When I was new to the program, I dreaded doing my fourth step inventory. What possible good could it do me to list all my resentments I wondered? When my sponsor told me there was an invisible category called "my part", I was sure this was going to be a useless exercise. I mean, I didn't have a part in choosing my parents, or my siblings, or what happened to me at school and on and on. Just thinking about it made me resentful!
After months of painful and exhaustive writing, I finally finished the first draft of my inventory. I remember reading it to my sponsor and becoming more and more irritated each time he asked me about my part. "But I'm talking about what he, she, or it did to me," I complained. "Yes, but yours is the only part you can change," he said. And that's when I began to understand.
I had spent a lifetime blaming other people, places and things for the misery in my life and all that did was make me a perpetual victim. Once I learned to focus on my part, however, I began to see the role my own behavior played in the destructive patterns in my life. And that's when I discovered I had the power to change them.
You see I learned that when you own your part, you own your power.
