TENTH STEP "(We) Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it." This is the first of the maintenance Steps. It is a very important Step because it covers the Fourth and Fifth Steps on a daily basis. By taking a daily inventory we can eliminate the build up of many of the things we dealt with from the Fourth through the Ninth Steps. We approach this Step in two parts. Let's talk about the first personal inventory. Personal inventory is then divided into two parts. The first part is going over our day. Getting in touch with the way, we handled things throughout the day, good and bad. The second thing we do in this Step is we take the things we did not handle well and take a look at them. After we do that, we go to the First Step and admit we did not handle them well because of our behavior. We now go to the Second Step and see how we could have handled them differently. And finally we go to the Third Step and make a decision to turn them over to the care of the Higher Power of our understanding to help us handle them in a mature and responsible way. Again, we see the importance of the first three Steps in relation to the other Steps. The second part of the Step deals with "when we are wrong, we promptly admitted it." There is a lot of confusion about this part of the Step. Although apologies are a part of it, there is much more. "We promptly admitted it" applies to self-honesty which is very important when we take our personal inventory. When we are wrong we must promptly admit to ourselves if we are to do anything about it. Sorry means nothing if we continue to keep doing the same thing over and over again (unhealthy pattern of living). We must use self-honesty to admit our wrong to ourselves so that we can apply the first three Steps to the situation. This takes practice, practice, and still more practice. To learn to live the Steps, we must practice the Steps. We must not strive for perfection, but we must strive to practice these Steps daily. Tenth Step Worksheet Answer the following questions on a separate piece of paper. What is a personal inventory? How do you do a personal inventory? What does this mean: When you were wrong, promptly admitted it. In what way do the first Three Steps apply to the Tenth Step? Why is a Tenth Step necessary?