Accept nothing less than peace and joy

Once you've cleared out the past in Steps One through Nine, accept nothing less than peace, joy, love, effectiveness, and efficiency in your life.

Here're a bunch of ways to practise Steps Ten through Twelve.

Follow the instructions on pages 84 to 88 of the Big Book daily, in particular any of the prayers or directions that can be implemented literally scores of times a day, e.g. the 'watch and turn' instructions on page 84, the 'constant accompaniment' thoughts on page 85, and the 'pause' instructions on page 87.

Be diligent about allowing no negative thought to fester without ruthlessly pulling it out and substituting a God thought in its place. Remember: God is on your side; you cannot be harmed because you are spirit, given temporary custodianship of your human existence by God; there are no problems, only situations to navigate, projects to manage, and tasks to accomplish; there is always a different way to look at any situation; and grace, cheerfulness, usefulness and calm are always available; fear is a liar; resentment is folly; lingering guilt and shame are misplaced. Peace is always available.

Listen to AA talks or other spiritual instruction. You can do this while walking, driving, doing housework, shopping, etc. No need to set aside special time, although that won't hurt, either. You can even attend meetings by dialling in and listening whilst doing these other activities.

Read spiritual literature, extract quotations and ideas to apply; compile your own index cards, post-it stickers, scrapbooks, notebooks, etc. of quotations and ideas. Share them with others.

Find more people to sponsor. Give existing sponsees more time. Go to meetings where there are lots of people who are new, in trouble, or in search of solutions to pressing and difficult problems. Think constantly about people who are struggling and how your life can be used by God to help them.

Find more service in meetings or in the fellowship structure.

Start an anonymous blog and write about your experiences of the programme to help others. Set up an anonymous Facebook page to share recovery resources, thoughts, and experiences. Find a way of doing anonymous TikToks to share helpful ideas with others. Use your imagination.

Get to meetings super early and talk to everyone.

Spend time trawling through Facebook groups devoted to AA (or whatever fellowship you're in) and you'll find lots of people who are suffering and looking for answers, experience, information, and guidance. Answer them. Befriend them. Help them.

Constantly (that means 'all the time') think about what tools you are applying to what problems and what results you are getting and how you will present these to other people in recovery who might ask for input, experience, or guidance.

If a person has time for fearful, anxious, depressing, despairing, angry, resentful, guilty, and shame-filled thoughts, they have time to meditate. That was great news for me, as it meant there was clearly lots of brain space to be repurposed into prayer and meditation!

Learn lots of prayers or passages from AA or spiritual literature and learn to say them (or sing them) out loud to block old, unhelpful thinking patterns. Consciously and deliberately apply the principles contained in the prayers or the literature to each problem or situation or feeling that arises: How does God want me to view this? What does God want me to do?

The programme is not a decoration or a separate pastime: it is a method of living. If not adopted wholeheartedly, which means with my whole heart, my whole mind, and my whole effort in the material world, I will simply fall back into the old method of living, which is the ego's method of living. You gotta have a method of living. The only question is: Which one? One that leaves you bored, heavy, and miserable, or one that fills you with infinite energy?

It does not require more effort, really: it requires willingness. Not doing the above is a false economy, because I pay the price in unhappiness. A person is thinking and 'doing' all day long anyway anyway: the question is only what a person is thinking and doing. Redirecting the thinking and action along different lines. That's all we're doing here, folks.

If you know someone who is doing more of the above than you, you're missing a trick.

Look at their lives: they're probably getting more done, more effectively and efficiently, and having more fun whilst doing it. Do you want more peace and joy? I certainly do. So the above is how I go about it!

How you know you're doing enough? When you're fizzing with excitement about life.