The topic of Self-centeredness at the Usual Suspects Men's Retreat in Camp Garner Creek in Dickson, TN

Good morning.

I don't want to put all this stuff.

I guess I'll put this on the floor

table. My name is Jerry Jones, and I'm an alcoholic.

Still,

I was told when I came here by our fearless leaders, namely Scott, Steve and that crowd that started this thing, that I was to select A topic that I wanted to. There you go. You're a good thinker. You must be a lawyer.

The bad news is I still send out bills. Oh, he's a practicing lawyer.

I actually that took 1/2 hour.

What you have to plan, then you have to recover after you've worked

science to this that most of you don't realize.

Yes, yes.

Well, I have enjoyed being here very much and thank you for having me. It's been a it's really a nice place and a great bunch of guys and I'm going to treat you to your first or second longest hour of the weekend.

I didn't tell you some things last night that I really kind of needed to tell you.

I took it rather personally that my wife went to Alamo.

It it didn't. It didn't occur to me that she needed any help at all. I couldn't see why she had a problem. I

and in the course of discussing that with her, trying to find out where the hell she was going, she didn't tell me, she didn't tell me. And I, I neglected to tell you this last night. She,

she was not exactly forthcoming when I asked her about where she had been going.

My daughter told me she'd been going to a family meeting. And I, as a lawyer, we decided we were going to get a divorce in six months if things didn't get better. And as a lawyer, felt like if there was a family meeting going on somewhere that she was present at, probably I needed a representative present at that meeting. And so when she came in, I began to find out, you know, what and where this meeting was.

And I asked her where she'd been, and she said out,

which set the tone for the whole proceeding. You know, out. Out where? To a shopping center. Which one? Preston Center. What do you do there? Met some friends.

Who were they? You wouldn't know them.

What did you discuss? What did you do while we just talked about our experience, strength and hope.

And then finally, finally

I got the word out of her and the word was Al Anon.

Al Anon.

I had never heard the word Aladdin, but by this time we were in rather heated discussion and I did not want to appear ignorant.

So

I made my best guess

and I decided it must be an aluminum kitchen utensil of sometimes.

It wasn't. It wasn't. It isn't. It isn't.

It's a wonderful organization full of loving people who you know,

And

when I found out she was going to this place and that everybody was welcomed it, I didn't rejoice in that at all. I, I immediately switched to thinking about what's this going to do to me? What's this going to do to me? Will they find out about me downtown? And what will they do to me when they find out about me? And that's a form of what I want to talk about this morning,

self centeredness.

Self centeredness was a difficult concept for me to get my head around

the first time I read about it. In the book where it talks about self centeredness being the center of our problems, I skipped that page.

Why should I read about your problems? I'm not self-centered

and

well, I gave money to the church. I was supporting a bunch of ragnot kids and a wife and hell, I I was not self-centered. I didn't need, didn't need that treat day.

But the longer I stayed, the more they talked about it.

They talked about it. Some people talked about it in Alcoholics Anonymous as though it's the cause of alcoholism.

It is not the cause of alcoholism. Alcoholism is a physical

reaction to the drug alcohol

and an obsession of the mind. An obsession of the mind that Teia says when I when you take a drink, alcohol,

I think I'll have another one of those, no matter what the circumstances are. And So what is what does self centeredness have to do with all this? We devote the third step, the 4th step, the fifth step

in the 6th and 7th step in part to this concept

and why, why we have it, what it is, why we need need to get rid of it. And the fact is, while it's not the cause of alcoholism, it's the cause of most slips that come about an alcoholism. And it's cause of the most failures that the alcoholic has in, in achieving recovery in the program of alcoholism. It's a difficult thing to get your head around.

You don't. I'd add trouble understanding it.

Everybody thinks of themselves, don't they? I have a friend of Dallas that says I, I'm, I'm not much, but I'm about all I think about.

And that's sort of the way I was. I was, I was reacting to me. It's where you take life personally. Whatever happens, if it's important at all, it's happening to me.

You and I can walk down the street and the

at the end of a few blocks ask somebody could ask us a question. What was the most important thing you saw as you walk down the street?

And we will have different answers.

Largely it will be what affected me in that walk, what what attracted me, what threatened me, what it was that that

I focused on. That's the self centeredness that we talked about. I hadn't met an old man one time years ago. He was named Doctor Bob Gibson. And Doctor Bob Gibson was not an alcoholic. He was a doctor of osteopathy and he'd given up his practice to go around the country talking about a spiritual life

and he thought that as Alcoholics Anonymous does,

that self centeredness was the biggest problem in achieving a spiritual life. Fiore carefully the 4th step to lead into the 4th step. It talks about what's blocking us. We need to find the cause and condition of our failures and to find that which is blocking us. Blocking us from what? The power

that we need, the power the the higher power,

self centeredness keeps us away from that power. I believe this God we have is a perfect gentleman.

He'll stay away if you want him to. He's present always, but he will not force himself on you. And I think you have to find a way to

locate this self centeredness and or you'll never get it, Doctor Bob Gibson said. It all started in the womb,

he said. Where and where in the womb? Everything's taken care of. It's warm. We're floating around in a nice warm bath. We don't have to breathe, we don't have to eat, we don't have to do anything. Everything is just fine. We are undisturbed and we are happy. And then it happens.

We get born and they slap us on the butt.

They put drops in their eyes. They begin to, we begin to mess our pants. We are hungry, we're cold, we're hot. We have a lot of problems. We have, we are, we are disturbed. We are not undisturbed anymore. And we have, we know based on our experiences, when we have the absolute right to be undisturbed.

No question about it. We just by God, it's, it's our right to have that

and we are given the tool very early to try to get that right.

And what is that when we're not getting it? We complain, we begin to cry. We cry quietly for a little while maybe, but then if they're no respond to us, we really let it go. We get ticked off and anger comes in and we begin to demand that somebody fix us by God. Now we don't have to go very long before the people around us begin to get a little tired of our demands.

You may, some of you may know that

if you've ever had a baby with colic, you know very well how tired you can get of the demands.

They, they can't talk to you, but they just raise a lot of hell and you, and you're trying to figure all the time what it is. And So what you ultimately do, you begin to work on a process of reward and punishment. You reward them for not crying and you give them a little trouble, not really punishment, but you you make it a little unpleasant for them when they, when they do cry sometimes.

And the kid knows that he picks that up on a pretty, pretty, pretty quick. So he begins to learn that, well, if, if his crime doesn't work, if demands don't work, maybe, just maybe if I try to do what they want me to do, like smile, giggle and girl doing that sort of thing, maybe they'll pick me up and give me what I want. But now we've got internal conflict going.

Now I'm doing something I don't want to do to get something I want.

It's like, it's like I used to illustrate this with a sign I had. It was an arrow, two arrows, an arrow with a point on each end. And over the top of those layers, it said one way

which which way you going to go.

And that's internal conflict. And we have a lot of that, and it goes on for all of our lives.

As life comes along, we find what the baby finds. There is resistance to what I want.

We do all we can to avoid that resistance, but we always have it. And resistance is a way the power, I think, tries to teach us

about life.

The people you know who have the least resistance in their life are the least mature and the least

whole people that you run across.

They don't ever get it. They just get what they want. They're spoiled, we say.

Well, it goes on with this. Resistance is always present. You never can get away from it. And you try to please and that works for a while and you get tired of that and you become defiant

just by God to hell with them. I'll just get what I want. I'll just take it. That's what I'll do. I'll just take it. And of course that creates more resistance. And then we, we switch to a, we may switch to a, some people do switch to a, a mode of trying to please by doing what the big boys are doing to get successful to what authorities want us to do. Follow all the damn rules. Al Anon's do a lot of this, following all the damn rules. I think

my wife follows all the damn rules.

Even when nobody's watching, she follows the damn rules

anyway.

That doesn't work either, because there's still resistance. They're still you're running into other people. Our book tells us

at the very first part of of step three that a life based on self centeredness could hardly be successful. We all have these wants, these demands, these not needs but wants that that conflict with one another. And we have we create our own resistance. Within that

you find other ways to try to

be undisturbed achievement. I don't know whether anybody ever was driven by achievement or not, but I, I was driven by achievement. I I have this Doctor Bob told me that or told us that we have 4 basic urges.

First urge is to find pleasure and avoid pain,

and the second is to get attention and avoid being ignored. The third is to find acceptance and avoid rejection.

And the final one is to be important and not be insignificant. Now, I chase those a lot. The fact is that's the that's the human condition. That's the way that we start off. That's the word. That's the beginning point of our growth. And what I think happens, what happened to me was that I could never quite get it. I needed money,

but I never had enough. I needed things. I remember when I was first went to Dallas and

got a job in a law firm, I had to ride the bus to work. Hated to ride the bus to work. It was hot. I had to stand up 'cause there's always some woman who wanted to sit down. I

the fumes of the gas, you know, from the engine were always coming up inside the thing. I just didn't like to ride the bus. Then I graduated to a carpool and I was never ready to go when they were ready to go or when they weren't ready to come home. When I was ready to come home, it just didn't work

and I knew. I knew I would be happy,

I would be undisturbed if I ever got to the point where I had my own car.

We had one car, but my wife seemed to have to use it all the time because the kids and I, I needed a car. I wanted a car. Finally, I got a car.

I hadn't had that car two weeks until I came upon a great truth. Wrong kind of car.

I needed a bigger car, a better car, and I chased more. Better and different as far as you can chase more, better and different. I thought when I made partner in my law firm, I would be happy. That would be it. I would be accepted. They wouldn't reject me.

The fear of I was going to be important. I made partner. They made me a junior

partner.

I didn't want to be a junior partner.

I wanted to be a whole partner, senior partner.

And, and they made that happened when a bunch of guys left the firm and they made me that I thought so I'd share that the cost of the rent. That's what they're trying to do is spread the cost out of money. I wasn't because I, I achieved anything, but that's, that was the way I was reacting to life and I chased more, better and different. And I thought that was the way it was. I thought that was going to bring me happiness and fulfillment as I went along.

The final stage of all of it.

When you've gone through, you never give up anyone of these things. You never give up complaining and demanding or I didn't you. You never give up trying to please. You never give up trying to be important. You never give up any of these things. You just use them at different times in different places, but they all produce an unsatisfactory result. For the most part. You wind up recognizing that you've done every damn thing you can,

and you're still not. You're still. You're still disturbed.

You have not achieved being undisturbed or unhappy. And what do you do then? You blame. It's their fault by God,

or it's my fault because it didn't quite do it. So I'm guilty. I feel bad about that. I'm restless, irritable and discontented. And I don't know what you did when you were restless, irritable and discontented, but somewhere back there I found a a solution to restless, irritable and discontent of short term. Didn't last long, but if you apply it often enough,

you're sometimes you're really serene.

Yeah. You don't know where you are, what happened. You just it's wonderful. It's wonderful. It's worth, it's worth Oblivion is a wonderful thing. You know when you when you really get in, in the pits there,

you, you fear. Another thing that comes out of this thing is fear. You're not going to get what you want.

It's they're going to take it away. The book says the 12 and 12 tells us that we fear is the feeling we get when we think somebody's going to take something important away from us or keep us from getting what we want. And this is this cropped up in me. I had a lot of fear. That's what happened to me when my wife was going to Al Anon. That was fear. That was self centeredness expressing himself.

In the sense that it self-reliance, it ended. I couldn't stop her from going to that damn thing. I tried everything I could to keep her from going to al Anon and she kept going

and she liked it and I didn't want her to like it. And I had this fear, I,

I was scared to death they were going to find out downtown Dallas that I was a drunk.

And I knew they'd fire me because we already had, we had two Alcoholics, senior partners. They weren't junior partners. They were senior partners and they were drunks. And I heard them talk about what they were going to do. They were going to get rid of them just as soon as they could. And here I was just barely on the partnership track. And I was about to, you know, if they found out I was a drunk or even if my wife thought I was a drunk, they'd get rid of me. They didn't need any more trouble. They had a full compliment of drunks they didn't want any more.

So I, I didn't want them to know. And when I got to AA, I didn't want them to know I was an AA either. I figured it would be just as bad for them to find that I was an AA as it was to find out that my wife thought I was a drunk. So I, I, well, I go to meetings and I'd scan the room to see if there was anybody in there that might know one of my partners and call downtown and said, guess what we saw? We saw one of your young partners

in an A, a a meeting, one of them Alcoholic Anonymous. Anonymous meetings,

What was he doing there? And I could just ever dad go to work and I think was the day they're going to call me in and fire my ass.

And then I'd go home that night. I think I got to get that woman out al Anon because they're going to find out. And then they begin to ask me to go to different groups and make little talks. And I'd go and I'd scan the room and I'd try to see if there's anybody there, you know. And I kept worried about that. And one day, after I'd been sober about 11 months, I was on the way to work

and my paranoia took over.

I'd wondered why they didn't confront me with going to a A

and it occurred to me that day, they know.

They know

they're waiting to the annual partners meet meeting and they're going to fire me next week at that partners meeting in full view of all the partners. That's what they're going to do.

Like hell they are.

I'm reasonably aggressive.

I I decided I'll force the issue. I'll go on the attack

and I picked out five of them

department heads, managing partner and I decided I'll tell those summit she didn't feel going to fire me. They'll have to fire me before that partners meeting

so I I picked out the meanest one first. He was the managing partner. He doesn't. He was not a warm and cuddly man.

I walked into his office and I knocked on the door and come in and I looked in. I said, could I? Could I speak to you for a moment, Sir? And he said, what do you want?

So well, I, I have something. What is, what do you want to tell me? Well,

it is Sir, that I'm an alcoholic

and I've been sober and Alcoholic Anonymous for 11 months. And I'm not telling you this because it's good or bad. I'm just telling this because you need to know it. I, if you ever see me drinking again, some of our clients are in trouble. And if you ever know anybody that needs a little help along the lines that I'm involved with, I might be able to help them. He was one of those guys that just reacted instantly, you know, and he did. He said I am delighted,

my God, I wondered what was wrong with you.

And he sat there and for the next half hour he talked and I listened. He said,

we knew something was wrong with you. I asked you if you'd been drinking too much and you told me no. And I said, well, I didn't think I was. And he said, never mind. He said, when you say you're an alcoholic, that's something that's got some, that's a, that's a point that that someone with your problem can seldom say. When you say you're an A, a, that's the best place you could possibly be. That's a wonderful organization. I don't know nearly much as much about that as I'd like to know,

but they help people and they do a good job and you've got a great future. We need you in this law firm. You're going to be a good trial lawyer. You've noticed I've started sending you business again, haven't you? I heard you was on the water wagon, but I'm not impressed with the water wagon. People get off and push the water wagon all the time.

Well, you say you're an AA by God, that's, that's that speaks the well of you. And in 30 minutes, he completely erased that self-centered fear that I had. I walked out of that office

and I could have whipped King Kong left-handed.

I feared no man.

I went to those other four guys and I told them exactly by God how it was me and the boss had talked it over

and we were delighted that I was in the program with Alcoholics and Oh my God.

And all of them but one

gave me the same support.

The one didn't want to talk to me about it. He wanted to talk to me about what kind of case I was working on. He wanted to talk to me about his ranch or his farm or or he's held anything in the world other than that. He was one of the two

that was an alcoholic and I picked him. He was an important and powerful man in my law firm, but I picked him because I knew he might need the deal.

And

he

he finally said, I know. I said, I need to tell you this. I need to say what I've got to say here now. And he said, I know, I know I'm an alcoholic, but I'm not drinking now and I don't think I'll have to drink anymore. I think I got a handle on it.

Well, he had a analogy. A little while later he took off on a deal somewhere in Houston

and got drunk and took off all his clothes and locked himself in in his

hotel room with all the papers to close the transaction. And the client called the firm and the firm sent a battery of lawyers to Houston to clean up the deal. And they got him out and got him dressed and called me

and said, Jerry, we're sending him home on the 3:30 flight at Love Field.

And when he gets there, he belongs to you.

Do with him as you choose.

And I sent him to Hazelton and he got sober and he had never had another drink.

That wasn't because I deserve any credit for that. I didn't deserve any credit for for going and telling them that I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. But I got it myself in a position of dealing with reality, who I really was. And that's a good place to be. What are they going to do to me? What are you going to do to me? I'm an alcoholic.

Shoot your best shot.

And they didn't they they welcomed me. They, they respected me. They didn't understand me. They never did understand what I did. An alcoholic synonym. So I was going to make a talk one weekend and I had my suitcase at work and I was going to the airport and they said, where you going? I said, I'm going to, I don't know, Seattle somewhere. And they said, what are you going to do up there? And I said I'm going to go up there and talk to a bunch of Alcoholics.

Oh, well, what are you going to tell them? I said I'm going to. I'm going to tell them.

I'm gonna tell them about how it was with me, how I got drunk and how I got sober. That's what I'm gonna tell them about,

they said. God, can't they find somebody closer to home than this?

I said, yeah, probably. You know, they may invite me to Tennessee one of these days. You can't tell,

but that self-centered fear was shot through my life and we take this 4th step inventory. That's what we're looking for is self centeredness, because until we get the focus off of us and somewhere else, we have no chance to receive

or to embrace the power that exists within us and all around us. God's everything, use nothing and He's everywhere present. But we got to be tuned in

to the right channel. Are we getting nothing but snow just like you do on TV?

And that self centeredness lives us and leaves us in that world of snow.

The way I discovered self centeredness was

when I went to see my managing partner. I'm not sure I really knew I was dealing with self centeredness.

Still had a lot of resistance to that. I jeez, I just, I just had a aversion to the idea that I was self-centered and I didn't talk to my wife about it. I didn't talk to anybody, my sponsor much. I just just dwelled on it a lot, thought about it a lot and

then one day we were in a meeting and they began. They were, they had talked about self centeredness and unmanageability. I wasn't unmanageable either when I got here.

I've done very well, thank you. I drank a little too much, but I was getting a handle on this and just as soon as I got this taken care of, I'd be right back on the track and everything would be fine. I just wasn't unmanageable and and you know, I wasn't self-centered. So I kind of tuned out of the conversation there for a while. I wasn't going to comment. I just didn't know any try to help these people. They take care of themselves.

I, I Suddenly, I remembered that one of the things that had happened to me that

when I was drinking a lot was it when I was taking the test, you know, I told you all about taking that 2 drinks. I, I did that in my green chair and generally I was watching television. You couldn't read when you were as drunk as I was. And, and so you had to watch television or do something. And

I,

I was in, I was in pet store one day and I, I saw an aquarium and I was really attracted to that aquarium. It was beautiful. It was pretty. And I thought, you know, I wanted my own aquarium, my aquarium. And so I bought it. I bought one. I bought the kind the size I wanted and I put it between my chair and the wall.

It was mine aquarium and

I put the kind of gravel in the bottom of it that I wanted it.

I wanted I put the kind of plants I wanted in there. I wanted leafy plants that kind of reached up to the surface, you know, graceful and beautiful and kind of waved in the

and it, you know, I, it had a light. I could make it daylight or I could make it dark. I had, I put the kind of fish I wanted in there. I liked pretty slow swimming fish

and I fed mock fish and like for him I sometimes it was a land of plenty and sometimes there was a famine upon the land.

And while I was setting that meeting that night, I remembered

and that ideal, I could watch that thing and just get Walter Mitty thoughts, just dream wild thoughts, you know? And but I remembered in that meeting that night that, my God, there was always one thing about that aquarium that bothered me pretty bad. And that day is that we had different kinds of fish that had different kinds of functions. And some of those fish were not exactly peaceful.

Some of them would nip the tail of the real pretty fish and the real pretty fish would begin to swim

back and forth and the first thing you know, they get the whole damn bunch just going, fish going everywhere.

And it just drove me crazy, just drove me crazy. And I'd reach out and slap the side of that,

give him a clap of Thunder to let them know there's a power out there, greater than they were, that was unhappy.

I gave them three claps of Thunder

and then you'd think they'd learn,

but some don't.

They seem to have been born that way.

It's kind of embarrassing to talk about this. I was 41 year old big time lawyer sitting there training fish

I

and I realized that those really rebellious fish needed to have a hands on experience with the power.

So I bought a dip net.

I would catch the bad fish and I'd take him out of the water and hold him on my lap,

have a drink,

let him get still,

and then you flip him back in there. Now, if you've ever done, if you ever do this, I want to help you a little. If you keep them out too long, they float.

And I gave him three more steps with the three more treatments with the dip net.

And then I recognize that some just, we're not going to learn. And I would take them to the commode and flush them,

buy another fish.

And that night I realized, you know, you've been talking about being unmanageable. Not, not your life not being. You couldn't even run a damn fishbowl

and you,

you know, not too many 41 year old lawyers sat around and get offended by what fish are doing. That may be self centeredness. You can't tell they're not doing what you want them to do. And I begin to find self centeredness everywhere I looked in traffic. Did you have, I don't know about you, but I have a lane. It's my lane.

What happens in my lane is my business. You don't go too fast in my lane and honk at me from behind. You don't slow down in my lane. You don't cut in front. You do. When you cut in my lane, you cut in front of me

and somebody has got to punish your ass. That's what I said.

So I can change my lane anytime I want to. I just pop over in the next lane and run you off the road. That's what my plan was, and

I

it, it showed up everywhere. I I realized that I was so wrapped up in my own thinking. I was just an Ottoman. I just reacted automatically to what happened. You push this button, you get this result. You push that button, you get that result. I was not free, free thinker at all, not a free person at all.

And I had to, I had to go to work on that. Now the bad news is the good news is I found it and that's the first step that we have to find self centeredness. The bad news is we can't get rid of it by ourselves.

We got to have the powers help to get rid of that. And that's what the other steps have to do with the you find it, you disclose it, you analyze it in the fourth step, and then you disclose it to another human being, to God, and then you become entirely ready to get rid of it. And you, you don't just make a decision to get rid of it. You, you've got to help.

I think

our husband says that

what you do is you stop doing what you know is wrong and start doing what you know is right and your life will improve. And that's kind of what happens. You it takes a, it's not a it's not an instantaneous things. Is, is it something that grows over your life? You, I don't know. I still do it. I still have to work on it. I still have to keep up with self centeredness. I keep up to find it and but it is the thing that blocks you,

the thing that blocks you from the power. And when you get to where you can become God centered rather than self-centered,

your life truly, truly changes.

Part of self centeredness has to do with values as well. What are your values?

What's important to you?

The Bible says something about you know where your treasures are. There will your heart be also.

What is it? Your? What are your values? We all have values. We all act toward values. And we have a, we have an internal monitor. I don't know about you, but I have a committee.

Committee meets and talks about various things that various subjects I've got to deal with. And it's but you, there's always one guy that I call him the Observer. He's watching. He knows what the damn committees doing. He's aware of what's happening. He's judging

what the committee does or what, whether it's good or bad or whatever. Sometimes I can shut him up and do what I want to do, but he always comes back. He always remembers that part of my mind. I guess you call it conscience and you can, you can dull your conscience over time, but you can never really truly read rid yourself of that conscious. And that has to do. When I first came to a A we talked a lot about self esteem.

I don't know why that's discussed in your groups anymore or not, but I

most drunks don't have real high self esteem. We screwed it up pretty good and we feel pretty bad and at least I did. I thought I'd messed up my life pretty good and I had pretty low self esteem and I didn't know what to do with it. I had I had pursued values that

you gave to me or I thought you gave to me. I was trying to do what I thought you expected me to do. I was affectionately known in my law, in my law firm as the alligator gar.

I was a kind of a nasty guy in the courtroom. I thought my job was to destroy the opposition.

And my favorite way to try a lawsuit was never put on a witness. So they didn't have anything to attack me with. But I could just if I could tear theirs up enough, the jury would go with me that way.

And when I started to work on the steps where I had to become entirely ready to get rid of some of this stuff, I had to rethink

what my role was in that courtroom. First of all, you heard me talk last night about winning and losing lawsuits. Fact is, I had to give up winning them losing.

I suddenly realized one day that health I don't make the facts.

I don't create the jury.

I don't select the judge, the opposition, the defendant or the plaintiff, the other party. I'm just a player in this damn thing. I do my little part, but they got a big part to play and I can't do anything about their part. I'm powerless over that.

And I got to quit trying to be

what I think they want me to be. I need to be myself. And I wasn't sure at all that humility and honesty and all those kind of things that they talked about would really work for a trial lawyer. I could just see myself standing up in front of the judge saying, well, your honor, I'm, I'm just a poor trial lawyer and I would like for you to help my client.

I didn't think they'd hire me do that and they wouldn't have.

But I found

I decided one day in the first trial I had after I got sober that I would go a new way. If anybody lied to me, I'd try to take the hide off of them.

But if I would try to be a gentleman and just get the information I needed, if,

if they were decent told, told me the truth.

And I

began to trial lawsuits and I became much more aware of what was going on the courtroom, how the jury was reacting. And my, my whole approach to trying lawsuits changed because I got a new value to which I was working toward. I was trying to be ethical. I was trying to be honest. I was trying to present things to the to the jury that I truly believed

and not present things that I did not believe. And it worked. It worked very well for me.

Our desire chips in my part of the world, so have all them to thine own self be true, that's what that is, I said last night. They told me early on in the program that the greatest freedom I would ever, ever have was to

be myself

and live inside my own values. If you're living outside your values, you either have to change your values or you have to change your actions. Because you'll never be. You'll never be comfortable any other way and you'll never, you'll never have any self esteem.

But if you do that, if you if you do that and you begin to live that way, stay sober every day over a period of time, your feelings about yourself, your self esteem will begin to to come up.

You get to feeling better and better about yourself. You'll know you're on the right Rd. the broad highway the book talks about. And there's some bad news with that. And the bad news is that the day you revert

to your old self, to the day you take advantage of somebody, to the day you lie to somebody, the day you

try to hit on a newcomer or whatever it may be, that day your self esteem will go right back to zero, Right back to zero. It does not perpetuate itself and you have to start all over again. But I believe that's a part of the system. I believe that's a part of God's way to tell us

what we're doing and what we're doing right and what are these values we're looking for? They tell us in our book. We talk about humility, we talk about open mindedness, we talk about honesty, we talk about love. We've got a lot of wonderful, wonderful attributes that we can live toward. And the early A as used the four absolutes. They were love, honesty, purity and unselfishness.

Bill has chose not to put those in the big book because they were described as the absolutes

and he didn't think that the drugs could handle absolute love, honesty, purity and unselfishness. So he left them out. That ticked off a bunch of people in Akron and they they still put those four absolutes on the front of their podiums and around their room and, and talk about them. And there was no grand old man named Paul Keebler. He's passed on now, but he was a world class AA and I drove around the the country in a big old Cadillac selling heavy equipment and

AAA meetings. And he was, he was always talking about the four absolutes. And one day I asked him, I said, Paul, what do you think about these four absolutes? And not a little too much for Trunks to handle. And he said, oh hell, he said, that don't mean you got to absolutely do it.

What that means is that your goal, that's where you're going, he said. We used to say that when you get ready to make a decision in your life, you say,

OK,