Keep Your Side of the Street Clean
Step 10 Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Step 10 is another building block in creating a healthy mind, body, and spirit. This Step encourages us to daily get out our proverbial brooms and sweep our side of the street. Doing this will keep us humble and help guard against constant resentments, negative thoughts, and anxiety. We learn how to respond differently in this Step.
If we don’t work through our feelings in the right way, it sets us up to reach for food again. It can take us back to how we use to react to stressful situations. However, we have a responsibility to God, ourselves and to others to live differently. We just don’t have a 12-Step recovery program, we “work” our program. Recovery is an active process that plays out daily in our lives.
Lifestyle
Examining our behavior and being ready to admit our wrongs becomes part of what we do. It gives us peace, instead of turmoil and obsession over something we’ve said or done.
Truthfully, I’m still learning to promptly admit my faults and to apologize to others, especially to people who are closest to me. It seems like they are the hardest people to apologize too. My pride seems to stand in my way sometimes. But after I’ve apologized, I feel so much better and my conscience is cleared.
A few months ago, I said something inappropriate to my boss. After I said it, of course, I couldn’t take it back. Even though what I said to her did not seem to change her facial expression or her mood, I felt bad. We continued to talk and then I left her office, without apologizing. While walking back to my office, I tried to justify why I didn’t need to apologize to her.
However, I didn’t feel at peace about what I said. My conscience was prompting me to go back to her and apologize, even if it didn’t bother her. Finally, after a few days of obsessing over the situation, I settled in my mind that I needed to apologize. I did and she graciously accepted my apology. I immediately felt peace, like a weight was lifted off my conscience.
Builds Character
This process also builds character that produces clarity, truth, a clear conscience, better relationships, and shows others that they are valued and their feelings matter.
So, take action by getting into the practice of taking our own inventory and admitting when we are wrong. This character-building Step keeps us accountable for how we treat others and makes us an example of how others should treat us.
Let’s incorporate this Step into our daily walk.
Cynthia
