplace. They let me pay $75 a month back Until I got it paid off And guys, I've got to tell you It took me some time to do But I got the money I got to get it paid They'll work with you You make your first approach And I guarantee you They'll look at you I've never called A credit card company I've ever called Any of these guys Working with the guys I sponsor Who wouldn't be Who weren't willing To work for They'll bend over backwards To help They just want something They want their money Make sense? Part of my job If I'm sponsoring you like that You walk in with A $5 energy drink and you owe every person in Texas, I'm going to stop. I'm gonna say, buddy, it's not your money. You're not going to buy? No. Well, I need a new pair of tennis shoes. $300 tennis shoes? Yeah, you can get those right after you finish paying your mom back. Make sense? Nah, some of y'all are not buying that. Okay. That's okay. That's Okay. We're going to help you understand what that's about. I got to tell you, There's a great quote up there. It says, it's not making the mistake that kills me, it's defending it that does the damage. You know what I'm saying? It's like we've all made mistakes. We all try to... We've got to keep in there. We've Got to keep doing what we can do. I've got a soapbox here real quick, a little four-minute soapbox. Because what I am starting to see is somebody is out there telling people to read from scripts. I agree. We use these little cards, these little index cards. My eight-step list is I owe my ex-wife this amend, and this is what I think I owe her. So I'll have it down so I'll know kind of what I'm doing. I don't want to walk in and say, well, I owe you some amends, but I don' t really know what it is. I don''t know. I'm going to get a chance to talk to her, and then she's going to tell me what I really owe her amends for. She's goingto clear that up. I've got experience with that if any of y'all ever want to visit. And there's a line in the book that misleads a lot of people. If I'm gonna go to Walmart and make amendsfor stealing something, I'm going to go tell this guy just like the book says listen, I'm in a program of recovery right now and I'm trying to stay sober and I am not going to do it until I get these men's paid off I stole some stuff from you and I need to pay it back are you with us? now they got a point of reverence and they understand what you're doing if you come to one of your best friends or a family member and start reading from a script they're going to throw you out the door do y'all understand? so let me get this straight Chris you don't want to pay the $40 you owe me back because you know it was the right thing to do. You just one more time want to save your little butt from drinking again and that's why you want to pay me the 40 bucks back. Why can't you just say, I'm wrong? I made a mistake. I treated you poorly. Not I'm sorry. They know that. We're all cool on that, right? The devil's in the detail. If we will just verbalize this to them and let them know, then like Myra said, some of these guys might come back and make amends to us too for some of the crazy stuff. And some they might not. The thing I want to mention that you've got to do with this is just understand the spirit of the law rather than the letter. It's like, don't come at me and make Amends to Me with a script because I'll send you packing if that's the case. And again, to do more harm, to make the amend, it comes to this point of you and me have been known each other forever and I think we're pretty good friends, but you've had some bad thoughts about me. And here's what people do. they take this step out of context out of the book and they say, well, I'm going to go make amends to Chris for having bad thoughts. Now, I don't know anything about you having bad doubts about me. You with us? Now, you're going to come down and you know, Chris, when I first met you I hated your guts. Okay, well you've hurt my feelings now. I mean, we were all laughing but you all understand. Now, before I didn't have a problem in the world. I knew we weren't very close but I didn' t have a bone to pick with you. I thought we were friends. Now you tell me that we're not because you've hated me and now you want me to hug you. Eat me. It ain't going to happen. I'm done. I didn't have a problem with you before, but now I've got a problem. Y'all follow? We've got these little men junkies out there. I'm having kind of a down day. I think I'm going to go just make up some amends so I'll feel better about myself. Quit stirring it up. Sometimes you might... Y'ALL FOLLOW? Sometimes you MIGHT... The book's pretty clear. Don't harm other people by making your load lighter. It's just this simple to do. Be persistent in this, guys. I've got to tell you, there's a lot of folks. It took me 13 years to finally make amends to my ex-wife. I tried to make my first approach. She said, thank you, but no thank you. And downstream, I was able to actually finally get a chance to make amens. So don't ever give up on one. Give it a shot if you need to. Every one of them is a little bit different. I agree with what Meyer said, absolutely. make sure that you talk to somebody about it before you get into it. Yeah, 10-step stuff is the same as just what he was talking about. You will not believe how it will change your life when you start cleaning this stuff up. Myers and I, a couple of months ago at a business meeting on the island down in Padre Island where I work and we're running late. We're running later because he was supposed to tell me where to turn. And we ended up literally in Mexico. Y'all think I'm kidding. We were really late for this meeting. Anyway, I'm back on the island. We're hurrying up. We've got to change to go to this meeting and I pass this guy on the left-hand side and scare him to death. I passed him. It was an area. Y'ALL FOLLOW? He was going slow. He didn't have his signal on. I passed Him. Alright? Anyway, I scared him to Death and I flipped him off. That's another thing. And I drove on to the house. Did I mention that I'm 26 years sober? Did I mentioned that? He follows me into the parking lot. You know, Now here I am, a 60-year-old guy. I'm fixing to get my butt whipped. This young guy, he's got tattoos and ear extensions and all this nonsense. And it's like, bless him. I don't know what you call them. You know the holes? He gets out. But I scared him to death. He was fixing to make a turn. He had kids in the car. And I passed him on the deal. And so I'm sitting there trying to justify with him that he was wrong because he didn't signal. Come on, guys. I passed Him. I scared Him to death I flipped Him off on the way out. Y'all follow? You know, all right. He said some stuff. I said some things. He got in the car mad. I hope you die, you pirate. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, you know, I said something about hooking on them ears. I said stuff anyway. And he left. But see, here's the deal. He's on the island because I've seen him. He lives down there and I'll eventually see him. And I've got to tell you, I've spent a bunch of time driving back by that restaurant where he is because sooner or later, I'm going to catch him. You all understand? I sat right there for five seconds after we did that and I said, man, I was wrong to do that. I wasn't justifying it. I'm crazy. My blood pressure's high. I'm pissed. I'm wolfpacking. I'm looking for him to validate. You know, you should have kicked his ass. That's what I would have done. He just looked at me like, man. What was that about? You'll follow? Anyway, I'll see him on the island. I'll keep you guys posted. Because when I see him, whatever I'm doing, I'm going to stop. He's got one of those cars. You can't miss it. I'll see him at that restaurant with the kids or without the kids. I'll go back to him and make amends for acting like an idiot. Just knowing that I'm gonna do it. I'm free. Y'all follow? I don't want to be a prisoner of my emotions of all this fear and all this craziness. I just absolutely don't. Prayer and meditation is absolutely important, guys. I'm not going to get in there and kill it because I really want to spend some time on this working with others. I, years ago, got a guy. We've got a friend of ours named Paul Martin who passed away years ago. Some of you all knew him. Wonderful old guy up in Chicago. He died with 64 years of sobriety. He wrote extensively for the grapevine back in the day when they published some great stuff. There's a bunch of articles that he wrote, a bunchof articles thathe wrote, and I had a friendof mine in Connecticut that got me, got them all on an attachment so that I could send them to you guys. But if y'all get a chance, if y''all email me and I will send you all those Paul Martin articles because a lot of those articles he talks about what we're talking about today about working the steps quick but he talks one of these deals about the prayer and meditation piece being so important to what he did. He would meditate 45 minutes in the morning 45 minutes into the evening and he said if there's one step that changed his life it was the meditation. It's like the forgotten step. Most of the people in AA they give it lip service but if you read some of these articles to get really clear about the advantages of doing that. And, of course, there's a lot of scientific evidence that shows that that's what we're supposed to be doing anyway. But email me and I'll be glad to send them to you. Y'all cool? We've got about five minutes left in this session. Any questions on 8, 9, 10, 11? You guys are just shell-shocked. I know. We're almost done. It's okay. I tell you what we'RE going to do because if we can finish a little early, y'all take a quick break and come back and we'RE gonna do step 12 stuff because that's where we want to be. Okay? All right. Thanks so much, guys. I appreciate it so much. I don't think there's anybody that would ever appreciate sitting in a room like that. The older I get, the less rear end I have, and the less rare end I have, the more I don' t want to sit. And this is like a couple of hours. In Europe, they used to have this deal where, and it still is to a large extent, they want you to do these workshops that start Friday afternoon, go Friday, and then all day Saturday, and most of the day on Sunday. And it's just, guys, we could light ourselves on fire up here and after a while you'd barely look up. I just emotionally, you just get to a place where you just you just get into this kind of part of its sensory overload. Part of it is just the physical part of sitting. It's like flying transatlantic like that. I mean, with every distraction you can throw at yourself, it's still a beating to get off the plane. It still a beaten to know that you had to sit still for that length of time. And so, for folks that stay, I'm always amazingly honored, grateful to a committee that listened to that sound reasoning early on and were all in for the idea of us getting done at a reasonable hour. We've got one more hour here like that and we're going to, I want to do 30 fast minutes and Chris is going to do 35 minutes and we are going to talk about some of the stuff that we really came to talk abut. The stuff that I wanted to talk about from the moment that this podium set up here was this idea of 12-step work. Guys, listen, if there is a secret in AA, it's 12-stepped work. And yet we find ourselves in this crazy deal where somewhere along the line we painted this idea that 12- Stepped Work is subjective, that some of you can do it and some of your can't do it. It's available to some people. And Bill never made the distinction. There was never, in 1988 when I sobered up, about three months after I soberied up, there was a guy from a big OAA group in Dallas that came to my original home group and he did a talk. And in this talk, one of the things that he said was, he said, you know, in my experience, there are good 12-steppers and there are bad 12-steppers. And if you're not really good at what it is that you do, you probably just need to leave that to somebody else. Well, so let me tell you, I know it sounds weird now, But at the moment, I could have kissed that guy on the mouth. I mean, I'm just like, because he took away every piece of responsibility to carry the message. Because I'm 100% convinced that I will never, ever meet the grade. I will Never, Ever be okay to do this. And I think from your reactions, from some of your reactions like this, I think some of you felt the exact same way. My head says, left on my own devices, I am too slow, I Am too busy, I'm too poor. I'm just fill in the blank. It doesn't make any difference like that. My head always has a reason why I can't sponsor you, why I cannot help you. I think that's where some of this temporary sponsor thing came up like this. I don't want to really commit to shepherding you through this work, so I'll just be your temporary sponsor so it can look like I'm doing something but I don' t really have any responsibility. And it's weird how that stuff works out. I haven' t found it either in the book either like that . . . Bill Wilson thought it was so important that he wrote a whole chapter about it, Working With Others, Chapter 7. And it's an amazing deal. And for so many of us, we just simply turn the other direction and we just trivialize the whole idea and we'll soft sell it early AA. I've got articles of them talking about men three weeks sober already pushed into service as sponsors. Three weeks sober and they're already sponsoring people. And yet, I told you there's old guys that I was talking about the other day and I love those old men, but I'm blown away by how many of them have been in the rooms for 20 years and have never sponsored anybody, have never done this. I'm not coming at that from a judgmental standpoint, guys, because I can see how it could happen. I can understand how that might come about. But it's never too late. I'm just telling you, it's Never Too Late. It's like trying to explain it, guys. It's sometimes problematic because I cannot bring with sufficient force. I cannot explain what it's like. It's like trying to explain what sex is like. Can you guys remember a time like this when you were talking about it with somebody and they were giving you a description of what sex was like like this? And you go, okay, I got that, I've got that. Really? Really? Okay, I'v got that like this. And you get kind of a head around it like this and then somebody finally takes pity on you or however the deal is and you end up having sex and then all of a sudden you go Oh, they didn't even scratch the surface. I mean, it's just like, wow. And then they brought that collie dog in and it was like, no, no. Sorry, I was just kidding. The descriptions, guys, you can't do that. And a lot of this has to do with, it is the same kind of thing. How do you describe an experience that is so profound? How do You put words on that kind of stuff if you've never experienced it like this? And yet we have rooms full of men and women who are still sitting on the fence, still sitting up there, all swinging their legs over like this, not wanting to get involved, not wanting To jump down in for whatever reason. I mean, whatever reason, but what We ought to do sometime is just look at some of the reasons and see if they're really bona fide. See if they are really as profound as we think they are. My big deal was I'm too stupid to do 12 step work. I'm just not bright enough to do it. I am really honest with you. It is my attempt at humility. I am just too slow to be a good sponsor. Really. Then you do it and you recognize that's the reason why Bill wrote it all down. I don't even have to be smart. I just have to read a little bit. I have to figure out how to put this stuff together again and then follow simple directions and I can be just as effective as somebody over there or somebody over there. I can, you know, it was crazy once I realized this. So stick with me for a second. I got, I was in this situation where I was doing a lot of things but I'm not doing 12-step work and I'm going to meetings and I'M starting to dance around the idea of sponsorship but I'M not really doing much of anything. And then the story that I relayed last night, Clifford made me do some stuff. My life was transformed as a direct result of that and I became the McDonald's of sponsorship. I mean, it WAS like, I WAS like It blew me away how many men God began to bring into my life, and I began to shepherd these guys through there. Now listen, if you're sponsoring one man, you have this view of sponsorship. If you're all of a sudden sponsoring five or six guys at a time, you have THIS view of it. It's a different view of IT like this. And all of the sudden, you simply do not have time to play games with this stuff. And so you tend to very wisely sift this down to its basic stuff so that you're giving exactly what it is that you need to give without all the goofy stuff like this I don't need to spend all this time with you. How many of you guys have kids? Remember when kids are real little, you've got a two-year-old in the room standing right here where I'm anywhere that kid is. You understand? If that kid goes this way, I go this way. If he goes thisway, I gothisway. And that's just the way it is until he gets a little bit older like this. And pretty soon as they get more mature and as they begin to grow, you can find yourself in a situation By the time that kid gets to junior high, you should be able to do this. I'm still jumpy. I'm paying attention. I'm watching what's going on. By the times that that kid get's to high school, you better be able do this and just watch what happens like this. Does it mean that there are not still crazy stuff might happen? Yeah, crazy stuff may happen but I'll be there to shore the thing up. But I don't have to shepherd them like that. The older they are in this thing and the more mature they are around the steps, the less I have to be there to micromanage stuff. I can just simply back off a little bit. So the quicker I work guys through the work, the quicker i can let go of them and let them get out there, experience what it's like to have their own experience with the work. Their own experience was sponsorship like this. And then see those people say, Myers, I don't know how do you sponsor hundreds of men? You sponsor them and then you back off. You sponsor him and you back up. It's fairly intense and then it's not so intense. If I thought that I had to raise every man that I sponsored, you understand what I'm saying? I understand why it would be problematic. I've got to start making decisions about who he can date, who he cannot date, what he does. Quit! The book never puts you in the middle of that picture. Who's in the center of that? Who's not in the centre of the picture? God. God. He calls me about a relationship. I don't know. Did you pray about this yet? You didn't? Well, Hoss, that's where I'd start. Why don't we get God in the middle of this thing and see kind of what happens, you see? And there we see. I want to tell you two fast stories. And I have two paths that I wanted to take on this. And I think I wantto tell you these stories because they illustrate two distinct things about sponsorship that I think that are important. One, there was a guy that I sponsored named Matt, and he's a ferocious guy in the trenches. and he was doing night watch in Dallas. If you call the Dallas-Fort Worth area any time after 5 o'clock in the afternoon or between 8 o' clock in the morning, one of our members from our group will answer the telephone. And we've been doing this for years and years and so on. He calls me like at 3 o'lock in the morning and I said, Matt, you better be bleeding to call me at 3 o' lock in the mornin'. And he said, Matt, I got a problem. And he says, I'm talking to a lady here locally whose dad's in California trying to get sober and he's not being very successful. And I said, what do you think we ought to do? And he said, well, my gut tells me we ought to try to get him here and see if we can sober him up. And I says, done. I'm all in. Let's see what we can do. So he talks to her and she talks to him and within 24 hours he's on a bus heading for Dallas. Now listen, this guy took three days to get from California to Dallas, Texas with this guy detoxing. I'm not sure who I feel sorry for more. Him or the people that were sitting around him. Because he's the real deal, and it must have been ugly to be on that bus. But he gets to Dallas. When he gets in on a Tuesday night, we've got a meeting Tuesday night and he's too sick to go. So we put him up in a hotel. One of our guys sat with him that night like this. And then Thursday night, he comes to the meeting and he sits there and he is literally detoxing still. He is shaking so bad, he just sits there and we are just kind of holding on to him and really he has passed the worst of it, but he is still a mess. And so then he leaves. Saturday night, he comes back to the meeting. And when he walks in, he's okay. We're talking like this. I ask him how he's doing. And he said he's fine like this and we're just kind of visiting about some stuff like this and about that time, I said, well, we're going to have to get you as busy as we can as quick as wecan and he said, well, you know, I'm a beginner. I probably need this, you know. And I'm going, buddy, I'll tell you, I'll give you one week to be a beginner I'll give you one week to be a newcomer. Past that, there's somebody else newer than you and you need to be taking care of them. This idea that you're going to sit in meetings for six months and be a new comer is a... I mean, you talk about getting hurt. You talk about a prescription that will harm you. That's it in a lot of cases. Don't do that. Come on. We'll love on you a little bit and then be done with it. Let's get busy trying to help somebody else. So this guy's name is Glenn and Glenn was standing there talking to me and I'm looking at the door and about the time I looked up like this, there's this guy that walks in like this and he walks in and you know where somebody's been... I mean, this guy is destroyed by whatever it was. He was drunk, booze or dope and he was kind of leaning forward and then he was leaning back and like this. And you could almost smell him from where we were like this because his hair looks like it was combed by a gerbil and it was just like it's all sticking out like this and he's just like his clothes are all tore up and he starts walking this way. And I said, hey, Glenn, do me a favor. Would you walk over there and greet that guy? And he said, no. And I says, Glenn I didn't ask you to sponsor him. I just want you to go over and greet him. And he says, what do you mean greet? And I say, Glenn just walk over here and say welcome to Primary Purpose Group Dallas. Let me show you where the coffee is and show him where the bathroom is. Because it looks like he could use it. And he goes, oh. And so I said Glenn, you want to stay sober? And he goes, yes sir. And I said, just go do it please. And he said, okay. And he takes two steps away from me and then he looks back like this and he's going like this and he is looking at me and he was wringing his hand and he went like, do anything but don't ask me to do this. And I just looked at him like this and I went, get! Like that. And he starts walking over there. So now they are out of earshot and I can't hear anything that is going on. I am just watching them. They are about where Amanda is in that big room. And I am standing here like this and I am looking over there and I watch Glenn reach up and put his hand on the guy's shoulder and they start walking back this way and I can hear Glenn's talking to him and then he gets back over here and he points to the coffee and hepoints to where the bathroom is like this and he sits there and the guy said thank you like this and then Glenn just kind of looked at him like this and Glenn stood still and watched this guy just walk off a little bit and then all of a sudden he goes like this and he turns around and listen, this is what Glenn does. Glenn turns around like this and goes like this and he walks back over her and I said Hey, Glenn, what did you tell him? And he said, I just told him how we do things around here. I said, wow, really? He said, yeah, yeah. Guys, we had ten minutes until that meeting filled up. There would be 200 people there that night. And we're sitting there watching Glenn sit there. And Glenn's sitting about two and a half inches taller than he was earlier like this. And I'm telling you, for 15 minutes before that meeting started, Glenn owned Primary Purpose Group Dallas. Amazing deal like this. And we would watch him get involved and watch him come set up chairs and watch Him do the rest of the stuff like this, and we would watching him walk free and clear of a disease that was destined to kick his rear end. And I got a chance to give him his one-year chip, and I got to chance to see his daughter that made the call that night, and all we did was sit and lean into each other and cry. That's all I could do because it was just such an amazing deal. she got her dad back, and we've got a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous that knows firsthand what it's like to get in the trenches and do something for somebody else. You see? One other quick story, and it's related but it's not related. It's notrelated in the same kind of way, and some of you will go, I don't understand the connection on this kind of stuff. There was a gal in our group that had been a member of our group for a long period of time. She had a history that was to this day the worst history as a child I've ever seen in my whole life. She was ritually abused. It was horrible times ten. I can't even imagine somebody growing through this stuff. She came in, she got sober, she did real well. And then at some point in time in there, she got really busy doing something. She was trying to adopt a baby. And she got real obsessed with the job. She had to do the job so that she could get the wherewithal to do this adoption thing. And so she just kind of starts drifting a little bit. And eventually she would start going to a meeting over closer to where she lived, and it was a thing of convenience. We were glad to see her. She stayed over there for a little while. And then it got to a place after about four months where she just stopped going to anything at all. She just wasn't doing much of anything. But her date to get this baby was drawing closer and closer and we knew that it was coming up like this. And so one evening, about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, on a Friday afternoon, I'm getting ready to go to Homeward Bound and do a deal out there. And I get a call from a friend of hers, a mutual friend. And she said, hey, can you come over and see her? She's in some trouble. And I said, what do you mean trouble? And she says, well, just can you comes over and sees her? And she's been asking for you. And I went, yeah, I will. And so I'll go over there and I see her. And I'm going to call her Ann. That's not her name. So I walk in and I said where's Ann? and the living room is full of people that I don't know. The parking lot outside, I mean, the street's full of cars and so I walk in and say, where is she? She's in the bedroom and I walk into this bedroom and it's all dark on the inside like this and Ann's sitting in the bed and she's got her nightgown on and she're holding it right here at her collar like this and she just, I mean it's just like, the room smells like somebody that had been in a room for days and I just went, ah, Lee. And so I said, you guys give me a second and again I walk over and I talk and I said kiddo what's going on And she said, Ann had a psychotic break and she'd come apart at the seams. And she was desperate and I said, and we don't have her in the hospital, why? And there's a bunch of ladies in the room like this and they're all already mad at me because I'm just a little abrasive. And so I was fairly abrasive, I was, because here was my buddy in this bed and she was dying and I thought, come on, she should be in a hospital. And so they said, well, good luck if you can get her to go. And so I leaned into her and I said, you really do need to be in the hospital, right? And she goes, I know, but I can't go. And I said why? And she said, Myers, if I go to the hospital there will be a record of my mental condition and you think for a second they're going to give me a baby if I'm a fruitcake. And I just went, sweet pea, I don't know what to do, man. She is simply in and out of reality. She's just listless, real weak. And I just said, buddy, you've got to do something. And she said, I don't know what to do. And she just busted down and started crying. And I was just devastated by the drama of what was going on because you just see this stuff and when it unfolds in front of you like this and you see mental illness at its ugliest, you just kind of go like, what? What can I do? And I remember backing up from the bed like this and I'm just thinking, I just don't Know. I don' t Know what to Do. And I said, well, I've got get out of here for just a minute. and I walked out in her backyard and it was real still back there and I just had a few words and I was talking to God about this thing and I said, buddy, I'm stumped. I don't know what to do. And then this thought comes to me and I thought, uh-uh. I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. And I'm just going to go, I just don't Know What To Do. And then the same thought came again and I went, ah, crap. So I go back into this room and I say, okay, here's what we're going to do I just made a couple of calls and I need you girls to get her dressed because I'm going to take her with me. And they said, you got her talked into going to the hospital? And I said, no, I haven't talked to her at all yet, but I'm gonna talk her into going and do some 12-step work. And these girls, these ladies in this room, and they were kind, these were swell ladies. These were members of her new home group and they weren't cut out of the same stuff. They weren't real keen on the idea of doing anything outside of AA land like this. I've since talked to some of them and there's still a problem between us. They still think that I was heavy-handed in the situation. But they were madder than hell. They were calling their husbands, you come get this man out of here. I mean, it was ugly. You can imagine it got real chaotic for a second. And I finally just said, listen, I'm battered and all of you. I'm going to do this. You don't have any other options. She'll die here. She'll slip off into some weird-ass coma and we'll lose her forever. We've got to do something. If she'll go, I'm not going to force her to go, but if she'll goes, I'll take her with me. And so they got her dressed and we talked a minute and I said, do you know where we're going to go? And she said, I think you said that we were going to Goina to Homer Bound. And I said yep, on Homer Bounds on Friday night the girls go to one side the guys go to the other side and we do this deal and we meet back in the parking lot. And so I said that's what we're gonna do. And she says, do You really think that's wise? And I looked at her and I say, I don't know what else to do. Seriously, we gotta do something. And she say, okay I'll go. But I'm not gonna talk. And I say Ann, you don't have to do nothing. and you just come up there with us and see what happens. So we get there in this parking lot and I had called a girl to come get her and so they rode up in a different car. We got there like this and so Ann goes up with her. I go up to the guy's side and I manage to stay there about 20 minutes and I'm coming apart. I don't know what's going across on the girl's side. I don' t know what' s happening and I've got to find out and so finally I said, guys, it' s yours. Y' all deal with the rest of it and I ran down the stairs and was just sitting in the parking lot waiting. About 20 minutes later, the door opens up. This girl comes out. Another girl comes out. Another girl come out. No Ann. And I went, oh, come on, man. Did I read this that wrong? And so pretty soon the girls got down to the bottom and I said, where is she? And they said, she's still up there talking to some girls. And I said well let's give it a couple of minutes and see what happens like that. Pretty soon she comes down the steps. And I'm looking at her. She's as far as from here back where Tom is. And I see her in the parking lot and she's walking towards me like this. She looks at me like that and she just does this and put a thumb up like that And I went, all right. And I walked over to her and I said, are you okay? And she said, yeah. She said, hey, I'm not going to play games with you. I'm nicht going to tell you that I'm a little sunbeam for Jesus right now. I'm niet going to say that I am firing on all cylinders. But I will tell you this, I am going to be okay. And the next day she was better and the next she was better and she left to go to Europe to pick up that little baby. And she did that. And that little kid is in high school now and she's hitting on all cylinders and it's a pretty amazing thing. So listen, sometimes we think our efforts over here are causal, that this affects this. But sometimes we miss the big stuff. The idea that her ability to get up out of herself and break that little cycle that was twisting her up inside like this, the idea that she could do that and it would break this psychosis that was going on, Did she still need some help down range? Yeah. Did she get some help? Yes, she did. But at the moment, this idea of just simply getting out of her head was what was necessary. I used to call Clifford all twisted up about some crazy stuff like this and Clifford would always tell me the exact same thing. Myers, Myers, listen, I know that's important what you're talking about. Do me a favor. Would you go down to the 2-4 and spend a couple hours with those guys and then call me back and we'll deal with your problem. over and over and over. He would do this and I would go down there and I'd walk in and the smell of that old grease in that place would knock me over like this and I take a couple of bucks out and I buy me a cup of coffee. And in a couple minutes, there'd be somebody sitting across from me just looking at me. And I'd go, you want a cup of coffee? And they'd go, yeah. I said, how about chicken fried steak? You want one of those too? And he'd go yeah. So it's going to cost me six bucks and I'm going to sit there and I'll sling some AA at this guy and talk to him for a little bit while he's eating dinner. I'm gonna drink my coffee like this. And then And at the end of this thing, I walk outside somehow transformed by an action that I took and then I can call Clifford back or not depending on the situation. But my experience was is that it never seemed big enough to even call him back afterwards like this. I just got the chance to spend two hours talking to a kid that just came in off the street, ate a chicken fried steak, drank some coffee, and I got to sling some AA with some meat in it, with some good stuff like this and give this guy some hope. And everything in me changed. Guys, the moment I was able to simply shift this thing from being about me to about them, I'm here to give, not to take. The moment I made that distinction, everything in my life changed. Everything changed. My relationship with my wife, my relationship with myself, my relationship with my kids, my relationship with the business that I'd grown to hate, everything began to change the moment I did this kind of stuff. And so all I had to do was simply submit to a process, submit to a clear-cut set of directions that had already been handed to me. I didn't even have to be smart. All I had to do was just simply be willing to do what it was that they asked me to do. Will you feel goofy? Yes. Will you fill up or will you feel hung out? Sometimes. Will you feeling uncertain? Yes. Do it anyway. Do it any way. Because if you wait, I've been waiting my whole life to hear somebody go, you know what, I just realized it was time for me to do 12-step work. I'm sorry. I know that intellectually we say that kind of stuff like that, but I'm telling you it's never been my experience. My experience has always been left to my own devices. I will always find a reason why I cannot help anybody, why I will Always Be Less Than I Need To Be. And I'm just telling you, man, all it takes, we just need to grow some bigger ones and go do it. You shouldn't say that, should you? But you all know exactly what I'm saying. Trust the process and then be blown away by what happens like this. And then when you get to be an old dude like me and you look back on your life being of service to other people, you will simply be amazed at what goes on. And you will realize, guys, at the end that your life counted for something, that the disaster that was your life was the springboard into being able to help somebody get past a disease that they thought was going to kill them. You see what I'm saying? Don't miss this opportunity, guys. Don't mess it. Every one of us is accountable. Every oneofus needs to be there in order to do that stuff. There are no excuses. None. None. And when you jump in and it's no longer their program but your program, it's not longer their group but your group, when you get in the middle of this other kind of stuff and you feel completely changed, then you will know exactly. And perhaps, perhaps, you will want to do what we do. Stand for something. Go kick some ass. change some lives. Pretty cool, right? I love you guys.