Online 4th Step Inventory Guide

[MajestyJo]

I like to compare myself to a battery. A battery has two terminals. A positive terminal and a negative terminal. If a battery has to many negative cells it has not live in it and is useless. If a battery has to many positives charges it will explode and you have nothing. But if a battery has the right amount of positives and negatives you can start up a D-9 Catapiller and go push a mountain around. That is the way I am. To many negatives I am useless. To many positives I am not worth nothing either.

- Anonymous

I like the battery premise, it reminds me that when I surrender to my Higher Power, I am empowered to do what I need to do for myself.

When I was in treatment, we had to do "daily affirmations", each morning we had to say something positive about ourselves! It was difficult for all of us. We all came from different walks of life, but after years of poor self-esteem, self-worth and abuse, there wasn't much thought of the positive. It was a good way to start my recovery. One of the greatest gifts in early recovery was to be told by a native woman that "God doesn't make no junk!"

What comes to mind is the song, "Eliminate the negative, excentuate (?) the positive, and go with Mr. In-Between. Again, like all things, it is about balance.

One of the scariest things I hear is that people haven't done this step or that, because they haven't done any other than Step One. I had a man ask me once if I worked the Twelve Steps in my recovery and I said, "Yes, some days all Twelve!"

In the Big Book on page 76 is says:

Quote:
Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble? Does this mean we are going to get drunk? Some people tell us so. But this is only a half-truth. It depends on us and on our motives. If we are sorry for what we have done, and have the honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson. If we are not sorry, and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink. We are not theorizing. These are facts out of our experience.

... We have listed and analyzed our resentments. We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality. We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can.

In this book you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him. If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning. That being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself.
This sound like me getting honest with me. God can, I can't, and just for today, I choose to let Him.
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