All Addictions
12-Step Study
Workshop
12-Step Study
Workshop
4/27/2017 0 Comments Recording For April 27, 2017Week 278 April 27, 2017
When you’re on your death bed, you’re not going to wish for more money or possessions. You’re going to be thinking about relationships. For Stephanie, the order of relationships is God first, her husband second, and her relationships third. She puts a lot of time and effort in being with people. Her church family, her recovered family, her family, her husband’s family. People, people, people. A recovered person cares about others as much as yourself. Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out." It takes Step 1, 2, & 3. I can’t, God can and I’m going to let him. It has to be iron clad. Referenced “The Hawk” and Mark Houston workshops. They said when someone slips, it’s always a question of step 1. Step 1 has not been iron clad. Slipee has allowed wiggle room. “I’m not really powerless, I can handle it”. When you have trouble with any step, you go back to the one before it. EX: I don’t want to do step 11, then they would say you go back to step 10 and question and say “Do I really believe I have to take personal inventory?” Then you go back to 8&9, 6&7. There is a character defect that you’re not willing to face. You question yourself (with your sponsor) and you end up with step 1. You’ve given yourself a loophole. You’re not powerless and so you don’t have to have a God and you haven’t made that decision. There is something in your inventory that you don’t want to face. The greatest gift to your recovery is to admit where you’re having trouble. Everything depends on your willingness to do 6&7. You can’t make good amends without total willingness to look at your mistakes. You make your amends and you live daily walking around looking at yourself. Being aware of your attitude. Am I kind, loving, do I have the joy of recovery? Am I a person that others see as positive. While maintaining boundaries. It’s not about me, it’s about God. Being an instrument for God. Live in 10, 11, 12 daily Step 11, you are serious gaze and gage about how you were doing the day. And if we’re not happy with how we lived our day, answer these questions and realize you need to improve yourself. But can you improve yourself? No, you need God. Step 11, you go to God and say, I was not the best version of myself today. I was cranky, procrastinated, etc. Just talk to God about where you weren’t the best version of yourself. Step 11 is Looking at yourself honestly like you do in 6&7 but knowing you have a partner. And that’s God. EX: I wasn’t abstinent today, talk to God and ask God for help. Then put the bat away. Paragraph 86.2 On awakening let us think about the 24 hours ahead….. We plan our day. Pray, Plan, prepare, protect. Quiet time, plan, think about the 24 hours ahead, prepare the day and protect. How to do protect? Has to be certain things that are Iron clad. Ex quiet time, exercise, food prep, etc. Nothing that gets in the way of doing these things. Could be work at 7:30 etc. Question 1) Write it down What they mean to you. Pray, plan, prepare, protect Question 2) For the next week. Do it every day. Plotting it in Pray, plan, prepare, protect Question 3) Bring it to God, yourself and to another human being. You don’t have to live a stressed life because you have the plan in front of you. But you do need to defend your plan. You need to pray to God for boundaries. Put intellect over feelings. Wrong motives is people pleasing. What’s the bottom line of people pleasing? Fear
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4/20/2017 0 Comments Recording for April 20, 2017
Big Book All Addictions Step Study~April 20 2017 http://thursday-steps-1-12.12stepstudyworkshop.com/ Questions for Week #277 Big Book, page 86 We live in 10, 11 & 12. All day long. It flows like a day. Like one continuous day (ex: you can skip the afternoon etc.) Continue to take personal inventory and when you’re wrong, promptly admit. And you might not know you’re wrong until 3 days later. Don’t separate them. They are very fluid, like a day. Step 10 is the walking around step. Trying to be as conscious as you possibly can about how you’re reacting and interfacing with other people. Walking through your day: is it kind? is loving? Is it considerate? Are you living recovered? Step 11 is prayer and meditation. All day long. God help me accept this….. Mediation is not necessarily sitting in a quiet place. Stephanie meditated on making pies, or on lifting weights. And if you have a conscious contact with God, then every action you do is a form of mediation and action. We’re living in 10, 11 and 12 and when we’re not our conscious lets us know, we’re inventory, admit it, make amends. Being recovered (living in 10, 11 & 12) is God conscious all of the time. That’s our goal. “Having had a spiritual experience” you don’t forget it or who gave it to you. And when you’re not living loving, forgiving, patient etc, you’re not living in God consciousness. So inventory yourself, go to God in quiet time, do action plan (maybe to change your thinking) and work it in all your affairs. Look up: “divorced”, “self pity”, “dishonest”, “self seeking”, “motives” 1) Write in your own words how is Steps 10, 11, 12 one fluid Step? 2) What does “pray, plan, prepare and protect” mean in relation to Steps 10, 11, 12? 3) Do you make plans (rough plans ok) for your day? You can relate ‘action plan’ to this. How can you live a ‘recovered life’ in your day. 4) What does “consider your plans for the day” mean to you, after hearing what Stephanie related what it means for her? 4/13/2017 0 Comments Recording For April 13, 2017Look up Worry Remorse Morbid refection inquire corrective Step 11 Nightly review Page 86 Review of day. You can do this any time of the day. As long as you keep your finger on your pulse of day and while you walk through your day, you do the 10th step. Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admit it. That’s the living in your day. The 11th is a time set aside where you review your day and you thank God for the good things and ask God to help you change the things that didn’t go well and accept the rest. Like the Serenity Prayer. Last week we covered:
Morbid reflection is doing this without God. “Oh I’m so terrible” Is a reverse form of pride. Selfishness and self-centeredness. Worry is like sitting in a rocking chair expecting to go somewhere. Remorse is wasting energy. If you have remorse, made an amends to God, the other person and to yourself. Then you can let go of all remorse. If you can’t do it to the other person, you do it with God, write a letter to the other person. The disease wants you in morbid reflection, worry and remorse. So miserable that you’ll numb yourself with food, alcohol, drugs etc. But that would diminish our usefulness to others. You’re in to self. “Naval gazing” -- Oh I’m so terrible. It’s limiting God. If you’re in morbid reflection, go to God, write about it, what you can do to make amends, write an action plan, share it. Sometimes we forget how big God is. Morbid reflection will steal your joy, peace and will probably bring you back to your addiction. Your purpose in 12 step program to be useful to others. We don’t get sober to get a great job, man, look good etc. We get sober to lead other people to the path of hope that there is a way to recover. It will really show you what our purpose on earth is. It is to be useful to God, others and yourselves. It’s not to look at your own needs. After doing the review, we ask for God’s forgiveness, if we need to, and inquire what corrective measures should be taken. Ex: amends 4/6/2017 0 Comments Recording For April 6, 2017Page 86 Paragraph 1
When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken. Do we have to do it at night? Bill wrote in the morning. Only matters that you review yourself. God, is there anything else you want me to know? Review is like taking two fingers to check your pulse. It’s checking how you’re doing in recovery. Review is not to beat yourself up or puff yourself up. Do the following every day, for homework read one day to your buddy. Have you hurt/harmed someone. Because if you have it will come up. Either your conscience or people will say or so something or cut you out of their lives. Start by writing 3 at least 3 things you did right that day. Simple as “I get up on time” or “I exercised” or “made my husband fish for dinner”. Recovery is seeing the positive in everything. Including myself. A recovered person is seeing the glass half full. Nothing happens in God’s world by mistake so everything can be positive if I just have the right attitude and bring it to God. Train yourself to see the positive in your day. Everything can be positive if I bring it to God. Was I resentful? (Yes, turn paper over and do a resentment on it. I am resentful at: my Mother. Cause: She criticized me on my housework. Effects my: self-esteem, personal relationships, personal security, pride, sexual relations, pocketbook. Turnaround a) Where was I selfish? b) What did I want from this person c) Why did I want it? Where was I self-seeking? What behavior did I do to get what I wanted from that person? (ex: I wanted her to apologize) Where was I dishonest? Did I directly lie? Was I honest with x (ex: “yeah I know I have a long way to go in housework”, lie because the house was neat) What was lie of omission? What should I have said to X to be completely honest? And say it in a nice way. (Well gee Mom, you’re being awfully critical. What was the lie I tell myself? (ex: “ell if Mom thinks I am a bad housekeeper then I guess I really am”. That’s a lie, I am a good housekeeper, just not to her standards) What am I afraid of? (I am afraid of her disapproval, I’m afraid that she’ll tell my sister, I’m afraid she’ll never want to come to my house again.) If there is a fear that you know you need to do fear inventory, then take it to a fear inventory. If you have a resentment, you know what to do. You don’t have to take it to bed with you. Where you selfish? You can be selfish and not be resentful. Was I honest? Clerk didn’t charge you Are you being honest with people in your life? (Are you telling people it’s ok when it’s not ok. Are you dishonest with yourself? Are you eating food you know your body doesn’t need? Are you staying up later than you know your body can handle? Are you driving faster than the speed limit.) These things are not to condemn you, once you’ve gotten to the 11th step, it’s the small stuff that we need to look. Was I afraid? And it fear is coming up, then do a fear inventory. Do I owe an apology? Won’t know unless I ask the questions of “Was I resentful, self-seeking, fearful. Take it to God, take it to quiet time, make an action plan. Do I need to make an apology to someone. Have I kept something to myself which should be discussed with someone at once? God, Sponsor, somebody who knows me through and through and can tell if I’m in denial, rationalizing etc. (do I need to talk to a loved one, doctor, etc.) |
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