The idea of "twenty-four-hour living" applies primarily to the emotional life of the individual. Emotionally speaking, we must not live in yesterday, nor in tomorrow.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 284
A New Year: 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes — a time to consider directions, goals, and actions.
I must make some plans to live a normal life, but also I must live emotionally within a twenty-four-hour frame, for if I do, I don't have to make New Year's resolutions!
I can make every day a New Year's day! I can decide, "Today I will do this . . . Today I will do that."
Each day I can measure my life by trying to do a little better, by deciding to follow God's will and by making an effort to put the principles of our A.A. program into action.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than our-selves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
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.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.