Sponsorship workshop in Austin, TX

Okay. How do you do it? As long as you do it. You're with it? You do a sponsorship style?

You do an extended third column with an additional 2 columns after? Do do back to your drop. The the end results are gonna be the same. You're with us? People don't relax because they work the steps different than me.

They relax because they didn't work the damn steps at all. That's been my experience that you got. If I haven't put myself on my inventory, I feel pretty bad shit. But my first boss had told me to just put myself on my inventory, and I'm dead if I did that. Oh, yeah.

Is it I have a take on that, but that's just You got them. I gotcha. Yeah. I gotcha. You got them.

Bottom line is we finish this little inventory. Give them a week. We sit down. We set some time out. I give my Meyer just like Meyer said, we give them the the directions on how we're gonna do this.

You're with us? It's gonna be fast and furious. They're getting all of rolled up, and they wanna tell you all the new details. Buddy, shut up. Read this damn thing.

Read this thing. We're gonna go from point a to point b, and then we're gonna go to the next, and we're gonna go to the next, and we're gonna go to the next. You with us? We're looking for truth. We're we're the person that does the longest inventory is not the success person here.

You're the person that gets to see their truth. Y'all follow? The more I'm talking exactly what Myers said, the more I'm rationalizing why why I got cookie to begin with. What do you mean by the dynasty of Columbus? We're not we don't have time to talk about it.

Come see me after. I'll I'll talk to you about it. It's not in the book. I'm saying a lot of people out there may do things differently. And I'm not saying they're wrong.

I'm just saying I try to stick as close to the book as I can get. You you make sense? Mhmm. We sit down an hour later while I do a fist step with somebody. I don't know if you did it this way, but when I sit down, I got a piece of paper.

And on one side, I've got 8. I draw a line and I got character defects. And while the guy's giving me this 5th step, I'm steady writing down. Mhmm. Who I think you owe amends to?

You with me? We're not talking about it now because it's not the time of the play. We're just I'm just writing them down because because it's from my 5th step that I got my 8th step list. You with us? It's from my 5th step that I get my character defects list from 6 and for 6 and 7.

You'll follow? Mhmm. And we'll get it. We'll go over the character defects. An hour later, he's on his knees, does a step up for a prayer, and we get on down the damn road.

God that removes the character defects, folks. I I I know some of you will disagree. I've sat in day long lectures and listened to people talk about 6 and 7. It just freaks the fuck out of me. Excuse the language.

Jesus. Guys, it's 2 paragraphs. How complicated can this be? You look you cannot agree if you want to. I'm working on 6 and 7.

I'm working on 6. What are you doing? Practicing your character defects? I've tried those children not to do the same things I've been doing over and over and over again. I try to do that.

But it's God who's the one that removes those character defects. It's God the one that changes us. Yes. Down over here, Scott. What you got, though?

I have a question about inventory unlike yourself. Otherwise, I'm confused about it like if do you do a full 4 columns on yourself? Yes. You feel like I'm pissed at myself because and then my part is I did it. I own it.

Why did you do it? Oh, why did you do it? Oh, okay. I just thought it was like it's, like, what goes on the second, what goes on the 4th with myself. Why did we do it?

My part. I I was resentful. I was supposed to be selfish and self centered. It's just not that complicated. Knock it out.

Do you live it? I had a guy at the hospital, a couple of months ago, a case manager that said just told the patients, if they didn't have at least 200 names on the inventory, they weren't doing a thorough inventory. And some of you are not making any response at all because you said, goddamn. I had 600 names on mine. It's the point I'm making, guys.

It's the point I'm making. Some of you are gonna have a bunch. Some of you are not gonna have as many. We all didn't get raised the same way. Some of us learned to deal with that stuff better than others.

You with us? Chuck, did you have a question real quick? Did you have a question? 6 4 sentences to 2 questions. If you did, 1 through 5 is yes and yes.

Was that too quick? But I'm I'm in a 100% agreement. It's just quick fast. Y'all y'all cool with this? An hour after, I still hear people in meetings.

I'm working on 6 and 7. Unless you did your fist step an hour ago, we're in trouble. Just get it done, you know. Now what are we gonna do? We've got our 8 step list.

This is this goes back to what the little gentleman was talking about earlier. My 8 step list, I'm gonna go over with a sponsor, who I owe amends to and who should I stay away from when when hurting others when when going through with this would would harm others. You with us? And yourself is not others. This is tough, guys, because I'm telling you I've watched I've I've done, like my brother, hundreds of fist tests with people, and I watch them crap out on on making amends.

They've got all this information. They know exactly what they need to do, and then they're gonna sit there on their asses in an AA meeting and wait for that person to come to them so they can make amends. That's not what the book says. Book says I seek out those people. I go find I'm the one laying in bed just grinding my teeth over them full of guilt.

How am I gonna clean it up? I'm gonna go tell them how I was wrong. I'm gonna try to set that matter straight. It's not about apologizing, folks. I'm sorry.

No. Not an amendment. Right. No. They know you are sorry.

Oh, yeah. Mostly, that's because we got caught. What do you do when you're watching them crap out on their ass, you know? How do you how do you typically handle it when your guys are open the title page of my book where I had them write, I'm willing to go to any lengths. Buddy, you said you were willing to go to any lengths.

And that's still good. You've do you have deadlines? We we do I we keep them motivated. Some of these guys have got lots it's kinda difficult to ask a guy that's just getting out of treatment who hasn't got a penny to go make those 1,000 of dollars worth of men that they owe. It's kinda I mean, you you can't squeeze that out of the term.

But what the book says, we make a first approach. We we talk to these cats, and we set it up. In other words, I don't avoid my creditors. I call the stupid credit card company. He says, buddy, I know I owe you this money.

This is what I can do. I can pay you $10 a buck whatever it is. You set it up, and then you follow through with it. All all it's addicts were all goddamn grandiose. I wanna write you this $50,000 check.

Here's the money I owe you. How cool would that be? That I owed y'all think I'm lying? I owed everybody. Everybody.

And they there there were people for the next 3 years that had to wait in line for their money. But they got their money. Makes sense? Including the damn IRS. But I faced it.

My sponsor was just straight on me about this. You you gotta follow through with these with these, amenities. You got some stuff on there? Just real quick. You know, there's there's there's this thing called momentum as we're working through this stuff and you see and I want you to notice that, in your experience with working with guys and gals, you see guys getting healthier.

They do their inventory. They're doing the rest of their stuff and they get ready to approach this thing called the men's and you know almost right away whether how they're gonna do it. They're already god, there's no getting around it. A men's takes courage. It just takes some guts, man.

Sometimes you just gotta pull your, you know, I'm ready. Let's go do this thing. And it's never comfortable. If it was comfortable, you'd have done it a long time ago. Right.

It's hard to do. But there's nothing that I can think of that is more miraculous. Nothing. There's no more evidence of a miraculous God that's there controlling everything than this process of an immense, the willingness to stand there and make the inventory, to stand there and make a list of the people that had harmed and then stand there and go, 'Okay, I'm ready. I'll go do this stuff.' And we grab ourself and we just head right on out the door and we pray and we bring you know, sometimes I think we forget that there are 3 people involved in that amends.

There's you, the guy you screwed over, and God. And sometimes we just trivialize it and discount the fact that there's a loving God right in the middle of that that whole process. If God's not there, you're screwed, brother. Because because what's gonna happen is you're gonna take one step backwards. You're gonna default right back to what?

Selfishness and self centeredness. And pretty soon, you ever see it, you're justifying your bad behavior. Man, I'm sorry I screwed you over, but you're an asshole. You know what? If you hadn't done what you did, I wouldn't have gotten and pretty soon you're right back in the same embroiled thing.

The book said that we were trying to be of maximum service. We're trying to fit ourselves to be of maximum service. We're trying to fix what we did and we're waiting for them to give us our marching orders about what it is that we're supposed to do. That woman I screwed over, who am I in my ear just to say I know what it's going to do to take to fix that? I don't.

What I can do and what I have control over is to say, you know what? In the clarity of this moment I see everything that I did to you that harmed you and I am I am I am I am painfully aware of how much harm I caused you. I treated you shabbily. Is there anything I can do to make amends for what I did? She'll tell you to go piss up rope and get out of there or she'll tell you to how about spending some time with those kids that you fathered?

Okay. What else? Some money would be nice. Terrific. What else?

See what I'm saying? I'm just there. I'm waiting for her to say. And everybody goes everybody wants to project from the time we sat down in an AA meeting, the day we first sobered up, we read that step and we went, oh, no no no. And the walls go up and now we have every preconceived idea in the universe about what we're gonna do and what we're not gonna do.

Right? Completely discounting that we are sane today and that we have recovered from this hopeless state of mind and body and that we are different people. You're as different as night and day. It's night and day. And this thing of trying to to operate under preconceived ideas has got to be smashed.

We have to just stop that stuff. Just get up in the morning, say it's a new day. Let's go out and see what happens. I'll tell you this from personal experience. You won't see it so much in your life as you'll see it in the lives of the men and the women that you sponsor.

Those telephone calls where they oh, shit. I get choked up every time I talk about this stuff. The the the call that comes in the middle of the night going, Myers Myers, I just saw her. Great. Tell me about it.

And he tells me about it. How'd it go? Buddy, you know what? She told me that she still loved me, or she told me that I wasn't as bad a guy as I think I am, or she whatever. However the thing worked out, But the absolute miracle of reconciliation, what we sometimes stop and forget, we we don't think about this thing.

This is healing on both sides of the equation. And by me having the willingness to walk up in front of Josh and say, Josh, man, buddy, I treated you shabbily on this stuff, I get God in the middle of the picture. Not only do I get a chance to try to clear off this my street that I destroyed there, Josh also has a chance to heal too. The healing is often on both sides. And in my arrogance, if I don't do it, if I hold this process at a at a distance, I've kept him from having the ability to do it too.

The chance to come clean and see, we're both getting well. We're both getting healed, and you see this stuff all the time. You see? Don't miss it. Now the willingness to do this work comes as a manifestation of doing the work and if there are holes in your work or if there are things that you've intentionally from defiance left out, you'll never have the necessary juju to do the amends.

You'll walk into the amends process cold and flat. Some of you guys have done it. You'll be going, and you'll be defensive, and you'll be you see you know what I'm saying. But you get plugged in and go in there, and then you walk out and you feel like you've been pimp slapped. You just kinda go, holy shit.

What happened in there? You know? And you don't know where it came from? You don't need to know where it came from. All you need to know is God was right there doing for you what you couldn't do in a 1000000 years, which has smoothed over the wreckage of 20 years of drinking.

Good stuff. How free how free do you wanna be? That's what my sponsor says. A lot of you guys know them. How free do you wanna be?

I wanna I wanna be free, but not that free. Well, there you go. You you you got it. But if you wanna be free, so you can come and go as you please, then that's what you need to do. The book has got 13 pages in there where it specifically says it tells you it goes through every scenario.

How do you do the x y's? How do you do the money? How do you what legal stuff's involved? And it it gives you all the instructions. We're not gonna go take time to go through all that.

The instructions are crystal clear. I had a guy call me yesterday. Well, Chris, if I make this amend, I might go to jail. Then you need to talk to your family about it. You need to let them know what's fixing to happen, and y'all figure out if you wanna go do this or not.

I'm gonna tell you something, folks. There's people in jail today that I do the work with that are freer than a bunch of y'all sitting in this room right now. Right. Because they make their damn demands. Life is long, folks.

How free do you wanna be? Walking around a goddamn with a gut full of of ulcers and and all the side effects come from stress and tension. Where do you think the stress and tension comes from? From you walking on eggshells worried about who's gonna attack you on the shoulder. Hey, buddy.

I remember you. Not good. Yo yo yo yo this? Pretty simple stuff. It should happen quick.

Sometimes these men's take a long time, guys, to make. But if you make your first approach, you you can start checking them off your list, guys. It's there's nothing cooler. I make 4 by 5 business cards and I you know, little index cards and put all the pertinent information. And when I make one of those amends, I tear that baby up.

Go to the next one. You're with us? It's pretty cool to see that stack getting closer. You'll find yourself walking differently because of it. Makes sense?

It's all it's tough. It really takes courage. Go cool? Mhmm. Let's do 10.

What? Let me let me I'll make this short sweep because we got the bigger space to fly. How many of you guys y'all will tell me right. How many of you guys do 10 step work every day? Pretty.

Pretty. This is good. That's good. That's about But let me tell you something. I have said I've asked this same thing in rooms with 600 people in it and had 3 people raise your hand.

There's usually not a sponsor standing on your neck making you do 10 Step work. There's usually not. And yet it's really funny. I I I remember one time I I've been working with with Clifford, the crusty one, for for a good bit of time. And he called me one day.

We were talking and he said, hey. Let me ask you a question, Mark. Do you ever do anything wrong? Oh. And I said, well, of course of course I do.

Who are you calling me your 10 step stuff? That's right. Oh, gee. And I remember just kinda backing out of the room and going, oh, I should know better than that. And I just and so, you know, what was really funny was at that particular moment in time, I remember sitting there thinking, you know, going, I don't quite even understand what he's talking about.

I've been in this thing a long time guys and I'm telling you, but I it's just a part that I discounted as something that I didn't need to be doing. But, buddy, when I went back and I read it let's be let's let's look at this thing real quick of of, 84. Halfway down the page. This thought brings us to step 10, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory. Great.

And we continue to set right in any mistakes as they go along. This is good. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. Now here's what we've given carte blanche to take a step out of order. You know, we're supposed to work these things in order.

But what the little piece here is telling us is that we're gonna have to be doing this 10 step stuff as we do that immune process. It's the only way that Juju's gonna be there. If I got all this wreckage I'm not dealing with and if daily it's creeping up, pretty soon I'm still blocked off from the sunlight of the spirits that I'm back there in this desert trying to make you the men again. It's a scary place to be. That's why we always end up having to remake those men's.

It's ugly. This 10 step stuff is supposed to keep us clear of this stuff. Skip down a little bit. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime, not just while you're working the work, not just your initial time through, every day.

Continue to watch for here they are. The little things that they talked about, those character defects that they talked about at the end of of of, step 4. The things that we were gonna illuminate on that inventory. They're gonna ask us at 10. They're gonna ask us again at 11.

I think Bill thought this was important. Where where continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. He didn't say continue to watch for triggers, for, for a booze bottle. It didn't it didn't say anything like that. It's they're they're bringing us back to the stuff that holds us in bondage again.

That's the stuff. And then it's gonna give us 4 pieces of instruction. This is the only step that I'm actually tearing apart a little bit piece by piece so that we can look at it. They're asking us to do 4 things. When these crop up, not if, but when, these crop up, we ask God if he wants to remove them.

2, we discuss them with someone immediately. 3, we make amends quickly to be harmed to anyone. And 4, we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we could help. Love and tolerance of others are their code. Four distinct declarative pieces of information right there that give us specific information on what to do around a 10th step.

There's no gray area, guys. I'm struggling here trying to see it. There's no gray area. There's no fuzzy area. It was just a straight heads up deal.

You got 4 things to do. And so it goes something like this. I'm having works with with David on the telephone. David is now one of my suppliers at work and he's a son of a bitch. And I go, bam.

And I hang up the phone on him. It. Now I know I've been around this a while and I know I don't ever let go of the telephone. When I do something like that, I just hold on to it. And my wife knows what I'm doing.

When she'll walk through she's my business partner. She'll walk through and go, stepped on somebody again, did you? And I went, yeah. How'd you know? And she goes, Dwight, you've been standing there for 20 minutes.

It usually doesn't take that long, but I'll hold that damn phone. And then I'll just pick up the phone. Okay. I'll say a little prayer. Then I click, click, click, call the crusty one cliff.

He's on the phone, Cliff. I did it again. I stepped right on top of this guy. This is what I did. He said, you know what you need to do?

He says, yes, sir. Hang up the phone. Don't let it go. Click click click. Call the guy back.

Take take take. No. Smires. Sir, no. Don't please please don't hang up.

I'm sorry. I treated you shabbily. I had no I got way too much on my plate. I overreacted. It's not your fault.

Forgive me. It's that simple. He says, fine. I hang up the phone, and then I go sweep the floor in the back. I go try to help somebody do something.

I go whatever. It doesn't have to be AA related. You just got to get out of self and go do something. Slick. Slick.

Slick. And I'm telling you guys, you will go. Any of you guys remember a time I'm gonna shut up. I'll get you just a second. Any of you guys remember a time when you, were squeaky clean up a after a piece of inventory?

You did this inventory stuff and you're standing there in in the sunlight of the spirit. You're taking really deep breaths in the morning, and you just feel wonderful. It's just cleaned up as clean as perhaps it's been in 30 years, and it feels great. And then day by day, days happen, and this kind of stuff happens and this reoccurring I got it jammed up with the guy at the cleaners and I just had course words with him and now my world gets a little narrower over there. I can't go see him anymore.

And then I have words with the guy at the at the day at the at the little 7:11 and I can't go to that store anymore and I can't and day by day my world does what? It does exactly the same thing it was when I was first coming into this deal. My world had had had shrunk down to nothing more than my kitchen and my garage. That's it. I couldn't go anywhere else, you see?

And there's where I'm headed. It may not look like it. Out of my arrogance and my ego, I think I'm still just fine. I did that great inventory and I'm squeaky clean and everything is fine. Every harsh word.

Every every everything I say to my family that is a little harsher than it needed to be. Everything that I should've done that I didn't do, there's one more little patina between me and God. And then one day I stand up and I realize that I haven't been taking any breaths at all hardly. I'm back to the shallow breathing stuff because I'm carrying the burdens of the world. The emotional crap is kicking my butt again and I'm just you understand?

It's that it's that deal and it's and it's just ugly. I have a fleeting memory of what it was like to be free and clear. And it is painful, painful to see. And the scary part that is, if you'll stay with me one more second, the painful part is is that is that sitting in a meeting, I now become the thing that I dreaded the most. I've become a stinking hypocrite.

Mhmm. Because I'm talking to the newcomer about a life of love and a life of of of this joyfulness with this God of our understanding. Yeah. And I'm not joyful. I'm covered up with all this crap again.

And being a phony in AA is the most uncomfortable thing in the whole wide world. It's a lot like being a phony in church. Oh, I love God. Yeah. Right.

How come you're cheating your employees and you're cheating on your wife? Mhmm. Cool. And it happens just like that in AA. It's exactly the same kind of thing.

And then we wonder why we're becoming less and less effective with the guys who we're sponsoring. Why are they kinda discounting us? Why is it why is it I don't wanna embrace the new guy when he comes in and I see he's new and I see him looking at the floor? Why did I go like this so somebody else will get you? Because deep down inside, in the darkest part of the night, I know that I'm a phony.

You see? That's why guys blow their brains out 10 years. So Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm sorry, buddy.

Do you have a comment? Yeah. It says someone not always get a hold of your sponsor. You still need to talk to someone. Surely.

Get it. So Sure. Absolutely. You bet your life, man. That's all I got for you.

That's why we do a little deal in in the Hill Country called Mad Dogs with the guys in my sponsorship. And it's just so that everybody gets to know everybody that's involved with us, so they know who to go to. If they can't reach me, buddy, call somebody else. We got some of them in the room today, and that's that's what it's about. It's about the accountability.

It's a good question. Somebody back there? I have a question and maybe it's a comment. I'm not sure. Maybe a thing.

You can have a question mark at the end of it. This is not how you go, but I got it in 5 months, and then they are all sober. But my concentration is not on the new person coming in the room with their head down. My concentration is on sharing my experience, strength, and hope that having somebody approach me to the sponsor. They've been experience, strength of having somebody approach me to respond to them based on something I've said to where there's an emotional connection.

So I feel like I can't really that's why I think I've been successful, and I don't know. What what what do you think? Next question. Therefore, when approached by those who in whom the problem has been solved. I just keep going back to it.

What does the literature tell us? What does the literature tell us? What does the literature tell us? What does the literature tell us? Just we go to them.

Seek out. Seek out. Mhmm. See, my heart is exactly what you're saying. You're not doing anything wrong.

He said, but my my heart, when I see somebody come in the door, I don't know about you guys, but my heart, I it speaks it's a Chris. He's uncomfortable. And then I just make a decision, a choice whether I'm gonna sit there, let somebody else get them because I've got too many. I sponsor a boatload of guys. And and you with me?

Or am I gonna get up, take my responsibility seriously, and go see if I can help that guy? Doesn't mean I gotta grab him as a sponsor. You know? But it means but I do have to be responsible to make sure that the hand of AA reaches out when somebody else comes in. And so I keep I keep doing that.

Unfortunately, god seems to want me to stay up to my ass in alligators with new new guys to work with. My prayer is always, oh, please, God. Don't no no don't anybody come see me tonight. Phone rings, but I'm, you know, I'm cranky. I you know, god.

Ask Patty, you know. And they think, hey. What's shaking? You know? I don't think it's gonna do it.

Don't you consider overload number of people sponsored? I believe you can get so many people that you can't really be as effective. We're gonna talk about it in the next hour, okay? Let's just try let's try to keep anything on 1011? 11th step?

We'll do that in smoke, and we'll take the next hour doing 12 steps because that's what it's all about, guys. That's the goddamn gravy. 11th step. You're You're supposed to be praying and meditate daily. Get up in the morning and talk to God, not in the bathroom.

Talk to God. Get some place quiet where you can get get get still for a minute. At night, you know, when you go over your 10 step stuff, prayer and meditation out throughout the day. How many times a day do you think you're at that hospital, I say, god help me? You know, somebody on the counter tap him, you know, with a cane.

Hey. I got a guy who's trying to commit suicide on the phone. It's like, God help me, you know. I go through the day. I ask God's protection.

Don't do that to me. You get anything? No. We'll do it next time. Let's smoke.

Cool. Smoke. Quick. 5:5:10 minutes, guys. Let's go get it to crank.

Yeah. Joe,