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7:- "Humbly asked our Higher Power to remove these liabilities and to help us to strengthen our assets for recovery."
A core principle behind the Seventh Step is taking the actions required to move foreword in our dual recovery. We ask for and follow the good advice we are given.
IN OUR OWN WORDS: Members share their thoughts on the Seventh Step
Step Seven is where the rubber meets the road. We take actions to implement the changes we need to make. We ask our higher and helping powers for help and guidance. We continue to ask for help and feedback because it usually takes a lot of time to make these changes and it's easy to revert back to our old coping strategies.
Step Seven was really a turning point for me in my ability to trust my Higher Power and the Program of recovery. Up till then I was mostly trying to stay straight and keep my act together one day at a time. All of a sudden I really wanted to change a lot more... to work at bringing myself into a more harmonious relationship with the world. To find out what this talk of serenity was all about.
For me, Step Seven involved considerable risk taking. Trying to do new things in new ways. It took practice to learn to reach out at meetings and develop new friendships. I took a big risk when I accepted a service position in my Home Group. It took a lot of faith and help from my Higher Power to do these things... to not just say no automatically.
Step Seven starts with the word "Humbly" so we can gather that humility is an important key to this Step. Humility is just about the exact opposite of humiliation. It is a sense of our very humanness. A realistic acceptance of our strengths and weaknesses. We have been developing a more realistic acceptance of ourselves by working the first six Steps. Here's where I think humility really pays off. We get better on two levels. One we have a lot of control over. It's an intellectual choice as to how we behave and react to situations. We know what's right and we try to do it. But there's a deeper level of change that we can't really predict just when or how it happens. That's when we undergo changes on our personality and in our automatic reactions to what life throws our way. We can take all the Steps and do our best to use all the tools and assets we have, but those deeper changes happen in God's own time and manner. So when I say humility, I mean that we do what we can as best we can and the rest is up to our Higher Power.
*Adapted from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous®
*The Twelve Steps of AA are reprinted and adapted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Permission to reprint and adapt the Twelve Steps does not mean that AA has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, nor that AA agrees with the views expressed herein. AA is a program of recovery from alcoholism only - use of the Twelve Steps in connection with programs and activities that are patterned after AA, but that address other problems, does not imply otherwise. THE SEVENTH STEP OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS* 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.