“Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.”
We ask god to help us be willing when ready we say something like this: “my creator I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. i pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.” We have then completed Step 7 – pg 76 Into Action from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
In Step 6 and Step 7 we are cleaning house. Step 7 is a continuation of Step 6. We continue to become more aware of our defects of character and pray to have them removed. If we are unwilling then we simply pray for the willingness. As we talked about before the most difficult thing about being willing to be rid of our shortcomings is the fact that we think some of them still work for us. However as soon as they are removed we often times see they were not working for us, but in fact they were hurting us and others. When we finally let go of them we begin to see that living an honest and clean life is much more beneficial in the sense that not only is there less harm being done to ourselves and others, but also less negative consequences. As it says in the big book “if we are sorry for what we have done, and have the honest desire to let god take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson. If we are not sorry, and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink. We are not theorizing. These are the facts out of our experiences.” in order to get to the point of complete surrender or in preparation for the steps it would be beneficial to research places and things such as FAQs about rehab and recovery in Los Angeles, recovery testimonials California, AA, and California Rehab Centers. These resources will most likely to be able to answer any questions you might have. After completing step 7 we continue to be aware of our shortcomings when they crop up and once again we immediately ask god to remove them. This is a very crucial step when it comes to self-love and developing with ourselves and others. The payoff is the absence of dissonance, increased self-esteem and an amazing ability to handle situations which use to baffle us as a result of having and surrendering to a power greater than ourselves.