The topic of step 4 at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

Thank you to set the time for the meeting, I will read an extract from Chapter 7, page 89. Working with others

Working with others practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other Alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. This is our 12th suggestion. Carry this message to other Alcoholics. You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence. When others fail, remember they are very ill. Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish. To see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of

friends, this is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives.

The topic of tonight's meeting is working step four with a Swansea and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic and after which the floor will be open for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that, I will now hand over to Tim.

Thank you. My name's Tim. I'm an alcoholic. Let me just. Oh, what am I trying to? I'm trying to share the screen. It looks different than usual. Here we go. Let's see if that seems to have worked. There we go. There we go. Can you see the big book now?

Yeah, good. OK, so there are a couple of you. I'm not sure I know. So just so you know what this is about, Tim Alcoholic got sober 24th of July 1993. I don't know if I'm a good sponsor, but I've I'm a busy sponsor. So that that bit certainly true. I've done a lot of it.

So I would like with addiction, just because you've done a lot of it doesn't mean you're good at it just but you do have some experience back there.

So this is just my personal experience. I don't speak on behalf of a a if it's helpful, great. If it if it's not, then don't come back and tell everyone how awful I am. That's just fine with me. So next we launched out on a course of vigorous action. So I mean you, you will already have said this to the Swansea that they need to when taking Step 3. Be prepared

for concerted action

until it's done, until steps 4 through 9 are done. And I would liken it to taking a trip through

a a sort of dark medieval German forest. As long as you stick. Has to be German, doesn't it? You need the menace without it being German. There's no French forest, you know, that's a Pleasington time, but a German forest,

you get the idea. Dangers on every side. You want to stick to the path and get through it as quickly as possible. The path is torch lit, so you're fine. Like the wolves won't get you as long as you stay on the path. But if you dawdle, you're going to start looking into the darkness and then the darkness will start to look back at you and then you'll start to exchange with the darkness. So you want to just get on with it.

And what they usually say on big book things is you can't launch slowly.

You know, it's got a slip down the, the, the slip way into the sea. If it if it stops you, it's really stuck then

the first step of which is a personal house cleaning which many of us have never attempted. Though our decision step three was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once another indication about the urgency followed by a strenuous effort to face.

Strenuous. What does that mean in practice? If someone is working, or has children or has other intense obligations? I think an hour a day on non working days and two hours a day at weekend is pretty reasonable. Get it out of the way first thing in the morning and then you spend the whole day smugly telling people I've done my step work already. If you leave it till the evening, you spend all day wondering if you're even going to get it done. And then one day

up when you haven't done it. And then two days, and then three days. Then you can't call your sponsor and you can't go to meetings because you now hate everyone because you hate yourself. But you're now in denial about hedging yourself, so you have to hate everyone else's diversionary tactic to avoid facing the truth. So rather than that, just get them to do it. You know, get get up at 6:30, get it done, and then spend the rest of the day smug

if someone's not working. Like not yourself out.

The one thing I would say

there can there is such thing as too much step work. Sometimes it gets too intense and you just need to go and do something nice instead. So I tell people to bookend the step work with a little prayer to start with, a little prayer at the end. And maybe if, especially if it's really intense, some people's histories are really intense, to book something nice afterwards to, you know, take the sort of bitterness away and to come back into the room.

Strenuous effort. We're not interested in results here. We're interested in effort. And that's important. This is our first attempt to look at this properly and it's not going to be perfect. So sometimes people spend years doing their first step for. And I don't think, I don't think that's the most helpful thing to do. You want to get it done as my old sponsor Brian said about his amends, about some of his amends, I think it was his amends or something. He said

I did them. I wouldn't give you tuppence for how I did them, but I did them. And I think it's like that. But the first step for or even the second step, but maybe the first five step fours are a complete disaster. But at least you're getting the material out as best you can. Kevin used to say you you're only interested in the whole luggage. You can come back for the hand luggage later. And I think that's, I think that's right,

a strenuous effort to face

and be rid of. So sometimes people talk about managing anxiety and depression and all of these other things and

that just makes me want to jump off a bridge

now. My anxiety, my depression, my this my that did not go straight away

but I want a solution which is going to get rid of it, not just help me somehow live in hell. That's not the purpose. The purpose is to be rid of this crap.

The advice I give to sponsors as well about Don Pritz would say that in step four, what you want to do, It's like you're sending a kid to a room to clean up the room by taking a big bin bag and putting all the stuff they don't want that is broken and doesn't work and they're tired of them and they've outgrown.

Put it in the bin bag and then we'll take it to the tip and then we'll buy you some new stuff. And that's the image here. Everything we find, we get to get rid of. So we're not finding who we are. This is not about us.

It doesn't say we find who we are. We we find the things in ourselves which have been blocking us. Now if you get rid of what's blocking you, you find who you are. But the Step 4 is not about us. It's about the things which don't work. What things? Beliefs, thinking, behaviour. I didn't come up with my own beliefs, thinking and behaviour. They were taught to me by society and by my family and the people around me.

And so Step 4 is about finding the things that I borrowed from other people which don't work, so I can get rid of them. And then I will. I will. Who I am is what's left over when everything from Step 4 is gotten rid of. So that's why there's nothing to be frightened of here, because you're not writing about yourself. You're writing about the beliefs, the thinking, the behaviour which have messed you up, and you're not responsible for installing the bad software in yourself in the first place.

So yeah, use save to the sponsor. You're, I'm sending you to your room to take all the stuff that doesn't work so we can get rid of it so you don't have to look at it. Yeah, okay. It's totally different than thinking that you're having to sort of

do a catalogue of the hell that you live in so that at least you now understand that the the hell that you live in, there's no point in that.

I don't know if any of you are old enough to remember. I'm not going to name names. I think I can see a couple,

but there was a show that I remember from the 1970s

and early 80s called the Generation Game, where the prize round, a conveyor belt would come past with all of the prizes and you got to concentrate very hard on the conveyor belt. And then afterwards, after 2 minutes were up.

Anything that you could recall as having been on the conveyor belt, you got to keep and take home as the prize.

And Step 4 is like that, but in reverse. Anything you get to find, you get to get rid of. So you want to find stuff. You don't want to conceal stuff because it's the stuff that's killing you.

Our liquor but was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions. Therefore we started upon a personal inventory. This was step 4A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact finding and a fact facing process. So again, here we're interested in peeling back the layers of self justifying, blame throwing narratives and stories which have coated these tiny little grains of

reality until we can find out what really happened, what really went on. It's about finding the getting past the story, peeling it back and getting to the truth.

Also, it's about facts, not judgements. So when I discover, I give you an example. And because people are very frightened that although it's a moral inventory, it's not a moralistic inventory. So what's a moral inventory? It's an inventory where, for instance, I discovered that I am self centred.

Now that's not with a wagging the finger at me, that's a moral question. Am I self centred or am I other centred? It's it's definitely a question within the domain of morality. That's where it resides. So it's a moral question, but we're not judging, we're saying what is going on and do we, what results are we getting from that? I'll give you an example.

I was

often told as a child, oh, you're so selfish,

selfish, selfish, selfish. And I never liked that.

But when someone said to me, well, let's look at this notion that you might be self-centred for one day. Every half hour, at the end of the half hour, you write down what you've been predominantly thinking about for the previous half hour. And come back to me the next day and we'll do a little summary. What have you been thinking about? And it turns out,

thinking about myself in some aspect. For each of those half hours, I've been thinking about these seven areas of self, which we're going to come to what I what what I thought others thought of me, pride, what I thought about myself, self esteem, how others were treating me, personal and sex relations about my financial position, pocketbooks about my security, the things that I need

and the and ambitions, the things that I want.

Me being self-centered was simply an objective description of what my thought life was centered on. Namely me says not a it's not a finger wagging thing. It's simply look at the fact. And then you say to yourself, how much fun am I having thinking about me all day long? How pleasant is that? But it's horrible. Well, OK, I want to get rid of it then. So it's no different than if you got a radio and it doesn't work. It's the it's not a bad radio,

it's not a naughty radio, it's a radio which doesn't work. And it's the same with all of the beliefs, the thinking and the behaviour. What's a character defect? It's a belief, a thinking pattern or a behaviour pattern which does not work. It talks in the big book also about our willingness to throw away the gadget, which doesn't work in favour of the new one, which does.

Let's have a look.

Resentment. Now, the reason we're starting with resentment, the whole phenomenon of resentment is one in which it's basically a great big narrative where I'm the innocent Princess in a world full of ghouls and monsters and ogres and threats and perils

and wicked stepmothers and wicked witches, and I'm the one being fed the poisoned apples. So where is where is me? And it's basically, I won't go into too many details because I don't appear into Course in Miracles territory,

but basically that's what resentment is about. It's about establishing an existential position where I'm innocent and the Bony finger of retribution

is pointed at you, not at me, as I'm trying to get rid of my own guilt and fear. Right. OK, so resentment, it's this huge diversionary tactic. If I'm going to have a hope in Hell's chance of getting to that moral inventory bit of step four, I've got to get rid of resentment. To get rid of resentment, I've got to be willing to get rid of resentment. To be willing to get rid of resentment, I need to do this analysis

in the first three columns to to understand the insanity of it. Because it's only by looking at the insanity of it that I'm willing to let go of it. In the same way. It was only when I looked at the insanity of the drinking and the other neat behaviours,

the compulsive addictions, It was only by looking at the insanity of it that I recognized that I didn't want the insanity anymore. So

the Step 4,

here's the boss level tip.

Step 4, the moral inventory does not start until page 67. The first question in which I identify a moral failing of myself is what were my mistakes on page 67? So what the hell is this stuff about resentment? I'm not going to look at me whilst I think there's something wrong with you. Whilst you're wrongs are filling my entire universe and consciousness, I cannot look at myself. So we've got to get rid of this stuff.

Another very important point about getting rid of resentment.

All resentment is the same and it boils down to this. If this had been different, I would be OK. If this were different, I would be OK.

So whether you've got Whether I've got one resentment or 10,000, the

underlying structure is the same. What this means is I don't need to analyze every single resentment in my life. I need a good range to understand its pervasive impact and to really ram home what is going on. But once the lesson has been learned, I do not need to write. I saw a girl once in a meeting. I felt so sorry for it. She had four lever Arch files full of papers on resentments, and she'd been

it for two years. She'd fallen out with her sponsor. She was looking for someone to read it to. People were running and hiding

and it I tried to talk to her, but she was very, she didn't want it. She didn't want to summarize it. No, no, no. She wanted to read out every damn thing. We get very attached these narratives, so it's very important. I always explain this to sponsees. You must never treat Step 4 as a socially acceptable form of self absorption.

We're here to get a job done and get it done effectively and efficiently so we can move past it.

Umm, so the first three columns. First of all, what is resentment? Now resentment we think of resentment and it's one of those words just like craving in physical craving or obsession in mental obsession, where the, the meaning of it in the big book is different than the meaning of it in the language. Generally. It's related, but it's not exactly the same. So resentment in the language generally means a sort of

an ongoing

self-righteous grievance. But it's very interesting when you look at the language in the big book, by the way, footnote what is written here was not what the 1st 100 did. You need to know that. But if you do what Bill wrote down in 1939, you'll discover it 1000 times more effective than what the 1st 100 did.

So it's some weird miracle which shouldn't work, but it does anyway. That's another question.

When it talks about resentment, it then talks about we asked ourselves why we were angry. And then it talks about being hurt or threatened, being sore, being burned up. And then it talks about our injuries

and being interfered with where where these things have been interfered with. So really this is going to be a catalogue not just of grumbling grievances,

but basically any situation where I'm either persistently or

recurrently upset,

where I'm out of whack. It doesn't matter what flavour the out of whackness is. It can be rage, it can be it can be hurt or threatened, can be self pity, can be basically anything which bothers me because to do the inventory I've got to be unbothered.

Sometimes when people have a crisis, when sponsees have a crisis, the first thing that they want to do is do the inventory. And you can't because you're still upset. You need to get an upset to do the inventory because you're crazy. If you're crazy, you won't see it straight. So you got to get unopset first.

So with this

I get people, and I do this myself, of course, I get built to write about anything which upsets them. It doesn't matter if it feels like the word resentment is anything which upsets or bothers you at any level. And first of all, you want people to do a full catalogue of names of people, places, situations,

ideas. So when it says principles, treat that as being abstract ideas. So I've had problems with literally the second law of thermodynamics. I'm not going to go into detail, but that that took up a couple of years back there.

It's, it's possible to have resentment against super abstract things. It doesn't matter what it doesn't matter that the point is to get something down in the first column. Now the .1 of the points of that is if you can get a comprehensive first column of all the things which are basically persistently or are currently bothered you in your life and it's, you're not writing in detail, but you've got a full list. The purpose of this is twofold. First of all, it gives you a starting point for the

to the stat 4, but secondly, you now know the scope of everything that is wrong with you. Everything that is wrong with you is sitting behind those situations. I used to go to psychotherapy and it did. It was wonderful in some ways, but every time I went, it was like cutting the head off the hydra and two more heads grew back. So it didn't matter what we resolved. We see I seem to come away from each session with twice as many problems as I started

with this. It's the opposite process where if you can, I mean I remember looking at a piece of paper with all the names on and saying my God, my whole life problem can actually be summarized on one page. If I can get past these disturbances, I'll be fine. Which I indeed was

once They've got the list of names and it could be the most someone had was 670.

If people have fewer than 20,

I don't believe them. I just don't believe people that have fewer than 20. So that's a whole other discussion. But most people come up between, you know, 20506070. What I then get people to do is narrow down the top 20 to cover a whole range of areas in their lives

on the basis that once you've analyzed 20, you're not going to learn anything new. It's everything is just the same thing, wearing a different hat.

And then we get to the second column and look at this. Look how concise it is. Mr. Brown. I'm resentful of Mr. Brown. His attention to my wife told my wife of my mistress Brown may get my job at the office.

You'll notice 1235 words, 1236 words, 123458 words, but no more than that. So I get people to write up to five charges per person

to try to be as factual as possible and not to tell a great big story. We want to get the nub of it in the second column

and to do that for somewhere around 20 people and that can be done in like 40 minutes. Some people need some real hand holding to go from the abstract story in their minds to the actual truth of what is going on. My favorite exam? My friend Ivana. She doesn't mind me telling the story

she had a problem with. Let's let's say

Carol

and 2nd column Carol is always putting me down and I started and you want to examine this for them. So always what? You mean like literally every time you encounter Carol, she puts you down. No, no, no, no, no. How often? Well, it turns out once a week. What do you mean by putting you down? That's a bit abstract. That could mean anything. She said she criticizes my ideas. OK, that's great. That's now concrete. I can understand that

she criticizes my ideas. Give me a bit of background here. Who is she? Oh, she's my boss. She's 20 years my senior. What's the context in which this is happening? It's work meetings where we get to throw out ideas and then everyone comments on everyone else's ideas. So the truth in the second column was. So we changed the first column from Carol to my line manager

and in the second column we got it down to

occasionally disagrees with me in work meetings. Now can you see how Carol always puts me down is totally different than My line manager Occasionally disagrees with me In work meetings,

we've in getting the facts down in the second column, we're already doing a huge amount of strip away the the the narrative. Often the narrative sounds like, you know, when they're telling you what's going to happen on a soap opera this evening.

That's what people's first draft of the second column sounds like. And I always work very carefully on the second column to strip back the all the fluff, get down to the facts. But that's just such an important tool for the rest of your life that when you go off the deep end to have the ability to immediately start discounting the egos narratives and just look at something plainly and factually.

Now the effects my, what it says here is effects mine. Then it's got these seven areas

which we talked about earlier, Pride, what you think about me, self esteem, what I think about me,

personal relations, how you treat me, sex relations, how you treat me in the bedroom or in related areas, pocketbooks is to do with money, security, what I need, ambitions, what I want. Now, I used to do this the very traditional way and just people would write, I would write this effects my personal relations, sex relations, self esteem.

And I don't know if you've ever heard of Step 5 where that's all someone does for the third column. First of all, within 5 minutes of its starting, you want to start sticking pins in your eyes or their eyes because it's so boring and painful. And you're like, why? What are you learning from this? I don't know. And that's the problem. It doesn't really tell you anything unless

here again, boss level tip

page 67, it says

an interesting thing.

Where had we been self seeking? Where had we been self seeking? Now when I apply this little trick, which as I took this question, where, where, where had I been self seeking and I applied it back to these seven areas of self, all the lights went off. And this is the key to getting out of resentment.

Umm. The reason I'm resentful is because I am self seeking. In other words, I have a plan, a scheme, a plot, a design, A set of expectations, a blueprint for how I want my life to look. And you're messing with it. Your behaviour is not in accordance with my blueprint.

Now,

whilst my upset is your fault, I'm going to stay unhappy forever. If I'm upset not because of your behaviour but because of my blueprint. We have a way out here because I can get rid of the blueprint and then I'm going to be OK. So to get rid of resentment, you either eliminate the person as you can't change them, so you have to eliminate them. You know,

wait till they're standing at the top of some stairs, one little push and it's in God's good hands. You can either eliminate them or you can eliminate self. You get to pick eliminating other people. And I can tell you it takes a long time. There's a long list of people to get through eliminating self. You eliminate self and you solve the problem universally. Rumi Sufi poet,

would say that it is easier to wear slippers

than to carpet the whole world.

So what we want to do with this third column is use this to demonstrate case by case by case that the reason I'm resentful is because I have a plan. Now how do you get to the plan? If you say to someone how you self seeking here, they're going to say I don't know. They won't because the ego is desperate to cover its tracks. So what we got to do,

the way I do it now, I've done it differently in the past. The way I do it now is I start with personal relations and sex relations. Personal relations and sex relations are about I got a script for how I want you to behave. If it's in the sexual domain, it's sex relations. If it's everything else, it's personal relations. And I say, how do how do we want you to behave? So let's take the example of the line manager,

personal relations. And you, you go to town. You're giving the ego a voice in order to write down what it says. Look at it objectively.

So the line manager,

what's my script for the line manager? Agree with everything I say in work meetings. There we go. That's the script.

Now, the reason why I want someone to behave in a certain way is because I have a plan for what my life should look like. And the plan breaks down into all the financial stuff, which is pocketbooks into all the needs and need is something that everyone needs.

If it's just you, it's not a need, it's a want. So need is about basic stuff, which is common to all humanity. That's security ambitions is about what I want. So we so I say, you know, so the now imagine response, right? So Carol, your boss, if she if she would always agree with you and work meetings, what would that deliver to you in terms of outcomes?

She'd say, well, I'm going to get to keep my job. I put that on security. I keep my job,

um, pocketbooks. Well, that affects my income.

That bounces back onto security. I'll have somewhere to live, somewhere to to

some some funds to pay for my daily necessities because if she criticises me, what I'm frightened of is she's going to sack. And then ambitions. I want a smooth progression up the career chain. So we've now got a picture of the blueprint for this person's life and then that's the outset. So you've got scripts, personal and sex relations,

you've got

the ambition, security and pocketbooks, which is the outcomes, and then you got the internal crap. So

why am I bothered that my line manager criticizes me and work meetings? Because I'm frightened that my colleagues think this is pride, think I'm incompetent. Incompetent. There we go. It's no more complicated than that. Incompetent and foolish. I want them to think of me as smart, innovative, accomplished. And then self esteem might be the same thing. So what I get, what I get people to write and what I write myself

under pride, how do I want them to see me? How do I think they see me? Self esteem, How do I, how would I like to see myself? How do I, how do I actually see myself? And sometimes those feed into each other. So if people think I'm crap, I think I'm crap. If I think I'm crap, I'll project that out onto other people. They're not always the same though. Sometimes you know you've done an amazing job, you just can't get the buggers to see it. Sometimes

you think you're terrible even though everyone's saying, oh we love you so much and you have so much to live for, but you're like, no, I'm the most terrible person in the world. You just won't believe anyone. So sometimes it's just self esteem, sometimes it's just pride. Normally it's both.

So what you get from this, I get people to summarise the third column across the whole of the step four and say right, you've now summarized on one page your egos blueprint for your life. If only this blueprint would be established and maintained in reality, if we could build the building designed by this blueprint, we'd be OK. And you get them to read it out and then

normally laughing by about 1/3 of the way through because

number one, it's full of contradictions #2 it's pie in the sky. Because it's so improbable. I want everyone to love me and adore me and respect me and validate me and praise me, give me lots of money the whole time with no exceptions. It's just unrealistic. And thirdly, what happens when the plan comes off? Well, I just make up another plan, which is what happens.

You're fine for like 8 minutes

and then the cold wind starts to blow and you're back at square one again. It's like peeing yourself in public. There is a moment of relief, but there is no long term benefit.

And what this whole exercise does, it does two things. First of all, it it loosens the individuals allegiance to their egos narrative about what is going on because it's so clearly insane. But you have to get it. When it's in my head it seems completely rational. When it's out on paper and then communicated to someone else, it looks totally different.

Once we've got that, we look at the

page 66, and page 66 is all about motivations for getting rid of resentment. Let's whiz through these.

It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment needs only to futility and unhappiness. So I get people to identify where this is the case. Have you noticed that just because you're upset about your financial situation does not make money fly through your letterbox? It does not achieve what it's meant to achieve, Unhappiness.

It is self-evident. Also there's the displacement to the precise extent that we permit these permit. Interesting verb. Do we squander the hours? That might have been worthwhile. But then the ultimate reason is if I stay resentful, I'm going to drink. If I drink, I'm going to die.

Also, there's a bit down here which started to get get to me recently. A few years ago we began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrongdoing of others fancied a real had power to actually kill.

And what I get to see when I'm taking someone else through this as well is I'll ask this direct question. Have you noticed that because of this set up with the blueprints, with the scripts, the outcomes, the image that you want to hold of yourself, but what you're doing is you're giving other people the right to determine how you feel. You've become their glove puppet. In fact, the people that you respect the least in the world

have the most sway on how you feel. How do you like that? Do you want, do you want to be like that? Do you want to be someone that is constantly triggered and set off by ordinary everyday events? Or do you want to be free? And honestly, that's the one that gets most people. People often don't care if they drink or not, but they don't like the idea of other people being in charge of how they feel. And that's true for me, honestly, emotionally, that's that's the one that I connect to.

And now the purpose of all of that,

the purpose of all of that, is to start to look at the actual solution. And one of the big things which happens in recovery is people get really good at writing, but not very good at changing. So the purpose of getting this far is to literally change, which means I've got to cut off the resentment at the ankles

now. People step forwards vary. Sometimes you have step fours where the everyone on there is clearly like

borderline evil. And that happens particularly people are getting sober really young.

One of the reasons they get sober really young is because there are a lot of really bad people when they're growing up. Some other people, it's pretty clear that like people were just people and they were just in my way. So this notion of, of people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick yet sometimes or maybe they were just getting on with their lives

and they were in my way and so they were a target.

But basically the, the, the simple insight I need to convey at this point with a sponsee is this. If people behave badly, it is because they are driven by emotions that are more powerful than them. Exactly the same as on page 62 about ourselves. So we take the insight from page 62 and apply it here and just deliberately look at these other people and say why might they have behaved badly?

What might be motivating them? Can I identify with those motivations even though the manifestation is different? Can I identify with them? And that starts to break down the barrier between me and other people. And then to diligently over a period of a couple of weeks, apply this prayer. This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done every single time the person pops into your head.

Again and again and again. And it's amazing. It works

it. You can turn other things here into prayers.

God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and everyone. And so I turned into a prayer and say, God show me how to take a kindly, intolerant view of each and everyone. And a good way of doing that the the trick I give people is ask God to show you what the world looks like

through their eyes. And it's not fun, that one, but it's helpful.

And within 8 seconds I read Oh my God, I'm a complete monster.

Or I've been behaving like a complete monster. I'm a perfect child of God, but I've been been behaving like a monster. There we go

once, and I also send people a bunch of readings and things to watch about resentment and forgiveness and all of that so you can go to town on that forgiveness stuff.

And that forgiveness journey then carries on forever on its own track. You're never done with forgiveness. It's where, as people say, we're in forgiveness school here. That's what the planner is. It's forgiveness school and the lessons don't stop coming. And then finally, finally, we're doing an inventory and I'm going to finish in 3 minutes. Alistair, there are

eight questions here. I see eight questions. People disagree, people, people can't, you know, people can't agree on how to count things in a A.

Is it twofold or is it threefold? Well, I don't know. Let's count the folds.

They keep moving though, don't they? But I see eight questions here

putting out of our minds the the wrongs others had done. That's what the whole last three pages are about. We resolutely look for our own mistakes with mistakes. I'm looking at where is my where is my perception of this situation being wrong? What did I do that I shouldn't have done? What did I not do that I should have done? But

the perception has to be altered and I get a bit kind of Rottweiler

Vulcan

cross examining barrister with this stuff about the perceptions. If you're not that sort of person, get them to talk to a friend in a a who is a bit like that. You want. I need from the people around me absolute brutality about deconstructing my little fanciful narratives about things and challenging my perception of things. If my perception doesn't change, I am screwed. You want people to challenge you. So the first question, what

states where is my perception distorted? What is the true story here? What is the same way of looking at this? Then these questions are now super straightforward. The hard bit we've done, which is getting behind the resentment, this is the easy bit. Where was I selfish? That's where I put my interests ahead of yours. What are your interests that I've disregarded? Dishonesty.

That straightforward lying? Misrepresentation,

concealment, or delusion?

Self seeking. We've already basically covered self seeking by those extra questions about the third column. What was I frightened of? Brainstorm bullet points.

Where were we to blame? That's why I'm looking at the situation. What specific contribution did I make to that situation? Which made a bad situation, which either created the bad situation or made a bad situation worse.

We saw our faults. The 7th question is faults, character defects. I give people a list of character defects. Some people like a list of 20. Other people want the list for like 300. Like whatever suits the person's personality. Give them the range, let them pick. But I don't write more than three faults per personal situation because otherwise you're just there forever. You want to pick the main items. And then finally with Michigan, our wrongs,

that's the behaviour of mine that harmed other people. So the 7th question, fault prepares me for step 7. The 8th question, wrongs, prepares me for step 8. Now what do I write these questions about? Number one, I write them about the 20 people that I did the detailed analysis of in the third column, plus

any other area of my life. So often food

finance,

long looking after your home. There are lots of areas which won't necessarily come up in the resentment inventory. But this is a moral inventory of my whole life. And I tell you, I've had people where the resentments cover like 110th of their life. But the real problems are over there. There's a gambling problem, there's a food problem, there's a diet problem, there's an exercise problem, there's a caffeine problem, there's an energy drink problem. There's a someone going to psychics and spending £400 a month with like those, those like

by psychics,

phone lines, all sorts of weird stuff that will not come out of the woodwork unless you say, honey, you want to look at your whole life, not just the people you resent because that's where the inventory lies.

We'll cover fear and sex, both distasteful subjects next week, but I'm going to stop there for now and and ask Alistair if you would to to open it up for questions.

Thank you, Tim.

Thank you very much. That was very helpful.

The meeting is now open for questions for Tim, which can be done by raised hand function in Zoom or you can message me through the chat function and I will ask him directly. If all else fails, just wave at me violently on the screen and I'll, I'll yeah, hand it over to you to ask your question and we'll we'll try and close on the hour while we might be a little bit longer. Anyway. Anyway, any questions?

Amara, you have a question and then Karen. OK, thank. OK, thank you. Tim, I was wondering for the fear part in the fourth column, do you encourage your, the people you're working with to go back to the third column and to connect all the fears that arise out of the

like demands from the seven areas itself?

That's a, that's a good question. I, I don't find people have a problem with that question usually. I think it, it usually works out in a very straightforward way. So

what I get people to look at, well, first of all, there are two sources of of the fear question. First of all, it's those relationships.

Secondly,

it's it's those that the areas of life not covered by resentment

and I just get people to, and this is all I do myself is to imagine myself in that situation and say, well, what what are the, what, what fears are floating around in my mind When I consider that situation, I find things just float to the surface pretty naturally. It's not analytical exercise. It's, I think it's a, it's a being sensitive to what is going on inside