SOME MORE QUESTIONS - HERE & NOW

1. In addition to your compulsive behavior, what character defects contribute to your
financial instability?
     a. Do you tend to be impulsive about spending money?

2. Did fear and inferiority about fitness for your job destroy your confidence and fill
you with conflict?
     a. Did you try to cover up these feelings or inadequacy by bluffing, cheating,
lying, or evading responsibility?
     b. Or by griping that others failed to recognize your truly exceptional abilities?

3. Are your standards for yourself unduly high?

4. Did you overvalue yourself and play the "big shot"?
     a. Did you have such unprincipled ambition that you double-crossed and
undercut your associates?

5. Are you extravagant?
     a. Do you recklessly borrow money, caring little whether it is repaid or not?

6. Are you a penny-pincher, refusing to support your family properly?
     a. Did you try to cut corners financially?
     b. What about "quick" money deals?

The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity and
depression. These stem from causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at
other times without. To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider carefully
all personal relationships which bring continuous and recurring troubles. It should be
remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are
threatened. Questioning directed to this end might run like this: Looking at both past
and present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety, bitterness, frustration or
depression? Appraising each situation carefully and fairly, can you see where you
have been at fault?
  Did these perplexities beset you because of selfishness or unreasonable demands?
Or, if your disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do you
lack the ability to accept conditions you cannot change?
  Do you feel that faith and dependency on a Higher Power is somewhat weak, even
cowardly? Has your inability to accept much on faith been handicapped by obstinacy,
sensitiveness, and unreasonable prejudice? Do you dissect spiritual beliefs and
practices of spiritually-minded persons as a basis of wholesale condemnation? What
would your choice be if you fearlessly had to face the proposition that God either is
or He isn't?
  These are the sort of fundamental inquiries that can disclose the source of your
discomfort and indicate whether you are able to alter you own conduct and so adjust
yourself to self-discipline. Suppose a particular insecurity constantly arouses the same
feelings again and again. You can ask to what extent your own mistakes have fed
your gnawing anxieties, and if the actions of others are part of the cause, what can
you do about that? If you are unable to change the present state of affairs, are you
willing to take the measures necessary to shape your life conditions as they are?

ACCEPTANCE OF SELF

Am I really willing to forgive myself? It takes a great deal of humility to be ready for
the final phase of your inventory. If we accept ourselves as we are, with all our
shortcomings as revealed in our inventory, we can go to another human being with
our inventory and reveal all there is to know about ourselves. If we are truly humble
in the sense that we are beginning to rely increasingly on our Higher Power in more
of our affairs, then we are ready for the last phase.
  If you made your appointment you need only to keep that appointment and verbally
discuss every portion of your inventory.

Difficulties commonly experienced are:

     1. Will the other person keep my inventory in confidence?
     2. Will the other person laugh at me?
     3. Will the other person think me silly?
     4. Will the other person think me ridiculous?
     5. Will the other person think me weird?
     6. Will the other person think me despicable?
     7. Will the other person think me base?
     8. Will the other person become disgusted with me?
     9. Will the other person reject me?

In taking your inventory you wrote down all these fears realizing they stem from our
need to present a "good" image of ourselves to everyone. We fear that if we don't,
they will have nothing to do with us. We will be isolated and outcast and, therefore,
worthless. On closer examination, it is the need to "doctor" or distort our image
which has been the real barrier between us and the rest of the world, which in fact
do isolate us in spite-or because-of the false front we present. Nothing draws us to
others, and others to us like honesty and humility. They represent true humanity and
that is what really attracts us to each other.

REWARDS INCLUDE

     1. Feeling more a part of the human race.
     2. Closer to our fellows.
     3. Self worth increases.
     4. A sense of well-being comes over us as never before.
     5. We get an inkling of what serenity can be.

"A friend is someone who knows everything there is to know about you, and loves
you in spite of it."

End of Conclusion Section