A life lived out of control is not a life of deep reflection. It is so much easier to glide through our daily routine , including ill-advised behaviors, on autopilot than it is to stop and think about what we’re doing. I suspect that most of us would probably look at someone else with the same patterns of behavior and think “what a nutcase,” or “danger – trouble ahead.” That brings us to Step Four of the Twelve Steps:
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Taking an inventory is critical. If you don’t have a pretty clear picture of what you have going for you, as well as what is working against you, success is unlikely.
Westley: Who are you? Are we enemies? Why am I on this wall? Where is Buttercup?
Inigo Montoya: Let me ’splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry’ Humperdinck in a little less than half an hour. So all we have to do is get in, break up the wedding, steal the princess, make our escape… after I kill Count Rugen.
Westley: That doesn’t leave much time for dilly-dallying.
Fezzik: You just wiggled your finger. That’s wonderful.
Westley: I’ve always been a quick healer. What are our liabilities?
Inigo Montoya: There is but one working castle gate, and… and it is guarded by 60 men.
Westley: And our assets?
Inigo Montoya: Your brains, Fezzik’s strength, my steel.
- The Princess Bride, 1987
An honest inventory usually doesn’t paint a very pretty picture for the person who is just coming to grips with their addiction.
However, this is not just taking an official moment to denigrate oneself.
This is where we take stock of where we are. We are not looking at root causes yet. An inventory is not a history – it is a snapshot of where things stand as of a particular point in time. This is critical, as there will be points down the road where you will need to take another inventory. If you take inventory once, never checking back to see how your “stock” has improved, the exercise is pointless.
There are several approaches you can use to work through the inventory. I’m a big fan of using the SWOT analysis used for basic analysis in many businesses. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. I worked through this process the first time by sticking a blank poster board up on the wall and dividing it into quadrants (one region for each of the SWOT categories). Next I spent a couple of hours thinking through my attributes (good, bad, and ugly), and writing each in the appropriate region. While I was doing this, I shut off my phone and all other distractions. Over the next week, I added to the list daily. By the time I had finished, the poster was full and I had extra sheets of notebook paper stuck all over my wall.
This is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine. The important thing is that you take some focused time to really dig deep and try to see yourself as objectively as possible. And that you make a record of it; memory fades and details get fuzzy, which makes the value of this limited for future reference.
The hard thing is getting around our natural tendency to see ourselves either as gods or monsters. Most fellow travelers with whom I’ve discussed this have said that they found it much easier to either list their failures (weaknesses) or their strengths; balance does not come naturally to an addict.
Could it be that lack of balance is part of our problem? Hmm.
This isn’t about beating yourself up. You probably did that about the time that you came to Step One.
The other thing I would caution about, with both this and the next step, is to be wary. Regardless of how screwed up our lives had become, there is a natural inclination toward the familiar. Thinking about where we are, and looking at the past (next step) is likely to bring up some nostalgia for our former comforter. I think this is where it becomes absolutely critical that you have an accountability partner – a sponsor, in AA-speak – who can help you talk and think through these steps without letting you drift.
Once you have a good, clear picture of where you are, you are ready to start looking at what got you here…but that’s another step.
Keep walking,
MNRecovery
