The Specifics...

Remember the four defects of character? Selfishness. Self-seeking. Dishonesty. Fear. These are the shortcomings that created the drive for us to do wrong. Whether or not we INTENDED harm is not the issue. No one really cares about our intentions unless they are making excuses for our bad behavior.

It is easy to get distracted from our good work of amends and restitution by making our own set of excuses. We feel like we are being punished or condemned or dying because of our past misdeeds. We confuse ourselves by declaring our substance use disorder a disease (which it is) but twist that knowledge and use it as an excuse for bad behaving. It is not. Once we know better, we can practice doing better. Amends is a part of our spiritual practice of doing better.

When we disclose our wrongdoing, we need to be specific. Here are a couple examples:

* If we borrowed money we promised to repay and did not, we repay the money. Sometimes it is better to repay the money BEFORE we attempt an amends. Actions always speak louder than words and often grease the wheel of resistance to any form of communication.

* If we slandered someone or tried to destroy their reputation to protect our own, we need to set the record straight in the exact same manner we tarnished the record. We do not do this in secret if our offense was in public. That’s not restitution.

* If we have compulsively lied, we begin to get just as compulsive about telling the truth.

I Don't Want to Do That!

Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exultation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe.

-Dag Hammarskjold

We may resist making amends because we have fears and resentments that make it hard for us to follow through - even when we acknowledge our wrongdoing. We compare offenses. He took my truck. She pulled my hair. He pushed me. She bit me. On and on it goes.

Recovery work is unwilling to give us a way out of doing hard things, because those who have gone before us recognize that doing hard things is the way through our suffering. Some humbling experiences are best embraced.

Do any of these things stand between you and your next right step?

* Do you find it hard to make an amends to someone who also needs to make an amends to you?

* Are you afraid that you will be rejected?

* Is your pride bruised and tender and too fragile to express the vulnerability required to admit you made a mistake?

* Are you in the habit of dishonesty rather than the practice of honesty?

* Are you selfish or self-seeking in some way that makes you reluctant to accept responsibility for your mistake?

All these thoughts holler at us to deny rather than admit. But recovery is about leaning in to a new way of living. So here is the million dollar question: who do you intend to become? I ask myself this all the time. Do I want to be the gal who sells ice to the indigenous people of Antartica (this analogy worked better before climate change became an issue) or am I a woman of principle and integrity? Am I the gal people back away from or am I the kind of woman people want to lean into and move toward - even on my bad days?

Cost/Benefit Analysis

Any habit that we have developed has perceived benefits - even the ones that turn on us. No one ever gets addicted to carrots. Example: If I discover during the course of my recovery work that one of my shortcomings is dishonesty, I need to ask how has this served me?

When I was a kid, telling my folks what they wanted to hear acted as a form of protection from conversations I did NOT want to have - we were not that great at dealing with conflict or conversations in general. One of the ways dishonesty showed up for me was defensive behaviors. People don’t mess as much with the feisty kid who refuses to listen to name calling. If my dad was going to call me stupid, then he was going to have to put up with me defending my intelligence for at least 20 minutes. Honesty in the situation would have required me to talk with someone about how afraid I was that my dad might be right. Maybe I was stupid.

What habits do you have that are no longer serving you well but you are still using? It’s helpful to acknowledge how they once served a purpose. It makes it a tiny bit easier to let them go!