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I was at a meeting recently where the topic was daily inventory. And a guy raised his hand who said he asked his sponsor how he should do a Tenth Step inventory every day. And his sponsor told him, “Pretend your entire day was recorded. If you sat down with your spouse or your sponsor and watched the whole tape, what are the parts you wish you could fast forward past?”
I liked that a lot. It distilled down something that can feel complicated.
Sometimes I wrestle with the inventory work that recovery encourages. It’s good. It’s helpful. It’s greatly benefited me in helping to understand thought patterns and behaviors. But I also haven’t been bummed out when I stop doing it on a regular basis, because it can feel unrelenting. I remember some days where I felt like I was my own dog owner, smushing my own face into an accident I had on the kitchen floor.
But I liked that idea of thinking about it like instant replay. So I have been thinking about that a lot as I move through the day. It actually helps me in the moment because I’ll think to myself, “Now, would I want video of me driving 55 MPH in a 25 MPH zone played in front of my 17-year-old who just got her driver’s license?” The answer is no, and I’ll find myself slowing down the car. That kind of thing is the beauty of inventory work. It’s not so much that I throw penalty flags on myself at midnight for something I did at noon. That’s certainly been helpful to me in the past, to be able to accurately assess behaviors after the fact and think through the repercussions and how I feel about them.
But ideally, the goal is to not repeat things, right? So if I am able to think about it in the moment, and think it through in real time and adjust my behavior, that’s a huge win.
And lately, I haven’t had any days where I would be truly embarrassed if cameras had been following me around all day. I can’t think of too many times where I had an outburst or bad behavior that I would be ashamed of. Maybe it’s time for me to get my own reality show!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
“You know what they say, ‘In AA there’s a wrench for every nut.’”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, February 2001, Anonymous)
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