The 6th Step

Hi Family (friends of Bill)! This is my prep for a lead I’m giving on Step 6 – maybe it will be helpful ❤️

Step 6: “Were entirely ready to have god remove all of these defects.”

• “Ready self for change.” dreamwarriorrecovery.com
• “Ready to be different.” – Gratitude Group in Mpls
• “Ready to aim for ideal.”
• “Ready to walk in path intended by HP.”
• “I’m going to stop holding on to my old ways” -“How It Works” (“tried to hold on to our old ways, but the result was nil until we let go absolutely”)

“So hold your head high, fingers to the sky”

Britney Spears

1. Considering with 5 steps before it
   • All steps same program
   • When struggle with a step, go to step before it
   • 1st step: “We accepted we were alcoholic – that our lives had become unmanageable.”
     • These old patterns aren’t working
     • My life is messy
   • 2nd step: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
     • If I aim for a less messy life, I am not alone and I might be helped
     • If I aim for something different than my old patterns, I might get really close (we’re all sinners) 
   • 3rd step: “Made a decision (to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood him)”
     • Don’t have to just be different or less messy now
     • Just agree/be willing 
   • 4th step: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
     • Look within, using columns as guide – I am doing this to uncover the messiness under the messiness
     • Get stuff off your chest and onto paper, using columns to guide – this will make it possible for clear communication in step 5 (communication necessary for identifying old ways)
   • 5th step: “Admitted to god, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
     • As specific as possible so can know when cropping up, even after we’ve said “ok I’m ready” in Step 6
     • Find old patterns that work and don’t work (not just shortcomings)
     • Find new ways of living – that is what we agree to aim for in step 6
2. What am I ready to have removed?…patterns found in step 5 – old ways of surviving (“…all these defects of character”) that aren’t working…
   • I can’t handle this
     • “Hysteria”
     • Emotionally express hopelessness and unmanageability confusingly in an overwhelming way
     • Take a useful tool (I know a lot of tools) and use at wrong time – send message to myself or others
     • Keep trying to break down and think I can handle it (skills, tomorrow will be different) – 1st step
     • Fight, flight, freeze, perform – send message to myself or others
   • Don’t want people the way they are or me the way I am or it is
     • Someone’s a wounded bird here and that is NOT ok – I do you and you do me
     • Disregard a clear request from other people to not help, think I know better/don’t want to hear what they have to say

• Not hear now because don’t want situation the way it is (I’m bored, I’m anxious, I’m depressed, I’m sad)
  • Stories to distract and for ego
  • Stories about future rapidly at such a pace I can’t remember what I’m talking about
  • Don’t want to feel like a grown up, revert to younger self, fantasize about younger self, romanticize some time when younger self was in the present (it was actually awful a lot of the time)
  • Fantasize about the future (Pete and Jen and me in Vegas, Pete and me ceremony)
  • Shop and obsess (necessities, stuff I don’t need)

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Me working Step 6 -“… entirely ready…” – I’m ready/I’m going to try my best at using different ways to survive – I decide/make decision – let’s do this/”you better work bitch”

• Return to just the simple readiness/decision as often as needed
• Things I don’t have to worry about in Step 6 – Step 6 is not step 7
  • When the readiness in step 6 isn’t quite cutting it
  • When I see specific defaults crop up and aren’t sure how to deal with them
  • Difficulty with being old self 
  • Don’t know what to do at any point ever in life