Failures

Why do you need to acknowledge your failures?

Admitting our failures is an essential part of working an honest program of recovery with humility, openness, and willingness. It is also important in preparing our searching and fearless moral inventory in Step Four. This moral inventory is an honest determination of all of our assets and liabilities. It’s a comprehensive look at who we’ve been, who we are, and who we’d like to be in the future.

To succeed in your ongoing recovery you will need to rid yourself of the shame, guilt, and remorse that have been blocking you from being your best self, personally and spiritually. Learning to admit your failures will help you face those negative emotions and get rid of them.

Addicts, like most people, are complex. We may project wholeness when inside we feel empty. We may act arrogant when we feel insecure. We may work hard to get other people to like us when we don’t like ourselves. We are a mixture of contradictions. Admitting failures allows us to discover and accept ourselves with total honesty. Once we learn to be totally honest with ourselves, it becomes easier for us to be honest with others in our day-to-day lives.

It’s helpful to remind yourself that we all fail; we are all imperfect. The danger comes in trying to hide our failures from others or in not learning from our past failures and mistakes.

You will know you are growing in your recovery when you can (1) admit to yourself and others when you have made a mistake, (2) apologize for mistakes without shaming yourself, and (3) take active steps to right wrongs made by the mistake. The only failure that remains a failure is one where you don’t take these steps.