The Essence of Recovery Step Six - Self

What if Step Six isn’t about fixing what’s wrong with you, but about growing who you really are? We flip the script on the “defects” narrative and walk through a character-first approach that makes recovery feel sturdy, hopeful, and deeply personal. Instead of spiraling in shame and fear, we focus on honesty, faith, courage, perseverance, discipline, service, and an active awareness of something greater—principles that translate into daily choices and visible habits.

We start by naming the problem with a defect-only mindset: it tanks self-esteem and keeps the brain stuck in avoidance. Then we map a more humane route—define your identity, align your week with it, and let your actions prove who you are. You’ll hear how curiosity and creativity fuel growth, why faith beats fear as a long-term strategy, and how living your truth makes procrastination, impatience, and resentment lose their grip. Along the way, we outline the essence of the first six steps: decide to change, find safe people, accept reality, investigate honestly, include yourself in something bigger, and build the self that can carry all of it.

This is recovery that looks like real life: stronger relationships, better work, consistent health, and a clear sense of purpose. Whether you’re early in sobriety or rebuilding after years, you’ll get practical ways to define your character, protect your routines, and let good days outnumber the hard ones. If you’re ready to stop chasing flaws and start living your truth with integrity and momentum, press play and lean in. If this resonates, share it with someone who needs a lift, subscribe for more, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Core Principles
• 1:39 The Problem With “Character Defects”
• 2:09 Define Character Through Spiritual Principles
• 3:35 Curiosity, Creativity, And Knowing Yourself
• 4:18 Living Your Truth In Daily Life
• 5:20 Hope And Faith Replace Fear
• 6:29 How Defects Fade With Maturity
• 7:53 The Essence Of Steps One To Six
• 9:35 Self‑Esteem, Growth, And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Why do people confuse step six? Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day, to work hard, work hard in relationships, work hard in recovery, work hard in your jobs, business, school, just work. And to love unconditionally, just put much more love out there and watch much more love return. Remember, recovery is beautiful. Your EQ is your IQ, and you cannot outthink an emotional issue. Now, what we are encouraging people to do is to go to the website life iswonderful. So then your brain can start to heal. See, the whole idea of the scorecard is to heal the brain, to start the road of recovery, so then you can live your best life. The link is in the show notes. Now, let's jump in to this week's episode. Self. Now, the way the original step is written, it just talks so much about character defects and what you need to avoid anger, and you need to improve upon all your negative defects. And that is the worst piece of advice I could ever give anybody in twelve-step rooms, in therapy, if you went to a treatment center. Your problem is not your character defects. Your problem is that you don't do not really understand your own character. How are you improving your character? How are you understanding yourself, your foundation? It is clearly written in any twelve-step literature that your biggest work, your most challenging work, and the work that will give you sustainability in recovery is about your character traits and your spiritual principles, which are the same. When you try to understand honesty, hope, faith, courage, perseverance, discipline, service of others, awareness of God. These are the basis of who we are. Now, there's other character traits that make us individuals, and that really can change who we are, as we always have different forms of uh excitement or motivations throughout our life. And you know, like for me, the biggest one that I've been cultivating for the last 15 years is much more curiosity as well as my creativity. Now, you've got to understand yourself. See, I'm a big believer, is this after I understand my own ideas of honesty, and honesty to me, and this is what I always give out honesty questions for free, is that do you truly understand yourself and are you living your truth? That means that you do not shied away of what you like. And that means, number one, in terms of what excites you, what motivates you, what is a big piece of who you are, and how does that drive your work, your relationships, your hobbies, your time. That is what I want someone to know. So if someone really understands who is Hugo currently, it's about recovery, it's about friendships and loving relationships, it's about working out at the gym, it's about podcasting, it's about food adventures, it's about travel adventures, it's about staying healthy, staying vibrant, and anything else that brings me joy. And that is what I truly want people to truly understand is if someone sees you, they know automatically, oh, I know what he's about, and I know his history, I know that he speaks Spanish, that he loves basketball, that his alma maters are UT and rice. And that is who you are. And I need people to really, because that really builds upon the essence of step six, on the essence, because if you truly understand self, if you truly understand your character on how hope really works in your life, are you hopeful, hopeful that things will work out? Do you have faith in your ideas, faith in your skills and talents, faith in the relationships that you are cultivating? And you do not live in fear that something negative can happen. Of course, something negative can happen, but the idea is to live in faith that really knows that you're gonna have many, many more wonderful days, like life is wonderful, than those negative days. And when you start living in the faith, in hope, in honesty, guess what? You're right. Your character defects go away. You don't live in self-worry, you don't live in procrastination, you don't live in impatience, you don't live in either hatred or arrogance and all those negative aspects of everybody's character that could easily come out if number one, you're an addict, you have the personality of an addict, you're a complete jerk, and you have unresolved trauma, you have unresolved processed of negative feelings from your childhood and adulthood, that is where character defects come out. Comes out from our insecurity and an immaturity. Stop being an immature baby, stop being irresponsible, stop being as long as you start doing what you need to do, your character starts getting better. And you don't live in this BS character defects, you live in your truth. Live in the truth. And that's when I would talk about you've got to live in yourself, who you are, defining. That's why it's always important. We go back to step one. We go back and we talk about your dreams and your goals, because that really can highlight on who you are and what you want to do with your life, which then goes into the essence of all these steps. Like we said, we're gonna talk about these six steps, the essence of each of these steps. Like we said, number one is about change. Put it into your brain that you need to change and start changing. Number two, find people that are safe, that you can really test ideas, test dreams and goals, and then you kind of move forward. Like I said, step three is much more about acceptance. You've now accepted where you are in life and you know what you need to do, and then you can then, you know, move forward. You know, step four is more about that investigation, becoming honest on what has happened in your past and being honest on what needs to happen as you go forward. And then we talk a lot about inclusion in step five, in being a part of something bigger. And then, of course, step six is about self. And we're able to move forward, and you're finally able to be open and vulnerable because of what you've done here in these previous steps. You can work the original steps, but not exactly as the way they're worded, because what it does, it lowers your self-esteem. And the problem with all gamblers, with all alcoholics, with all drug addicts, is they when they finally start to address their problems, they have low self-esteem, they've been acting immature, and they have a lot of insecurities. So the whole goal is how do we break away from that? And how do we grow a person up, no matter if they're 22, 36, 44, 59, 66, 78, and grow. Because there is no reason you should not be living your best life when you are just living your truth. But that is understanding yourself and understanding spiritual principles, character traits, understanding what you need to do in life. With that, remember life is wonderful. Tap into lifeiswonderful. And we were going to conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery podcast.