Step One and Beyond Daily Topics 2025 Q3

30 September 2025: Stockholm syndrome

“‘Doctor, I cannot go on like this! I have everything to live for! I must stop, but I cannot! You must help me!’” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

Sometimes, I was aware of two powers inside me: the power that wanted life and recovery, and the power that ‘wanted’ self-destruction, oblivion.

At times, I was so thoroughly won over, brainwashed by the guiles of alcoholism, that the tension was relieved and I was single-minded in my cheerful commitment to ongoing alcoholic drinking.

This is a case of Stockholm Syndrome: hijacked and taken hostage by alcoholism, I eventually started to side with it against myself.

What’s your experience?

29 September 2025: The stages of the spree

“After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

The period of sobriety is part of the spree: regenerating the system, purging the guilt, repairing some of the damage, clipping coupons and earning vouchers for the next drink. This is not a relapse: it is merely the cycle coming full circle. A relapse is possible only after full recovery has been achieved.

What’s your experience?

28 September 2025: Reality vs reality

“They had visioned the Great Reality” (Page 161, Big Book)

Is the world real?

If you look up at the stars, and see a constellation, the stars are indeed there, and measurable. But the constellation is a construct in the mind of the viewer: the stars have no intrinsic relationship with each other, or, rather, such relations as there are remain invisible to this ordinary viewer, who imposes their own magical vision on them, seeing scorpions, ploughs, and bears.

Reality is the universe. The world is the construct of astrology.

What’s your experience?

27 September 2025: Positive charges

“... altruistic movement ...” (The Doctor's Opinion)

In a conductive metal, electrons leap from atom to atom, and this is the flow of electricity: the movement of negative charges.

In AA, the altruistic action causes a similar chain reaction: the movement of positive charges.

What’s your experience?

26 September 2025: Up, down, over, and out

“… these simple principles …” (Page 130, Big Book)

Lighten up

Tighten up

Buckle up

Shut up

Sit down

Calm down

Dummy down

Buckle down

Turn over

Chill out

What’s your experience?

25 September 2025: Insurance

“I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learned to others who want and need it badly. I do it for four reasons:

1. Sense of duty.
2. It is a pleasure.
3. Because in so doing I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me.
4. Because every time I do it I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip.” (Dr Bob’s Nightmare)

Not drinking is not a sign I have recovered.

Not being burgled is not a sign I have insurance.

The first nine steps take out the insurance, and the last three pay the premiums.

What’s your experience?

24 September 2025: Pause

“… pause …” (Page 87, Big Book)

“… pause …” (Page 119, Big Book)

As soon as I say ‘yes’, I’ve stopped thinking.

I’d rather gain approval or get rid of uncertainty than think things through.

Once I think things through, there is a lot more ‘no’ or ‘not now’ or ‘not yet’.

As soon as I say anything—or even start planning what to say—I’ve stopped thinking.

Sometimes God really does want me to think.

What’s your experience?

23 September 2025: St George

“Love and tolerance of others is our code.” (Page 84, Big Book)

“The rule is we must be hard on ourself, but always considerate of others.” (Page 74, Big Book)

Acceptance is not the answer to all of my problems.

The answer to some of my problems is actually non-acceptance.

Love and tolerance of others is the code, but what is the code with myself?

I must be intolerant of myself, of the manifestations of self: resentment, fear, unhappiness, and mediocrity.

The self, the imposter–dragon, must be slain.

The paradox is that I must accept the unacceptable thing as being there within me before I make the decision not to accept it and to get rid of it.

If I deny it is there, I am in no position to get rid of it.

What I can’t see I can’t fight.

This plays on the two meanings of accepting a state of affairs:

1. Not denying it is there.
2. Permitting it to persist.

I must accept it in the first sense but then not in the second.

Accept, then reject.

What’s your experience?

22 September 2025: Group

“The very practical approach to his problems, the absence of intolerance of any kind, the informality, the genuine democracy, the uncanny understanding which these people had were irresistible. He and his wife would leave elated by the thought of what they could now do for some stricken acquaintance and his family. They knew they had a host of new friends; it seemed they had known these strangers always. They had seen miracles, and one was to come to them. They had visioned the Great Reality—their loving and All Powerful Creator.” (Pages 160 to 161, Big Book)

There are many ways to run an AA group.

I’m in a phase of liking simplicity. Room. Chair. Tea. Alcoholics. Very short script. Very short reading. People talking about stuff. Timekeeper. Pot. Serenity prayer. Dinner.

Doesn’t need more.

What’s your experience?

21 September 2025: Decisions, decisions

“If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.” (Page 58, Big Book)

This condition has a condition precedent:

If you have decided you do not want what you do have and are willing to go to any length to get rid of it—then you are ready to take certain steps.

Without that, the process is either redundant or adding good to bad. The first is pointless and the second is useless.

What’s your experience?

20 September 2025: Alcoholics Anonymous

“‘You fellows are somebody. I was once, but I’m a nobody now. From what you tell me, I know more than ever I can’t stop.’ At this both the visitors burst into a laugh.” (Page 157, Big Book)

“Why not bring him into contact with some of our alcoholic crowd?” (Page 38, Big Book)

“The minute we put our work on a service plane, the alcoholic commences to rely upon our assistance rather than upon God.” (Page 98, Big Book)

“When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God.” (Page 52, Big Book)

“you must remember that your real reliance is always upon Him.” (Page 164, Big Book)

Alcoholics Anonymous is like a sea. Waves rise and fall back, visible for moment before collapsing.

Why did the fellows laugh? They realise he’s got it backwards. It’s his being somebody that is the problem, whilst they, appearing to be somebody are in fact nobody: Alcoholics Anonymous.

One takes one’s turn in a meeting. One takes one’s turn in sponsorship. As important as stepping is stepping back. As soon as there’s a risk of becoming somebody, become nobody. Disappear. One of the crowd. Do the job and move on; let others take up the slack and learn how to do the job. Be on hand to advise. Or maybe not. I need AA, and AA needs me, but I do not need any particular AA person or AA group, and no particular AA person or group needs me. Without me, any particular person or group is fine. If I think I need a particular AA person or group needs me, or I need a particular AA person or group, or if a particular AA person or group thinks they need me, something has gone wrong; a false reliance has been set up, and it must be severed, so that we can all, individually and corporately, be restored to our own individual, personal reliances on God.

AA works because we remain strangers. It is the strange I can listen to. Those I know, I cannot listen to. I cannot hear what they are saying. The strange, the unattainable, the different, the perplexing captivate the attention, and it is through them that I learn. I cannot help anyone I am close to. It is the distance that makes communication possible, and the gap is created by anonymity.

What’s your experience?

19 September 2025: Leave it there

“place the problem, along with everything else, in God’s hands.” (Page 120, Big Book)

When I place a problem in God’s hands, He does not need me watching over Him.

When I place a problem in God’s hands, I leave it there and get on with my day.

If He needs me to do anything, He’ll tell me one day in the morning meditation.

I don't even need to bring it up.

What’s your experience?

18 September 2025: Glass menagerie

“they show the underlying reasons why they were making heavy going of life” (Page 51, Big Book)

“We think each family which has been relieved owes something to those who have not, and when the occasion requires, each member of it should be only too willing to bring former mistakes, no matter how grievous, out of their hiding places. Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worth while to us now. Cling to the thought that, in God’s hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have—the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them.” (Page 124, Big Book)

Being weighed down by the past was why I was making heavy going of life.

Surrender, Inventory, Confession, Amends.

The past is still entirely with me but it is entirely transparent and light as a feather; the collection of figures that populate it, a glass menagerie.

Now useful in its display case as a set of curios.

What’s your experience?

17 September 2025: Elephant

“Common sense would thus become uncommon sense.” (Page 13, Big Book)

Part of a spiritual awakening is becoming aware of things to which one was previously blind.

Sometimes there is an elephant in the room.

Who has to deal with it?

The person who can see it clearly and is equipped with an elephant gun.

With sight comes responsibility.

What’s your experience?

16 September 2025: Facts and results

“The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)

“Was I crazy? I began to wonder, for such an appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that.” (Page 5, Big Book)

“Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, of the ability to think straight, be called anything else?” (Page 37, Big Book)

“Perhaps your husband has been living in that strange world of alcoholism where everything is distorted and exaggerated.” (Page 108, Big Book)

“The practical individual of today is a stickler for facts and results.” (Page 148, Big Book)

Distortion, exaggeration, lack of perspective, lack of proportion, elusive.

Insanity: Seeing only the parts of the situation, not the whole. The picture of the whole is elusive. The perspective—the appreciation of what is near and what is far—is off. The relative proportions of good and bad, profit and loss, are off. The thinking is not straight but crooked, the perceptions distorted and exaggerated: the inability to tell the true from the false.

This is the description of any dysfunctional scenario.

What’s the answer?

Ask God to be able to see the facts and the results.

“What’s the truth?” one asks, and, when one thus asks, one is gradually shown.

What’s your experience?

15 September 2025: Centre

“Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.” (Page 62, Big Book)

If I think I’m at the centre of the universe, and you think that the centre of the universe is either you or God, in either case our topographies do not match; in our perceptions, we’re living in two different universes.

No wonder there is collision: we are not proceeding based on the same set of ‘facts’.

What’s your experience?

14 September 2025: Air

“The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others.” (Page 82, Big Book)

Unconstrained air, subject to sufficient energy and propitious conditions, produces a tornado.

Constrained air, forced through a double reed, produces the cor anglais solo in a Dvořák symphony.

Same air—air is air.

The constraint of being directed by God looks like imprisonment. In a sense it is. But look at the effects:

1. I am freed from being subject to malign forces, for subject to forces I will be, anyway. I go from being destructive to constructive, with far less use of energy. An out-of-control person has only the illusion of agency.

2. Something useful can be done with me, and that usefulness is something I could not possibly have come up with myself. I am merely the material used; I originate nothing.

What’s your experience?

13 September 2025: Flank

“Good generalship may decide that the problem be attacked on the flank rather than risk a face-to-face combat.” (Page 82, Big Book)

“He who loves well lies well. You really have to hate someone to tell them the whole truth.” (“Qui aime bien ment bien. Il faut vraiment détester quelqu’un pour lui dire toute la vérité.”) (Hervé, Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent!))

Candour’s a virtue. But so are patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love.

What’s your experience?

12 September 2025: God’s will

“Before taking drastic action which might implicate other people we secure their consent. If we have obtained permission, have consulted with others, asked God to help and the drastic step is indicated we must not shrink.” (Page 80, Big Book)

Facts, knowledge, principle, reason, logical intuition, moral intuition, prayer, meditation, contemplation, consultation ... once these are united in a single view, that’s God’s will.

What’s your experience?

11 September 2025: Victim

“Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?” (Page 61, Big Book)

Happiness and satisfaction come from doing God’s will.

The delusion: happiness and satisfaction flow from the outside in if I manage the outside correctly.

This is only thing I’m the victim of.

The ego is the persecutor. It's not you, them, or it.

When I recognise that the problem is the ego (the self), and ask for a different way, God provides it.

What’s your experience?

10 September 2025: Detachment

“At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time.” (Page 13, Big Book)

“Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems.” (Page 55, Big Book)

“6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.” (Page 59, Big Book)

“Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. … And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid.” (Page 63, Big Book)

“We ask Him to remove our fear” (Page 68, Big Book)

“We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him.” (Page 71, Big Book)

“Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? … I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows.” (Page 76, Big Book)

“Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.” (Page 84, Big Book)

“We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed.” (Page 85, Big Book)

“God has either removed your husband’s liquor problem or He has not.” (Page 120, Big Book)

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.” (Page 86, Big Book)

“the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to them” (Page 161, Big Book)

“Job or no job—wife or no wife—we simply do not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God.” (Page 98, Big Book)

Someone said that the opposite of addiction is connection.

I’d say that the problem of addiction is entanglement with substances, behaviours, self, other people, and the material world, and the answer is detachment from all of these things, in order rely instead and solely on God.

The opposite of addiction is detachment.

What’s your experience?

9 September 2025: Shrink

“We must not shrink at anything.” (Page 79, Big Book)

“If we have obtained permission, have consulted with others, asked God to help and the drastic step is indicated we must not shrink.” (Page 80, Big Book)

In active addiction, I want to be tranquilised.

Wanting to be sober is about wanting not to be tranquilised, to experience life as it is, filtered as it is through my attitudes and thinking, so that I can start the business of fixing what needs to be fixed: the attitudes and thinking within me.

The corollary is that I think others want to be tranquilised too.

They don’t, unless they’re untreated addicts.

And I go around trying to avoid other people feeling things, thinking that, if they feel something, even negative, something has gone wrong.

The kaleidoscope of feelings really is the interface with life.

No kaleidoscope, no life.

Half the feelings, half a life.

But half a life is no life.

Half measures available me nothing.

The necessary truth, even put kindly and appropriately, will produce a range of emotions.

Amends, even put kindly and appropriately, will produce a range of emotions.

I must not shrink at saying what needs to be said, in case someone has a transient feeling.

No shrink. No shrinking.

What’s your experience?

8 September 2025: Draft

“They are over-remorseful and make many resolutions, but never a decision.” (The Doctor’s Opinion)

A decision is where I cut off all but one of the options, leaving one and one only.

I stop thinking, start acting, and defer further assessment until all the data are in.

That takes way longer than I think.

Decisions really have to be final for me.

The future is kicked so far away that I forget it is there.

There is only the now.

If I leave the back door open, I’ll always feel a draught.

If I allow re-assessment of the decision, I’ll waver.

That’s why I kept relapsing, before I made a decision.

What’s your experience?

7 September 2025: Loss of power, loss of control

“(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.” (Page 60, Big Book)

I heard a radio report about a ship crashing into a bridge.

They said, “The ship lost power, and therefore control.”

That’s Step One. Because I have no power (and something else does), I am not managing my life (and something else is).

Thinking one has got one part of the step, but not the other, I’ve not understood anything.

The consequence of lacking power is to be at the mercy of the existing momentum and the surrounding tide, and the course of my vessel is no longer under my control.

What’s your experience?

6 September 2025: Unanimity

“Before taking drastic action which might implicate other people we secure their consent. If we have obtained permission, have consulted with others, asked God to help and the drastic step is indicated we must not shrink.” (Page 80, Big Book)

“The right answer will come, if we want it. God alone can judge our sex situation. Counsel with persons is often desirable, but we let God be the final judge. We realize that some people are as fanatical about sex as others are loose. We avoid hysterical thinking or advice.” (Pages 69 to 70, Big Book)

“that all important decisions be reached by discussion, vote, and, whenever possible, by substantial unanimity” (Concept XII, Warranty IV)

To make a decision:

• Establish the right motives (surrender to God)
• Consider the situation carefully
• Obtain the consent of others, where necessary
• Consult with others
• Ask God for help, pray, meditate

Once unanimity is achieved between these factors, I have my answer.

5 September 2025: Life questions

“3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Page 59, Big Book)

What if my question is what to do with my life?

Fortunately, as I have turned over my will and life to the care of God, that’s not my question to ask.

My question to God is what to do today.

That’s the only question I need to ask.

If something God asks me to do today relates to the future, sobeit.

Trusting God means trusting God, not figuring it out.

I am where I am not because I planned it, and I like where I am, so I’m glad I didn’t plan it.

Once the days are put together, the path, in retrospect, is plain.

It needn’t be figured out in advance.

What’s your experience?

4 September 2025: Running the show

“We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show” (Pages 87–88, Big Book)

There are only two roles available: God and servant.

I have to remind myself of this because, when I’m agitated or doubtful, I’m playing God.

How?

To play God is to have a notion of how things should be, and to be agitated arises from things not according with my notion.

To play God is to fail to play servant.

The servant’s instructions are pinned up in the servant’s booth.

If I’m not in the booth, I won’t see the instructions, so I won’t know what to do.

Playing God is at the root of all mischief.

What’s your experience?

3 September 2025: Explaining

“It is of little use to argue and only makes the impasse worse.” (Pages 126–127, Big Book)

When I’m explaining something I’ve done, there’s often dirty work afoot.

Either I’m trying to get someone to excuse me for doing something wrong.

Or I’m trying to convince myself that wrong is right.

Or I’m trying to relieve someone’s misunderstanding when the problem is not misunderstanding but resistance: if it needs to be explained, they won’t accept even a compelling explanation.

In all three cases I’m wasting my time.

What’s your experience?

2 September 2025: Sweep

“We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so” (Pages 77–78, Big Book)

Until I made amends, I could not see things as they were. The mirror was dirty. Amends cleaned the mirror. The mirror, the world, looked different, and, in the mirror, I did, too.

What’s your experience?

1 September 2025: Fortune cookies

“Unlike most of our crowd, I did not get over my craving for liquor much during the first two and one-half years of abstinence. It was almost always with me. But at no time have I been anywhere near yielding.” (Dr Bob’s Nightmare)

During the withdrawal period, the addiction is trying to get me to go back.

It sends me up a stream of fortune cookies, in the hope that I’ll eat one, and be back.

If I crack open one and eat it, but the message inside reads: “Go to hell!”

During withdrawals: don’t eat the cookies.

What’s your experience?

31 August 2025: Hi ho, hi ho!

“That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.” (Page 60, Big Book)

“The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that ensured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step One)

“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go!”

Hi—the mental obsession hijacks me into the first drink.

Ho—the physical craving takes me hostage and keeps me drinking.

It’s off to work we go—I’m now working for my alcoholism.

Except it’s got me thinking I’m doing this for myself.

Powerless over alcohol = powerlessness over the mental obsession and the physical craving.

Powerlessness means something has power over me.

Unmanageability means that that something, not me, is doing the managing.

What’s your experience?

30 August 2025: Transmission

“But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven’t got.” (Page 164, Big Book)

Oh, but you’ve more than you think.

I’m wary of interpretations that let me off the hook.

Each day of sobriety gives me experience to share.

As time builds, experience builds.

Hoarded experience goes wormy.

I revert to moany victim.

Best to work: pass it on.

What’s your experience?

29 August 2025: Vanity and humility

“Rather vain of us, wasn’t it?” (Page 49, Big Book)

Four things that the ego wants me to have.

Visibility
Applause
Importance
Notice

VAIN:

The antidote:

HUMILITY:

Honest
Unobtrusive
Modest
Industrious
Loving
Insouciant
Tractable
Yielding

What’s your experience?

28 August 2025: (Self-)love and marriage (horse and carriage)

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.” (Page 86, Big Book)

Self-pity: upset that I have not got my way.

Self-seeking motives: wanting to get my own way.

Dishonest motives: concealing the fact I want to get my own way.

All three are about my way.

Divorce implies I was married.

Each day I remarry my own way.

Each morning I must be divorced anew.

What’s your experience?

27 August 2025: Turntable

“we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution” (Page 25, Big Book)

Railway turntables are devices for turning railway stock from one track to another.

Locomotives can be switched from one track to another, e.g. using a railway turntable, but once they’re on a track, that’s the track they’re on, and the destination is unalterable.

When I’m on a God track, I can’t go wrong.

When I’m on a self track, I can’t go right.

Steps Six and Seven are absolute: they represent the turning from one track to another, the self track to the God track.

There are no half measures possible.

What’s your experience?

25 August 2025: Observer and observed

“Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.” (Page 64, Big Book)

What we find in Step Four is not us: it is what is blocking us from God. Our defects of character are not what we are but are what we’re not. That’s why we don’t need to counterbalance them with assets to make ourselves feel better. They’re no more who we are than our defects are who we are.

Defects are defective beliefs, thinking, and behaviour. They’re garments. They’re not the body, the substance of the person.

Why can’t we just ‘stop being selfish’?

I become attached to the beliefs, thinking, and behaviour, and start to think, erroneously, they’re me, my identity, the essence of who I am.

This is part of the answer as to why selfishness, once embedded, has such a foothold.

It is also in the nature of selfishness to protect itself. Like a parasite, it incentivises the host through rewards and punishments to refrain from expelling it.

To have selfishness removed, I need to detach from it, or the pain of the removal will cause me to resist the divine removal process.

Detachment is achieved partly through the observation that takes place in Steps Four through Nine.

The observer is not the observed. In becoming the observer, I stop being the observed.

I then see the horror of selfishness for what it is, and selfishness’s wiles have no further hold over me.

The detachment process complete, the removal can take place without great pain to the host.

What’s your experience?

24 August 2025: Housecleaning

“Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal housecleaning, which many of us had never attempted.” (Pages 63–64, Big Book)

Imagine a kitchen, where God wants to cook something, with us doing the actual work, under his minute direction.

His first instruction: clear the kitchen of everything that does not belong: Steps Four through Nine.

What’s your experience?

23 August 2025: BONUS: Fear

“1. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid?”

What is fear?

A toxic, mind-and-body-contaminating dread stemming from the negative assessment of a potential future event or circumstance.

It is the chief weapon of the devil. The problem is not the situation but the devil.

The problem is not the thing of which I am afraid but the fear itself.

Noting it has been possible to withdraw the negative assessment of any event in the past or present, which is relatively easy, because one has a fact to deal with rather than a swirling mass of fragmentary images and mental GIFs, one can withdraw the negative assessment of the potential future event or circumstance.

Firstly, one simply does not know the future. One’s predictions are always way off.

Secondly, who is applying the negative assessment? The negative assessment does not emanate from the event or circumstance but from me. It’s an optional sticker.

Why it is one might react to a potential future event or circumstance with fear?

Because it falls into a category that one has trained oneself to assess negatively, and thus, when it is anticipated, the negative assessment is applied automatically.

Instead, ask oneself: Why is this bad? One gives a reason. Then one asks why that is bad. And so on. The endeavour soon falls apart and loses itself in pointless abstraction. Ultimately, if anything happens, so what? One adjusts and gets on with it.

We have God, we can be at peace at any moment, as long as we do not apply any negative assessments, and nothing compels a negative assessment.

In fact, the whole game of life is the game of remaining at peace no matter what.

Whatever the situation, once one is at peace, right action is clear and unimpeded by draining fear.

What’s your experience?

23 August 2025: Eyes Down!

“He should concentrate on his own spiritual demonstration.” (Page 98, Big Book)

In Bingo, we say, “Eyes Down”. In Al-Anon, too. Mind my own business. Focus on my own Bingo card. Ignore everyone else. Stay out of their heads, their lives.

What’s your experience?

22 August 2025: Infamy

“Social distinctions, petty rivalries and jealousies—these are laughed out of countenance.”

If only they were!

This is the ideal: whenever I have a notion of gangs, cliques, conspiracies, exclusions, abandonments, or other imagined maleficence within my home group, I’m back in that strange alcoholic world of exaggeration and distortion.

Solution: laughter out of countenance (i.e. see how ridiculous the notion idea is and thus cause it to collapse).

Method: discuss the matter with someone sensible with the express aim of seeing through such folly.

One must approach this not to defend the system causing the unhappiness but to destroy it.

What’s your experience?

21 August 2025: Detachment

“If you leave such a person alone, he may soon become convinced that he cannot recover by himself.” (Page 96, Big Book)

Sometimes people say that the opposite of addiction is connection.

I’d say it’s detachment.

When people detached from me, I got sober.

When I detach from others, I get well.

Then I can relate properly, with appropriate distance and mutual recognition of private and common ground, on a non-entangled basis.

But first: disentanglement.

What’s your experience?

20 August 2025: Step One: one idea

“We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery.” (Page 30, Big Book)

“Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.” (Page 60, Big Book)

Three ideas: (a), (b), and (c). Each is one idea. (a) is one idea not two. Alcoholism = powerlessness → unmanageability.

Unmanageability is not a characteristic of my life: the term refers to a lack of ability on my part: to manage.

What is to manage? To direct operations.

Alcoholism entails being unable to direct the operations of one’s life.

Why?

Because I’m not calling the shots; alcoholism is.

I do not drink because of … [insert motivation]. I do not drink on … [insert trigger]. I do not drink in order to … [insert purpose]. Those statements are made by someone in control, in a management function, directing operations.

I drink because I am compelled. The compulsion has the agency. The compulsion is in control. The compulsion is in a management function. The compulsion is directing operations. The compulsion is in charge, and I am not: I am not able to manage my life, because it is managing my life in my stead.

What’s your experience?

19 August 2025: Principles, Steps, Programme

“12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” (Page 60, Big Book)

“No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress.” (Page 60, Big Book)

What are the principles? They are they Steps.

What are the Steps? They summarise the Programme:

“The Twelve Steps that summarize the program may be called los Doce Pasos in one country, les Douze Étapes in another, but they trace exactly the same path to recovery that was blazed by the earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous.” (Foreword to the Third Edition)

What is the programme? The contents of the first portion of this volume (up to page 164).

“Therefore, the first portion of this volume, describing the A.A. recovery program, has been left largely untouched in the course of revisions made for the second, third, and fourth editions.”

Principles = Steps = Programme = contents up to page 164.

What are we to practise in all our affairs? Precisely this.

What’s your experience?

18 August 2025: Canvas

“When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material world and life as we see it, there is an All Powerful, Guiding, Creative Intelligence, right there our perverse streak comes to the surface and we laboriously set out to convince our- selves it isn’t so.” (Page 49, Big Book)

A charcoal drawing on a canvas did not draw itself.

Its sense lies in the mind of the artist and in the mind of the viewer.

It cannot discern that sense by self-examination.

The two dimensions cannot understand even themselves because they require the third and the fourth.

The three dimensions cannot understand even themselves because they require the fourth.

The material cannot make sense of itself because it requires the spiritual.

What’s your experience?

17 August 2025: The Al-Anon Steps

“This requires action on our part, which, when completed, will mean that we have admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our defects. This brings us to the Fifth Step in the program of recovery mentioned in the preceding chapter.” (Page 72, Big Book)

“We think we have done well enough in admitting these things to ourselves.” (Page 72, Big Book)

In Step Four, we admit our defects to ourselves, by simple virtue of writing them down.

In Step Five, by admitting our defects to another, we are automatically admitting them to God.

In Al-Anon, we say that we work the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is stated in the suggested opening. However, the Big Book is not conference-approved literature in Al-Anon. The only thing that is taken from AA (and adapted slightly) is the summary of the Twelve Steps taken from page 58.

These are not the Steps, however; the Steps are the contents of the book up to page 164.

Imagine a recipe book where the only page left is the contents page. Someone comes along and tries to reconstruct recipes merely based on their title, ‘bouillabaisse’ or ‘black forest gâteau’: they might come up with an approximation, but this will not be authentic.

In Al-Anon, we have taken the recipe title for each Step but then populated it with our own content.

Thus in Step Five, some of the literature refers to the admission to God and the admission to oneself as separate acts than the admission to another person. This means that the Fifth Step in Al-Anon really is a different Step than the Fifth Step in AA. It cannot really be said to be the same Step at all. It is not true to say that we work the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous in Al-Anon. We are doing something different. Except there is no settled system for going through the Steps in Al-Anon. There is merely a smörgåsbord of possibilities, and the individual guides in various books, supplemented with titbits scattered throughout the more discursive literature. Some elements are very good. But the individual is left with the task of assembling a programme for themselves, because of the fellowship failing to arrive at a settled position as a whole as to what the programme is. This is not ideal. Imagine a hospital where there are no treatment protocols but the patient, who is mentally ill, having to devise his own treatment programme based on the full range of possible interventions.

Hence, I use the Big Book to address the issues raised in Al-Anon, and I find the method perfectly adequate.

What’s your experience?

16 August 2025: Eels

“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.” (Page 58)

It is not some old ideas we have to get rid of but all of them. Imagine trying to pick particular eels out of a bucket of eels. Slippery, they evade one’s grasp, and the task seems endless. Just so with ideas. Best tip the bucket into the river then go to the source for fresh water.

When the Book presents the programme to me, the only valid response is, “Yes!”

What’s your experience?

15 August 2025: Fearlessness

“With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start.” (Page 58)

My automatic response to effort, hardship, or setback is to resent, to snivel, to shrink back like a slug threatened with salt.

Such fearfulness is not natural but results from mindset.

They would not ask me to be fearless if it were not possible: that would be cruel.

What is fearlessness?

Choosing to adopt a positive, constructive attitude and then proceeding efficiently and cheerfully along the suggested course of action.

What’s your experience?

14 August 2025: Emphasise, urge, beg, smash

“My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs.” (Page 14)

“The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.” (Page 30)

“This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience.” (Page 39)

“We, who have traveled this dubious path, beg you to lay aside prejudice, even against organized religion.” (Page 49)

“With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start.” (Page 58)

“We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable” (Page 76)

“We urge you to try our program” (Page 117)

Yes, the steps are suggested (in other words the authors cannot force us to take them). But it is mistake is to infer that it does not matter whether we take them or that the authors do not care about us.

In contrast to this, certain points are emphasized, re-emphasized, and smashed home; we are begged and urged.

The authors clearly believe that the Steps need to be taken and need to be taken now and would indeed like us to take them.

This is the general sense of the Big Book: both necessity and urgency.

“When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be?” (Page 53)

What’s your experience?

13 August 2025: Half and half

“Half measures availed us nothing.” (Page 59)

“It never fails, if you go about it with one half the zeal you have been in the habit of showing when you were getting another drink.” (Dr Bob’s Nightmare)

Half-measures = half the steps.

Half of the zeal = half of infinite zeal.

Take all the steps with sufficient zeal → sobriety.

What’s your experience?

12 August 2025: Feast

“Giving, rather than getting, will become the guiding principle.” (Page 128)

In a good relationship, the two have connection to an abundant source and share their abundance for a double-sourced potluck feast.

In a bad relationship, the two share the scraps they can spare, dressed up with extender, and feel shortchanged by the other, disappointed that the other is a terrible source.

What’s your experience?

11 August 2025: Jigsaw

“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.” (Page 58)

Trying to explain things to someone with any old ideas is like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle when elements of an old jigsaw puzzle are still on the board.

The old pieces say to the new ones, ‘You do not belong.’

The old, unfinished jigsaw puzzle must be thrown away.

What’s your experience?

10 August 2025: Elastic

“So we had to get down to causes and conditions.” (Page 64)

If elastic is worn out, it snaps because it was stretched a thousand times, not because you stretched it one time too often.

The final stretching was the occasion for the snapping, not the cause.

The same with ‘relapse’.

What’s your experience?

9 August 2025: Ill

“The entire family is, to some extent, ill.” (Page 122)

When conflict happens, it is sometimes the purpose of the relationship.

The ‘upside’ of the relationship is then really the alibi.

What’s the purpose of the conflict?

When I’m in conflict, ‘it’ is your fault. That means that ‘it’ is not my fault. The point of the conflict is to shift the fault for the ‘it’ from me to you. And you’re shifting the fault for your own ‘it’ to me. Back and forth. To and fro. Exploding pass the parcel, accumulating weight on each passage. Important to have the last word: the parcel blows up in the lap of the speechless.

When I stopped drinking, I had to give up alcohol, not beverages.

When I stopped people-dependence, I had to give up conflict, not relationships.

Can you heal a relationship?

The relationship is neither ill or well. Since it cannot be ill, it cannot be healed.

It is the participants who are ill, and the participants can be healed.

Working on the relationship is working on the wrong thing.

I work on me by recognising I can do nothing about me.

My job is to catalogue and confess my folly.

Then: redirect my reliance to God and take direction.

My reliance was on people: getting; and giving to get.

‘I love you’ was my invitation to the waltz on the dancefloor covered in mantraps.

When I don’t need anyone or anything except God, I’ll attract someone who doesn’t need anyone or anything except God, and we can be in heaven’s picnic together, with God.

“If you want it, you can’t have it. If you don’t need it, God will give it to you on a plate, and you can keep it as long as you don’t need it, as long as you remember you need Him not it.” (Cahuenga B)

What’s your experience?

8 August 2025: Alpha and omega

“Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God’s ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us, wasn’t it?” (Page 49)

People tried to explain things to me, and I argued.

I ‘disagreed’.

We were both wasting our time.

I came into AA with the wrong mindset.

This included a thousand false premises.

Someone would present a new idea.

To understand it, I would have to undo the premises.

But these cannot be undone individually.

You pick at one, and you find it’s glued to the rest.

Like cold, congealed spaghetti:

The strands cannot be separated.

I was holding onto all my premises.

I was doing this by holding on to even one.

No one could tell me anything.

If I was right, why was I so unhappy?

A solution involves changing everything I think.

If I was right (at all): no solution existed.

If I was right (at all), why bother looking for a solution at all?

The choice was alcoholic death, ending it, or surrender.

I chose surrender.

Surrender is a choice.

What is surrender?

Saying:

“I cannot solve my problem.”

“Everything I think must be wrong.”

“I want a solution.”

“Show me.”

Starting with nothing and building up from there.

What’s your experience?

7 August 2025: Ready

“If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.” (Page 58)

Whilst I’m making a decision, there are two or more options on the table. When I make a decision, I push all of the options off the table except one, and that’s the one I’m sticking with.

If I start to ‘reconsider the options’, I did not actually make a decision, or I’ve put previously rejected options back on the table. The back door’s been open all the time, or I’ve nipped back and opened it. Leave the back door open, and you’ll feel a constant draught. That’s a recipe for insecurity and instability. I have to be careful to make decisions only when the facts have materially changed, e.g. through acquiring a considerable body of new evidence.

The decision in question is the decision to take the action that brings about ‘having’ what ‘we have’.

What ‘we have’ is a working relationship with God, to whom I am utterly and eternally subservient, with no idolatrous pursuit of other objectives.

I need to want this, emotionally, and not just recognise it’s technically advantageous.

I have to be prepared to pay the temporary and nugatory prices of effort, pain, and sacrifice.

That’s the willingness.

‘Want’ (desire) + ‘willing’ (preparedness to commit to action) = ‘ready’.

No ‘ready’? No ‘want’ or no ‘willing’.

‘Want’ but no ‘willing’? Immaturity or fantasy.

‘Willing’ but no ‘want’? Unstable and doomed to fail. Emotion always wins.

‘Want’, ‘decide’, ‘willing’, ‘ready’, ‘steps’ => success.

What’s your experience?

6 August 2025: Complacency

“It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.” (Page 85)

Of the death threats (Step One reservations, resentment, ongoing harm, secrets, failure to face creditors, failure to make amends, resting on laurels, insufficient Twelfth-Step work, and dependence on people, places, and things rather than God), the worst is complacency (resting on laurels). Why? Because it’s the one that blinds me to the rest.

What’s your experience?

5 August 2025: Willing to believe

“It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself.” (Page 12, Big Book)

Being willing to believe seems a straightforward idea. After all, ‘willingness’ and ‘belief’ are everyday notions. There is a hitch, however.

Willingness is typically associated with action, but belief is not an action.

What is belief?

To believe a proposition means to assent to its truth, because one ‘sees’ it is true. Seeing is involuntary. One cannot will seeing.

Some simple examples:

I believe that a cat lives at number 43 because:

• I have seen the cat there; OR
• Sally tells me so, and she is reliable; OR
• I can see cat paraphernalia, cat footprints, and cat fur, so I infer a cat lives there.

Respectively, these mechanisms are experience, authority, and inference.

To believe any of these things about the cat cannot be an act of the will: I cannot will the experience of seeing the cat; I cannot will someone’s authority; I cannot will an inference. I cannot therefore will my belief.

What does Bill mean?

Bill W’s logic is often shortcut. He omits steps or uses metonymy.

For instance:

• When he says our lives are unmanageable, he later corrects and says that we are unable to manage our lives because we are powerless over alcohol.
• He says we’re powerless over alcohol when we are really powerless over impulses to drink.

And here is the third great example: We cannot will belief but we can be willing to take actions that are promised to bring about belief.

‘Seeing’ that God exists is the last and involuntary step in the sequence of voluntary steps.

To be willing to believe is to be willing to take the steps to bring about belief.

What’s your experience?

4 August 2025: Came to believe

Five ‘come / came to believe’ quotations:

“An illness of this sort—and we have come to believe it an illness” (Page 18)

“But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it.” (Page 25)

“They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking.” (Page 50)

“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” (Page 59)

“We have come to believe He would like us to keep our heads in the clouds with Him, but that our feet ought to be firmly planted on earth.” (Page 130)

Once I realise:

• I have a problem
• Others have solved the problem
• They have done this through God
• I can do this through God
• There is a higher realm where I must live
• There is a lower realm where I must act

I have the right philosophy, and I can take the requisite course of action.

What’s your experience?

3 August 2025: Selfish programme?

“Therefore, the first portion of this volume, describing the A.A. recovery program, has been left largely untouched in the course of revisions made for the second, third, and fourth editions.”

That first portion of the volume contains the following quotations about selfishness. These should make it clear what the AA programme has to say about the matter:

“Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.”

“Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil.”

“We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.”

“Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.”

“We reviewed our own conduct over the years past. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate?”

“We subjected each relation to this test—was it selfish or not?”

“We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.”

“Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.”

“When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology?”

“We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends.”

“To be vital, faith must be accompanied by self-sacrifice and unselfish, constructive action.”

“He is not likely to get far in any direction if he fails to show unselfishness and love under his own roof.”

What’s your experience?

2 August 2025: Steamroller

“New groups started up and it was found, to the astonishment of everyone, that A.A.’s message could be transmitted in the mail as well as by word of mouth.” (Foreword to the Second Edition)

The Book is amazingly powerful. Submitting to its contents and the actions it instructs, particularly with a sponsor, reading line by line and receiving their input on each line, is like lying down in front of a steamroller.

I start reading, and the steamroller nips my feet, which become caught under the wheel. Gradually I’m crunched, bone by bone, little by little, until the steamroller inches up and my eyes pop out.

The Book and its contents are way bigger than me, and I’m best off becoming lost in its ideas and actions.

What’s your experience?

1 August 2025: Rear-view mirror

“When we look back, we realize” (Page 100, Big Book)

Every single hardship, difficulty, or challenge I have ever faced has turned out to contain a lesson.

I am certain that each lesson is there to equip me for something else lying further ahead that would otherwise have floored or even destroyed me.

I am not being victimised.

I am being trained.

Repeated ‘victimisation’ is really a repeat of the lesson.

If I don’t learn it the first time, it will come back until it’s learned.

What’s your experience?

31 July 2025: Will

“praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out” (Chapter Five, Big Book)

What is God’s will for me?

Well, I can start here:

• Fulfil my obligations
• Fulfil them at the earliest opportunity
• Fulfil them with maximum diligence

Once that’s done, I can think again.

Except that’s never done.

What’s your experience?

30 July 2025: Particular

“So we clean house with the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.” (Chapter Six, Big Book)

Sometimes I find myself in a PaTiKuLa situation. What’s PaTiKuLa? A situation that requires PTKL: patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love.

Now, that’s not to patronise the people I encounter in such a situation. The problem lies with me. The situation, the people, are merely touching on my sensitivities and offering me an excellent opportunity to face myself. What are my sensitivities? My demands for how things should be.

What’s your experience?

29 July 2025: Nil

“If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps. At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.” (Chapter Five, Big Book)

What does nil mean? Drunk.

What’s your experience?

28 July 2025: Toxic

“He is seldom mildly intoxicated.” (Chapter Two, Big Book)

“He is the fellow who goes to bed so intoxicated he ought to sleep the clock around.” (Chapter Two, Big Book)

“In a few years he became so violent when intoxicated that he had to be committed.” (Chapter Three, Big Book)

“We have indulged in spiritual intoxication.” (Chapter Nine, Big Book)

The book has three uses of the word ‘toxic’: three are to do with alcohol; one is to do with spirituality.

The programme, spirituality, and religion I’ve used to change the way I feel, to get high.

The real purpose of the programme is not to feel different but to help me establish a relationship with God, so I can live that out. This is because it is the right thing to do. As a by-product of that, I’m saved from drinking and given a more satisfactory, satisfying purpose. Satisfaction is not so much a feeling but a determination made by assessment: looking at one’s life sober, it is hopefully more satisfactory than a life of drinking, and that has do to with the fulfilment of purpose and potential, not one’s subjective enjoyment of it.

Although I do feel better, that’s not the point.

Turning to another topic prompted by the word ‘toxic’: I’ve been in relationships I described as ‘toxic’, and I’ve unfortunately referred to others as ‘toxic’. It’s a common enough shorthand, these days.

On referring to relationships as toxic: this a relationship I’m getting something out of I should not be getting at all or should not be getting from another person, and so putting up with things I should not be putting up with whilst doling out things I should not be doling out. As soon as I stop playing ball, the ballgame is over. It is not the relationship that is the problem, and it is not the other person that is the problem: I’m the problem. There’s no unqualified victim, because, even when I was at my most passive, I was actively remaining in the situation. There was as much of a payoff for me as for the other person. Whatever situation I find myself in is, at the level of my consciousness, the best of all possible worlds, or I would have done something to change it.

On referring to people as toxic: this is best avoided. I’m one to talk, first off. But that’s not the point: I’ve learned to distinguish people and behaviour. The book says we’re all children of a living creator, so I presume we are. That means we’re good. Other people’s behaviour might be immoral, might breach etiquette or custom, might be strategically unwise, or might not be to my personal taste, but that’s between them and God. The same applies to me.

What’s your experience?

27 July 2025: Cards

“When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.” (Chapter Six, Big Book)

The thoughts that the physical brain introduces into my mind are like playing cards dealt to me.

I can either reject them or incorporate them into my hand, and then I have to decide how to play the hand. In the analogy, that is what I do with the thoughts, in my mind.

Each time a three of hearts is dealt, it is a different three of hearts. It is not the same three of hearts. It is one with identical characteristics, but it is not the same one. The cards themselves have no power. The only difficulty is remembering that I have agency.

To use another analogy: Swatting a fly is easy. Swatting two flies is not twice as hard as swatting one.

For God to remove the thought, I must first put it down. Only then will God remove it. He will not wrest it from my hand if I have picked it up.

What’s your experience?

26 July 2025: Big

“But not so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worthwhile in life.” (Page 18, Big Book)

“Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worthwhile to us now.” (Page 124, Big Book)

Someone people say they’ve got a ‘big life’ in recovery, and I quite understand what they mean. It’s usually a better thing to have home, occupation, and affairs than not.

But size is not the measure. If I have big feet, they are not better feet. They’re not fitter for their job by virtue of their size. A big life is not necessarily a better one. A better one is a worthwhile one, and the things that are worthwhile are often trifling in material magnitude.

What’s your experience?

25 July 2025: Casserole

“Of necessity there will have to be discussion of matters medical, psychiatric, social, and religious.” (Chapter Two, Big Book)

“That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral.” (Chapter Four, Big Book)

“Having had the experience yourself, you can give him much practical advice.” (Chapter Seven, Big Book)

“We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there.” (Chapter Four, Big Book)

The soup has eight ingredients:

• Physical
• Mental
• Social
• Practical
• Religious
• Spiritual
• Philosophical
• Moral

In recovery, I’ve had to make progress in all eight areas.

Now I understand why attempting to solve my problem by looking at just one or some of these areas failed.

The fellowship is the casserole dish, not the casserole.

Trying to get sober and well using the fellowship alone is like trying to eat the casserole dish.

The ingredients don’t produce a casserole without heat, and God is the source of the heat.

What’s your experience?

24 July 2025: Detachment

“until we let go absolutely” (Page 58, Big Book)

What do I detach from?

• The past
• The future
• The world
• Its people
• Me
• My circumstances
• The results

What does detachment mean?

• Don’t think about it
• Don’t talk about it
• Don’t interfere with it
• Don’t stare at it

Is there an exception?

Yes, when planning the day, these might need a glance, under God’s guidance; as I am going through the day, I might need to briefly apprehend what is going on.

But otherwise: keep the focus on the right thought and the right action, and on nothing else.

What’s your experience?

23 July 2025: Spiritually fit

“Assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to do.”

The exclusions required for spiritual fitness:

• No secrets
• No ongoing harmful behaviour
• No resentment
• No fear
• No unamended harms
• No unfaced creditors
• No selfish activities
• No self-indulgence

The inclusions required for spiritual fitness

• Daily spiritual practice
• Periodic spiritual practice
• Intensive message-carrying
• Substantial level of service
• Discharging AA obligations promptly and well
• Discharging other obligations promptly and well

The above is the ideal I seek to grow towards.

When I’m making progress, I’m safe.

What’s your experience?

22 July 2025: Victim

“a victim of crooked thinking” (Chapter Ten, Big Book)

I used to be a victim.

What’s a victim?

As a victim, I was hurt, by a lot of things. I found things hurtful and disappointing. The things that hurt me were either outside me or inside me but—in my perception—outside the scope of my responsibility. People hurt me. Peoples hurt me. People, places, and things hurt me. The key thing: the hurt was not my fault. I did not even attribute the hurtfulness to malice. I saw hurt as the consequence of the general way of the world, not the result of wickedness alone.

This last point entailed something deadly: this meant that people could not interact with me without me being hurt. In other words, when people interacted with me, I would be hurt, I would construe it as their fault and then react accordingly. Even if this was below the surface, people knew this was happening and instinctively avoided me. If they interacted with me, I would be hurt, and it would apparently be their fault. They did not want to be perpetually cast as the perpetrator.

The only people who willingly danced this dance were either getting a kick out of being classed as a persecutor or were playing the same victim game but in reverse.

I don’t know how to have a healthy sick relationship, and a sick person (which I was) cannot help but have sick relationships.

A sick relationship cannot be healed by attempting to heal the relationship directly, especially not by talking about the relationship to the other person in the relationship. The talking about each other and oneself to each other is the very means by which the attack and counterattack take place. More talking means more hurt.

Only if the individuals in question heal in a general sense can the relationship be healed, and this can typically take place only if the person ‘puts down the drink’: this does not mean leaving the relationship (in fact it often requires staying in the relationship, which is the classroom) but entails taking the material that arises in the relationship and dealing with it with someone else, whilst being sober, considerable, and helpful within the relationship, regardless of what the other person says or does (see pages 98–99 and 117–118 of the Big Book).

What’s your experience?

21 July 2025: Seven areas of self

“Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.” (Chapter Five, Big Book)

The Big Book goes on to set out seven areas of self: security, pocketbooks, ambitions, personal and sex relations, pride, and self-esteem. Since I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to God in Step Three, I’m turning these over to God, too.

Step Four looks at how my attempt to run these areas causes havoc. I plot and plan, and other people fail to cooperate with my plots and plans; as a result, I feel resentful. I realise my plots and plans might not come off; as a result, I feel frightened. I behave selfishly; as a result, I feel guilty. I am dishonest, and this produces more fear and guilt. What a mess! This needs to change!

To change, I need to know what to change, what’s right and wrong, what works and what doesn’t. That’s what Step Four shows me.

It also gives me the basis for confession (Five), reinforced willingness (Six), commitment to change (Seven), and relationship repair (Eight and Nine). In Ten through Twelve, I live on a new basis: the basis of trusting and relying upon God. I’m just God’s servant, here to act on the line, “Thy Will Be Done!”

How do the seven areas of self get turned around with the Steps?

Security and pocketbooks: My health, accommodation, supplies, occupation, and finances. These are none of my business!

Does that mean I sit there like a blancmange, waiting for God to supply me? No! “You gotta take action to activate your faith. God ain’t gonna slide no hotdog under your door.” I take action under God’s direction, and keep my head down, focusing on the task at hand, praying constantly. God’s never let me down, in 31 years of sobriety

Does that mean I can be careless or reckless with these areas? Absolutely not. God will do for me what I cannot do for myself so I must do what I can do, under his direction. Prudence, forethought, industry, frugality, knowledge, awareness, and good records are my duties in these areas. My business is to be a good ‘paterfamilias’ of these areas, but without fretting over them.

Ambitions: These are the little plans and designs of self. What I want is now irrelevant. A life run on self-will can hardly be a success. Pursuing and achieving ambitions do not bring happiness and satisfaction. They’re a mug’s game. Doing God’s will is the only thing that consistently brings happiness and satisfaction.

Personal relations and sex relations: If I adjust my attitudes and actions, my relationships take care of themselves. What others belief, think, say, or do is none of my business. My job is wishing others well (benevolence) and acting well towards others (beneficence). Basic mottos in the home: no complaint; no criticism; no negativity; serve; yield; be bright and cheerful.

Pride: If I act well, my reputation takes care of itself. What others think of me is also none of my business.

Self-esteem: The Big Book tells me on page 28 I’m a child of God. Any parent knows their child is of infinite value. That means I’m of infinite value (and so are you). If I think otherwise, I’m simply wrong. Who am I to contradict God? When I have low self-esteem, I’m wrong. As with everything, trust in God’s infinite love.

What’s your experience?

20 July 2025: Abyss

“Though you may be able to stop for a considerable period, you may yet be a potential alcoholic. We think few, to whom this book will appeal, can stay dry anything like a year. Some will be drunk the day after making their resolutions; most of them within a few weeks.” (Chapter Three, Big Book)

“But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience.” (Chapter Three, Big Book)

Imagine having ‘serious’ alcoholism. Physically addicted. DTs. No job. Oesophageal varices.

Now imagine having ‘mild’ alcoholism. Still working. Still married. Horrendous hangovers. Each month a lost phone, a few days of impaired performance at work, some embarrassing episodes, some scrapes, some narrow misses. But still fun, sometimes.

Now imagine two railway carriages. One is first class. Another is a cattle wagon. Except both are on the same train and the train is heading for an abyss, over which the railway bridge has collapsed.

Which one is mild, and which one is serious? The answer won’t make any difference.

What’s your experience?

19 July 2025: Hopeless

“We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.” (Foreword to the First Edition, Big Book)

What is the hopeless state of mind and body?

Imagine a central heating system, which switches itself on when the temperature drops to a certain level. Imagine it has a thermostat that detects the temperature, and, when the temperature rises to a certain level, it sends a signal to the heating element to turn itself off. Now imagine that the thermostat is broken, so, although it detects that the target temperature has been reached, it does not send the signal to the heating element, which keeps on heating. There is no way of manually switching the system off. The property gets hotter and hotter: the occupant is at risk of dying of heat stroke.

Fortunately, the system gets so overheated that it short-circuits before the occupant dies. You call an engineer. The engineer says two things that are alarming. He says that the system cannot be repaired, so that, if the temperature ever drops to a certain level, the system will be reactivated, and the same process outlined above will repeat. The occupant will simply have to hope that the system short-circuits and that this will happen before he dies of heat stroke. The second alarming thing is that the system cannot be uninstalled.

Is there a solution?

Yes. There’s an old-fashioned fireplace in the flat. Some brickwork obscuring it must be removed and the chimney, cleaned, but then a fire can be lit, and, provided that the fire is tended well, the temperature will never drop to such a level that the heating system is reactivated. This requires fairly constant work and attention.

What’s your experience?

18 July 2025: Vestibule

“To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.” (Chapter Four, Big Book)

“When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be?” (Chapter Four, Big Book)

Imagine a room, a vestibule, with two exit doors. One is marked ‘alcoholic death’. The other is marked ‘spiritual basis’ (subtitle: ‘ego death’). No wonder it’s a difficult choice. Both involve death.

But the vestibule is comfortable. Nice furniture, little view of a garden, big samovar of tea, freshly de-packeted Oreos, nice and crunchy. Why not just hang out here for a while? Or forever?

One day, the floor will give way. Actually, it could give way any minute, maybe in ten seconds from now. By the time it gives way, it will be too late to bolt for the door marked ‘spiritual basis’.

That’s when I realise I have to make a choice between the two unpalatable options. Dawdling is folly.

What’s your experience?

17 July 2025: Off to the circus

“But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink.” (Chapter Three, Big Book)

Imagine being on a train platform. On the right is your regular train, heading towards your destination. On the left is a sinister train painted in garish colours depicting images of a circus. Inside you can see people having a ball. There are strongmen, acrobats, monkeys, clowns, the lot. The circus folk are milling around on the platform, chatting to people, encouraging them to get on the train. One of them persuades you to join them, saying, “Your train does not leave for an hour. Come with us. You’ll be there in a trice. You can have all the fun of the circus. But don’t worry: we’ll get you back in time for your train.” You decide to take the clown up on his offer, and board the train. You take your seat, enjoying the amazing atmosphere. You close your eyes for a moment, and when you open them, you realise you’re inside a cattle wagon. There are no windows. The clowns, the acrobats, the monkeys are gone. There’re only the strongmen left, and they’re guarding the doors. The train moves off.

What’s your experience?

16 July 2025: Intuition

“… we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision” (Page 86, Big Book)

I have learned to trust intuitive thoughts, as long as they are not immoral, grand, or rash. They can and should be tested against spiritual principles. But most ideas readily pass such a test. Even if they’re a little odd, or run against tried-and-tested habits and ways of doing things, why not trial them?

Most major structural changes in my life have actually come from small daily changes that build up into an entirely new direction or focus.

Today, I listen and act.

What’s your experience?

15 July 2025: God’s scheme of things

“… even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God” (Page 46, Big Book)

“God’s scheme of things” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

The rabbi is asked, “Why did we have to bring sacrifices of burned meat on the altar of the tabernacle? What does God do with all of that? It’s not like he eats it.”

The rabbi answers, “He likes it.”

I don’t have to understand God’s will. I just have to do it. Obedience does not depend on understanding.

What’s your experience?

14 July 2025: Concern

“I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned.” (Page 36, Big Book)

“We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well.” (Page 63, Big Book)

Jim’s position is precisely the position we adopt when we take Step Three: we are the mere employee in the business we used to own. God owns the business now. We transferred the title deed in Step Three.

In contrast to Jim, gratitude is in order, not irritation.

We have an inexhaustible source of funding and support.

There is never any reason for fear.

I used to own my concerns—my fears—now God owns them.

What’s your experience?

13 July 2025: Block

“… the things in ourselves which had been blocking us” (Page 64, Big Book)

“It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.” (Page 41, Big Book)

How does a relapse happen?

Is it because, when I feel really bad, I remember that drinking is nice, and then make a rational decision that drinking make sense as a solution to the problem, because nice feelings are nicer than bad feelings, and drinking produces nice feelings?

Well, not quite. Even if feeling bad were why I’m even thinking of drinking in the first place, to ‘decide’ to drink is not rational, because, for an alcoholic, the idea that drinking is a good idea, on balance, is false. That’s the delusion. Because of the physical craving triggering vast, unstoppable consumption and all of the attendant behaviours and consequences, the first drink is never a good idea, however bad I feel. It’s just not worth it.

It is possible that the desire to drink is arising in the first place because of the bad feelings, though?

This argument falls down very quickly, however. If it were the case that bad feelings trigger drinking, feeling bad above a certain threshold would always give rise to drinking, feeling bad below that threshold would be safe, and feeling good would constitute a defence. And precisely what would the mechanics be? How long would one have to be upset at, say, level seven or level nine before a drink were triggered?

Coming down from the theoretical to practical level, the argument fares no better. Many people in recovery feel terrible and are never tempted to drink. The thought simply does not arise. Many people who drink again were not feeling bad at all, either on the day or in general (see Jim’s story, Fred’s story, in the Big Book, “not a cloud on the horizon”). In fact, a common experience is to go through a bad patch, and be tempted to drink once the bad patch is over, when the person is now back to the good status quo ante.

To bring it even closer to home: before AA, I drank when I felt bad but also when I felt good. If I drank in opposite conditions, one can hardly hold that the drinking was caused by those conditions. Moreover, my acquaintance was replete with people who were profoundly unhappy yet not alcoholic.

In the light of these considerations, it’s remarkable how widespread this belief is, that feeling bad is a causal factor. The answer might lie in the Big Book itself, which provides conflicting evidence, or at least evidence open to conflicting interpretations. In The Doctor’s Opinion, we have the famous (infamous) ‘restless, irritable, discontent’ line, which is read as suggesting that, since relapse relieves these feelings, these feelings cause relapse and must be avoided—one might as well say that plaster casts cause broken legs or paracetamol causes headaches because these are the treatments. The most likely reading, in my view, is that these feelings are the feelings of someone resisting the mental obsession when it hits: they’re not the reason for it arising in the first place. Then, they have their place: the mental obsession generates these feelings to accelerate getting its own way. In another passage, Bill says that self-pity and resentment almost drove him to drink but twelfth-step work saved the day. Did they though? If they could have, he would have had a different type of alcoholism than Jim, Fred, the man of thirty, and the certain American businessman who drank again without being so driven. Then there’s the boy whistling in the dark. The best explanation for this sometime apparent correlation between feeling terrible and subsequently drinking is that, rather than one causing the other, both have their origin in a common source.

When I return to being in charge, in the place of God, that very denial of God produces a sense of wrongness, followed by guilt (for the denial of God), which produces fear (of retribution from God), which produces resentment (to shift the guilt and object of retribution elsewhere). Moreover, operating on self-power is always suboptimal to operating on God power, so I will be producing worse results, and that’s going to produce bad feelings, particularly as, when in self, I’m attached to externals and to results, with my emotional condition pegged to them, as some currencies are pegged to the dollar.

So, a relapse into self-will is broadly going to have two effects: (a) feeling generally worse and (b) losing the grace of God, the spiritual defence, which would otherwise block the spontaneously, arbitrarily arising desire to drink from overpowering me. The desire to drink is simply an impulse that, in a recovered alcoholic, will inevitably arise at some point or another. It comes from a place deep within that is beyond thought and reason. In its mechanism of persuasion, ‘reasons’ might be adduced, ‘purpose’ might be cited, but these are the rationalisations that pull the wool over the eyes of the alcoholic, the alibis and excuses that do not ring consistently true even to the alcoholic. Such reasons and purposes, reported after the event, hold no weight, being, as they are, alcoholism’s persiflage, Jim’s whiskey in his milk. Solemn recollections of pre-relapse thinking show the insanity of relapse. They are not the breadcrumb trail of causality.

The real reason for the relapse is the absence of mental defence in the moment that the mental obsession happens to strike, and that, in turn, is caused by the self-will that blocks us from God. That self-will is the source also of increased unhappiness.

What’s your experience?

12 July 2025: Harm

“We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone.” (Chapter Six, Big Book)

Here is a list I find helpful for identifying precisely how I have harmed someone.

Physical injury
Damage to or theft of property
Monetary loss
Deprivation of time
Interference, intrusion, and nuisance
Unnecessary negative emotion
Impaired or ruptured relationship with the individual
Impaired or ruptured relationship with a third party
Reputational harm
Loss of opportunity for usefulness
Deprivation of due help
Help that deprives others of responsibility
Misdirection from a position of authority

What’s your experience?

11 July 2025: Hogwarts Express

“My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator” (Page 13, Big Book)

Recovery: Board the Hogwarts Express, and you’ll end up at Hogwarts. The Hogwarts Express is the journey, not the destination. The destination, Hogwarts, is the spiritual life that is acquired once the Steps have been completed. How do you board the train? Rush at the wall. What’s rushing at the wall? Buying all of the ideas of the programme and taking all of the actions enthusiastically. A lot of people haven’t yet received the Hogwarts letter: they’re still ‘out there’, knowing there’s something wrong, but not knowing what to do about it, which means we have work to do. “You’re a wizard, Harry, Bobby, Sally …!” Not everyone who receives the letter gets on the Hogwarts Express. A lot of people made it to King’s Cross (AA), all right, but are just camped out in tents on the platforms. They won’t board the Hogwarts Express, or, worse, they board other, more sensible trains.

What’s your experience?

10 July 2025: West Hampstead

“After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

Alcoholism: getting on the Metropolitan line thinking it’s a stopping train but then plastering your face pitifully against the window as it hurtles past West Hampstead and the terrifying thought occurs that you’re not going to be able to get out until Harrow-on-the-Hill.

What’s your experience?

9 July 2025: Grace

“But for the grace of God, there would have been thousands more convincing demonstrations. So many want to stop but cannot.” (Page 25, Big Book)

Sometimes you get into the backseat of a car, and you’re trying to fasten the seatbelt, but it just won’t click, because you’re trying the seatbelt in the wrong socket. That’s what it’s like coming back from a slip. You’re doing everything right, but it won’t click. Coming back and doing everything right won’t work unless it clicks, and you’re not in charge of the click. This is why slipping is not safe.

What’s your experience?

8 July 2025: Lift

“We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness.” (Page 30, Big Book)

What is alcoholism? Imagine a lift going down. There is a display showing what subterranean floor you’re on. The lift does not stop at every floor. Sometimes you go down several floors without the lift stopping. There are no buttons inside the lift. The walls are completely smooth. When it hits the bottom, the lift and you will be destroyed. There is no indication of when that will be. If the lift stops and the door opens, get out quickly, before it shuts and the lift moves off.

What’s your experience?

7 July 2025: Runaway train

“Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.” (Page 30, Big Book)

Imagine a runaway train with broken brakes hurtling towards an abyss over which the railway bridge has collapsed.

The only solution is to pull the emergency brake (God). That’s behind a piece of glass. The piece of glass is self. Self must be smashed to pull the emergency brake.

Regular people can have a self and be fine.

Self is not part of my alcoholism.

For me, self stands between me and the solution.

What’s your experience?

6 July 2025: Conception

“Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” (Chapter One, Big Book)

Three people can go to Paris and each have different conceptions of Paris. Those conceptions do not change Paris. Paris does not depend on those conceptions. Paris was there before the people existed and went there and will be there after they leave and after they cease to exist.

When I have a conception of God, God is not dependent on that conception and is not my own creation. There is arguably one God, not one pocket deity for each person in AA.

I am His creature.

What’s your experience?

5 July 2025: Complete willingness

“Remember it was agreed at the beginning we would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol.” (Chapter Six, Big Book)

“Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend.” (Chapter One, Big Book)

“Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.” (Chapter Five, Big Book)

To go to any length, I start by going to one length and then build up from there.

That means taking one thing, doing it properly, and doing it every day.

It might be going to the 7.00 a.m. morning meditation daily. It might be having my camera on at that meeting. I might be asking God to direct my thinking. It might be doing a Step Eleven review. It might be taking or returning on the same day every single incoming AA call. It might be saying a particular set prayer daily.

Take one thing. Do that. No deviation.

Inconsistency with important and manifestly good habits suggests atheism: it shows I’m still listening to the devil, who tempts me to divert from a perfectly good path. Just one deviation means I’ve not surrendered: I’m taking the action when I think it’s warranted, not because I’ve committed, come what may.

Surrender means surrendering the right to retract the surrender, surrendering the right to decide.

If one stone is missing from the arch, the arch collapses.

What’s your experience?

4 July 2025: Potential vs true

“Potential alcoholic that I was, I nearly failed my law course.” (Page 2, Big Book)

“Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years. Certain drinkers, who would be greatly insulted if called alcoholics, are astonished at their inability to stop. We, who are familiar with the symptoms, see large numbers of potential alcoholics among young people everywhere. But try and get them to see it! As we look back, we feel we had gone on drinking many years beyond the point where we could quit on our will power. If anyone questions whether he has entered this dangerous area, let him try leaving liquor alone for one year. If he is a real alcoholic and very far advanced, there is scant chance of success. In the early days of our drinking we occasionally remained sober for a year or more, becoming serious drinkers again later. Though you may be able to stop for a considerable period, you may yet be a potential alcoholic. We think few, to whom this book will appeal, can stay dry anything like a year. Some will be drunk the day after making their resolutions; most of them within a few weeks.” (Pages 33–34, Big Book)

“But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience. Let us take another illustration.” (Page 39, Big Book)

“The tragic truth is that if the man be a real alcoholic, the happy day may not arrive. He has lost control. At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he passes into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail. This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.” (Pages 23–24, Big Book)

As it turns out, the distinction between potential and real / true alcoholic is a little blurry. Also, it does not matter. Neither the potential nor the real / true alcoholic can stay stopped: the potential alcoholic has no advantage over the real / true alcoholic. The position is exactly the same in practice, the destination is the same in practice, and the treatment is the same in practice.

In other words, even a hint of being unable to stop places me in exactly the same position as the person who has been trying and failing for years. This is all very democratic.

What’s your experience?

3 July 2025: Kitchen

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.” (Chapter Six, Big Book)

“There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Step Ten: clean the kitchen.

Step Eleven: figure out, perhaps using recipe books, what to cook.

Step Twelve: cook.

Cleaning is not the point. Recipe books are fun but they’re not the point.

The point is the cooking.

The meal is chiefly for others.

What’s your experience?

2 July 2025: Big

“On the third day the lawyer gave his life to the care and direction of his Creator” (Chapter Eleven, Big Book)

On a few occasions, I have said that recovery was great because I had a “big life”.

In a sense, there is a valid point here:

I have an occupation, I am married, I am busy, and I have stuff. There’s more going on than just the pub and the kebab shop.

However, here’re the problems with the statement.

“I”: I am at the origin of the proposition; I am the subject.

“I have”: Except I don’t: nothing is possessed; only temporarily occupied, lent, experienced, adjacent.

“I have a”: Life is not divisible into individual portions: there is no such thing as ‘a’ life, like what I experience is cordoned off from the other portions.

“I have a life”: Life does not belong to me. I belong to God, and God places me within life.

“I have a big life”: The number of activities, their complexity, and their magnitude in the eyes of the world are of no significance.

What matters is seeking God and doing God’s will. That can be done as well in a ‘small’ life as in a ‘big’ one.

What’s your experience?

1 July 2025: Function

“Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness.” (Chapter Six, Big Book)

My job in life is to learn (understanding) and do (effectiveness).

Learning right things (by shutting up, forgetting myself for a minute, reading, and listening).

Doing right things (by discarding concerns for my personal welfare and ambitions and seeking God’s daily mission).

Learning + doing = growth.

What’s your experience?