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The Inventory Process

Bruce P.

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     The 4th Step is the basis of the entire 12 Step Program and therefore deserves our close attention. After we have admitted we were powerless over Sex and Love Addiction and come to believe that a Power Greater than Ourselves could restore us to sanity through this program, we make a decision. That decision is to turn our lives and our will over to the care of the God we understand.

     How do we do that? By working the rest of the Steps! The 3rd Step is really a decision to work all the rest of the Steps. The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is perhaps clearest on what to do after making the decision:

     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. 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 be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. Our [acting out] was but a symptom.  So we had to get down to causes and conditions.

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     The 4th Step is the heart of the program: it pumps its blood into every other Step. We couldn’t do the 5th Step, which is sharing our inventory with another, telling our whole life story, holding nothing back and exposing every nook and cranny. To do that, we need a searching and fearless moral (meaning honest) inventory in writing. The 6th Step requires a list of our more glaring character defects (or shortcomings or wrongs or whatever you want to call them). We get this from our inventory. In the 7th Step, we ask God as we understand that Power, to remove those character aspects that are blocking us off from the sunlight of the spirit and, usually, from our fellow human beings. The 8th Step uses the list from our 4th Step and then we add anyone to it that we have harmed and whom we haven’t listed on our inventory. We make amends to those people in the 9th Step. With the 9th Step, we enter into the world of the spirit; we have begun to experience the spiritual awakening promised in the 12th Step.

     The 10th Step suggests we continue to take inventory. In the literature, there is no distinction made between the 10th Step inventory and the 4th Step inventory, but many of us today use the 10th Step as a daily review of our day and of our character flaws that we are trying to have God remove. This is clearly based on what we discovered from the 4th, 5th and 6th Steps. In the 11th Step, having established conscious contact with our Higher Power by working the previous Steps, we seek to improve that contact through prayer and meditation.

     So the 4th Step is central and crucial. Furthermore, our literature tells us that “this is but the beginning of a lifetime practice.” In short, we don’t do just one, but continue to take 4th Steps throughout our lives. The conditions we live in change, the people around us change, we change. People step on our toes (as the literature says), jobs come and go, we might have children, we age, things like the pandemic – unexpected as it was – come along and we have to adjust. As these things change, we need to do inventories of our resentments, fears and sex conduct at a minimum. We need to look at our life as it changes.

     How do we do the inventory? I use the AA format outlined in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. That includes a close examination of my resentments (anger at people, institutions, principles, and myself ), my fears and my sex conduct. I add a review of the 7 deadly sins and my worst secrets. However, there are many other inventory formats that work as well. There is an inventory I did for my first 4th Step that had 121 questions, divided into childhood, adolescence, adulthood and a general review in case I missed anything in the first three sections. The questions were deep, examining family, friends, teachers and others from my whole life. There are workbooks. Other 12      Step programs have good ideas for inventories. 

     The first key in doing the inventory is to write it. I did lots of inventories before I came in the program. They were all in my head and all used to beat myself up. It was only when I came into program and wrote my inventory out that I got an objective look at myself, who I was, what I had been doing, and how I felt about it. In the rest of the steps, I learned how to deal with the shortcomings that the inventory had exposed.

     The second key is to make sure that no matter what format you use, you include your role in the behaviors you are examining. The inventory is about ourselves, no one else. Our reactions to the actions of others are what are important. In the inventories I do, each part of the inventory asks what my role was: what I did.

     The inventory requires prayer. I find it necessary to pray for the strength to be honest and fearless in doing the inventory. In reaching out to my Higher Power, I find the strength to do what needs to be done on this step. During the inventory, I pray for others I may have harmed. While doing the 4th Step may require instruction from our sponsor, doing the Step is an action of the individual. I have to do it.    One of the secrets I have found from doing many 4th Steps is that I need to be on the 4th Step only; I cannot let any other Step (5th Step, 8th Step, 9th Step or whatever) interfere with the honesty and thoroughness this Step requires of me. Prayer helps in that regard.

I have also found it crucial that I list my “Take to the Graves.” These are the secrets that I swore I would never tell anyone or – just as important – secrets I found I just wasn’t telling anyone. We are only as sick as our secrets. Getting them down on paper is centrally important.

     Remember that the purpose of the inventory process is to find and be rid of those things that are blocking us from our Higher Power and the people around us. As such, it includes all the rest of the steps. The 4th Step is just the beginning. It is the identification of the difficulties we face.

     A word on the 10th Step. The 10th Step says we continue to do inventories and promptly admit our wrongs. I do this on a daily basis. I have my list of my shortcomings from the 6th Step. I say a 6th Step prayer every morning that asks God to give me the willingness to have all of my character defects entirely removed, including …. And then I list my character defects and their opposites. This reminds me every morning what I am striving for. I then say the 7th Step prayer asking God to remove the offending behaviors. I do my 10th Step at night, reviewing everything I’ve done that day and using that 6th Step list one by one to see how I’ve done for that day. It is a rare day when I haven’t engaged in some shortcoming, but it is also a rare day when I haven’t been pretty good in many of them.

     To conclude, there is a story one of my early teachers told me. A person saw the magnificent statue of David by Michelangelo. They asked the Master, “How did you do that?” Michelangelo responded that he took a block of stone and chopped away everything that wasn’t David and that’s what he wound up with. And that’s what we do with our program. With God as the sculptor and with the Steps, our meetings, our sponsors, the literature, our slogans and our fellow members as the chisel, we are chipping away everything that isn’t us. And this is what we have so far. May your Higher Power bless you!

     Working on your 4th Step? Want to work with others? The author conducts a 4th Step Workshop on Zoom every Monday at 10 am Central time. It is an AA meeting, but is open to anyone working on their 4th Step. Members of this fellowship attend the meeting. We actually provide forms and write the inventory during the meeting. To get full information on the meeting, please email SerenitySLAABeverlyChicago@gmail.com and ask about the 4th Step Workshop.