The resentment inventory at a Big Book study in Winston-Salem, NC

Good to be back in North Carolina. Had a little trip last weekend up back up to New Jersey and that was good too. But we were really glad to get back. We're considering North Carolina home now and

I'm enjoying my time here and especially at this meeting.

There was a a piece of paper that was passed around. I hope everybody has a copy of it. I

what it is, is it's a, a four step resentment sheet and we'll get to that in a minute. But if you don't have a copy, I think there's, there's probably somewhere around here. Now in the, in the weeks previous to this, we've covered the first step. We, it took us five or six weeks

to cover the first step. And hopefully, hopefully everyone understands what it means as far as Alcoholics Anonymous is concerned to be an alcoholic.

The, the chapter, the chapter we agnostics basically lays it out. If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot give up alcohol entirely or if, when drinking of little or no control over the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic. That's, that's very, very simple.

And if you're, if you're a drug addict or a food addict or anything like that, you can you can use that same

defining terminology if when you honestly want to, you can't stay away from it. And when using it, you have little or no control over the amount you take.

That's what. That's what turns it into

alcoholism or drug addiction or whatever. And when that happens,

there's a scale. And no matter how far down the scale you've gone, you'll find your experience can benefit others. Your ability to quit

drinking on a non spiritual basis will depend on the amount of control you've lost and drank. It says. And then in chapter 2 wives, there's the different type of heavy drinkers, Alcoholics going down the scale. There's very definitely a scale. And so depending on how far down the scale you've gone, you'll find that you have less and less control as you go down that scale. I think we've all seen people in here who,

who've gone to treatment, you know, 28 day treatment and drank on the way home.

I think you know how crazy, you know, when you think about that, how crazy is that? You've just spent $14,000 to, to figure out how to not drink and be encouraged to not drink and be taught to not drink and why you shouldn't drink and on the way home you drink. It's nuts. That has to be a lack of

sanity. And I think we've all seen chronic relapsers in these rooms. We've we've probably seen chronically relapses in these rooms. You know, it's my belief for most of the chronic relapses is they've gone down the scale to the point where simple meeting attendance is not going to be able to keep them sober. So,

and a lot of times they're misunderstood, you know, and in my earlier days up in New Jersey, the chronic relapse or after a certain point was shunned.

You know, they tell you stick with the winners. And so those chronic relapses were the losers. But really what this book says, this book doesn't tell you to stick with the winners. It tells you to stick with the losers, the people who need you, you know, so, so once, once I got ahold of, of these principles, I started to see that Alcoholics Anonymous, at least up in that up in my area, had changed significantly from what it was meant to be

to what it was, you know, at that current time. And that's kind of a shame. So we understand the first step and the second step, we come to believe that there's a power greater than ourselves that we can somehow get ahold of, get in touch with this, this power we need. The first thing we need from this power is the ability to say separated from alcohol or separated from the substances which we have

little or no power over. That's the first thing we need, but we also need help managing our lives. Dash that our lives have become unmanageable.

Here's the thing. And, and very, very few people really want to admit this. When you're, when you're new, you know, it's very difficult to get to this truth. But the truth of the matter is, is whoever has been managing your life should be fired

because they've done such a bad job with it. And the person who is managing your life was usually you.

So, you know, nobody likes to fire themselves, but that really is needed. Sam Shoemaker, who basically was, was one of Bill Wilson's spiritual advisors. Sam Shoemaker ran the Oxford Group in New York City where Bill Wilson spun dry and got sober. Okay. He wrote a book called Life Under New Management. You know, you can find it on eBay still for a couple of bucks. And basically in that book, it lays out the step process.

That's how you turn your management over to God is basically the steps

anybody in here does. Has anybody in here been told to turn it over? You know, you're screwing something up and you raise your hand and you share a bunch of stuff in the meeting and somebody goes, kid, you got to turn it over. Well, a lot of times. A lot of times they'll tell you to turn it over, but they won't explain how exactly to do that.

I'd been told to turn things over for a long time until I actually learned how you're supposed to do that. You turn things over

by, by applying steps three through 12. That's how you turn something over. You practice. You practice steps and principles that go against your, your, your nature as an alcoholic and against your ego and against your, your, your incessant need to continue to run your life.

You take these steps and, and these steps basically shift your whole perception and your whole behavior patterns

to the point where you know, you, you start to be able to, to do some things that you couldn't do before. The most important of which is to say separated from alcohol.

So you come to believe this in step three. You know, we did. We did Step 3 two weeks ago.

That's basically

making a decision that you're in, OK, you know, OK, I, I admit I'm an alcoholic. You know, I can see that I can't run my own life. I know that there's a power greater than myself out there because I see it working in so many people in Alcoholics Anonymous. You can see this power

work in our rooms more so than I think anywhere else on the planet, You know, you know, the transformational power of God is at work in these rooms and you just can't deny it. When you see it enough, it's okay, okay, I, I'm willing to believe

that there's a power greater than myself. You know, the next step is you're in, you know you're in. I'll do what you guys say. I, I've run out of plans. You know, if, if, if I need to make a decision to turn the management of my life over to something that's going to help it run better than, than I, then I, that's what I need to do.

And it's not an easy decision to make. The third sentence is not an easy decision to make. You know, we don't want to admit failure. We don't want to admit that we're, you know, we're, we're doing a lousy job running our lives. None of us want to admit that. But the the fact of the matter is, is you got you got to look and see what's going on and be honest and true with yourself about that.

So in in step three, we make a decision to turn our will and our life over the care of God.

But that decision, unless it's followed by some action, won't won't mean anything.

The great story that you hear all the time is there's there's three frogs sitting on a log and two of them decide to jump into the pond. How many of them are on the log?

Three because the two frogs just decided they didn't do it. And so many times we're caught sitting on the logs stuff. There was a, there was a couple of meetings up in my area that were 1-2 and three meetings, step 1-2 and three meetings. And I went in there one time and I said, I said that's all you do. You just do step once 212 and 3:00.

So, so you realize that everything is totally screwed up in your life and that there is an answer to to that big problem and you're going to access that answer. And then you go back to your life is all screwed up. You know, it's, it's a circle and you never, you never get out of that. How about we start looking at some of the steps that actually are off

solution to that problem. You know, and

it's happened before that people didn't agree with me.

Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal house cleaning. I think I said this last week, I'm really good friends with an aerospace engineer. He was in town this last weekend and did a little speaking down at down in Statesville.

And I asked him one time I go, I go, Doug, what does launch mean? What do you think about when you think about launch? And he goes, Chris, launch means going from zero to 300 miles an hour in a matter of feet, you know, so when you sink a launch, that means if we're going to launch into a course of vigorous action,

that doesn't mean, you know, like I'm going on vacation in a couple months, I'll bring a pad and pencil with me. Then, you know, launch means like right then nothing, nothing gets in the way of that. So you make your third step decision and then you start on your four step right away. At that moment is really what this book is telling us.

Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. So the third step decision is a vital and crucial step, but it can have little permanent effect unless it's followed up by a fourth step.

That's why I had problems with the 1-2 and three meeting. You know they would. They were bringing a lot of beginners into this 1-2 and three

and it was 123123123.

The book is basically saying that it's great to understand you're an alcoholic. It's really good to come to the conclusion that there's a power greater than yourself. And it's, it's also a really good thing to make a decision to turn your will in your life over the power of God. Apply spiritual practices in your life so that you can overcome alcoholism. But but that's, that's just a, you know, that's just a very, very beginning. You have to do some things after that.

Our liquor was but a symptom, so we had to get down to the causes and conditions.

One of the most revolutionary things about the book Alcoholics Anonymous is it it it doesn't blame a lot of things on alcohol. It basically says our drinking was a symptom. And there's a lot of a lot of statements in this book and in the 12 and 12 that back that up.

Bottles are just a symbol.

Umm, my drinking is. My drinking is part of alcoholism. Alcoholism is

my defective relationships. It's the emotional bondage of self. The, the, the, the terminal self centeredness that, that, that I have the, the perspective that's based on self centeredness that I have the, the worldview that's based on self seeking and selfishness.

The, the, that's really what my alcoholism is. And the drinking is a symptom of that. It's a bad symptom. It's a symptom that needs to be taken care of and gotten under control. But if it's just a symptom,

you know, treating doctors understand this. They either treat the illness or they treat the symptoms of the illness. And if a doctor has the choice to be able to do either one, he's going to treat the illness first because treating the symptoms, all your, your, your leaving the underlying illness alone, and all you're doing is treating the symptoms.

So the real answer is to treat the illness. And that's what we're doing as we move into Step 4.

It's the beginning of a treatment for alcoholism.

We had to get down to causes and conditions. Causes and conditions of what? Of our alcoholism, Of our failure at life, the things that are why we haven't been good managers of our own lives.

Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory. This was Step 4.

Bill Wilson was a businessman, kind of a failed businessman. But when he told stories or or he used examples, he tried to use examples that he thought the people he was working with. No, most of the 1st 100 were failed businessmen.

So he says a business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact finding, a fact facing process. It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock and trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods to get rid of them properly and without regret.

If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values. So he's saying we're going to take stock, we're going to take an inventory of ourselves and we're going to see what has been working, what hasn't been working. We're going to see the causes and conditions. We're going to try to identify the causes and conditions of our inability to manage our own life.

And we're going to start to take actions that are going to going to help help us

help place ourselves in the atmosphere where God can remove these defects of character and take a little bit of control of the management of our lives. Ultimately, when we start working steps 10:00 and 11:00, we want a more and more allow God in to manage our lives.

But in the beginning it's, it's a little tough. It's it's it's not something we're used to.

So, so he says the business image. We do exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure. Being convinced that self manifested in various ways was what had defeated us. We considered its common manifestations.

Remember earlier in step three we realized, we recognized that selfishness, self centeredness, that is the root of our trouble.

If you haven't gotten that, there's still some work to do in the first three steps.

When I first read this book, I was in a treatment center in early 1989, and I read about the selfish person. And I thought to myself, you know, that really makes a lot of sense for my roommate, you know, selfish bastard, you know,

they took all the drawers and the dresser and keeps me awake at night moving all around and everything.

I couldn't see it for myself. I, you couldn't have convinced me I was selfish and self-centered because I did.

I did what I thought were acts of selflessness. I would lend you money. I'd share my drugs. You know what I mean? I, I do, I, I give you a ride into the city, you know, for, for court or something. I mean, I would do, I would do things like this, you know, with my best buddies, Weezer and Bear Man,

you know, the guys who didn't even have any names. And so I thought like I was like a really loyal friend and all this. And you know, I look back on it, it was completely insane,

but it was hard for me to pin. You know, it's, it's really hard to look in the mirror and admit all this stuff. It really is. We take this in chunks. We take this in pieces sometimes. But I understand today absolutely every single problem in my life is caused at root.

The root cause is selfishness and self centeredness.

Resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more Alcoholics than anything else.

Notice that it doesn't say alcohol destroys more Alcoholics than anything else. It's basically saying resentment does. Bill understood the alcoholic.

We we are so angry at so many things, it's unbelievable. Even if that anger is below the horizon and it's not blatant, we're still really, really unhappy with a lot of people,

a lot of institutions, a lot of principles or the way the world works. We're unhappy with them. And the more alcoholic we are, the more pissed off we are. And somebody, I mean, I have never met an alcoholic who couldn't tell me who they're mad at. You know, every once in a while somebody will come over and they'll be doing their four step with me and they'll have like 8 resentments on their ace on their four step list. And I'll say 8 resentments.

That's a bad day. You know that's not a lifetime inventory,

you know, and that you have to help them see that. You have to help them understand what resentment is. When you look at the word resentment, you know, if you look at the Latin

root where it came from, Ray means again, and sentiment means to feel. So what happens if if we're angry, we refill that anger and refill that anger. That's really what resentment is.

Is anger appropriate? Sometimes, of course it is. Sometimes it's absolutely unavoidable. But what happens is we we grab that anger and we Nestle it to our bosom and we feed it and take care of it, nurture it. And 10 years later, we're still mad

at somebody for something they did. We're still looking to get even with them or something. You know, like what they did to us.

And, and one of the things that I heard that made so much sense to me once I'm in a meeting was resentment is like drinking poison and expecting somebody else to die,

you know, and it really is. We're going to be, we're going to be angry about it, but what it's doing is it's corroding our spiritual condition.

From resentment stem all forms of spiritual disease for we have not only been mentally and physically I'll, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. That's a great line. So the people who get sober and run off to the gym eight nights a week and skip the meetings because they're doing they're they're doing powerlifting or something. They got the cart before the horse.

The people who run off and, and are dealing with the the mental stuff, going to counselors seven nights a week and

group therapy the the other seven nights and psychiatrists the other seven nights and they're missing out on meetings or 12 step processes. They've got the cart before the horse. We need to straighten out spiritually and then we start to straighten out mentally and physically. And I've I've seen that time and again in dealing with the resentments. We set them up paper. We listed the people, institutions or principles with whom we are angry. This is number one. If you look at your sheet,

on that sheet, at the top line

should be the people, institutions and principles. You just list that. Now, the sheet that I gave out, I want everybody to understand I'm not, I'm not a slave to certain mechanics. There are a lot of different forms. There's a lot of different ways to do it. Ultimately, what I'd like people to be able to do is just to be able to do these four steps with a big book and a piece of paper. You know that ultimately that's the best thing. But you know, I have done the Hazleton Guide, you know, every treatment center

there's writes their own four step. There's the Joe and Charlie fours where you check stuff off. And I found that that's that's just not the way to do it, you know, check the boxes. This book asks you to put it down in black and white. So

I don't really care how you do it. I don't care if you go across or you go up and down. What what what I'm interested in is that you comply with the instructions in the book. That's what's really necessary. So I don't care what it looks like. This form is something that I'm working with currently.

Something may come up next week that makes a little bit more sense to me. You know, I'm open minded with with that stuff and and not, not a slave to the actual mechanics, but they ask you to put down on paper the institutions, people and principles with whom we were angry. So if your first four step, that's going to cover a lot of ground,

how many people, institutions or principals were you angry at?

You know,

I'm also a believer in multiple inventories. I it says in the step book, many of us go in for annual or semiannual house cleanings. Basically what a house cleaning is. It's steps 3 through 9, you know, clean house then help others

that let that lets me know that not everybody but many AAS do multiple four steps, multiple fist steps,

annual or semi annual or in my case every four years or so.

I believe. I believe to do that is a very a very powerful experience.

The second question we asked ourselves why we were angry and you know, be be brutally honest. Why were you angry right it down? I was angry because of and just just put it down there. Now, if there's more than one resentment, let's say you're you're writing the the resentment. I resent my father.

OK, if there's more than one resentment, I use more than one piece of paper. But you'll see in here that you don't necessarily have to do that. Bill gave us two ways to write resentment inventory. One is to list out each resentment and the other was to list all the resentments. And there's two different exams in here. What we'll we'll look at that. But the second question is, why were we angry? And try to be as accurate as possible. What I don't like to see is

things like, well, I was, I'm resentful of my father because he was never there. OK, That's a this is an example. He was OK. Oh, he was never there. I mean, I mean, you know, he got your mother pregnant and you never saw him again the rest of your life. He was never there. No, no, that's not what I mean. Well, what do you mean? Well, he never went to my baseball games.

Well then right now he never went to your baseball games. Let's try to get to the truth here and not use these absolute statements. You know he was a jerk. Well, don't. Don't write that down. Write down specifically why you resent them. Resent the person.

This is about discovering the truth about our stock and trade, and we should be as truthful as possible in it.

Now we start to go into the third column a little bit. The seven areas itself. In most cases it was found that our self esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships, our sex relationships were hurt or threatened. So we were sore, we were burned up on our grudge list. We set opposite each name. Our injuries was in our self esteem, our security, our ambitions, our personal or sex relations, which had been

with we were usually as definite as this example. So here's column three. I want to explain column three and and why we need to to understand it and apply it to the four step resentment inventory. If you're mad at somebody,

something you have needs to be threatened or something you want to get needs to be threatened, harm, threatened or interfered with. I look at it like this. Instincts are

protect what I have. Ambitions are the things that I don't have yet but I want to get. So if you harm, threaten or interfere with my instincts, which is the stuff that I have, or you harm, threaten or interfere with the things I want to get, which are my ambitions,

that's what leads to me getting pissed off at you. And it's usually money, power, sex. Those are the big three. When you start messing with those, whether I have it or whether I want to get it, you rile me up. And we need to look at this. So the seven areas itself,

basically our self esteem, this is how we feel about ourselves, our pocketbooks, that's our financial security, our ambitions, the things that we want to get, our personal relationships,

our sex relationships.

If these are interfered with in any way, if they're harm, threatened or interfered with, they cause us to be angry. So we need to list these down.

Let me use as an example a basic, basic example. The IRS. OK, column number one, I'm mad at, you know, the IRS column #2 why am I angry at the Rs? Because they're auditing me on Thursday. Okay, well now I've got to look at the seven areas of of self.

Is it affecting myself Esteem? Yeah, it, it's harming myself esteem. It's, you know, myself esteem is how I feel about myself. And I feel pretty crappy about myself right now because I got caught cheating on my income taxes. All right, Does it affect your pocketbook? You're damn right it affects my pocketbook.

They're probably going to attach my paychecks for the next two years.

Does it affect your ambitions? Yes, it affects my ambitions because I want to use that money. It may be the IRS's money, but I want, I want that money. I got plans for it. You know what I mean? I want them taking it. They take it up.

Does it affect my personal relationships? Well, it could, it could because if it gets out that, you know, I'm being audited and there's going to be criminal charges or something like that, you know, some of my personal relationships might be harmed. Is it going to, is it going to harm my, my sex relationship? Well, the wife might not be too happy about, you know, me not letting her know I was cheating on the income tax

and and it absolutely could affect my intimate relationships.

You go over it like this. A sentence, a short sentence for each of those that apply. If it doesn't apply, fine, Don't put don't put it down. But it if it applies, let's look at it. Because what we want to do is we want to see how we operate. We want to see emotionally how we operate with these resentments. And I'll show you why when we get to the 4th column. Now, when we look at Mr. Brown,

Missus Jones, my employer and my wife.

Let's just look at Mr. Brown.

The causes his attention to my wife told my wife of his Mistress Brown may get my job at the office.

OK,

now if you look at this, each one of these gets a different column for for the seven areas itself, sex relations and self esteem. For the first one, sex relations, self esteem, fear, security, self esteem, fear. Those are what's affected in those three resentments for Mr. Brown.

The greatest shirt I ever saw it in a convention was Mr. Brown needs his ass kick. I love that.

OK, now let's look at how he does Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones, she's a nut. She snugged me. She committed her husband for drinking. He's my friend. She's a gossip. Oh, he grouped them all together. And if you look, there's only one column for the seven areas itself. Personal relationship, self esteem, fear. You know, I don't care how you can do it either way. But what we really want to do is we want to look at

we want to look at what's going on with these resentments. I did the same thing with with my employer and my wife.

We went back to our lives. Nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty. When we were finished, we considered it carefully. The first thing apparent was was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. The 1st 3 columns, they're still wrong. You know what I mean? The 1st 3 columns, you're still pissed at them.

There's really been not a lot of revelation here in the first three columns. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Sometimes it was remorse, and then we were sore ourselves. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worst matters got. As in war, the victor only seemed to win.

Our moments of triumph were short lived.

It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. You know, if you're going to be grumpy and cranky in Alcoholics Anonymous decade after decade after decade,

you know, that's, that's really your choice. There's a way out. There's an inventory process and there's amends and there's everything else that can get you from, you know, a cranky person to somebody who is pretty free and it's available. And I really don't want to waste my life being mad all the time. I you know, I used the craziest thing was is I was a resentment machine.

Last year's a drinking, you know, they talk about an immense list. I had a list of people I wanted to get even with. That was my list. And I would wake up in the morning and this is what would happen. I would, I would wake up and the first thoughts to come into my mind was this, those bastards.

So first thing I would think of in the morning, you know, hey, that's really setting the tone for a good day, you know?

Oh, but I really thought they did it to me. You know,

my life is in shambles. It can't possibly, because it's my fault.

To the front precise extent that we permit these resentments do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile.

But with the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, that's what our hope is, and that's what's necessary. If you're an alcoholic, you need to maintain and grow your spiritual experience or you're in trouble. This business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal, for when harboring such feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die. So to be free of these resentments is really

one of the main purposes of the 4th and 5th and 6th and 7th and 8th and 9th step, to be free of this anger. Because if we don't get rid of this anger, we're not going to be placed in the sunlight of the Spirit where God can shine down and protect us, keep us safe and protected. We're in the clouds, we're in the dark. We're always angry. We can't access the power

that can keep us safe, protected, sound, sober, and help us recreate our lives, so we need to be free of these resentments. If we were to live, we had to be free of anger.

The grouch in the brainstorm before, not for us now. Period. Dictionaries are helpful sometimes when studying this book because brainstorm has a whole new meaning today than it did back in 1939. Today a brainstorm is you get a brainstorm. It's like three or four people sitting around. They come up with a an idea for a better mousetrap or something,

a brainstorm. If you if you read the definition in a 1939 or so dictionary, it means to completely lose your mind. It means punching holes in the walls and ripping the keys off of pianos and kicking the cats and busting the windows in the car. I mean, it's just completely losing your mind.

Has anybody in here ever completely lost their mind that way?

Let the record show all 600 people raised their hand.

Uh, these tapes are going to go to my Home group in New Jersey.

OK, the grouch in the brainstorm are not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men for out, but for Alcoholics these things are poison.

We turned our back to the list. Now there we understand the 1st 3 columns, but there needs to be a line of demarcation.

This is this is a big separator here. OK, we've listed out who we were angry, why we were angry, and how it affected us. Now

we need to look at the 4th column, but there's some work we need to do. First it says here's what it says. We turn back to the list for it held the key to the future. If this list holds the key to our future, should we be paying attention to it? Absolutely. Bring that up at the next discussion meeting. Let's talk about the key to the future our our four step list. You'll see the meeting turn to fear or resentment really quick.

We're prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle.

We began to see the world and its people really dominated us in that state, the wrongdoing of others fancied or real. Because sometimes we have resentments that there's no basis for

had the power to actually kill. Who wants to be dominated? Is anybody in here want to be dominated by the people you hate? No way.

How can we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol.

This was our course. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick,

though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us. They, like ourselves, were sick too.

Spiritual sickness, you know, resentment is a spiritual sickness. Fear is a spiritual sickness. There's a lot of, there's a lot of things that affect our spirit and to some extent all of us are spiritually sick in one way or another.

So though we did not like their symptoms in the way they disturbed us, they, like ourselves, are sick too. Here's a prayer directive. Whenever there's a directive like this, we're supposed to pray. So what I asked my guys do is after they've written the 1st 3 columns and they're about to do the 4th column,

they need to do the resentment prayer. And the resentment prayer is basically this. We ask God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, this is a sick man, how can I be helpful to him? God saved me me from being angry. Thy will

not mine be done. And that's the resentment prayer. And we really should say that before we start filling out the 4th column.

We avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful. We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show us how to take a kindly, intolerant view of each and everyone. Now here's here's the instructions for the 4th column referring to our list. Again,

putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely look for our own mistakes. Where had we been? Selfish, dishonest, self, self seeking and frightened. So you write a sentence on each of those that are applicable. Let's go back to the IRS

example. By wearing I've been selfish. I was selfish because I wanted to hold on to my money even though it was not my money, it was the IRS money. Where was I dishonest? I cheated on my income taxes. That's illegal. Where was I self seeking? I had plans for that money. I need a bass boat because without a bass boat I'm not going to be happy.

Where was I frightened? I was frightened that if I didn't get the bass boat, I wouldn't be happy.

I was writing. If I didn't have that money, you know, I'd lose it. OK, so that's a four banger. You know, when I start to look at this, when I write it out,

is, is the IRS coming after me or did I ask him to come after? You know what I mean? They're just doing their job. They just want their money. And when I start to see this, this takes the wind out of my anger. When I see the truth about the resentment, it takes the wind out of my anger. I'll say that probably three out of five resentments disappear just when you inventory them.

But for the other two out of five, you know, the rest of the work is is absolutely necessary, the amends and all that other stuff. But most of the resentments will disappear just when you start looking at you know why you even have them. The truth about about your

your stock and trade,

though a situation had not been entirely out for what we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. So in step four, we in the fourth column, we forget what they did to us and we just look at our part.

Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man's. When we saw our faults, we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly, and we're willing to set these matters straight. Why were we willing to set these matters straight? Because we became willing to go to any lengths. And Step 3,

that was part of Step 3. The decision to go through the rest of the steps was part of the third step decision.

You know,

I've really had some resentments in my day. I'm going to finish up just telling, telling a few a few of my own personal experiences with with this step.

I was, I was running around with, with this guy. We're doing a lot of a a work. This is around 1999 and we were doing workshops and we were doing a whole bunch of stuff together and,

and for one reason or another, you know, I'm sure that I played a part in this. For one reason or another, this guy kind of turned on me and he started talking behind my back and, and I found that out because people were coming up to me and saying, Chris so and so, you know, was

telling us to stay away from you, that you're going to get drunk. And, and, and you know what it was actually was I shared a fist step with this guy and, and he started telling everybody all the stuff that I had shared on the fist step. And he was saying, you know,

he was saying, you know, Chris said all this stuff and he said he's, he's going to get drugs. And I confronted him, you know, when I go, hey, you know, guys are coming to me saying that you're, you're, you're, you're talking crap about me. What what's, what is that? He's like, no, no, not saying anything. Nope, Nope. And, you know, I mean, this went on and on and on and it got, it got to the point where it really started to drive me crazy. It started to eat my lunch.

I mean this, this, this. This guy who's supposed to be my spiritual brother is sharing all this stuff from my fist steps. He's telling everybody to stay away from me. Who? Who are my support group?

He's telling my sponsee's to fire me and he's not admitting this to my face. I was pissed, you know what I mean. And I started to gather the troops. Now here's my part in it. What happened was I started to gather the troops. I started to get my team up against his team,

you know, my half a, a against his half a. And and this is this. This comes out of a misperception of being under attack. You know, I mean, I really misperceived. This was him acting out the way he was acting out. And I was reacting really, really poorly because I was bringing a lot of other people into it. Now it got to the point where I couldn't sleep, you know,

some meetings I didn't feel comfortable in. And I, you know, I recognize the fact I'm, I've got a lot of sponses. I've gone through the steps a number of times.

I know I need to do a step forward through a step 9 on this guy. I know I do. But I don't want to because I I'm justified with this. You know, he did. Yeah. I didn't do it. He did all this stuff. And for the longest time, the longest time I I held out. I held out on this. I wouldn't,

I wouldn't do what I needed to do. And finally it became apparent that I was getting so emotionally I'll that I could drink over this, you know, I could drink over this. So I bit the bullet. I did a four step on it. OK, I shared it with somebody.

Step six, step 7, prayed for, you know, the willingness to have these defects of character removed. The things that that made me think I was so certain that it was all this guys fault that I had no part in this. And then I, you know, I put the A step card together and in the A step card I did, I played some role in this.

I did not treat him the way I would have liked to be treated. You know, I, I talked bad about this guy. I gathered troops against this guy and I put all this stuff down on my A Step card and I gave him a call