I had to give up on the old idea I learned as a child that mean take care of thier own problems themself.I finally realized my problem with alcohol was something I could not handle on my own.Besides Me and my thinking was the biggest problem.Thanks for the topic.

I had to give the idea of up blaming others for my unhappiness, and I had to give up the idea of righteous anger and resentment, and I had to give up the idea of self-pity. These have proved to be poison that I long carried and thought were "normal" ideas and that I was justified in harboring them.
After a fourth and fifth step these old ideas were replaced with taking responsibility for myself and forgiving others their trespasses.
These old ideas were pretty ingrained in this alcoholic brain and therefore take daily work for them to not pop up in my old "autopilot" thinking.
The great thing about "progress, not perfection" is that little by little I feel the new ideas are getting o be more on autopilot all the time.
Those old ideas are heavy burdens and so unseemly!

I had to give up the idea of what Joe has described - I was brought up to keep my private concerns to myself which gave me a lot of trouble with my attitude to Step 4. I was quite appalled at the idea of sharing my deepest, darkest secrets with someone else. The realisation that my life depended on it soon brought me round. The biggest idea I had to let go of was self-reliance. I had not only to believe in God but to TRUST God in order to be able to do that.

I had to give up the idea that my thoughts/ideas/opinions and perceptions always reflect a true reality. I was forever making assumptions about the way things were and why people had done things and what other people were thinking and then acting based on these assumptions. So often I found out that the way I saw things was not necessarily how they really were and therefore my actions had been unnecessary, inappropriate or just plain wrong. Now I try to look for other points of view, talk to people, meditate, apply spiritual principles and in this way try not to act on my assumptions. Life is a lot smoother this way.

agrees with nickie's posts

and i also had to let go of the fact , when i relpased, that nobody ever got sober by the grace of the fellowship... not even me. lol