Both Sides of Myself
Step Four teaches us to take a thorough look at ourselves, the positives as well as the negatives.
I dreaded Step Four because I thought I already knew what it would find. I'd been keeping an inventory my whole life — just only the bad half. Every flaw catalogued, every mistake replayed. I didn't need a Step to tell me what was wrong with me. I could do that in my sleep.
What I couldn't do was name what was right. When my sponsor asked me to list my strengths, I went blank. Not because I don't have any — but because somewhere along the way, I decided I didn't deserve to claim them. Owning a defect felt honest. Owning a strength felt like arrogance.
That's the real discovery of Step Four. The defects weren't news. The surprise was how aggressively I'd hidden my own worth from myself — and how much courage it took to write it down. Naming what's wrong with me was habit. Naming what's right required a kind of honesty I'd never practiced.
Before listing a single defect, I can start my inventory with five strengths. If that feels harder than listing flaws, that's worth noticing.
