Instead of 12 steps try 4!

STEP ONE:

Till the day he [John Newton] died he never ceased to be amazed that, as he says at age 72, "such a wretch should not only be spared and pardoned, but reserved to the honour of preaching thy Gospel, which he had blasphemed and renounced . . . this is wonderful indeed! The more thou hast exalted me, the more I ought to abase myself."[68] He wrote his own epitaph:

JOHN NEWTON,
Clerk,Once an Infidel and Libertine,A Servant of Slaves in Africa,Was,by the rich mercy of our Lord and SaviorJESUS CHRIST,Preserved, restored, pardoned,And appointed to preach the FaithHe had long laboured to destroy,Near 16 years at Olney in Bucks;And [28] years in this church.

When he wrote his Narrative in the early 1760s he said, "I know not that I have ever since met so daring a blasphemer."[69] The hymn we know as "Amazing Grace" was written to accompany a New Year's sermon based on 1 Chronicles 17:16, "Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and said, Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that thou hast brought me thus far?"

Amazing grace! How sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like me,I once was lost, but now am found,Was blind but now I see.

The effect of this amazement is tenderness toward others. "[The 'wretch' who has been saved by grace] believes and feels his own weakness and unworthiness, and lives upon the grace and pardoning love of his Lord. This gives him an habitual tenderness and gentleness Spirit. Humble under a sense of much forgiveness to himself, he finds it easy to forgive others."

He puts it in a picture:

A company of travelers fall into a pit: one of them gets a passenger to draw him out. Now he should not be angry with the rest for falling in; nor because they are not yet out, as he is. He did not pull himself out: instead, therefore, of reproaching them, he should shew them pity. . . . A man, truly illuminated, will no more despise others, then Bartimeus, after his own eyes were opened, would take a stick, and beat every blind man he met.[1]

STEP TWO:

Philippians 3:4-11 “If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. 7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

STEP THREE:

1 Chronicles 16:12 2 Remember His wonderful deeds which He has done, His marvels and the judgments from His mouth,

Ephesians 2:11-13 Therefore remember, that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called "Uncircumcision " by the so-called "Circumcision," which is performed in the flesh by human hands-- 12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

STEP FOUR:

[1] From John Piper's sketch on John Newton. Read John Piper’s entire biographical sketch Here.