 G'day mate, 40 here. Beautiful day here on Manly Beach. A great time to get some recovery, listening to the daily reprieve here. This is how step 4 works. So yesterday she is in my house and we're doing some work together. And she tells me how he doesn't feel like his wife is there for him and loves him. Today in the morning he shows me a text on Melissa. How his wife wants to take him out. And be there for him and celebrate the fact that he didn't cheat on her for three years. That would be amazing. So what does it mean to go to any lengths? Essentially that just means the willingness to work the steps. So we're here looking at a gorgeous Manly Beach. My God, some of those waves were three times the size of a normal man. Okay, so we act out for a reason. So that's the incentive to stay as balanced and happy and comfortable as possible. Because then we'll be much less likely to act out. So step 4 was when the magic happened for me. Step 4 absolutely blew my mind. Because I saw clearly an enormous role that I played in my own unhappiness. That almost all my problems with other people I played a pretty big role. And so it just kind of calmed me down. I realized I was the biggest obstacle to my own happiness. So step 4 you take note of all your resentments. And you write down a column, every institution, every individual you resent. And then what they did to you that you resent. And what part of self was affected? Was it your survival needs? Was it your prestige? Was it your sex and love life? Was it your self-esteem? Your social standing? And get clear. And then what role did you play in your own misery? If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? It is a course of vigorous action. The first step of which is a personal health care decision was a critical step, a crucial step. It could have a little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and to be aware of the things in our lives which have been blocking us. So you begin by taking notice of your resentments. That's the key place to begin. That'll tip you off because when you build up a resentment you're much more likely to act out. So if your problem is food or women or money or drugs or alcohol you're going to be much more likely to act out once you build up a full load of resentment. So you begin by paying attention to what your resent. That was our step three. We made a decision to turn our will into a life over to the care of God. What the hell does that mean? We made a decision to give our will over to God. Okay, really all that means a decision to turn your will into a life over the care of God is that you plan to continue working all 12 steps and to implement them throughout your life. That means the person who Chaim was until he entered into recovery is not the same person who Chaim will be. I was told that old Chaim will forever act out. The new Chaim will stay so and it's run on self-will. So I noticed whenever I read a novel, watch a movie or watch a TV show people are inevitably brought low because they follow their own basic instincts towards destruction. I noticed that almost all the characters in movies, TV shows and novels it's nothing that they live for that's higher than the satisfaction of their own instincts. And so when I simply followed my basic instincts for status, for security, for sex and love that didn't really do it for me. That didn't put me in a good position. Each guy thinks the same thing. Yeah, if you had my wife, if you had my life then you'd act out too. That's how guys tend to talk. They want to blame their problems on somebody else, on a spouse, on a boss. This is from the Daily Reprieve podcast, DailyReprieve.com. Really good stuff. Getting back to basics, mate. And my word, if you had my sex relationship or the lack of a law or a fine child says hey. So masturbation, porn, hookers, that's not the problem. It's just a manifestation of the problem. That's just an outgrowth of the problem. The problem is fundamentally feeling ill at ease in the world and needing to turn to a substance or a process to get rid of that feeling of lack of ease. So I spend about an hour a day listening to these 12 step podcasts to help myself regain equilibrium in the world. With the internet, then I could stay sober. It shows me so much pornography so I can't stay sober. Dressing is such a provocative way of dressing the way that I want my wife to dress and that's why I could stay sober. You go to synagogue and you leave and you look around and you're supposed to know. So every Orthodox Jewish bachelor who I know well, after the age of about 28, highly unusual to still be an Orthodox Jew and a bachelor after about age 28, pretty much everyone I know well is an addict to porn. Then when they get married, find out their wives aren't too happy about them still looking at pornography and often the marriage doesn't last long. Step further. My wife didn't treat me that way. I could stay sober. These are like telltale signs that you're dealing with an addict. Someone in a bad place and they just want to blame everybody else with their problems. Part of the recovery begins with taking responsibility for your own life. Everybody in a condescending. So yeah, that's true of me in the past. Oh, I thought everybody else would shape up. If only my boss would treat me better. If only rabbis would treat me better. If only my girlfriend would treat me better. If only my family would treat me better. If only I got a break. If only the teacher gave me an A grade. Then my life would get better. If only, if only, if only I wasn't under so much stress. A big book, I'll never forget it or so maybe a few months. And he goes on to talk about how if all the actors in the play would change, everybody would just... If only people would understand that, you know, I like to speak with sarcasm or I like to use irony or, you know, I've got a cutting edge sense of humor. If only people understood that, you know, I don't really belong here. Somehow there's been a great big mistake and I haven't gotten that nationally syndicated radio show. So they can't really expect me to turn out high quality work. I'm not the problem. They really just... I'll never forget this every time I think about this now. It's like a good laugh. While I'm reading, I'm like, wow, I wish I could give this to my father to read. Like, wow. I believe like every person needs to just follow his script. And then it's like, wow, how do I sneak this into my wife? Like, how does she get some of this? Like, oh my God, if only girls, my children, like, oh my God, my rabbi, you know. And finally, finally we're humbled enough to say I gave my will up to God in step three. Which means no one around me has to change. Yeah, in my experience, once I started living for cause greater than myself, the things greater than my own self-will, life just started getting... Once I started living to help other people with these problems in recovery, like, anything that transcended my own basic desires, then life started to dramatically improve. The sex industry doesn't need to change and even if it does need to change, you ain't changing it. We're making some damage over here now, fellowship of losing some revenue. It's still doing well. I come here very simple. I thought I'm going to walk through the doors and people are going to simply say, this is how you don't go to work. So when I started applying these insights, I calmed down. Then my ADHD calmed down. I started sleeping a little better. I started getting along better with other people. I started earning more money. I started cleaning up my side of the street. I started to hate myself less. I started getting some traction with my life. Just following these basic principles. That's all I needed to do. And it's so much easier to do that when you've got a fellowship, man. When you've got other people. When you've got a community. Right? So on my own, I can go off in all sorts of negative, self-destructive, antisocial directions. When I'm part of a community, I start making better choices, right? I need that reinforcement from other people. Nobody has to change. Only one person. Meet six years old at movement 95. Yeah. It's such a simple elementary perspective. But realizing nobody has to change, but me. I need to change. But nobody else needs to change. Yeah. Coming to you live from Manly Beach, man. And nobody else has to change. Manly, I have to change. If I want better results, I have to change. So I was in my parent's house last week. I'm sitting there with my father. We're having a philosophical conversation about could you get somebody to change? Could you help somebody change? Could you manipulate the situation to change? I want to do this type of conversation. My grandmother... Yeah, I spent so much effort. I did everything I could to learn how to be better at manipulating other people. And I'd have been so much better off just putting the focus on myself. Learning how to manipulate myself by putting myself in a better environment. In a better community. With better practices. And getting open and honest with people. She comes walking out. She's literally... She went through everything. She was in the hospital. Literally in the last two years, maybe 20 times. But it's not exaggerate. She goes there for the weekends, you know. We always say she's like, you know, she has like 100 lives to unreal. She comes literally walking in. She can't eat anymore physically. She has tubes and pipes. Her walk with her is literally holding her up. I say, can anybody change? Can you change anybody? And she picks up her head like ever so slightly and says, sure yourself. Sure yourself. There's only one person that's changing in this world. And that's me. Responsible for myself. How ironic if every person was just busy changing themselves and actually accomplished that. Now, if you do focus on changing yourself, right, and everything going on with you is going to still transmit to other people, you have to get the vaccine to go to Australia. No, there are no longer any COVID restrictions to travel to Australia. But I've had five COVID shots. So we do influence other people and I think we tend to underestimate how much we can influence other people. But whenever we directly try to change people, it almost never works. But if we indirectly influence people, all right, it can be profound. It can be huge. But like directly applying pressure to try to change someone, that never works in my experience. I have to be everybody changing everybody else in this world. The hardest and most difficult thing to change is myself. And what I do all day as a result is change everybody else. Opportunity we're finally of ourself and we get to hold up a mirror. And for once and for all, really do an internal, spiritual, mental, emotional surgery. Yeah, soul surgery. I think that's a pretty good metaphor for a 12-step work. Little soul surgery.