- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. This is a
simple Step in a simple program. Sometimes the simplest things help us feel happy. - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. We keep our eyes on ourselves.
We continually and regularly evaluate our behavior. We figure out what we like about ourselves, what we've done right
and good. Then we either congratulate ourselves, feel good about it, thank God, or do all three. We figure out what we
don't like that we've been doing, then we figure out how to accept and take care of that without hating ourselves for it.
Here's the difficult part: if we're wrong, we say so. If we have worked Steps Eight and Nine and dumped all our guilty
feelings, we will know when we need to say "I'm wrong" and "I'm sorry." We will feel earned guilt, and we will be able
to notice it. If, however, we are still feeling guilty all the time, it may be difficult to distinguish when we do something
wrong because we're feeling guilty all the time and we don't feel any different. It's just one more
page_190Page 191shovel of guilt thrown onto an already heaping pile. The moral of that story is: Dump guilt. If we get some, take care of it
immediately.
- 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. This Step, used daily and as needed, will
successfully take us through our entire lives. This Step requires we learn the difference between rumination and
meditation. It also requires us to decide whether we believe God is benevolent. We need to decide if we believe God
"knows where we live," as another friend says. Get quiet. Detach. Pray. Meditate. Ask Him what He wants us to do. Ask
to be given the power to do that. Then let go and watch what happens. Usually, His will is an appropriate, common-sense
approach to life. Sometimes, we get surprises. Learn to trust this Higher Power to whom we have given the guardianship
of our lives. Become sensitive to how He works with us. Learn to trust ourselves. He works through us too. - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice
these principles in all our affairs.* We will awaken spiritually. We will learn to spiritually take care of ourselvesnot
religiously, although that certainly is part of life. This program will enable us to love ourselves and other people, instead
of rescuing and being rescued. Carrying the message does not mean we become evangelists; it means our lives become a
light. We will learn how to shine. If we apply this program to all areas of our lives, it will work in all areas of our lives.
Working the Program
Now that we are familiar with the Steps, let's discuss what "working the program" and "working the Steps" mean. All
over the world, ''anony-
*The Twelve Steps printed here are those of Al-Anon, adapted from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous,
found in Alcoholics Anonymous, A.A. World Services, New York, NY, pp. 59-60. Reprinted with permission.page_191Page 192mous" people meet at a variety of locationschurches, homes, and barber shops. They might meet once a day, twice a
week, or seven nights a week. They don't preregister or register. They simply find out where a particular group meets that
focuses on the problem these people are having troubles with. At the meeting, they don't have to identify their last names
or where they or their spouse work; they don't have to say anything if they don't want to. They don't have to pay money,
although they can make a donation of any amount to help pay for coffee and meeting room rent expensesif they want to.
They don't have to sign up. They don't have to fill out a card. They don't have to answer any questions. They just walk in
and sit down. This is called going to a meeting. It is an essential part of working the program.
One nice thing about meetings is that people can be who they are. They don't have to pretend they don't have a particular
problem, because everybody there has the same problem. If they didn't have that problem, they wouldn't be there.
Meeting formats vary with each particular group. Some groups sit around a table and the people who want to talk,