Twelve Step members are taught to “just do the footwork and stay out of the results,”

Twelve Step members are taught to “just do the footwork and stay out of the 

results,” and even that “the results are none of my business.” Eckhart Tolle (1997) 

actually traces this practice all the way back to “Karma yoga” of Hinduism. The 

actual practice appears to consist of withdrawing or setting aside the will for a 

future outcome as an object of attention and effort, focusing instead on the realtime experience of doing what one is doing. An AA member also learns to “let go 

and let God” or “turn it over.” The practice of theistic surrender targets the same 

“evils” of will (to control outcome, to be there, not here) and ego that “washing 

the dish to wash the dish” would train out of the Buddhist. In fact, living in the 

present with an attitude of service, is the consistent “fruit” of surrender as an 

experience and a practice. When we surrender what has already happened, and let 

the same “higher power” decide what will happen, we are left to deal only with the 

unfolding present. Surrender also replaces both material attachment and aversion 

with a “higher power.” 

Twe l v e  St e  p  Sloga ns

Probably the most obvious and explicit AA mindful practice is the determination 

to live “one day at a time.” While the bell of mindfulness may call the Buddhist to 

the living, breathing moment, “one day at a time” reigns the sober alcoholic in to 

the broader boundaries of a full day, this one. Future-tripping and catastrophizing 

are short-circuited by: “Wait a minute! What can I do about that today? Have I 

done it?  If the answer is ‘yes’, the rest is irrelevant.  If ‘no’, I get to work.” This 

practice is a simple and powerful way to bring the mind back from the imaginary, 

high-stress future to its much more manageable present. As to abstaining from 

alcohol or drugs or any other “fix,” the reminder that one only has to deal with 

one day of “deprivation” greatly reduces the agonizing specter of life as an endless 

desert with no oasis. This humble tool of coming back to the present day has kept 

millions of alcoholics sober