STEP GUIDE from the book “The Twelve Steps To Happiness”
By Joe Klass, a Hazelden Book, ISBN 0-345-36787-1
“Complicated people seem to have to learn the hard way what each of these simple steps does not mean before they can see in plain language what they do mean. The purpose of this little book is to help you avoid the time-consuming pitfalls I stumbled through on my confused but steady way to a life that is wonderful beyond measure.” – Joe Klaas
“I do not conceive of God as being He, She or It. I suspect God is androgynous [neither masculine or feminine]. I refer to God in the masculine pronoun only because centuries of usage, improper as it may be, have made it the most familiar way to communicate about our Higher Power.” – Joe Klaas
Step 1. Admitted we were powerless, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
A. Admit you are powerless over your most difficult problem. Acknowledge it is useless to try to control it.
B. Admit you cannot manage anything else. Recognize it is hopeless to try.
Step 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
A. Recognize that still trying to control what can’t be managed is insane.
B. Let yourself believe there might be a power greater than you in the universe. Be willing to gamble that a Higher Power might make you sane enough to stop trying to manage.
Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
A. Gamble everything you are that a Higher Power will take charge of every aspect of your life. Take a chance. Turn your body, mind, spirit, and all your affairs over to the Great Unknown that might not even be there.
B. Address God Directly. Say “God take charge!”
Step 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
A. Remember an inventory is not a history. It’s what’s in stock now.
B. Examine your current behavior. What’s good about yourself? What’s defective? Ignore the past except for guilt, resentment, hatred, or unforgiveness.
C. Write it all down, both good and bad.
D. If there is fear in your inventory, it is not fearless. Put God back in charge. With God in charge, there’s nothing to fear.
E. Take the inventory again without fear.
Step 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
A. Analyze what is causing each defect of character you found in Step Four. Why do you do such things? Do you trust yourself to handle your problems more than you trust God? Is the nature of your wrongs that you take control away from God?
B. Admit to yourself, your Higher Power, and to someone else that you keep trying to manage an unmanageable life because you don’t trust God to do it for you.
Step 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
A. Step Six has already happened to you if you are ready to let God remove your shortcomings. If you insist on working on your own defects instead of letting your Higher Power eliminate them, repeat Steps Four and Five until you acquire enough humility to let God remove them His way in His Own Time.
Step 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings
A. Speak to God. Ask Him to take away all character defects, even those not listed. Be humble enough to let Him
Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
A. List every person you ever harmed and the damage you did to them. Include those you think had it coming to them.
B. Remember an amend is more than an apology. It is compensation for actual damage.
C. Become willing to make restitution to every person on the list. At this point, eliminate no one from your list for any reason. That comes later.
Step 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
A. Seek out those we damaged. Eliminate those our amends would harm further. Eliminate amends that might damage an accomplice. Do nothing that would hurt anyone else. Don’t worry about those whom you can’t find. You may run into them later. If it’s impossible to make amends now, do it later if it becomes possible. Forget about amends you can never make. Take your own name off the list. You are making amends to yourself by taking these Steps.
B. Correct the damage you did to those still on the list. Apology isn’t enough. Make appropriate physical, mental, emotional or financial restitution for each harm you caused.
Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
A. Each day examine your feelings and behavior. It’s a spot check. You may have neither time nor need to write it down. What are you doing or thinking that is making you uncomfortable?
B. What’s the nature behind what’s wrong? Is it because you don’t trust God to handle something? Are you trying to manage it?
C. Admit you have grabbed control from your Higher Power.
D. Do Step Three. Put God back in charge.
Step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us, and the power to carry that out.
A. Reestablish the conscious contact previously established in Steps Three, Five, and Seven. Directly address God.
B. Meditate to empty your mind of all personal concerns. Get your mind totally off yourself. Get your ego out of the way so the Creative Force may fill your brain with new thoughts and intuition. Set no goals for meditation. Leave what follows to God.
C. From now on pray only for knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry it out. Never pray for anything else. Address God. Say, “God, make me feel like doing only what you want me to do. Make me feel like not doing anything you don’t want me to do.”
D. Now do what you feel like doing. You prayed for the power to carry it out. Trust the intuition you asked your Higher Power to create.
E. You are spiritually awake when you trust God in all things without telling Him what to do.
Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principals in all our affairs.
A. You are spiritually awake as the result of taking Steps One through Nine. You no longer list things for God to do. You have abandoned yourself to God’s unpredictable management. You accept what happens, good or bad, as part of His plan.
B. Explain the Twelve Steps to others who seek happiness and success.
C. Practice Twelve Step Principles in everything you do.
In Anchorage, Alaska call Barnes & Noble @ 279-7323 or Borders Books @ 344-4099. They’ll hold the book for you at the cash registers so you can pick it up quickly. Cost: $6.99 – a bargain at twice the price!
“The Twelve Steps To Happiness” by Joe Klass,
ISBN 0-345-36787-1, a Hazelden Book -- www.hazelden.org