Step 7 – Time to be humble

“Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings”

OK…so I’m betting that you’ve had enough of patience for the moment. :-)

Now it’s time for Step 7. Which, you just might find to be a bit more difficult than the whole patience thing. See, here we’ve got to reign in the horrible beast of pride. Pride and ego and anything else that is saying you are in control and got everything covered. It’s pride and ego that make you believe that the hurts that you’ve caused aren’t really that bad. They are the source of your excuses and justifications. In short, they are a BIG part of what’s holding you back and keeping you stuck.

“When ready, we say something like this: "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. 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. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." We have then completed Step Seven.”
-A.A. Big Book

Notice that the step starts with Humbly. This is the ONLY way to do step 7. You can’t keep on telling yourself the same old excuses. You can’t keep standing on your pride and expect any sort of change or success. If you find that you’ve still got that niggling little voice in your head, grab your personal inventory and give it a glance. That should shut that little voice up. :-)

This is again a step of surrender, just like step 3. We are again admitting to ourselves that WE can’t fix us. We look to a Higher Power and ask, not demand, not tell, not beg, but simply ask for help.

Remember that the 12 Steps are as much a spiritual process as a character changing and growth process. Step 7 is VERY much a spiritual step. Spiritual growth never happens without humility. It’s the attitude or a student, willing to place yourself in another’s hands and believing that the best will happen. We realize that the way we were working before isn’t working and we’ve reached the point where we should be able to say to ourselves, “Let’s try this another way.”

“The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God. The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. It is really saying to us that we ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.”
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

This is also a removal step. You have you list of behaviors and what contributes to them all. Now is the time to start removing those things that support or start the behaviors. This might mean a change of friends, hang outs, activities, etc but it might also mean a change in thoughts, responses, and the internal monologue that we all have constantly going on inside our heads. This part is VERY important. You can’t make a change if the sources of the behavior are still staring you in the face. Let’s be real, you’ve made the list, you’ve laid the groundwork, and dammit, YOU’VE BEEN PATIENT…so let’s get to work now. Restructure your environment for success. It’s time to clean house.

“This may also mean action on my part in getting rid of sources that lead me to addictive behaviors. If it is my pride that makes me believe that I can still live with these sources of temptation, then the sources need to go along with my pride. I rid my life of those things, people or situations that are causing me to fall or stumble as far as I can do so in a responsible manner.”
- From 12Step.org

And remember…you’re not alone on this path. You have support and love, if you take a moment to look around you for it. So look up and look over and see me smiling and waving back at you.