The 7 Steps of Expert Giver Groups

The 7 Steps of Expert Giver Groups (Short Form)

1. Step 1: Finding a Mentor in an Expert Giver Group with the Goal of becoming less Selfish and more Unconditionally Giving and Forgiving. Become humble and teachable, by finding a mentor in an Expert Giver Group and by committing to being honest and accountable to that person.
2. Step 2: Completing Your Five Personal Inventories and Reviewing them with Your Mentor. As you complete each of the five personal inventories in Step 2, arrange a meeting with your mentor to humbly and honestly go over each personal inventory together, being open to feedback that helps you to see things that you could not see on your own.
   • (a) Resentments and Anger: We examine our anger and resentments toward ourselves and others to remove them.
   • (b) Unforgiveness and Hatred: We practice forgiving ourselves and other people who have hurt us.
   • (c) Our selfishness, inconsideration, dishonesty, and jealousy: We must determine where these exist and remove them from our intimate relationships.
   • (d) Fears: List them with instincts affected.
   • (e) Character Defects: We examine which ones we have to start removing them.
3. Step 3: Share what you feel guilt or shame about with your Mentor or a Priest.
4. Step 4: Making a List of Amends and Reviewing It with Your Mentor. Make a list of amends that you owe to others and review the list with your mentor.
5. Step 5: Making Your Amends. After you review with your mentor which amends to make and how to make them, start making those amends.
6. Step 6: Continue Taking Your Personal Inventory and Promptly Admit When You Are Wrong. Continue reviewing your resentments, unforgiveness, intimate relationships, fears, character defects, and conditional giving—promptly admitting when you are wrong, and making amends immediately when you cause harm to others.
7. Step 7: Mentoring Others. Offer to become a mentor for others who are willing to go through the above steps. Be as unconditionally giving as you can in service to others. Be open to starting an Expert Giver Group in your area.

The 7 Steps of Expert Giver Groups (Long Form)

Step 1: Finding a Mentor in an Expert Giver Group with the Goal of becoming less Selfish and more Unconditionally Giving and Forgiving.

Become humble and teachable, by finding a mentor in an Expert Giver Group and by committing to being honest and accountable to that person.

To be humble is to admit that you don’t have all the answers, and so are teachable and open-minded.

Humility is required for honest self-examination. Humility is required to become accountable to others. Humility is saying, “I don’t know it all,” and then being open to constructive feedback from others to examine how we can improve.

Humility is not the same as humiliation, which is the act of being dishonored, disgraced, embarrassed, and shamed. Humiliation directs a person toward humility.

Humble people can admit when they are wrong. Humble people are not victims who blame others.

Willingness to acquire humility is the first step. Humility is required to take accountability and responsibility for our own lives. Humility is very rare in today’s world because most people operate from an “I’m right, and you’re wrong” perspective. The blame game is default human behavior. “It’s your fault. I didn’t do it.” People don’t like to admit how they’re wrong. Many of us point the finger of blame at other people for our problems and circumstances. We often seek to divert attention away from ourselves when we were wrong—because the last thing we want to do is say, “I’m sorry,” or “I was wrong about that,” or “Please forgive me.”

The process of accountability to another person requires humility, which is an admission that you need help from others.

However, many of us have been hurt over and over again by different people throughout our lives. We have all been let down, tricked, conned, and scammed. Because of that, we have given up hope in the goodness of others, and in their ability to be trustworthy with our best interests at heart.

With the increasing fear of others and the lack of trust that most of us have, we don’t want to be vulnerable, or to take the risk of being used or hurt by another’s selfish motives. Therefore, we have become more and more isolated. Many people believe that the idea of others helping them with pure motives is impossible. But being open to trusting again is required to develop a productive relationship with a mentor.

We have lost trust in each other’s motives. But to change and grow, we need honest feedback from each other, which involves trust. When people first go to an Expert Giver Group meeting, they are received with open arms, and they experience other people who just want to help them get better. At first, the newcomers may not trust that the help is without selfish motives. They may think, What’s the catch here? But after a short time, they will realize that there is no catch. Then they begin to truly appreciate the fact that most people there have good intentions to truly help each other grow and succeed, without hidden motives for sex or money. How much do we experience this in the real world? Sadly, not much. Expert Giver Groups purpose is to connect people with the goal of unconditionally helping each other with no hidden motives and no strings attached.

The first step suggests that you choose a mentor from an Expert Giver meeting. This will be someone who wants to help you grow, and who is committed to doing so. It’s not recommend having people of the opposite gender mentoring each other because of the possibility of sexual motives entering the picture. But this is only a recommendation, not a rule. The mentor is there to help you go through the Seven Steps, to develop an accountability feedback relationship, and to share experience, strength, and hope.

Your mentor’s goal is to have a sincere desire to help you without seeking anything in return. Follow your gut and your intuition. It is okay to change mentors. I recommend getting a mentor within your first few Expert Giver meetings. At least, choose a temporary mentor and exchange numbers within the first two meetings. I recommend regular phone contact for the first month, and weekly in-person meetings of at least an hour, if possible. A mentor will be your guide through the remaining steps below.

Step 2: Completing Your Five Personal Inventories and Reviewing them with Your Mentor.

As you complete each of the five inventories in Step 2, you will arrange a meeting with your Mentor to humbly and honestly go over each of the five inventories separately, being open to feedback that helps you to see things that you could not see on your own.

Summaries of the five different personal inventories:

• (a) Resentments and Anger: We examine our anger and resentments toward ourselves and others to remove them.
• (b) Unforgiveness and Hatred: We practice forgiving ourselves and other people who have hurt us.
• (c) Our selfishness, inconsideration, dishonesty, and jealousy: We determine where these exist and remove them from our intimate relationships.
• (d) Fears: List them with instincts affected.
• (e) Character Defects: We examine which ones we have to start removing them.

Keep your personal inventories private from others. They will be only for you and your mentor to review together, after which you may choose to dispose of them or save them for review later.

There will never be a perfect time to begin writing out the lists below. You just need to start. Once you begin writing, it will start flowing. The first time you have thirty minutes to dedicate to it, do it. Don’t put it off. It’s important. Completing these inventories will be life changing.

(a) Resentments and Anger

The first personal inventory is (a) Resentments and Anger: We examine our anger and resentments toward ourselves and others to remove them.

Resentment defined: Bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly.

List Your Resentments. The Resentment Inventory is one table with four columns. In the following sections you will fill in one column at a time, and together they make the inventory shown below:

Column 1: Name All of Your Resentments by Offenders. Either by hand or with a computer spreadsheet, create a four-column list as in the table above. Label the first column, “Offenders.” Then list all the people and institutions that you still feel angry toward—everyone you hold a grudge against, in any order you think of them. This list might contain family members, friends, previous bosses, policemen, judges, teachers, bullies, institutions, politicians, former romantic partners, and so on.

Column 2: Name All of Your Resentments by What Happened and the Instincts Affected. Label the second column, “What Happened / Instincts Affected.”

First, write down what happened to cause the resentment. How did the person or organization wrong you, and what did they do to hurt you or make you angry? If there is more than one offense to list under that person or organization, write them all down.

Second, examine which instincts were affected with each resentment.

We are born with hard-wired instinctual drives for security and sex. When these instincts are threatened or compromised, it can lead to feelings of resentment.

Security instincts can be either financial security, personal security, or emotional security.

Some examples of your financial security (financial stability) being affected might include:

• someone took away your income or job;
• someone stopped providing for you; or
• someone set a boundary that cut off your resources.

Some examples of your personal security (physical health and safety) being affected might be:

• someone harmed you physically;
• someone threatened to harm you physically; or
• someone deprived you of food and shelter.

Some examples of your emotional security (emotional/social well-being) being affected might be:

• someone hurt your feelings;
• someone abandoned you; or
• someone interfered with an important relationship in your life.

Sex is another instinct, in addition to the security instincts that can be affected.

Some examples of your sex instinct being affected might include:

• someone cheated on you sexually;
• someone stopped providing sex for you; or
• someone shamed you about your sexual desires or orientation.

So, for each resentment, ask yourself which instincts were threatened or compromised: was it Financial Security, Personal Security, Emotional Security, and/or Sex?

This second column (What Happened / Instincts Affected) will reveal all the blocks that keep you poisoned with anger and resentment. Resentments are poisons that are hurting you, not the people or institutions that you feel angry toward.

You have now listed all the people who have harmed you or whom you are mad at; you have listed exactly what happened; and you have listed what instincts were affected. When you are done with Column 2, you are now ready to determine if you played a part in any of your resentments.

Column 3: Determining Your Part in Each Resentment. The third column of your Resentment Inventory is to describe in writing your part in creating or causing your resentments. To make this third list, for each offender write down your part in causing the person to react negatively to you.

Was the other party reacting to or retaliating for something you did?

People often do things that hurt us because we stepped on their toes in some way, or we had some part to play in causing their reaction. But many times, we are unaware of the part that we played. When we think about it, we usually find that we have blamed others for retaliating for something that we started in the first place.

In the My Part column, you take responsibility for your own actions. The task of finding and admitting your part is about reviewing your fault, not the other person’s fault. This exercise is about looking at yourself, not others.

This exercise is about looking at yourself, not others.

What is your part, and where are you to blame?

This shifts your perspective from nurturing a victim mentality to owning up to how you played a part, taking responsibility for the role you played. It is not easy to look at your own part, or to admit what you did that caused another person to harm you. Most people only focus on the other person, ignore their own part, and justify being a victim. It’s natural for us to blame others; that’s our default mode. It takes courage and humility to look at and acknowledge our own part honestly.

For Column 3, here are some questions to help you examine if you played a part in your resentments. You don’t need to write out all the questions. Just use them as guidelines to uncover your role in reviewing your part, if any, in what happened. If you played no part, just write the word “Forgiveness” for that resentment.

Even if other people deserve some portion of the blame, this inventory is not about them—it is about examining your part in how you caused people to react against you—in other words, you discover your own part in causing your resentment.

For each resentment, ask the questions below:

• Was I taking advantage of others, using them, or expecting more than I should have from them?
• Did I make demands or set expectations for them that they did not agree to fulfill?
• Did they set a boundary or limit that I didn’t like, and so I reacted in anger?
• What did I do to them first for them to react this way?
• Did I threaten or compromise their instincts for sex or security?
• Did they threaten or compromise my instincts for sex or security?
• Did I lie, cheat, or steal?
• What could I have done differently?

This step will take courage and humility to follow through on. It requires you to trust another person with intimate details about yourself, making you vulnerable to him or her. You may be apprehensive about doing this, but you will find that once you start to truly open up to another human being, it will feel like lifting a weight off your shoulders.

By being truly honest about yourself with another person, you will find that your mentor will be able to help you to uncover more of your responsibility for your own resentments—which we called “My Part” in the Resentment Inventory you filled out above in Step 2. You may think you did a good job of listing your part when you were completing that list, but I can tell you from experience that another person can help you to uncover and see more of your faults than you can on your own. Your mentor can help to point out your own part in causing your resentments, so that you can change your future behavior by becoming accountable for how you have minimized or justified hurting others in the past. You need other people to help you see those things about yourself. Over time, you will become better at seeing your part on your own, but in the beginning, you are mostly blind to it without help from another.

There is great value in someone knowing who you really are, with the insight to then give you valuable feedback. That will prepare you for the future, when you will mentor others. Receiving feedback from a mentor is not about being shamed for your bad behavior. Rather, it is about being open to reviewing your behavior, taking accountability for it, and not being a victim.

Reviewing all your inventories with a mentor will ignite powerful changes in your life, enabling a positive direction for your future. Once you start this process with another person who has a genuine loving intent to help you grow, you will want to share more with him or her, and to become increasingly open to getting feedback. It is a leap into practicing humility. By being willing to take this step, you will make real progress in your own growth, which will lead to a better life for yourself and everyone you know by allowing another person to help you remove the blocks that are in the way of you becoming an Expert Giver.

Now that you have completed writing out all sections of your Resentment Inventory (Offenders; What Happened / Instincts Affected; My Part; you may plan a meeting with your Mentor to review your Resentment lists together.

After completing a review of all sections of your Resentment Inventory (Offenders; What Happened / Instincts Affected; My Part; and with your Mentor, for the resentments where you played no part, the only solution is to practice forgiveness.

Column 4: Practicing Forgiveness of Resentments in Which You Played No Part. What about when, as with the Male Mugger example, you have no part in your resentment? Sometimes sick, ignorant people harm us for no reason caused by us, but still they hurt us. In some instances, we are truly the victim of another’s selfish, harmful actions. How do we deal with resentments that we haven’t caused? The answer may initially seem impossible. But the resentment that you feel only hurts you.

This brings us to the second personal inventory:

(b) Unforgiveness and Hatred

We practice forgiving ourselves and other people who have hurt us.

Forgiveness goes against your feelings of “justified” resentment. However, ultimately, forgiveness is the solution, because the forgiveness is really for you and your freedom from the resentment. To forgive despite your “justified” anger is no easy task. But resentments are the number one block that hold us back from unconditional giving to and loving service to others. To be truly free, you must forgive the other party—but it is a hard choice to make.

The nature of human beings is to take revenge when someone hurts us. We generally want an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and it’s not in our nature to forgive.

Forgiveness takes real effort because it goes against how we feel. It’s easy to forgive people for small harms they have done to us. But to be at peace, we must also forgive the bigger harms they have done to us, even if that at first seems impossible.

If we do not forgive others who have harmed us, we will always carry a negative chain inside us that links us to them. Having a negative link to others may cause them to harm us even more in the future. Forgiveness breaks the ties we have to them. Our forgiveness of others heals us. By not forgiving others who have harmed us, we are punishing ourselves.

As Nelson Mandela said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”

To be truly free, we must forgive others who selfishly hurt us in the past, to release our anger and resentments.

And we must forgive ourselves for selfishly hurting others in the past, which will remove the self-punishment, self-sabotage, and guilt we carry for the pain we have caused others. Our desire to punish ourselves comes from our guilt over the harms we have done to others.

Forgiveness releases our anger, hate, and guilt, which are blocking us from loving others unconditionally.

How do we forgive others and ourselves? The only thing we need is the willingness to do it. The greatest first step is to become open to forgiving others.

If you repeat that last sentence every time the person(s) come to mind in the future, you will find that some point all your hatred, resentment, and dislike have disappeared completely, and your forgiveness of them is complete.

You will find that you have forgiven yourself, and no longer sabotage or punish yourself, or create limitations in your life. You have set others and yourself free.

Now that you have completed starting the Forgiveness exercises, you may proceed to write out your third personal inventory which is to List Your Intimate Relationships.

(c) Our selfishness, inconsideration, dishonesty, and jealousy

We must determine where these exist and remove them from our intimate relationships.

List Your Intimate Relationships. Make a list of all the people with whom you have had previous intimate relations, using their first name or initials. The purpose here is not to describe or discuss details of how and what we have done sexually, or our sexual tastes and preferences.

Create a list of all your previous intimate partners. As you list each name, write out the answers to each question below:

• Selfishness: How was I ever selfish?
• Dishonesty: How was I ever dishonest?
• Inconsideration: How was I ever inconsiderate?
• Jealousy: How did I ever create jealousy?
• Alternative Behavior: What could I have done differently?

Fictitious Examples:

After completing writing out your intimate relationships personal inventory, plan a meeting with your Mentor to go over your intimate relationship inventory.

After meeting with your Mentor to go over your intimate relationship inventory, begin writing out your fourth personal inventory:

(d) Fears

List them with instincts affected.

List Your Fears. Fear is defined as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous and likely to cause us pain or threat.” Fear is based on the belief that we will lose something that we already possess, or won’t get something that we want, need, or demand.

Our survival instincts create the fears that drive our insecurities of not having enough—primarily not having enough financial, personal, emotional security, or sex. The drives of our fears and instincts tell us that “more” will fulfill us—but “satisfaction” is never obtained.

Write down a numbered list of all your fears, and relate them to the instinct affected: Financial Security, Personal Security, Emotional Security, and/or Sex?

1. Fear of losing my job. (Financial, Personal, and Emotional Security)
2. Fear of losing my intimate partner. (Sex & Emotional Security)
3. Fear of losing my house. (Financial, Personal, and Emotional Security)
4. Fear of dying from cancer (Personal and Emotional Security)
5. Etc.

1. Fear of losing my job. (Financial, Personal, and Emotional Security)
2. Fear of losing my intimate partner. (Sex & Emotional Security)
3. Fear of losing my house. (Financial, Personal, and Emotional Security)
4. Fear of dying from cancer (Personal and Emotional Security)
5. Etc.

After completing your fears list personal inventory, you may plan a meeting with your Mentor to go over your fears list inventory before beginning your fifth personal inventory, or you may proceed to the fifth and last personal inventory and write out your character defects. You may combine the fears and character defects sections into one meeting with your Mentor if you choose.

The fifth and last personal inventory will be to examine your character defects:

(e) Character Defects

We examine which ones we have to start removing them.

List Your Character Defects. Write out how the character defects below appear in your life today. Ask yourself how the following do or do not apply to you:

1. Greed: I don’t have enough to share with others, and I always need more to be okay. It doesn’t matter how much I accumulate. No matter how much I have, I justify being selfish, wanting more, and keeping more for myself. My goal is to always be as generous as possible. List examples of my being greedy, writing down the who and the why.
2. Jealousy: I don’t like others because they threaten to take away what is mine, such as my sexual partner, my money, or my resources. My goal is to never be jealous. List some examples of my being jealous, writing down the who and the why.
3. Envy: With this cousin of jealousy, I resent others for having what I want. It is a feeling of discontent aroused by others’ possessions, qualities, attributes, or luck. My goal is to always want the best for others. List the people I envy and why.
4. Doubt: Doubt is the biggest destroyer of dreams. My goal is to always practice persistence toward goals despite my doubts. List doubts that I have, writing down the what and the why.
5. Worrying: When I dwell on troubles over which I have no control, I become anxious. My goal is never to worry about things I have no control over. List things I worry about which I have no control over.
6. Revenge: This character defect involves righting a wrong with another wrong—“an eye for an eye”—when the actual solution is forgiveness. When I hurt others, I hurt myself. My goal is to forgive everyone, wishing them happiness, peace, and joy in this life. That, in turn, will set me free. List those people I would like to seek revenge against, and why.
7. Sloth: This character defect involves the reluctance to work or to contribute to one’s own expenses. If sloth is unrelated to physical or mental incapability, it is a form of selfishness. My goal is to always earn my own way. List how I am slothful, and why.
8. Gluttony: When I eat excessively, I hurt myself by becoming overweight and suffering from all the associated health problems. My goal is to take excellent care of my body and my health. List examples of how I am gluttonous, and why.
9. Lust: Sexual desire is not bad unless I harm others or myself, or am dishonest or selfish with others for sexual motives. My goal is for my sexual relations to be totally honest and cause harm to no one. List examples of how my sexual desires have harmed others, been selfish, and why.
10. Controlling: Control involves imposing my will on others. My goal is to always live and let live. List examples of how I try to control others, and why.
11. Pride: Pride has two completely opposite definitions, one positive and one negative. The positive definition refers to feelings of self-worth and self-respect. The negative definition refers to feelings of vanity and arrogance, which are actually a mask for low self-esteem. Positive pride is associated with humble service to others, whereas negative pride is associated with selfishness and superiority. My goal is to seek humility and to become more giving and of service to others, which leads me to positive pride and turns me away from negative pride. Positive pride builds others up and fosters a community, while negative pride seeks to elevate oneself at the expense of others, often revealing deeper insecurities. List examples of how I display positive and negative pride, and why.
12. Conditional Giving: Conditional Giving is giving with an expectation of something in return, such as sex, money, or control of others. Unconditional giving is with no strings attached of anything expected in return. List examples of how my giving is conditional, and why. My goal is for all my giving to be unconditional with no strings attached.
13. Use of Bad Drugs: Bad drugs are those that increase selfishness. Some examples are Narcotics, Opiates, Meth, Cocaine, and excessive alcohol use. Are you using any drugs that increase selfish behaviors? If so, list them and how they make you more selfish.

After completing your fears list, and your list of Character Defects inventory with examples, plan a meeting with your Mentor to go over these final lists before continuing to Step 3.

Step 3: Share what you feel guilt or shame about with your Mentor or a Priest.

After completing your inventory lists and reviewing them entirely and honestly with your mentor, you should tell him or her any secrets that you feel shame or guilt about. Secrets eat at us from the inside and keep us sick. Ever hear the phrase “you are only as sick as your secrets”? When they are shared with another person, that takes away most of their power. In turn, your mentor may share with you a secret that has weighed him or her down. If your secrets involve a crime for which you could be jailed, you can describe it in general terms so as not to reveal exact details, or you may choose to share the secrets anonymously with a priest.

Step 4: Making a List of Amends and Reviewing It with Your Mentor

Make a list of amends that you owe to others, and then review the list with your mentor.

First, go back to Column 3 (My Part), and reexamine those resentments that you learned you had a part in creating. Those resentments will become the bulk of your Amends List.

Second, go back and review your Intimate Relationship List, adding those individuals to your list whom you think you owe an amends.

You do not have to review Column 4 (Forgiveness), because you have already practiced forgiveness with anyone in that column (e.g., the Male Mugger), and you do not have to make amends to anyone on that list, because you did not harm anyone on that list (they harmed you).

Fourth, think of people or organizations who are not on any of your previous lists, but you harmed in some way, such as by lying, stealing, or cheating. Add them to your Amends List, which is now complete.

Remember—and this is very important—you are not yet doing Step 5. That is, you are not yet making amends. And you are not yet deciding if and how you will make amends. You are only making a list of the amends you may need to make. If you have an urge to make some amends immediately, resist.

First, you need to meet with your mentor and review the amends that you wish to make and how you wish to make them. Then, with the mentor’s feedback, determine which amends to make now, which ones to make later, and which ones not to make at all. You do not want to make any amends that will cause harm to anyone else in any way. Make all these decisions with your mentor.

If you make amends your way, without first consulting your mentor, you can do unnecessary harm. This is especially true if you make amends to former romantic partners, which in most cases, can cause more harm. When you contact a former romantic partner to apologize, be certain that you do not have a sexual motive. Amends are not about you feeling better while making someone else feel worse. It is for you and your mentor to decide together when making amends is needed.

Your mentor will also help you to decide the best way to make your amends. It may be face-to-face, over the phone, through e-mail, anonymously, or not at all. In some cases, not contacting the injured party is the amends you need to make. To confess to cheating on a former partner just to get it off your chest will only cause further harm. That is selfish and not recommended. If you are planning on confessing to cheating on a current partner, your amends may be not to tell him or her, but instead to resolve never to cheat on anyone ever again. This is called a “living amends.”

Then there are financial amends, which may involve owing people or organizations money that you have borrowed or stolen. How do you make those wrongs right? Do you call up a person or company and admit a crime, thereby putting your freedom and income in jeopardy? No, especially if other people depend on your income. This falls under the category of amends that cause further harm.

In some cases, it may be best to come up with a plan with your mentor to repay money anonymously. If you cannot find the people to repay, or they have died, you can repay them indirectly by donating to some cause they may have approved of. In some cases, it is best not to make the amends immediately, but to wait for the best timing. Your plan of action concerning your amends should be discussed and decided with your mentor.

Step 5: Making Your Amends

After you review with your mentor which amends to make and how to make them, start making those amends.

Now that you have gone over with your mentor which amends to make and which not to make, and the how and when to make them, you can begin to make them without delay. Some may require you to wait for an opportunity to present itself. With money that you owe, you should pay it back immediately, assuming you are able to. Otherwise, immediately start a payment plan with the individual or company, as you decided earlier with your mentor. Once you have worked out the specifics of each amends, including the methods and the timing, you can move forward with courage.

After the amends process begins, you will start to experience a freedom and peace that you had not previously known. You will have a new perspective on life. Self-pity will fade away. Your desire to help others will grow, and selfishness will begin to fade and be less of a challenge. You will become less interested in selfish things, and more interested in helping others.

Step 6: Continue Taking Your Personal Inventory and Promptly Admit When You Are Wrong.

Every day, complete your Daily Personal Inventory (see below), reviewing your resentments, intimate relationships, fears, character defects, and conditional giving. Write down any new amends to review with your mentor, and practice forgiveness when the need arises. Also, evaluate your giving during the day, determining whether it was unconditional, or if you gave with conditional selfish motives.

We are never fully cured of our instinctual drives, desires, and motives, which direct us to be selfish. That part of us will always want to take more and give less. It can dominate our choices if we leave ourselves unaccountable and unchecked.

There is a printable Daily Review sheet for this — sheet 7 of the worksheets. Print several and keep them where you will see them.

At the end of each day, take your personal inventory. I suggest either printing out several copies of the Daily Personal Inventory table provided below, or getting a notebook in which, while you refer to the table, you only write down any new items that come up. I also suggest that you have a weekly meeting with your mentor to go over your Daily Personal Inventory, to maintain accountability to yourself and another.

First, examine any new resentments you may have. If you need to make amends to anyone, list those to discuss with your mentor how and when you will make them. If you need to forgive anyone, start practicing the forgiveness as described in Step 2, above.

Second, examine if you were selfish, dishonest, inconsiderate, or jealous in your intimate relationship(s) today. And write down what you could have done differently.

Third, list any new fears you may have experienced that day, and write down whether they affected your financial, emotional, or personal security or your sexual relations.

Fourth, review if you experienced any character defects today, thinking about how you can improve.

Fifth, write down examples of how you gave to others throughout the day, noting in each case whether you gave unconditionally or with financial or sexual motives.

Taking a Daily Personal Inventory, meeting with your mentor to discuss your Daily Inventories weekly, and regularly attending Expert Giver Groups are all ongoing actions to maintain progress in becoming a more Expert Giver.

Step 7: Mentoring Others

Mentor others who are willing to go through the above steps. Be as unconditionally giving as you can in service to others. Be open to starting an Expert Giver Group in your area.

Offer your guidance as a mentor to guide other people through the steps.

When an Expert Giver Group is just beginning, the participants will not yet have experience completing the 7 Steps of Expert Giver Groups. Thus, at first, the participants will pair up to mentor each other.

When someone agrees to be your mentor, arrange a weekly time to get together with the goal of discussing and working through the 7 Steps.

NextStart a group of your own ›