Rajiv Khurana, M.D.

Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step ten is, in many ways, an ongoing version of steps four through nine. With step ten we take a quick inventory of the day or a specific situation, identify our part in any problems, and, when necessary, we self-correct and quickly make an amends. Hopefully, having worked steps four through nine already, we are familiar with this “inventory, assessment, change, and amends” process. The difference here is that step ten inventories deal with the present rather than the past, and the schedule for self-correction and amends is “as soon as possible” instead of waiting until we are spiritually fit.

For most of us, step ten is a very unnatural behavior. As active addicts we rarely (if ever) engaged in this type of self-examination. In fact, we avoided it like the plague. Even in recovery, many of us sidestepped or delayed the self-examination process, putting off our step four inventories for months or even years. On the plus side, when we finally completed steps four through nine, we came to know the relief that self-examination, changing our behavior, and making amends brings us, so we can approach step ten with less trepidation.

Unlike most of the previous steps, step ten is worked on an ongoing basis, usually every day, sometimes more than once per day. In fact, steps ten, eleven, and twelve are all “daily practice” activities. For this reason, these steps are sometimes referred to as “maintenance steps.” The basic idea is that steps one through nine will get us sober and spiritually fit, and steps ten through twelve will keep us that way. Yes, lots of recovering addicts do go back and re-work earlier steps (especially steps four and five), but usually that is done on an annual basis or some other quite spread out schedule. Steps ten, eleven, and twelve are meant to be worked regularly.

Typically, step ten is done on an as-needed basis, and also near the end of each day. Let us examine the as-needed, spot-check version first. This type of tenth step recognizes that if we are disturbed or upset, there is something wrong with either us or the situation around us and the issue is best looked at right away, before things escalate. For instance, if you are at work and become angry with your boss, a fellow employee, or a client, you can work a quick tenth step, pausing to look objectively at the situation, making note of any part that you have played in it. Once you have a better understanding of what is happening and your role in it, you can deal with the situation in an appropriate fashion.

Recovering addicts who’ve learned to pause and perform a spot-check tenth step inventory before acting on what they are feeling find that doing so generally prevents engagement in regrettable behaviors that later require a formal amends.

Most recovering addicts also choose to work the tenth step at the end of each day, looking back upon the events that have passed and assessing how we did. Here we can look at situations where we handled ourselves with class and dignity, as well as situations where we might do better in the future. Occasionally, we may realize that we owe someone an amends. In such cases we should make that amends as soon as possible—either right away if it’s not too late in the evening, or the following morning. This end-of-day inventory is a way to keep our side of the street clean on an ongoing basis. It is also an easy way to uncover character defects of which we may not have been aware.

Oftentimes end-of-day tenth step inventories are performed as part of one’s daily spiritual practice. The concept of a daily spiritual practice will be discussed more thoroughly in a forthcoming post on step eleven. For now, it is important to understand that step ten is not a step that is taken once and forgotten; instead, it is an ongoing, day-to-day (sometimes moment-to-moment) tool of recovery.