'Without God, you can't; without you, he won't.'
The removal of defects means that my attitudes, thinking, and behaviour must change.
How?
As with everything, I need two commodities: knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out.
Applied to Step Seven, this means knowledge of what the new attitudes, thinking, and behaviour should be, and the strength to implement them.
Why is strength needed?
The old attitudes, thinking, and behaviour are deeply ingrained habits that are designed, like a thermostat, to keep my emotional temperature just right by adjusting my environment. Now, the thermostat may be broken, and these old attitudes plus thinking and behaviour patterns may ultimately have a disastrous effect on my emotional temperature (anyone else discover that years of crappy thinking and behaviour result in grinding misery?); yet when they are threatened and I am called upon to believe, think, and act differently, all hell breaks loose, alarms go off, and I feel immense discomfort, as my programming informs me I'm 'getting it all wrong'.
This is why change is hard: it needs strength to override the faulty thermostat, which is convinced that the old attitudes, thinking and behaviour spell comfort and the new ones, danger. The reverse, in truth, is true.
For my defects to be removed, I'm going to need to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
Eventually, the new attitudes, thinking, and behaviour become as ingrained as the old. Until then, I need God to bridge the gap.
The removal of defects means that my attitudes, thinking, and behaviour must change.
How?
As with everything, I need two commodities: knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out.
Applied to Step Seven, this means knowledge of what the new attitudes, thinking, and behaviour should be, and the strength to implement them.
Why is strength needed?
The old attitudes, thinking, and behaviour are deeply ingrained habits that are designed, like a thermostat, to keep my emotional temperature just right by adjusting my environment. Now, the thermostat may be broken, and these old attitudes plus thinking and behaviour patterns may ultimately have a disastrous effect on my emotional temperature (anyone else discover that years of crappy thinking and behaviour result in grinding misery?); yet when they are threatened and I am called upon to believe, think, and act differently, all hell breaks loose, alarms go off, and I feel immense discomfort, as my programming informs me I'm 'getting it all wrong'.
This is why change is hard: it needs strength to override the faulty thermostat, which is convinced that the old attitudes, thinking and behaviour spell comfort and the new ones, danger. The reverse, in truth, is true.
For my defects to be removed, I'm going to need to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
Eventually, the new attitudes, thinking, and behaviour become as ingrained as the old. Until then, I need God to bridge the gap.