4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

AA offers some categories of things to think about as you take inventory of yourself: anger, fear, and resentment.  Why are these such common places to look?

ANGER – I’m not getting my way today!
FEAR – I won’t get my way tomorrow!
RESENTMENT – I didn’t get my way yesterday!

What do these have in common? Yeah, getting your way. Why do you have to get your way? Why do you have to have a way? Why not just give it over to God? We should have done this in Step 3. Remember that? “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” If we truly “give our will over to God”, we won’t have a way. We’ll have God’s way. Is there a better way?  Wouldn’t it be nice to live without anger, fear, and resentment?

Soul Searching

As we’re getting sober and starting to feel better, and the clouds are starting to clear from our minds, it’s a good time to look around and enjoy the view. It’s also a time to look back and meditate on our past. Were we always so bright? Or did we have an inventory of anger, fear, and resentment? With our newly found better view (of ourselves), maybe we have a new baseline with which to judge ourselves and take a personal inventory of how we were living and how we were treating the people around us. I mean some real soul-searching!

Soul-searching is a process, just like recovery. There is no single moment that defines healing. Instead, it’s a culmination of intentions and actions that lead you down the right path. Soul-searching involves looking objectively inwards at yourself.

When we were caught up in addiction, our intentions never really lead to how we actually behaved.  So, a little soul-searching is due to help you figure out who you were and what’s in your inventory that you need to change to become the person you want to be.

Start Your List

So, keep a list!  Write it down!  Maybe keep a notepad open on your phone or a little notebook in your bag.  Why?  This is an important list!  We are going to be using this list for the next 6 steps!  That’s half of all the steps!  We’re going to be using this list up until Step 10, when we go back and revise it!

So, get on it!  Write your list.  Take inventory of all those things that caused us to impose our will over every situation and then not necessarily get our way!