Twelve Steps and Twelve Promises

Twelve Steps and Twelve Promises

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Promise: We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Promise: We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood Him.
Promise: We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Promise: No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our
wrongs.
Promise: That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Promise: We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Promise: Self-seeking will slip away.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them
all.
Promise: Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would
injure them or others.
Promise: Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
10.Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Promise: We will intuitively know how to handle situations which use to baffle us.
11.Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as
we understood Him, praying only for a knowledge of His will for us and the power to
carry that out.
Promise: We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
12.Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this
message to alcoholics, and to practice these principals in all our affairs.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.