Ron W. – AA Speaker – Funny Inventory Stories and Powerful Message of Self Discovery NEW 2017
Step 10 of Alcoholics Anonymous is about taking personal inventory on a daily basis and always watching for old patterns or habits that we might fall in to. It is also the part of the recovery process where we grow spiritually and we become mature. Ron W. shares stories about inventory and step ten in a hilarious and engaging way. This tape is not only about inventory though, as it is packed from beginning to end with INCREDIBLE experience, strength and hope from one of the funniest AA speakers on the circuit!
Taking inventory in the tenth step and staying current
How long did it take you originally to get to Step 10 yourself working through the steps the first time and then after that? How many times have you found it necessary to do a Fourth Step? Well, I didn’t do my first inventory, my first fourth step, until I was in my second year. At the time, we started going through the steps with someone who was taking us through the work, beyond just talking about it at meetings. Before that, I was looking at the wall and reading the steps off the wall and doing bogus stuff trying to look good in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was a pretender in the rooms and not really practicing the principles. By that I mean not actually doing the action of the steps.
Believe it or not, even if you are not doing the steps, oftentimes you can practice the principles of the program. I was still coming. I was still talking to people. I was still telling somebody about different things that I was doing, even though I hadn’t written it down, and even though I most of the stuff I was talking about was stuff I was involved with in the present. I hadn’t gone into the past; I hadn’t looked at all this the stuff that was causing me to do the things that I was doing over and over and over again. So I was in Alcoholics Anonymous for two years before I got to the tenth step, maybe it was about two and a half years because we went through it slowly and we took our time.
So two and a half years when I did my first tenth step, I did another fourth step too, because I’m in a workshop all the time where we’re bringing new people through the process all the time. Now, I end up doing one annually. I do one every year. It gets shorter most years and sometimes longer because it depends on what’s happening in my life during that during that time period. It’s amazing how as I pull back the layers of my life, you know I’m 61 years old and there are a lot of things I’ve forgotten that occurred earlier in my life. As time goes on you remember more and more things. As you listen to other people who sharing their experiences, they trigger things for you to see and you have that “A-HA moment.”
You know, I know some people say they’ve done one and that’s it. I mean, that’s good if you do and it works for you. But I’m not that good. I do stupid stuff all the time and there is still always a lot of debris that I need to continue to clean up, some of it I’m not able to let go of. I have to just find what it is an apply the freeing exercise of inventory. I also like to go through inventory with new people and set an example for them so they can see me doing it what I’m preaching.
