Cultivation

“Character is not cut in marble — it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.” 

“Then it may be rescued and healed.” 

— George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871)

When people begin working the Steps, they often encounter a familiar list of character defects. The exercise asks for honesty about patterns that create harm in our lives and relationships. Yet the language itself can be difficult. The word defect suggests something fundamentally wrong with the person who carries it. For many who arrive in recovery already carrying a long history of shame, that framing can deepen the sense that something inside them is broken.

Jeffrey Munn offers a different way of understanding these patterns in Staying Sober Without God. He argues that people are not defective. What they develop over time are thought and behaviour patterns that once served a purpose but have become dysfunctional. The term defective suggests a fundamental flaw in the original design. Dysfunctional describes a learned response that no longer fits the present conditions.

Munn goes further. Most of what recovery literature calls character defects are, in his view, character assets that have been taken to an extreme in response to life events. Selfishness may develop in someone whose needs were rarely met growing up. Determination hardens into stubbornness when flexibility was never safe. Self-protection becomes isolation when connection consistently caused harm. Resourcefulness drifts into manipulation when honest asking never worked. These traits did not appear without reason. They were shaped through experience and repetition, often during periods when healthier options were not available.

This perspective changes the nature of the work. If we believe we are defective, the task becomes removal. Something inside must be cut away or erased. Traditional language around Step Seven reflects that assumption by asking a Higher Power to remove shortcomings. Munn proposes something different. Instead of trying to eliminate traits, the work becomes understanding how they formed and learning to redirect them.

Compassion is essential in that process. Before attempting to change a behaviour, Munn encourages looking honestly at what these patterns were originally protecting. Aggression may have defended us in an unsafe home. Avoidance may have helped us endure conflict we could not safely confront. Dishonesty may have kept peace in a household where truth was punished. These responses were attempts to manage difficult conditions. Acknowledging that history does not excuse the harm caused. It makes genuine change possible without adding another layer of judgment.

Part of what makes this possible is awareness. Many of these patterns operate below conscious notice — we act from them without recognising them as patterns at all. Naming the behaviour, tracing its origin, and seeing how it once made sense is itself a form of change. The pattern loses some of its power once it can be seen clearly.

Munn describes the next step as cultivating goal traits. For each unhealthy pattern, a healthier direction can be chosen and practised. Instead of concentrating on stopping selfishness, we practise generosity. Instead of focusing on eliminating dishonesty, we practise honesty through small, repeated choices. The emphasis shifts away from what must disappear and toward what can be developed.

Change then becomes a process of repetition. Healthy traits do not appear through a single decision. They grow through behaviour practised over time. Each honest conversation strengthens the habit of truth. Each act of generosity reinforces the capacity to think beyond the self. Gradually the older patterns lose their grip because something new is being built in their place.

Munn describes this as cultivation because growth requires patience. A garden develops through attention and repeated care. The same principle applies to behaviour. We return to the work day after day, not because we are defective, but because learning new ways of living takes practice.