Drop the Rock: Removing Character Defects - Steps Six and Seven

by Bill Pittman

Deprivation and overconsumption are flip sides of the same coin. The point of recovery is finding the balance.

Finding balance incorporates the awareness gained in Steps Four and Five with the action (the behavior changes and prayer) gained in Steps Six and Seven.

As in the First Step, finding balance involves admitting (accepting as true and valid to ourselves) that past attempts to meet our needs have failed.

Finding balance also includes recognizing that a predictable aspect of our disease is extreme action: consumption, deprivation, or repetition. This is how we become ready for finding the balance. We get to experience it.

The winners actively seek and practice a new way of living. A new way of being. A new way of thinking. A new way of behaving. A new way of relating. The losers wait until they are in so much pain that the choice becomes obvious, and then they choose to participate only enough to get the pain to stop.

The essay talked about people who analyze themselves to death. They know exactly what makes them do the things they do: the tyrannical mothers, the abusive husbands, the poverty they were raised in, or the childhood of extreme indulgence and privilege. They have great insight, but instead of using that insight as a means to develop new and hopefully better behavior, they use it as a reason to continue with old, destructive behavior.

permanent result of improper socialization by parents (who in most cases probably did the best job they could). Admitting that they might be somewhat at fault, they are sure others are more to blame.

those Steps in the Program that are vital to emotional and spiritual recovery: Steps Six and Seven.

The majority of us are very aware of our defects of character, but often it isn’t until we are “sick and tired of being sick and tired” that we become willing to change.

We are authentic when we choose to act and feel and choose to behave in balance with the higher values and principles we’ve chosen for our lives. If those principles and values are not fully in place and manifested, it doesn’t make us phony. It makes us human.

There are many stages in surrendering and practicing. It’s called progress. We will be discussing many of the

There is no magic in recovery. We get what we work for.

This depression, I discovered, was not humility but another form of “playing God,” believing my character defects were more powerful than my Higher Power’s forgiveness. Then, when I recognized Who had the power and who was powerless, I had to decide if I was “entirely ready”

Then I was made aware that character defects are like active addiction. I couldn’t keep using and expect God to relieve my disease. Neither could I keep practicing my character defects and expect God to remove them.

The next thing he discovered was that his own resistance to surrendering was because his self-concept was that his personality was his character defects. If he gave up his shortcomings, he’d become the “hole in the donut.”

Believing there’s something more and better is

the essence of faith; it is trusting that God will reshape me into what I was meant to be in the firs...

contemplating surrender, many of us come face to face with our self-image in an honest fashion for the first time.

Our defects, many times, are our best friends. If I become (choose to be) “entirely ready” and my character defects lessen or disappear, whom will I be?

As it says in the Twelve and Twelve, it is not the blatantly obvious character defects that we have problems giving up, it is the ones we practice “in moderation” or only on occasion that are the most difficult.

In becoming entirely ready—in deciding to be willing to surrender—we must examine our hearts and work with prayer and meditation to set aside self-image and move into self-awareness.

wasn’t just attending meetings anymore to avoid doing what I needed doing outside of meetings. All my defects become glaringly obvious through my actions . . . but that does not define me as a person. I may act badly on occasion. That doesn’t make me a bad person.

Finally I was working on the Steps outside of meetings instead of just talking about them at meetings.

It becomes apparent in Pat’s story, and many like it, that the “hole in the donut” fear is a shadow boxer. It can cause us alarm, but if we do the work and move forward, it gradually disappears in the light. It disappears in proportion to our understanding of who our Higher Power is and how the God of our understanding works in our lives.

We’ll take a look now at ways of taking action and those things that cause us to resist taking action to become entirely ready.

Occasionally, we’ve been forced into taking action, like doing a Fourth Step inventory or talking out a Fifth Step. Making amends calls for action. Usually, however, after taking those specific actions, we’re done. Steps Six and Seven, in particular, become “nodders.” We go to meetings where Six and Seven are discussed and nod wisely and serenely with almost every comment that is made.

Having done a little work or action on a Step in the past is a far cry from continuing to work it now. Nodding at meetings in agreement with a particularly profound comment is not the same as doing what the speaker may have done to reach that awareness.

There is none of the dramatic confrontation that exists when we do the Ninth Step, nor is there the feeling of accomplishment that comes with helping others in the Twelfth. The Sixth is not dramatic. There are no enthusiastic witnesses to rush up and shake one’s hand. It’s a rather solitary affair and hence seems simple. But had I taken any action?

have found it difficult to lie to others because of practicing the principles of the Program but still easy to lie to myself. When I say, all too swiftly, “Of course I’m willing to change,” I know I will ask myself, “Really? Who’s kidding whom?” The fact that I will daily question my willingness to change will increase my ability to be increasingly willing. I simply won’t take the process as lightly as I have before. I can’t learn anything unless I’m sincerely willing to learn. Nor will making myself promises to change have any significance until the willingness factor is developed.

The fact that I will daily question my willingness to change will increase my ability to be increasingly willing.

we think that recovery is strictly about abstinence from alcohol (or drugs, food, sex, gambling, and so on) and that staying abstinent will solve all the major problems in life, then we probably won’t want to hear what comes next. If, on the other hand, we feel that recovery is about living fully, usefully, and freely and about reaching toward our potential, then we might keep an open ear.

Helping others to stand, however, is not quite as meaningful as helping others learn to walk.

We help others by setting the example rather than telling them the example. We learn to shift our vision to the horizon, rather than watch our feet. This is extremely important when we are looking to continue to grow and to let go of those things that may limit our ability to do so.

The first act is awareness, second is acceptance, then third is surrender (action).

To make surrender effective, we must be willing to help the process by using our awareness to move into line with the surrender. We must choose to act “as if.” Our awareness must shift so we become aware when we aren’t acting in accordance with that choice.

When I faked it in my early days, I found myself making it in later days. In the beginning, I was asked to act “as if” I was following instructions, trusting the Program, listening to my sponsor, and coming to believe. The amazing thing was that soon I was doing those very things.

was never able to think my way into recovery. My mind created a tremendous amount of trouble for me. I needed to turn my mind down (not off). I soon discovered the difference between doing and thinking. The key to acting “as if” is faith. The way to faith is through my fears. I have made progress and stay entirely ready when I turn fears over to my faith and simply act “as if.”

One of the things we must be careful of is our capacity for drama. It seems as if addiction is a path toward drama. Perhaps because most of us repressed and suppressed feelings from the very beginning, we learned to be dramatic when it was important for our feelings to be noticed.

Even though it is important to validate, feel, and identify our feelings, we must be careful not to dramatize.

We must be willing to quietly move toward self-examination, rather than self-absorption.

(1) Find a ritual. We can develop or borrow a ritual to mark our surrender and choice to become ready. The power of ritual is incredible, and we can use that power to help us move into balance with our choice.

Perhaps put our thoughts and fears and feelings on slips of papers in bottles and set them sailing into the sunset at the ocean.

Rituals are rites of passage, as is the Sixth Step. Using a ritual for this powerful method of transformation personalizes the experience.

Following the example of an old-timer friend of mine, whose quality of recovery I admired, I printed, in ink, each of my separate defects on a poker chip. Then all thirty chips went into a small pitcher. Every morning upon awaking, I plunged my hand into it (like picking a number from a goldfish bowl) and came up with the “chip for today.” The defect might be anger, fear, pride, resentment, gossip, arrogance, self-pity, procrastination, anxiety, intolerance, and so on, but whichever one it was had to be concentrated on for the next twenty-four hours and either reduced to a minimum or cast away.

Nevertheless, I kept up this game for two or three years, telling many fellow members about it and urging them to go and do likewise. I explained that, although the Step suggests that God would remove these defects when and if I became ready to let go of them, I was of the school that believed in the saying “Pray for potatoes, but pick up the hoe.”

Still those dozens of defects I had laid claim to kept cropping up again and again, over and over. It seemed that the harder I fought them, the harder they fought back.

just have to keep in mind that if I am not 100 percent sincere in my willingness to be rid of the problem, the procedure won’t work. I have come to realize that Step Six means exactly what it says. No more, no less. When, and if, I become ready to have painful, inhibiting, or long-standing flaws removed, they will be.

A little progress has been made on pride. I can now admit that most of my troubles stem from one large and glaring defect: self-centeredness. For how can I wallow in self-pity, weep over resentments, be sick with righteous anger, ache with envy, and tense up with fears and anxieties unless all my thoughts are exclusively on poor me?

“A person’s life is what his thoughts make it.”

any recovering person can have: the willingness to get out of the driver’s seat, to stop trying to run the show. I need to keep the Sixth and Seventh Step message of letting go and letting God in my thoughts at all times.