What if the step everyone dreads in recovery isn’t actually about becoming a better person, it’s about being willing to try? That’s the surprising thing I learned recording this episode with Sonia Kahlon.
Sonia is the voice behind The Sober Curator, and she’s someone who has done the deep work, through addiction, through a divorce that nearly took her out, through years of therapy and internal family systems practice. She’s candid, funny, and refuses to pretend that recovery ever looks like having it all figured out.
Character Defects Are Just Instincts Out of Balance
We started this conversation admitting we both wanted to throw the book across the room. Step Six asks us to become “entirely ready” to have God remove our defects of character, and for two people who already spent years hating themselves before getting sober, that framing felt like one more thing to be ashamed of. But Sonia reframed it beautifully: these aren’t moral failures, they’re natural desires that have simply exceeded their purpose. “It’s out of balance,” she said, “that feels right to me because my mind does get… I have a thing about more.”
Envy Is the Thief of Joy
Sonia was honest about the defect that embarrasses her most: envy. She described how comparison, especially on social media, can erase an entire life of genuine abundance. “When I’m envious of somebody else, I’m in total denial of my own gifts.” It’s a reminder that gratitude and comparison can’t occupy the same space at the same time.
Resentments Are Pebbles, and We Collapse Under the Weight
Maybe the most useful image from this episode: resentments build one pebble at a time, so quietly we don’t notice the weight until we’re buried under it. For some people, Sonia said, that collapse looks like relapse. For others, it looks like the near-collapse she experienced during her divorce. The fix isn’t perfection, it’s staying connected enough to your own feelings to notice the pebbles before the sack gets too heavy.
“Resentments are like little pebbles in a sack that you throw over your shoulder.”
Recovery was never going to be about arriving somewhere flawless. It’s about noticing when we’re out of balance, communicating instead of avoiding, and asking for help with the parts of ourselves too big to fix alone. That’s worth showing up for, one imperfect day at a time.
Action Items
- Separate your character defects into big and small; you don’t have to tackle all of it at once
- Next time you feel resentment building, name it before it becomes a pebble in the sack
- Practice saying an uncomfortable truth out loud to a safe person, not your hardest relationship
- Notice when comparison (especially on social media) is stealing your gratitude
- Try a small internal family systems check-in: where do I feel this in my body, and what does that part need?
- Aim high, but let go of the idea that “perfect” is the goal, especially outside of sobriety itself
- Ask for help holding the things that feel too big to fix alone
Resources Mentioned
- Sonia Kahlon, The Sober Curator: https://thesobercurator.com/
- The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (“the 12 and 12”)
- 12th Step Guide for Spiritual Fix, page 214 exercise
- My First Million podcast
- 10X Is Easier Than 2X by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy
👊 Need help applying this information to your own life?
Here are 3 ways to get started:
🎁 Free Guide: 30 Tips for Your First 30 Days – With a printable PDF checklist
Grab your copy here: https://www.soberlifeschool.com
☎️ Private Coaching: Make Sobriety Stick
https://www.makesobrietystick.com
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