[CatsPajamas]

There is much more to this step, but I'll stop here for now. This is a very important step, one that should not be taken lightly. This is NOT a time for you to beat yourself up over everything you've done wrong, and it's also very important that you are taking your OWN inventory and not someone else's.

I heard a woman speak once about her grandmother's cottage on a lake. After much rain, there was flooding and water came into the cottage. The woman went to help her grandmother carry things out and put them into the yard. As they did so, they took an inventory:

what was damaged beyond repair,
what was unnecessary and could be discarded,
what was precious and special and should be kept,
what was worth repairing or restoring and
what was ok as is.

That's what it's like to do a personal inventory. It's not a judgment call, it's simply about what works, what doesn't, what we might want to keep, what is no longer necessary, etc. Most of my character defects are assets that I have taken to an extreme. If I can look at it, see the point at which I am moving into excess, then I can keep myself in check and keep myself balanced.