(This blog is tenth in a multi-part series, “Thoughts On The Steps”. This series is not a guide on how to work steps; steps can only be worked under the guidance of a sponsor. The twelve-step program is a spiritual program; it teaches us how to live a spiritual life. Working each of the steps gives us the chance to practice a spiritual principle. Whatever your particular fellowship, the Steps are the same, as are the spiritual principles behind them. These are my thoughts on the steps and on those principles.)
Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
For folks like us, complacency is the enemy. There's an old program saying: you're either moving away from your last drink/fix, or moving towards your next one. If we aren't progressing in our Recovery, doing at least something each day, we start to regress. If we don't actively work to keep our Recovery, we'll lose it. Our disease is incurable. I will never not be an addict/alcoholic. Those tendencies in thought and action will always be with me, but if I Persevere and practice my Recovery, then my Recovery will prevail.
I think of it like a sports star at the top of their game. A pro football player doesn't practice less. If anything, he practices more. The same is true of a professional musician. An ace trumpet player doesn't get to put her horn down and rest on her laurels. If she wants to keep up her skills, she has to practice everyday. The same is true of Recovery. We need to keep practicing the spiritual principles of the program to keep getting the benefits. We need to keep on keepin' on. That's Perseverance.
There's lots of ways to do the tenth step. A full formal working of it can involve a whole lot of writing, everyday, about our thoughts and actions throughout the day. A more informal working of it means maintaining a tenth-step attitude--we check in with ourselves. We pay attention to the things we do, examine our motives of why we do them. And, of course, when we mess up, we fess up to it right away. We're practicing being this new person we're becomming. We're going to make mistakes, we're human. When we do, we admit where we've been wrong.
There's another common saying from the program that comes into play in the tenth step: this, too, shall pass. When we're new to Recovery, and even for a while after we've been coming to meetings, life can be a rough ride. We're new to the whole idea and way of living without getting loaded. It takes a while for things to settle down. Once they do, we tend to realize that it isn't life, but ourselves that's settled down. Remembering that all things pass is so crucial. Good feelings, bad ones, they all come and go. Nothing is permanent. Our thoughts, our feelings, they are all changing, as is the world around us.
As addicts/alcoholics, we hate change. We're control freaks, and a world that changes so rapidly around us can be infuriating. The tenth step helps us immensely to deal with that outside world as well as our internal one. We work at becomming practiced observers of what is happening inside our heads. We try to get to a place where we see our thoughts go by with a measure of dispassion. We allow our thoughts and our feelings to flow through us, knowing we don't have to act on them. If we see something objectionable, we take action to correct it. Thoughts are just thoughts; we don't have to act on them. Feelings are just feelings; they won't kill us.
The 'daily' part of this step reminds us of something else that's crucial: this is a one day at a time program. Maybe by the time we've gotten to the tenth step, we've fallen off the 'Just For Today' tack. Step ten brings it back to the basics. Just for today I'm going to stay sober. Just for today, I will pay attention to my actions and my motives. We don't list out a month's worth or even a week's worth of activities. We check in with ourselves and examine ourselves on a day-to-day basis.
The last three steps are sometimes called 'mainetnance' steps, and I get that. For myself, I've found it useful to work all twleve steps more than just once, but the tenth step is a great tool all by itself. It reminds me that I need to be vigilant in working the program. I need to keep on working it, every day. I need to check in with myself and pay attention to what's going on inside me. If I get lazy, my Recovery suffers and I will be back on the path to relapse. And long before I do, I will have created a wake of wreckage a mile long behind me.
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