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Welcome back to the Path to Warren podcast. It’s episode 14, and it is July 14, 2020 on a beautiful morning. It’s 05:45 AM. My time and I have headed to the gym. Just wanted to take a minute and talk about resentments. I have a lot of childhood resentments that I’ve worked through and been able to work through. These are the things that early on in recovery, people say that the number one reason for people relapsing and going back out to use or to drink and try to cope away their issues and their stresses. Everyone says that the number one reason is the number one offender are resentments. So the whole process of working these twelve steps are to get rid of these resentments from the past. Things that we have been wronged over, issues that the people have hurt us or left us or abandoned us, treated us wrong. All of these things that we think that we have held onto in our heads. It’s crucial for us to get rid of these and to become at peace with these issues. As I’ve worked on myself over the last 850 days or so, I have had to literally look at every single person in my life. I took several days, actually took several days and went through my phone contacts. I went through my phone contacts and anybody that I saw my level of anxiety rise whenever I looked at their contact in my phone, whether it’s an old friend from high school or a customer that I mistreated or abandoned the job or anything on there, that was an issue. I wrote it down and I just made a list of people. I later came back to that list once it was complete and started to work the steps over What is my issue with this person? Somebody said one time that if you’re at a festival, for example, I grew up in Irmo, South Carolina. We had the Irmo Okra Strut and somebody said, if you’re walking through a crowded festival and you see somebody and that person in your mind, if you want to switch lanes in the street, you want to switch sides of the street in order to avoid that person, there might be a resentment there. Wow. When I came into recovery, there were a lot of people like that in my life that I did not want to talk to, that I wanted to avoid, that I didn’t want to stir up anything, and I just wanted to leave alone. Those people probably have in my head some kind of resentment going on that I need to work out. I would encourage you that if there’s anybody that you want to switch lanes or switch sidewalks to avoid, consider what’s going on there. I really got to look at that issue and try to figure out what it is and what did it do to me. We have a four column process for working out each and every one of these resentments that you take a piece of paper, you turn it landscape. And I wrote down every person’s name on the left. And then the second column, I wrote down what that person did to me in my mind or what the issue is. The third column, I have to write down what area of my life did that affect? Did it affect my relationship? Did it affect my sexual activities? Did it affect me financially? What area of my life did it affect? Did it affect me emotionally? That’s the third column. The fourth column is I have to look at my part. What was it that I did to possibly cause this or to possibly not communicate? Well, what was my part in the situation? And this last column, what we find is we have to list out what character defect was this of mine? So was it pride? Was it self centeredness? Was it ego? Were there any areas of my character defects that we’re starting to see patterns here on this fifth column. And what I found was after I worked these resentments with the help of a sponsor and with the help of another person in recovery who’s my accountability partner, I was able to see trends. So now I know that if I’m back into a corner, I’m probably going to have one of these character defects that wants to show its face. Pride, ego, self centeredness. There’s several of these character defects of mine that if I’m not careful, they’re going to show their face. So this is just a really quick podcast to talk about some of the resentments from childhood and some of the resentments that I’ve had growing up in my life. There are three categories of areas that when you’re working step four in particular and this could be a whole long podcast, but I had to look at my resentment, had to look at my fears. What are the things that I fear in life? And I had to evaluate my sexual misconducts. Look at all three areas of those and take an inventory. Just as a store or a business, whether you’re retail, have a big warehouse of products or inventory, you need to take inventory of the products on a regular basis so that you know what’s still good. What can you still salvage? What needs to be thrown in the trash, what needs to be repaired? If it’s good enough for a business to do on a regular basis, don’t you think we need to do it to ourselves? And that’s the whole process of working the steps through step four and five. So I hope everybody has a wonderful day. I hope you use this. If this has been beneficial, please subscribe share it with your friends that might be needing some help with their recovery. I hope you have a wonderful day and make your contribution. Thanks so much. See you on the next podcast.