I love step 4. Most of the time I skip the first 3 steps and go right to #4
.... until my sponsor finds me out and makes me start from #1
What works for me is to follow the analogy of a business doing a _physical_ inventory of merchandise. What are my _positive_ traits? my negative? which do I have too much of? not enough? What _should_ I have to be in balance?
That is just the beginning. Having once been a business owner I understand that just knowing what you have won't help much. I have to know _why_ I have too little or too much if I want to correct the imbalance. Having this "list" shows me what areas I need to work on, and in what priority.
What I found out with the inventory is that I am very critical of other people's work habits. The reason I am critical is because I am a workaholic. Classic, out of the textbook, over the top, workaholic. Instead of working to reduce my critical attitude I focused on reducing my "workaholism". As I slowly healed from the need to over-work my critical attitude just slipped away, all on it's own. Imagine that. The inventory showed me how almost all of my "defects" arise from just a few "base" issues.
Once I understood the workaholism and it's causes I continued with the merchandise analogy. I clearly have skills in the field of business, I was just using them incorrectly. I was doing it to excess instead of doing it with expertise. No different than stocking too much of a low quality piece of merchandise. So I went back to school to get an MBA. Not only did that help me in my recovery, I learned how to be a business owner from _experts_. I see that as surrendering my workaholism to the "Higher Power" of the instructors at the University. They showed me how to do it with balance.
One of the things I have always bemoaned is that when I came into the world nobody gave me an owner's manual. This inventory is how I write my own manual for my own life. This inventory, this list of items that need attention, is the "Table of Contents" to my owner's manual.
Mike
