Not Just for Prisoners: The Seven Steps to Freedom

Editors note: The following is Mitch Horowitz’s Introduction to the G & D Media edition of “The Seventh Step,” a self-help classic designed by and for prisoners that can help anyone break free of limiting beliefs and behaviors. This edition is available at Amazon.com.

By Mitch Horowitz 

This book highlights and reinforces the greatest power inherent within each of us. This power is the “secret,” if there is one, to any legitimate program of self-help. With it, progress is not only possible but inevitable. Without it, progress will fail to arrive, even with the best therapies, medications, and programs.

It is: ravenous hunger for self-change.

An Arab proverb goes, “The way bread smells depends on how hungry you are.” Your hunger determines both your outlook on life and your agency to alter it. That hunger alone will determine what you get of out this book.

Author and ex-convict Bill Sands (1920-1969) wrote “The Seventh Step” in 1967 to describe and prescribe his successful prison fellowship program. The Seven Steps fellowship, which Sands started in 1963, has led large numbers of ex-felons to better, more purposeful, and more productive lives.  

“Some of the released men relapsed into crime,” The New York Times surmised in 1969, “but overall the program worked well.”

Bill Sands’ work, like that of another Bill, Bill Wilson, coauthor of Alcoholics Anonymous, is not limited to one kind of person facing one kind of crisis, in this case a life of in-and-out incarceration. Although the seven-steps approach was designed by and for prisoners, it can, like other modern fellowship programs, free anyone from perpetual conflict and desperation.

This book and its message are not panaceas or substitutes for a more just society, or for a society like ours that imprisons too many of its people. (When “The Seventh Step” appeared in 1967, the U.S. imprisoned about 100 out of every 100,000 people; as I write these words in 2018, the rate is about 655 per 100,000, although it has recently been dropping.) Rather, “The Seventh Step” functions as a blueprint for individual revolution, which, in turn, requires helping others get free from lives of crisis.

Here are the steps:

The 7 Steps to Freedom

 1. Facing the truth about ourselves and the world around us, we decided we needed to change.

2. Realizing that there is a power from which we can gain strength, we decided to use that power.

Anyone familiar with twelve-step programs will recognize some of the same principles at work here. Like the twelve steps, the seven steps emphasize seeking help from a higher power. In chapter three, Sands describes how he and fellow convicts devised this formula and specifically settled upon the word power in step two:

At first the word “force” crept in and was voted down
almost at once. Force was what kept them in prison, force was for the captain of the Yard and his bulls. Anything about God, or the Lord, or the Almighty was out. Prisons are full of agnostics. Of course there are some sincerely religious men in any prison, but it’s also true that, for many of the cons who claim to have been “saved” while doing time, religion is a shuck.

Hence, the principles of the seven steps are radically ecumenical. There is a need to believe that something beyond the motor and cognitive functions of the individual lends invisible help to one’s efforts, but no name, faith, or doctrine is prescribed. That’s yours to find. Napoleon Hill sometimes called it Infinite Mind.

The seventh step in the title means reestablishing lasting personal freedom, and helping others do the same. But, as Sands writes, this step was not initially designated as the final one. The steps were reordered to spell the acronym FREEDOM, according to the first letter of each. At one time, the last step—and the one I personally consider most vital—was step five: “Deciding that our freedom is worth more than our resentments, we are using that power to help free us from those resentments.”

Deciding that our freedom is worth more than our resentments. That statement captures the sense of hunger I described above. It captures another vital fact of life, too: We cannot eradicate unwanted circumstances or behavioral patterns by sheer will; rather we must substitute in their place something—strength, love, honor, freedom—that is more meaningful and deeply treasured than our compulsions.

I love this book’s realism. Its true-life characters are hardened, often grim people. Not all of them were transformed. Many were. And within their progress you will be able to see the possibilities of your own.

Mitch Horowitz is the PEN Award-winning author of books including Occult America and The Miracle Club: How Thoughts Become Reality. Visit him at MitchHorowitz.com and follow him on Twitter @MitchHorowitz.