THE STEPS · STEP TEN
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
IN PLAIN WORDS
The step where the program becomes a life.
The first nine steps clean up the past. Step Ten keeps it that way, one day at a time. The Book says we've entered the world of the Spirit and our next function is to grow — by continuing to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear as we go, and when we're wrong, admitting it promptly.
Not at year's end. Not when we're caught. Promptly.
This is the step that shrinks the gap between the mistake and the repair from decades to hours — and it's why old-timers say they haven't had a Fourth Step's worth of wreckage pile up in thirty years. A few honest minutes, daily. That's the whole maintenance plan.
INTO ACTION · BIG BOOK, P. 84
Where we get stuck
“Every day? Forever?”
A few minutes, most days, honestly — beats an hour of perfection that quits by Thursday. The Book says we grow along spiritual lines, not straight ones.
“Promptly admit it — even when I'm half right?”
Especially then. Our half of wrong is the only half we can clean. The other half was never our department.
“I missed a week. Did I break it?”
No. Step Ten has no streak to break — only a tonight to begin again. Pick it back up at the next honest minute.
THE STEP TEN TOOL
The Daily Inventory
Five honest questions, most nights. The tool is live and free. It closes the day the way Step Eleven's On Awakening opens it — a morning and an evening bookend.
A personal tool, not a clinical one. If you’re struggling right now, call or text 988 or call SAMHSA at 1-800-662-4357.
A simple daily inventory
Five questions. Takes three minutes. Today’s answers stay on this device and clear at the end of the day. Writing it down shows us things we miss when it stays in our heads.
Consider sharing this with someone — your sponsor would love to see it.
Part of our Recovery Tools — free tools for people working the program.
Something missing from this tool? Tell us →
WHAT THE BOOK PROMISES — AND ALMOST NOBODY KNOWS THESE ARE HERE
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone — even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality — safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
THE TENTH STEP PROMISES · BIG BOOK, PP. 84–85
What a sponsor would ask
“What's the longest you've ever nursed a resentment? What did the rent cost you?”
“When you're wrong, how many days does it currently take you to say so out loud?”
“Did you owe anyone an amends today? That's a Step Eight name — add it.”
From the literature
Big Book · pp. 84–85
Big Book · pp. 84–85
Step Eleven is the morning half — On Awakening.
Continue to Step Eleven →