A man gets on his knees beside his sponsor and asks God to take his shortcomings. He has already admitted he cannot drink. He has already written down the worst of what he has done and read it out loud to another man.
Step seven asks for something those steps did not. It asks him to stop defending the parts of himself he still likes.
That is the price of humility, and it is why step seven stalls more men than any other step in the second half. The principle behind it costs him the last argument he had left.
What people mean by the 12 principles of AA
The twelve steps describe actions. The twelve principles name the character a man builds by taking those actions.
AA literature talks about the steps as spiritual principles throughout, and members over the decades settled on a one-word virtue for each step. The list below is the naming most commonly used in meeting rooms and in AA study groups. No single AA pamphlet publishes it as an official roster, so a man may hear small variations from one room to the next.
The order matters more than the wording. Honesty comes before hope. Hope comes before faith. A man cannot skip to humility at step seven without the six steps that make humility possible.
SOZO Recovery Center built this series from direct survey feedback given by men in the program. Each entry below links to that man's own account of the principle in his own words. Nothing in those accounts came from a textbook.
Why step seven costs a man his pride
Step six asks a man to become entirely ready for God to remove his defects of character. Step seven asks him to get on with it and ask.
Between those two sentences sits the hardest bargaining in the program. A man reaches step seven with a list from his fourth-step inventory. He looks at the list and finds items he wants to keep.
Impatience gets things done at work. Anger has protected him since he was twelve. A sharp tongue keeps people at a distance, and distance has felt like safety for twenty years. Every defect on the list has paid him something.
Humility is the principle that lets him hand those over anyway. He still likes some of them. He still remembers exactly what each one paid him. He hands them over because he has run out of evidence that he can manage himself.
One man in SOZO's program described the moment plainly. He knelt with his sponsor, used the prayer from page 76 of the Big Book, and asked God to remove every defect standing in the way of his usefulness. He wrote afterward that the willingness and the humility arrived together, and that he was grateful his sponsor made him spend real time on steps six and seven.
Pride is the thing that argues against that kneeling. Pride says a grown man handles his own character. Step seven is where a man stops making that argument and finds out what happens next.
Read the full account in Step 7, Humility.
The twelve principles and the steps behind them
Each principle below names a virtue, the step that builds it, and the SOZO client account that describes living it.
| Step | Principle | What the step asks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Honesty | Admit the drinking has won and the life has stopped working |
| 2 | Hope | Come to believe a Power greater than himself can restore him |
| 3 | Faith | Decide to place his will and his life in God's care |
| 4 | Courage | Write a searching and fearless moral inventory |
| 5 | Integrity | Admit the exact nature of the wrongs to God and to another man |
| 6 | Willingness | Become entirely ready to have God remove his defects |
| 7 | Humility | Humbly ask God to remove his shortcomings |
| 8 | Brotherly Love | List everyone he harmed and become willing to make amends |
| 9 | Justice | Make direct amends except where doing so would injure someone |
| 10 | Perseverance | Keep taking inventory and admit wrongs promptly |
| 11 | Awareness | Seek conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation |
| 12 | Service | Carry the message and practice these principles in all his affairs |
One: honesty
Step one asks a man to admit that alcohol or drugs beat him, and that his life stopped working. He cannot begin anywhere else.
A SOZO client wrote that he had resisted admitting it for a long time, and that telling the truth about his situation felt good once he finally did. He also wrote that admitting it came easier surrounded by men in the same position.
Honesty is the entry fee. SOZO's guide to Step 1 in AA covers what powerlessness means for a man who has been strong everywhere else. The client account lives at Step 1, Honesty.
Two: hope
Step two asks a man to come to believe that a Power greater than himself can restore him to sound thinking.
The word came is doing the work. Nobody demands instant belief. A man watches other men recover and starts to suspect it might be available to him too.
Hope is the first thing a man gets back. Read Step 2, Hope.
Three: faith
Step three asks for a decision. A man turns his will and his life over to the care of God, as he understands God.
Faith here is a verb. He acts on the decision before the feeling shows up, and the feeling tends to follow the action.
Read Step 3, Faith.
Four: courage
Step four asks a man to write a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself. He puts the resentments and the fears on paper where he can see them.
Fearless does not mean unafraid. It means he writes the entry anyway.
Read Step 4, Courage.
Five: integrity
Step five asks a man to admit the exact nature of his wrongs to God and to himself. Then he says the same words to one other human being.
That third listener is the whole step. A secret loses most of its power the moment a man says it out loud to somebody who does not leave the room.
Read Step 5, Integrity.
Six: willingness
Step six asks a man to become entirely ready for God to remove his defects of character. Nothing here requires him to remove them himself.
Willingness is the gap between knowing a defect and letting go of it. Some men sit in that gap for months.
Read Step 6, Willingness.
Seven: humility
Step seven asks a man to humbly ask God to remove his shortcomings. The section above covers what that request costs him.
Humility puts him at actual size. He stops arguing that he is worse than everyone and stops arguing that he is better.
Read Step 7, Humility.
Eight: brotherly love
Step eight asks a man to list everybody he harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.
The list is the easy half. Willingness toward the people who hurt him first is the half that takes work. SOZO's guide to Step 8 in AA covers how that willingness develops.
Read Step 8, Brotherly Love.
Nine: justice
Step nine asks a man to make direct amends wherever he can, except where doing so would injure the person he owes.
Justice means he pays what he owes at the cost to himself. He does not buy his own relief with somebody else's pain.
Read Step 9, Justice.
Ten: perseverance
Step ten asks a man to keep taking personal inventory and to admit it promptly when he is wrong.
This is the step that turns a program into a life. He runs the inventory daily, and the gap between a wrong and an apology shrinks from years to hours.
Read Step 10, Perseverance.
Eleven: awareness
Step eleven asks a man to seek conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation. He asks for knowledge of God's will and for the power to carry it out.
Awareness grows quietly. A man notices he is asking what he should do before he acts, where he used to act and explain later.
Read Step 11, Awareness.
Twelve: service
Step twelve asks a man who has had a spiritual awakening to carry the message to other alcoholics and to practice these principles in everything he does.
One SOZO client wrote that he had always respected the idea of a servant leader, and that he never connected service to loving other people until he reached this step. Giving recovery away turned out to be how he kept it.
SOZO's guide to Step 12 in AA covers how service protects a man's own sobriety. Read Step 12, Service.
The principles a man keeps using after treatment
Steps one through nine happen roughly once. A man admits, inventories, confesses, and pays what he owes. Then the program hands him three principles he uses for the rest of his life.
Perseverance runs on a daily clock. Step ten asks him to keep the inventory going and to admit a wrong the same day he commits it. Men who work it describe the change in ordinary terms. An apology that used to take four years now takes forty minutes.
Awareness holds the morning. Step eleven puts prayer and meditation ahead of the day's decisions, so a man asks what he should do before he acts. The habit is small and the effect compounds.
Service closes the loop. A man who sponsors somebody else has to keep his own program in order, because he cannot hand over what he is not carrying. That is the practical reason step twelve protects sobriety, and men in recovery describe it the same way across decades.
A man who leaves treatment with those three principles in daily use has a program he can run without supervision. That is what the whole series points toward.
What a family reads in this list
Families searching the twelve principles are usually trying to work out where a man is and what to expect next.
The list gives them a map. A man at step four is writing something painful and will be short-tempered for a week. A man at step nine may call to make an amends that a family has waited years to hear. A man at step twelve is spending time with somebody newer than him, and that time is part of his own program.
Knowing the order helps a family stop reading every hard day as a setback.
Where these accounts came from
Most published writing about the twelve principles explains them from the outside. A counselor defines humility. A blogger lists the virtues.
The Principled Recovery Series does something different. SOZO collected survey feedback from men working the steps on campus and published what those men wrote about each principle as they reached it.
That means the account of step seven comes from a man who knelt on a floor and said the prayer. The account of step one comes from a man a few weeks into treatment who had just stopped arguing with the truth. Their names stay out of it, and their words do not.
How the principles fit into treatment
The twelve principles work in a meeting room and they work harder inside clinical care.
SOZO Recovery Center integrates the 12-Step method with Christian principles and evidence-based clinical practice for adult men in Arkansas. A man works step four with a counselor who also treats his depression. He reaches step seven with a clinical team that understands what withdrawal did to his thinking.
SOZO is CARF International-accredited and licensed by the state of Arkansas, and the program follows the American Society of Addiction Medicine continuum from detox referral through sober living. SOZO provides no medical detox on campus, so the admissions team coordinates a placement with a partner facility and brings a man into care once he is medically stable.
Frequently asked questions about the 12 principles of AA
Are the 12 principles the same as the 12 steps?
No. The steps are the actions a man takes. The principles are the virtues those actions build in him. Each step has one principle attached to it.
Is there an official AA list of the twelve principles?
AA literature calls the steps spiritual principles throughout, and it does not publish a numbered roster of one-word virtues. Members assembled the common list over decades, so a man may hear small variations between rooms.
Which principle is the hardest?
Men name humility at step seven more than any other. It is the step where a man gives up defects that have paid him something for years.
Do the principles work outside AA?
Step twelve asks a man to practice them in all his affairs, which means at work, at home, and at church. Men in recovery report that the tenth step travels best.
Does a man have to be a Christian to work them?
No. The steps say God as a man understands God. SOZO serves men of faith and men who are open to faith, and honest doubt disqualifies nobody.
Talk with someone at SOZO
Reading about humility and practicing it are separate activities. The second one goes better with a counselor and a room full of men doing the same work.
SOZO Recovery Center serves adult men at 505 W Grand Ave, Hot Springs, AR 71901, with a multi-acre residential campus in Jessieville. See the programs SOZO runs, or call 501-984-5317 to talk with the admissions team about what level of care fits.