What happens when everything appears to fall apart?
Batten down the hatches. What does that mean?
Batten down the hatches. What does that mean?
- Admit complete defeat and decide to throw your lot in with God.
- That means you'll be protected if you decide to trust and serve God 24 hours a day.
- Complete defeat also means taking your focus off yourself, your resentments, your self-pity, your self-loathing, and your fear. Ego is bullshit and needs to go.
- Have a couple of home groups where you do service. These should be the strongest AA groups in the city you live in, no exception. By 'strongest' I mean those with the densest content concerning the destruction of self and serving God and the strongest fellowship network plus social activities after the meeting.
- Go every week unless you're dead or out of town.
- Follow the instructions of pages 84 to 88 of the Big Book every day, in particular discussing with people who won't permit any self-indulgence any bad behaviour or negative thinking. If they make a suggestion, follow it.
- If you've not completed the first nine steps, do so.
- Get a job in the AA service structure.
- Seek opportunities to carry AA's message to the outside world.
- Find newcomers or other people in trouble to share solution with; sponsor.
- Reclassify work and family obligations as service.
- If you haven't got a job, get one.
- If you can't get one, study and volunteer for 35 hours a week.
- Find opportunities to be useful in your community and/or society.
- Spend at least one hour a day reading and listening to spiritual materials, and actively mine these materials for principles, ideas, attitudes, and corrective measures.
- Talk to your sponsor every day.
- Talk to two other people every day whose lives are based on service.
- Do everything they suggest.