“Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.” (Chapter 5)
At the most basic level, to me, this means:
- Recognising I have failed
- Recognising, therefore, my beliefs, attitudes, and values have failed
- Adopting new beliefs, attitudes, and values that work
- Implementing those promptly, diligently, resolutely, by applying the programme precisely as instructed
- … before all else and above all else, because there won’t otherwise be an ‘all else’
- Without scepticism, cynicism, bet-hedging, without my fingers crossed behind my back, without grumbling, whining, challenge, resistance, mini-breaks, sabbaticals, alteration, adaptation, cherry-picking, without taking what I want and leaving the rest, without delay, without cutting corners, without falling back asleep, without descending into box-ticking or other perfunctory compliance
- Obviously I will fail at the level of performance: how I do in practice might often show great room for improvement
- But I cannot afford to discount at the level of commitment, deciding in advance to hold back my full self from the process
It turns out there are quite a few ways to throw a spanner in the works, to sabotage the whole operation, often whilst superficially complying with the process.
Self-honesty therefore really means daily vigilance about my own commitment to the programme and my own living up to that commitment.