A recovery practice

Step Ten Inventory

A few minutes at the end of the day to look for resentment, selfishness, dishonesty and fear, as the Tenth Step asks.

Akron, Ohiom.

Dr. Robert Smith's house in Akron, where Alcoholics Anonymous began in 1935. Photo by Nyttend (cropped). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Step Ten Inventory module as it prints, on the daily page. The dots are the page’s quarter-inch grid.

The Tenth Step

The Twelve Steps were first published in 1939, in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, which members call the Big Book. The tenth step is to keep taking a personal inventory, and to admit it promptly when you are wrong.

In the chapter "Into Action," the Big Book names four things to keep watching for through the day: selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. A few pages on, under the Eleventh Step, it asks members to review the day at night. Many do both at once in a short evening review, and those four are the prompts on this module.

How the module works

Four prompts with two lines each, on the daily page: Resentful, Selfish, Dishonest, Afraid. Under each, write where it showed up today, if it did. An empty line is a good day, not a skipped one.

If something on the page needs putting right, the step asks for it to be put right promptly. If something needs talking over, the page is there to bring to your sponsor.

A note

Memari is not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous or any twelve-step fellowship. This module is a page to write on, laid out around the step, not a program. The Big Book is the place to read the step itself, and your sponsor and your group are the people to work it with.

Sources

Alcoholics Anonymous (Works Publishing Company, 1939; now published by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services), chapter 6, "Into Action."

Put it in your planner

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Find Step Ten Inventory in the module drawer, under Recovery. Free, and no account needed to try it.