P is for Principles. Practice these principles in all our affairs. Take our recovery out of th rooms and apply them to our live at home, at work, and in the community.
What are those principles?
12 Steps and the 12 Principles
1. We admitted we were powerless over the effects of addiction — that our lives had become unmanageable.
1. Honesty, acceptance and surrender.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
2. Hope, Trust
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
3. Faith, willingness
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
4. Courage.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.
5. Integrity.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
6. Willingness, self-honesty
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
7. Humility.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
8. Justice and brotherly love.
9. Made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
9. Self-discipline and good judgment.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
10. Perseverance and open mindedness.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
11. Awareness.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other codependents, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
12. Love and service.
These very depending on who you are talking to. Many say the only principle for Step One is Honesty, but I am a firm believer in all three as listed here. It says we are to do Step One 100% and in order to do that, we need to find surrender and acceptance to go with the self-honesty.
