Growing-Up

The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 115

Goodwill

Have you ever envied someone else's good fortune? Consider the friend who calls with a different ring to her voice. Instead of sharing her troubles and woes, she proceeds to tell you good news. Something exciting, financially beneficial, glamorous, wonderful beyond belief has happened in her life. It's not a fantasy. It's one of those rare moments when a dream has come true.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

Newcomer
At a meeting I shared about a loss I've gone through, and the response was amazing. People expressed sympathy and understanding, and a number of them shared experiences of their own that were similar to mine. It surprised me. I'd told the same story at a different meeting, and people there didn't say a thing to me. I had left feeling like there was something wrong with me. I can't figure out what I did differently this time, maybe there was something about the way I shared.

A Lifetime Process

We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people. . . . ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 52

Accepting Our Humanness

We finally saw that the inventory should be ours, not the other man’s. So we admitted our wrongs honestly and became willing to set these matters straight.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 222

Why is it that the alcoholic is so unwilling to accept responsibility? I used to drink because of the things that other people did to me. Once I came to A.A. I was told to look at where I had been wrong. What did I have to do with all these different matters?