One of the easiest old behaviors to fall back into is blaming people for your problems. It’s so important to always come back to the core of every issue: what part did I play in this?  What can I do to change it? If I can’t change it, what can I do to help myself accept it?

When you take stock – just another way of saying taking inventory – you are essentially doing an assessment of your sobriety. You are not only asking the critical question: am I heading toward a drink?  You are also asking yourself: Would a healthy person in recovery act this way?  No one likes a dry drunk – all the bad behaviors just without the liquor poured over it.

Taking stock does not mean you can never recognize someone else’s culpability – clearly there are times when someone else is creating chaos and most people have encountered at least one person who seemed to be a natural saboteur.  However, when you recognize this it’s still a good idea to look at your part – did you do anything that got you tied into a person like this?  Do you find yourself attracting people who are train wrecks?  Do you stick with someone or a job or any situation long after it’s clear that it’s not good for you just because you’re afraid of change?

As long as the focus stays on ourselves we can find solutions.  When the focus is on the other person, there really is no solution because, well, we all know how well trying to change other people works.

Ever meet that person who is so obsessed with changing some aspect of themselves that they have become rigid, protective, and a bit of a jerk?  Yup – I’m sure you’ve met them.  The person who seems on guard and ready to pounce.  An example might be someone trying to no longer be someone who says yes to everyone  – so if you ask them if they could hold the door for a second they fly off the handle: I’m not a DOOR MAN!  Only to be a little embarrassed a few seconds later when they see you were asking them to hold it so you could help someone in a wheelchair get through the door.

This is called overkill

I know I have had areas of “growth” for which I went a little overboard. I was told I was too nice. I let people walk all over me.  I went through about 1 year of being really not-nice and relishing this sort of no-holds-barred-I-can-say-exactly-what-I-think attitude. Needless to say, I didn’t make many friends.

At some point I realized I needed to find a balance. It’s okay to be nice.  I separated out the too-nice (like letting someone take advantage over and over) – but that didn’t mean I didn’t do favors or help someone out, just that I didn’t let someone create a one-sided gravy train where I started to feel like they were going to start cleaning my bones soon.

There are other ways a person can become a jerk under the guise of improving their own behavior. For example, someone who doesn’t usually speak their mind now rants continuously about every little thing that annoys them.  Or someone who was overly generous now is overly stingy.

It’s understandable when learning a new behavior that we might do a little overkill – I mean, that’s the alcoholic personality a lot of the times.

“I’m going to stop being a door mat better than anyone else in the world who ever stopped being a door mat!”

This is why taking inventory on a regular basis is important.  If behavioral change becomes selfish and alienating, I can check myself and readjust.

No business that sells products would survive if it didn’t check inventory regularly. They would not be able to identify issues that were undermining their profits, and problems would spiral out of control.  Stores do inventory on a regular basis to figure out how much waste is occurring (in the case of food sales), how much theft is occurring, or to determine issues with overstocking or understocking products. 

Imagine if one of these businesses realized there might be a problem, did one inventory, identified a theft issue, then never did an inventory again.  You can well imagine they would never get the theft problem under control.

So it goes for personal inventories when we are in recovery. We might identify an issue in our first inventory and work through the steps to improve our lives, but if we never do another inventory issues could crop up again or we will miss new issues that tend to crop off as life throws us curve balls.

The goal of taking inventory regularly is to identify problem areas quickly and develop an action plan to deal with them.  If I sit down and think about what I’m doing that’s sabotaging the best life I would possibly have, I can tell you that I never end up with a blank sheet of paper in front of me.

I find one of the best ways to do this is to simply sit for a few minutes after asking myself: Is there anything you are doing now that doesn’t seem to be working?

Procrastination – yup, that often ends up on the list. I’ll go through periods where I’m really good about not procrastinating, then it will crop up again.

I might even go into more detail: I put off housecleaning until it’s a wretched experience that requires twice as much work as I would have to do if I just kept up with it every week; I’m avoiding a person I need to talk to; I’m eating the wrong things because I’m putting off going to the grocery store; I seem to have stopped regularly exercising because I always say I’m too tired today so I’ll do it tomorrow (and tomorrow never comes).  Procrastination is at the root of all of these behaviors.

The inventory kick starts change – okay. I’m going to the grocery store today to get healthier choices so I’m not dialing 1-800-junkfood for delivery in desperation for dinner.

An inventory isn’t about beating myself up – it’s about stopping long enough to recognize when negative behaviors and attitudes are becoming ingrained.

An inventory helps me figure out why life seems so chaotic or out of control.  Need to change that. Check.