Steps to a new life

I found the following in some papers that I had from a meeting and thought that it was really a good summary of the Twelve Steps.

It feels good (First Step) to get honest about yourself, to admit to yourself what has been objectively totally obvious for a long time to anyone and everyone but yourself: that your life is unmanageable and you have been affected by someone else's drinking. Yes, it feels better to finally acknowledge that, rather than to keep on pretending otherwise.

And then (Second Step) it feels good, by fiat and out thin air, to start telling yourself that by reaching out and asking for help and by availing yourself of resources (call them powers, or even a Higher Power if you will) outside of yourself, you might actually get to the point where you have a decent life and stop hating who you are and learn to appreciate being alive.

And then, what the hell, it feels pretty darn good to (Third Step, and the one that few of us truly figure out how to do) abandon all your fears and worries, and for no good reason simply begin to trust that everything is going to be alright because that is the total opposite of what you’ve been doing for as long as you can remember and look where that got you. So you search inside yourself for some basis of feeling that things are going to be OK, and you begin to let go of your chronic and acute anxiety. You learn to trust. And to that end, you fashion some conception, any conception, of a "Higher Power" you can trust in and seek guidance from (which for purposes of convenience and because ultimately it feels silly to do otherwise you end up calling "God").

Getting back to that honesty thing again, even though it is enormously frightening and difficult to do so, it ultimately feels truly fantastic to (in the Fourth and Fifth Steps) take a long hard look at what you are as a human being, and to identify the many aspects of your personality and mentality that have played a causative role in producing so much of your unhappiness, and seeing how you could begin to respond to the situations you find yourself in in a different way, a way that is consistent with taking responsibility for who you are and how you are going to experience life, and to go through all this with another person.

And then (in the Sixth and Seventh Steps) there’s humility, and recognizing that as much as you want and need to change and grow out of and away from the very unhealthy propensities of personality you’ve identified, you’re never going to be able to completely do so and certainly not on the basis of your own individual resources.

Followed by (in the Eighth and Ninth Steps) facing up to the harm you’ve caused others, and acknowledging those wrongs to the people you’ve harmed.

And then (Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Steps) maintaining that honesty, hope, trust, responsibility, humility, and reliance on a "power" other than yourself while seeking to be helpful, kind, loving and tolerant of others for the rest of your life.