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June 4 – Ready for Change · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to the Daily Ripples with Corey and his guest, Kevin.
• 0:11
  Today is June 4th, ready for change.
• 0:15
  The stone.
• 0:16
  Change requires more than awareness.
• 0:18
  It requires willingness.
• 0:21
  I may see what needs to go, but freedom comes when I am ready to release it.
• 0:27
  Ripple 1, practical.
• 0:29
  Today, I will ask myself an honest question.
• 0:32
  Am I truly willing to change or am I holding on to something familiar?
• 0:39
  I will take a step toward letting go, even if it is small.
• 0:43
  Willingness often begins before readiness.
• 0:47
  Ripple 2, Spiritual.
• 0:49
  As I come before the Father with an open heart, the Holy Spirit works where I cannot.
• 0:55
  Following Christ, I learned that transformation begins with surrender.
• 1:00
  I do not have to change myself alone.
• 1:02
  I need only be willing, and God begins the work within me.
• 1:08
  Yeah, I mean, you know my story.
• 1:12
  I went back out after being in this program for five years, and that was exactly why,
• 1:17
  because I had not been willing to give this program,
• 1:25
  give myself completely over to this program.
• 1:28
  I still thought I could manage on my own.
• 1:30
  And it wasn't until I was willing to turn it over to this higher power
• 1:37
  and follow his will that things started changing for me.
• 1:42
  And so I can definitely relate to what that's talking about.
• 1:47
  And like it says, man, you don't have to have all this know-how.
• 1:53
  It's just, you know, being willing to not know, but to be willing to learn from it, you know.
• 2:00
  And so that's kind of where it was for me.
• 2:04
  I didn't have any of the answers, but I was willing to find them and learn them from somebody else who had been through it and had received some of the answers to the way this thing works.
• 2:20
  You know, this is an interesting topic.
• 2:22
  And I think, you know, me and you have talked in depth about these things.
• 2:27
  Because, you know, I don't know if you know this, but this aligns into the daily reflections, right?
• 2:33
  the daily reflections of alcoholics anonymous so yeah pastor mike he read the daily reflection
• 2:40
  then made his own thing and so really we're on step six right so we're talking about yeah
• 2:47
  we're talking about defects and we're talking about you know and you my friend we have gotten
• 2:54
  very big steps of defects of character and change can you do it yourself i think
• 3:02
  I mean, there was a time that I used to talk heavily about the seven deadly sins.
• 3:07
  Yeah.
• 3:08
  And offsetting it with the seven heavenly virtues.
• 3:13
  So, I mean, you're more well-versed in step six and seven probably than I am.
• 3:20
  I don't know about that.
• 3:23
  But I am aware of my character defects, and I know those seven deadly sins pretty well, too.
• 3:29
  I have no problem with understanding those.
• 3:33
  It's the whole, you know, the whole part where, you know, I did try to change those in the beginning.
• 3:41
  You know, I was like, oh, all right, you know, I'm done with lustfulness.
• 3:45
  Yeah.
• 3:45
  Yeah.
• 3:46
  How'd that work out for you, Kevin?
• 3:49
  And so, you know, it's been revealed and the awareness, you know, it says change requires more than awareness.
• 3:58
  Because the awareness at one point was all I had, you know.
• 4:01
  Right.
• 4:01
  But before this program, I didn't even have that.
• 4:04
  And so once I saw that I was aware, I was like, well, I got to be willing to let this stuff go.
• 4:10
  And that was a challenge, man.
• 4:12
  Some of it still is a challenge, you know.
• 4:14
  If I'm being honest about it, there's things in my life where I can still find myself having a little bit of pride on some things I do.
• 4:23
  If I have a good golf game or something, you know, I want to brag about it.
• 4:26
  Right.
• 4:28
  But, you know.
• 4:29
  I mean, I brag about stuff, too, you know.
• 4:31
  Of course.
• 4:32
  But, yeah.
• 4:34
  I'm just using that as an example.
• 4:36
  But I'm just saying, you know, I mean, I can go down a deep, dark hole on some other stuff.
• 4:40
  I don't know what kind of viewers we got here, you know.
• 4:45
  Well, you know, and I don't know why.
• 4:48
  I think you're probably familiar with page 47 in the 12 and 12 talking about conditions, right?
• 4:54
  It talks about we thought conditions drove us to drink and where we tried to correct these directions and found that we could not, to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics.
• 5:07
  It never occurred to us that we need to change ourselves to meet conditions wherever they were.
• 5:13
  Well, I agree with half of it because it's not finished either because me changing myself, I've never been able to do.
• 5:25
  Like, so, for instance, like on page 52, where it says, we had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems.
• 5:32
  Well, my human problems, I feel like those are those different things in my life, right, that I want change.
• 5:38
  Why we shouldn't apply to our human problems is the same readiness to change our point of view.
• 5:42
  So, you know, instead of changing, you know, the women's or this or this or this, what I think I need to be changing,
• 5:51
  like right in the present time because this isn't working out,
• 5:54
  this isn't working out, this isn't working out.
• 5:56
  Maybe it's been my point of view the whole time, right?
• 6:00
  And like, I don't know, you know, so when I change my point of view
• 6:03
  or angle of approach, I don't know if you've ever,
• 6:06
  well, not angle of approach, but attitude.
• 6:08
  Attitude, yeah.
• 6:09
  It's like an airplane.
• 6:10
  Yeah.
• 6:11
  Yeah.
• 6:11
  That's what I'll, you know, and that's really cool
• 6:13
  because it's the attitude in the airplane that's, you know,
• 6:17
  Bill talks a lot about that, the angle of approach.
• 6:20
  And my approach is different on things today because I don't think, you know, everything I think I could do to fix things in my, this is a cool thing.
• 6:32
  So me and my significant other, she has a bipolar one and she was misdiagnosed.
• 6:41
  They thought she just had bipolar two and she was medicated for some things.
• 6:46
  And, man, we have been working.
• 6:51
  And, man, we pray her about it.
• 6:54
  And she's all over the program doing this and this and this and this and this.
• 6:59
  Right?
• 7:01
  And she went to the doctor and she was like, hey, this stuff isn't working.
• 7:08
  And they diagnosed her.
• 7:10
  And, man, I'll tell you, she's been on a new medication.
• 7:13
  and our life has completely changed completely i mean like night and day differently you know
• 7:21
  from 7 a.m till we go to bed it's a completely different life today and you know but the angle
• 7:28
  of approach you know i think fixing it over here is gonna fix it because that's the only thing i can
• 7:33
  see right and i remember talking to bill i was like man i don't know what to do because well you
• 7:40
  were there and you know with the court stuff i mean i had a you know cory's aa hotline i was
• 7:46
  taking people through the work on the phone every other night because i you know i didn't know how
• 7:50
  much time i have left right and i didn't also i wanted to put some good into the world but if i was
• 7:56
  gonna leave and you know maybe god helped me out through the process and he did but you know i was
• 8:02
  i told him i said you know man i don't know if i need to start sponsoring more guys what do i need
• 8:06
  to do because I don't know how to go through this.
• 8:10
  I was getting to a place.
• 8:11
  I was getting really bad.
• 8:12
  And, you know, man, like, I don't know.
• 8:15
  God takes care of things.
• 8:16
  And, you know, other than me taking care of things, right, because I think I can do all
• 8:21
  this, but God does.
• 8:23
  I think that's the biggest change of my point of view in that aspect.
• 8:27
  Yeah.
• 8:28
  Your hands were kind of tied, you know, but you pressed on and you were able to continue
• 8:34
  to work with others in the program, and you kind of had to give it to God, you know.
• 8:40
  You couldn't, there wasn't much else you could do.
• 8:44
  So, I mean, it was a great learning experience for sure.
• 8:48
  And I think as you work these steps and the more you learn by working with others,
• 8:55
  the more we get a higher level of maturity because you learn to not be so selfish
• 9:04
  and then when you have to actually keep an open mind towards these things,
• 9:10
  and maybe this can change.
• 9:13
  Maybe I don't need all that that I thought I had to have.
• 9:17
  And so with this program, we actually grow,
• 9:22
  and I guess some of these things eventually do start to go away.
• 9:26
  I haven't seen all of them go away.
• 9:29
  Well, I mean, like, you know, it says in the page, what is it, 76, it says on the sixth step, it says, can he now take them all, everyone? If we still cling to something, we will not let go. We ask God to help us be willing.
• 9:46
  And, you know, you've probably heard me talk a little bit about this, but I've come up into a place where, all right, so for instance, steps four and five in the book, right?
• 9:57
  You know, we're talking about resentments, who we hurt, you know, we let it all out.
• 10:02
  But page 61 through 63, I fully understand after I do a fourth and fifth step, right?
• 10:10
  And, you know, steps two and three are just considerations within themselves.
• 10:15
  So six and seven is, you know, a prayer, just like step three and a consideration.
• 10:23
  Well, you know, I think, you know, because page 77 says our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be a maximum service to God, the people about us.
• 10:32
  So if I'm fitting myself, right, through the process of amends, right?
• 10:39
  So if I go face some of the women's that maybe I cheated on, the old employer that I screwed over, when I start doing that, God's almost fitting myself to a baseline, Corey.
• 10:55
  Making right of the things I should have done when my mom told me how to be.
• 11:01
  That's funny.
• 11:02
  I heard that in a meeting the other day.
• 11:03
  Everything you're learning is just the same stuff your mother tried to tell you when you were little.
• 11:09
  and you didn't listen.
• 11:10
  Yeah.
• 11:11
  And, you know, well, you know, my birth mother, she's not around,
• 11:15
  but, you know, she probably didn't have the best advice for me.
• 11:18
  Yeah.
• 11:19
  But I think that's interesting because, you know,
• 11:22
  that's all I'm doing is fitting myself to be better because, you know,
• 11:26
  I didn't act correctly to people.
• 11:30
  And then those defects kind of just because that's, to me,
• 11:35
  if somebody came into this program and said, you know,
• 11:38
  I don't want to believe in God.
• 11:41
  Like, I'm going to go the route of the group as a spiritual entity,
• 11:46
  and the group can be my higher power,
• 11:48
  and I'm going to go at this in a sense of, you know,
• 11:53
  work through the book work and do this.
• 11:57
  Because, you know, you're coming to the...
• 11:57
  Are you talking about somebody in particular now?
• 12:00
  I mean, I've done this multiple times, right?
• 12:02
  No, I know, but I'm just saying, you know.
• 12:05
  Your point was that you probably couldn't work with them.
• 12:08
  Is that what you're going to say?
• 12:09
  No, I work with them.
• 12:10
  I love those guys.
• 12:12
  Okay.
• 12:14
  I thought you were going to say you didn't want to work with them.
• 12:16
  They couldn't grasp God as their higher power.
• 12:20
  No, I love those guys.
• 12:21
  They're so much easier to get through than someone that goes to church already,
• 12:26
  already thinks they have this relationship with God because they're not open-minded.
• 12:34
  But like the people that, you know, atheist or very big agnostics going through this program and just a book work deal of this is the work and this is how you get through it.
• 12:48
  You know, go make some amends and go like, you know, I got it.
• 12:53
  That's what happened to me.
• 12:54
  You know, after I had some time in sobriety, I got amazed before I was halfway through, Kevin.
• 12:58
  And then I stopped.
• 13:00
  Yeah.
• 13:02
  But, you know, so I don't advise that.
• 13:05
  But you got anything else on this subject?
• 13:08
  I think that's it.
• 13:11
  I lost my page again.
• 13:12
  Hold on.
• 13:12
  Well, our prayer, Kevin.
• 13:14
  Okay.
• 13:15
  Is, Father, make me willing to let go of what holds me back.
• 13:19
  Through your Spirit, shake my heart for change and lead me into the life you are calling me to through your Son.
• 13:27
  Amen.
• 13:28
  Amen.
• 13:30
  Amen.
• 13:57
  Thank you.