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Step Ten          
 

Step Ten

We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

      
         
               
 
Question 1: Continuing to take personal inventory sounds like such a drag, why do I have to go on endlessly beating myself up?
Answers:

To me practicing this step doesn’t feel like endlessly beating myself up. It’s more like checking my compass to make sure I’m still heading where I want to go and getting rid of any dead weight before it bogs me down. I really don’t want to go back to carrying stuff around for years till I’m really miserable. This step helps keep my heart light as I “trudge the road to happy destiny”.
Linda S

Continual inventory may sound like a bit of a chore but it’s really nothing compared to endlessly feeling guilty, making excuses for myself, lying to cover my misdeeds, lying to cover my lies and the never ending effort to keep track of it all.
Steve P

I try to do the right thing but when I come up short I want to straighten things out as soon as possible. Nothing seems to get better if I just try to ignore it.
Mary S
   
               
 
Question 2: Somebody I respect told me that the key to forgiveness lies in Step 10. I keep staring at the step but I can’t see any key there. What was she talking about?
Answers:

I love the way your friend put that, “the key to forgiveness”. One of the things I must be most on the lookout for when I take my continuing inventory is a resentment. Resentments occur when things don’t go the way I want them to, when people don’t behave they way I think they should. If I am unable to let such things go when they occur and hang on to them instead, I am harboring a resentment. I believe the Big Book when it says that for me resentments can be serious, even fatal things. I find that I cannot will a resentment away. I cannot rationalize it away. No amount of logic, of thinking that I really should let it go and forgive this person actually makes that happen for me. Forgiveness, the ability to let a resentment go, must be sought outside myself, it is a gift which I must receive. The instructions for the 10th Step give me a clear way to seek this forgiveness. If I read Big Book pages 84-86 I find the instructions to pray to God and ask for forgiveness (not Him to forgive me, He doesn’t have the resentment, but to receive the gift of forgiveness from Him). The book goes on to say that perhaps I should discuss this problem with a friend (at once!) and then to take any corrective measures that are necessary. Finally, I should turn my thoughts toward helping others. This is a pretty good formula for finding the gift of forgiveness.
Peyton B
 
 
 
               
   
Question 3: I heard that when you got angry with someone it’s a good idea to pray for them. Does this really work?
Answers:

My sponsor says that when I start to get a resentment I should pray for the person I resent. I should pray to God and ask Him to give that person everything they desire and I should keep this praying up until the resentment goes away. A few days of this is usually enough to straighten me out.
Paul R

I ran to my sponsor to tell her the awful thing this woman had done to me and she said, “Pray for the bitch!” She told me to pick something about the person I thought was really good and pray that she might keep that thing. The woman had beautiful skin so I prayed every day that God help her keep her beautiful complexion. After about a week whenever I saw her all I could think about was how wonderful her complexion was, my anger was gone.
Priscilla H

 

 
     
     
 
               
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