POCKET POWER

HUMILITY

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HUMILITYHumility is a frequent topic at meetings of

recovering people, and is often difficult to talkabout. This pamphlet will discuss some ideasabout humility that may help us understand itsrole in recovery, and make it easier to talkabout. Through understanding humility, we willlearn to live and cope with sobriety and recov-ery.

Low Self-Worth/Big EgoLet's take a look at the relationship between

humility and low self-worth and what is com-monly known as "big ego." Harry Tiebout, aclose friend of Bill Wilson's and an early sup-porter of Alcoholics Anonymous, characterizedthe alcoholic as "king baby." By this, he meantthat drinking alcoholics demand what theywant when they want it and believe the universerevolves around them and their needs. There-fore, he concluded that continuing recovery, de-pends upon maintaining awareness of our pow-erlessness over alcohol and the unmanageablequality of our lives.

The king baby quality of drinking alcoholicsis readily apparent in grandiose behavior. Alco-holics who spend money they don't have onpeople they hardly know or on things they don'tneed manifest grandiosity. Fantasizing future

First published March, 1985.

Copyright @ 1985, Hazelden Foundation.All rights reserved. No portion of this

publication may be reproduced in any mannerwithout the written permission of the

publisher.

ISBN: 0-89486-254-5

Printed in the United States of America.

Editor's Note:Hazelden Educational Materials offers a vari-

ety of information on chemical dependency andrelated areas. Our publications do not necessar-ily represent Hazelden or its programs, nor dothey officially speak for any TwelveStep organi-zation.

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A Willingness to LearnThe ego state manifested in big ego or in low

self-worth is in some ways a refusal on our partto admit we need help or that we can learn fromothers. No matter how long we have been in theprogram, we can continue to learn more aboutourselves, others, and our Higher Power.

Believing a Power greater than ourselves canrestore us to sanity is an acknowledgment thatwe are not experts on how to stay sober or how

to live with an alcoholic. In short, we need helpin order to live and grow. We needed others tohelp us begin recovery. And as we continue togrow, even after years in the program, we stillneed others to help us maintain recovery.

In recovery, willingness to learn can expandbeyond learning how to stay sober or how to livewith an alcoholic. Willingness to learn can be-come an ongoing acceptance of our limitations.If we let go of our prejudices, we can discoverthat learning how to live is not limited to expertsor to people of our own race, sex, or socioeco-nomic class. Our ability to learn in life and togrow in recovery may be facilitated by anyonewe meet in the program or outside of it.

Willingness to go to meetings, read literatureabout recovery, and spend time with a sponsorin honest sharing are helping us stay humbleand sober. But we must also acknowledge andbe willing to learn from our mistakes. The sad-ness that results from making mistakes is thatoften we fail to learn from them. As we grow insobriety, we learn more and more to accept re-sponsibility for the consequences of ouractions. Willingness to learn from mistakes canturn catastrophes into opportunities.

Humility and HumorHumility and a sense of humor are closely

greatness or giving a gift instead of love arecharacteristics of the grandiosity in an alco-holic.

What may not be so apparent is that extremelow self-esteem is also a manifestation of theking baby quality of alcoholism. In a grandiosephase, an alcoholic considers him-or herself tobe above others. However, extreme low self-esteem places one below others. In both in-stances, the alcoholic's attitude is "but I amdifferent." Low self-esteem can also be a meansof justifying self-centeredness, manipulatingothers through one's self-hatred, and constantlyputting down oneself. There is the attitude of "Ican do everything," and at the same time, "Ican't do anything." Humility cuts through thesetwo extremes with the recognition that "I cando something" with the help of a greater Power.

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related, but not in the sense that one can laughat a cartoon or a funny story. It is an ability tolaugh at oneself, and not take oneself too seri-ously. Before recovery began, many of us hadsuffered humiliations and saw nothing funnyabout them. But in the process of recovery, webegan to laugh with others at some of our weak-nesses and foibles. It is always easy to take our-selves too seriously, no matter how long we havebeen sober. A.A. friends who continue to punc-ture our balloons of grandiosity or lift us out ofthe depths of self-pity with their humor, are animportant part of humility.

A person caught up in grandiose behaviormay cause others to laugh. But you can be surethat person will be taking his or her actions veryseriously. Likewise, someone who is in thethroes of self-condemnation, self-hatred, andguilt will find little or nothing funny about hisor her situation. In the process of recovery, ashumility becomes one of the foundations of ourlives, we begin to laugh at our past and even ourpresent. This does not mean we are being irre-sponsible. It simply means we are seeing our-selves in perspective, and our actions, thoughts,and feelings may not be the center of the uni-verse.

A Characteristic of the ProgramHumility is a characteristic of the TwelveStep

program and touches on each of the Steps.However, if we look at the Twelve Steps as awhole, we begin to see that working the pro-gram leads to a new way of perceiving ourselvesin the world. We are no longer focused on alco-hol or other drugs. The escape from this wasnot a decision made on our own. I know of noone who woke up one morning and said, "It is abeautiful day. I have lots of money in the bank.My spouse and children love and respect me,and we have a fine relationship. I have goodfriends and meaningful work. I think I will stopdrinking and start going to meetings."

For most of us the program becomes an es-cape from a life characterized by pain, fear,frustration, anger, and an attempt to havethings our way. The Twelve Steps are a processof de-centering and re-centering our lives. Aswe know, self-centeredness in its various formsis at the root of our problem. The Steps give usa way of getting off dead center where our owndesires, feelings, and demands are the focalpoint of our lives.

In living the program with the help of others,we continually make the discovery that the lessself-centered we become, the more full our livesare and the more rewarding sobriety is. The

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process of re-centering our lives on what we cangive to others and how we can share what wehave received is indeed a quality of life that canbe called humble. It does not mean we are. un-concerned about ourselves. However, the re-markable thing is that the more we re-center onother people and their needs, the more we re-ceive.

It seems to be true, however, that this re-cen-tering process means we also need to re-centerour lives in relationship to our Higher Power.As we do this, we are more able to let go ofothers and serve them without trying to controland meet our own demands under the guise ofhelping. The re-centering of our lives in rela-tionship to our Higher Power gives us a newfreedom regarding others. Humility in this re-gard helps us maintain the perspective that re-minds us we are not God, but are free to becomefully human beings. In this sense, the programof the 'IWelveSteps leads indirectly to humility.Humility cannot be bought. Nor can it be di-rectly decided upon. Humility is acquired indi-rectly through working the Steps, and leads to ahealthy acceptance of self.

This may be a phenomenon of the TwelveStep program. It does not belong to a school ofspirituality that says, "Are your spiritual mus-cles flabby? If so, take our special ten-day

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course and develop those muscles so that youare a spiritual or emotional giant or a very to-gether person, and then you can take credit forit." The paradox of growth in working the Stepsis that we cannot do it alone, yet no one can doit for us. Working the 'IWelve Steps not onlyleads to and requires humility, it also leads to adeeper and more secure sense of self-esteem. Itis then that the joy in living we had originallysought becomes a reality.

Patience and Self-AcceptanceHumility looks different on different people,

and often we have a false picture of what it is.We think of people walking with downcast eyes,never having anything good to say about them-selves, and never acknowledging they are capa-ble of anything. This is an erroneous picture ofhumility, although it is one that we frequentlyfind ourselves believing. Instead, humility willdiffer for each of us, and we will become morehumble as we become more who we really are.

Becoming who we truly are is not the samething as asking ourselves the question, who amI? Frequently we think "identity crisis" means aclose examination of our past in a very analyti-cal way. The tendency to search for our unique-ness (as though it were some sort of reality wecould find through continued self-searching), is

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the result of a mistaken idea of what our iden-tity and humility really are.

Humility helps us recognize that we are bothunique and ordinary, sharing all things that areimportant with the rest of humanity. The searchfor identity does not go back into the past asmuch as it goes forward into the future. Thissearch asks who we want to become and how wecan get there. Likewise, humility is not a contin-ual dredging up of our past behavior, but rathera simple acceptance of our past, and a realiza-tion that we do not have to behave as we didbefore.

Perhaps some examples will help. Considerthe accomplished musician who has workedvery hard learning to play an instrument andthen denies that he or she is good; or the manwho has worked at his golf game and then con-tinues to put himself down; or the person whogives a very good speech but continues to denythat he or she has' a gift for speaking. Such adenial of gifts makes others as uncomfortableas being with someone who exaggerates his orher talents. Denial of our gifts and the inflationof the importance of our gifts are not character-istic of humility.

Humility looks different on different peoplebecause we have different gifts. To be humble isnot to deny that one is gifted, but to acknowl-

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edge that our gifts make us a part of humanityrather than setting us up as superior to others.Nor do our limitations set us apart, they join ustogether, and we experience them as a source ofunity rather than barriers of separation.

Steps Six and SevenOne of the most important insights of the

TwelveSteps is that a chemically dependent per-son is a good person. Step Six acknowledgesvery realistically that we have defects of charac-ter. This is quite different from feeling we aredefective characters. Even in moments of gran-diosity, many of us have had the feeling there issomething deeply wrong with us, that we arefatally flawed human beings, created somehowdifferent and slightly out of place. This idea ofbeing defective at the very core of our being iscontrary to the 1WelveSteps. However, we mayhave many defects of character that have been asource of disharmony and pain in our lives. Ifwe look closely, we may discover our defects ofcharacter hurt ourselves more than anyone else.

We sometimes hear it said when we are mak-ing a list of people we have harmed by ourdrinking or using, that we should put ourselvesat the top. This may be true, but the best waywe can make amends to ourselves is by allowingthe defects of character to be removed. Envy,

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greed, anger, jealousy, gluttony, pride, and lustmay have blocked us from a more effective life.They have denied us a harmony with others, ourHigher Power, and ourselves. As the defects ofcharacter are removed, we become more who wereally are.

In Steps Six and Seven we first become readyto have these defects removed, and that meanswe have acknowledged they exist. The "BigBook" and "Twelve and 1\velve" from Alco-holics Anonymous suggest that what is meantby entirely ready is not necessarily to be inter-preted as wildly enthusiastic. Rather, it meanswe are willing to undertake the difficult but re-warding path of spiritual growth, and to do thiswe need help from God as we understand Him.Entirely ready means we will "never say never"about any defect.

Perhaps the main point Steps Six and Sevenmake regarding humility is that we need to con-tinue to ask for help in the process of recovery.They also remind us that, although a defect ofcharacter may be removed, the capacity for it isnot removed. If we are viewing defects of char-acter as patterns of behavior which are a sourceof pain in our lives, then we must rememberthat even though the behavior may change, weretain a capacity for that kind of behavior.

For example, developing a way of life that

, demands rigorous honesty is a difficult and life-time process. No matter how long we have beenin the program or how honest we have become,this defect of dishonesty may continue to hinderour growth. At times we may have used honestyas a means of being brutal with other people, orwe may find that we are being dishonest in ourwords, actions, gestures, or in the way we lookat someone.

Around this defect of dishonesty, we see thatwe tend to use the same rationalizations as wealways have. If we do not continue to take per-sonal inventory and ask to have these defectsremoved, they can block our growth in recovery.We retain the capacity for our defects just as weretain the capacity to choose to use or drinkagain, even though the desire to drink or usemay have been lifted. We should not be sur-prised when even after years of sobriety, defectsof character continue to be a part of our lives.Remember Steps Six and Seven remain availableto us as a way of continuing to make amends.

Achieving HumilityThe 1\velfth Tradition of A.A. also provides

an important insight into another aspect of hu-mility. It says anonymity is the spiritual founda-tion of our traditions, reminding us to placeprinciples above personalities. The tradition of

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anonymity protects the group, as well as theindividual. If we begin to apply the Twelfth Tra-dition to ourselves, we may see values in termsof personal growth.

A kind act done for someone which nobodyfinds out about, not even the person for whomit was done, can be a good way of checkingwhere we are in terms of humility. If we findourselves resisting doing those things for whichthere is little or no credit or expression of grati-tude, we can begin to work on doing them andhelp our recovery process.

Developing gratitude as a way of life helps usgrow in humility because we see life from a dif-ferent perspective. We begin to notice in ourlives all of the things we have to be grateful foron any given day. Also, by learning to be contin-ually grateful and seeing not only sobriety butother things in life as gifts, we recognize morefully what has been given rather than what hasbeen achieved.

Another avenue to humility is the develop-ment of a sense of awe. This is closely related togratitude but not quite the same. Some of usmay live in places that are awe-:inspiring, andyet we have taken them for granted. The sunset,a night sky in the winter, really looking at ourchildren or lover, perhaps simply taking time toallow ourselves to appreciate the face of a

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friend, can help us develop a sense of awe. Awetakes us out of ourselves in a healthy way. Also,going to meetings, becoming involved in theservice work of A.A. *, making coffee, being agreeter, going on Twelfth Step calls, listening toand sharing with others are all ways in which wecan develop a sense of service to others andgrow in humility and recovery.

These simple practices of gratitude, awe, realparticipation in meetings, listening and sharing,all help us toward a healthy and happy sobriety.Along the way they give us a better perspectiveon who we are and who we can become. Theyalso help us cut through the grandiosity and lowself-worth of an ego-centered life and lead ustoward growth in humility.

T

* Or any other Twelve Step program.

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ftzeldenHazelden Pocket Power Series

A series of inspirational pamphlets small enough to carrywith you wherever you go. Short enough to read in one sitting,each pocket-size, 16 page pamphlet uses traditional A.A. phil-osophy to deal with the different stages and emotions encoun-tered during recovery.

Freedom From FearOrder No. 1282B

GratitudeOrder No. 1331B

HonestyOrder No. 1336B

HopeOrder No. 13378

HumilityOrder No. 1338B

InadequacyOrder No. 5360B

Just for TodayOrder No. 1339B

Miracles in RecoveryOrder No. 5402B

PatienceOrder No. 5361B

Reaching Out to OthersOrder No. 5400B

SerenityOrder No. 5362B

SurrenderOrder No. 5449B

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