I see step 6 as also being open to learning and accepting of life with all its anxieties, challenges and hurt. “To live with life on life’s terms”. Often we have developed defects of character because we struggle to do this. Therefore, may be aggressive because we are really scared or apathetic or narrow-minded because we want to avoid pain. There are so many different defects of character because of fear. Is that not why people are tense, suspicious, withdrawn or defensive? To protect themselves from not having enough love , do individuals not have the tendency to overfeed with selfishness, gluttony , greed and judgement? If individuals do not know how to fit in or belong do they not get self important, wordy, isolate, gossipy and exaggerate? If individuals cannot be themselves do they not compensate with strategies of vanity, fantasy, perfectionism and pretentious grandiosity and superiority? Its endless and its about life strategies to cover what emotional pain, residue, confusion or avoidance one has. Being open and accepting is knowing this and that all human beings have flaws. Its the nature of the “animal” we are. However, the dysfunctional ways of acting, feeling and thinking cause further pain rather then reduce it which is what we were aiming for in the first place. In other words what we do has not worked. Therefore being open to something different is paramount to step 6.,
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Being honest I would concede that “doing it my way” for so many years did not work. Being fundamentally ill at ease with self makes life so difficult and is such a huge barrier to healthy living and relationships. My good qualities were present but often swamped in defenses and underlying anger. I made great efforts to change but somehow the efforts were made from a place of sickness so could never really succeed the efforts just seemed to reinforce the problem. How to get out of self to get well? It can seem impossible. There must be a pay off in a process otherwise it will not work. I had to be ready to be open and accepting but that must come from a deep place- lip service to this step and the others will not work.