Have you felt like trying to understand your problems isn’t enough to actually solve them? What’s The Tools by Phil Stutz about?
In The Tools, Phil Stutz and Barry Michels go beyond the common analytical approach to therapy. They provide practical strategies for handling life’s challenges and unlocking your potential.
Read below for a brief overview of The Tools.
Overview of The Tools
In The Tools, Phil Stutz and Barry Michels argue that the common therapeutic approach of understanding and analyzing your problems isn’t enough to actually solve them. This is because your deeply ingrained beliefs often limit your efforts to understand yourself and change your mindset. The authors set out to improve on this approach by providing practical strategies for overcoming life’s challenges and fulfilling your potential. They explain that practical strategies go beyond traditional analytical approaches by helping you change your behavior. This pushes you past the limiting beliefs of your inner world, allowing you to engage positively with the external world of endless possibilities.
Phil Stutz is a psychiatrist and author who’s written and co-written several books on self-improvement, including Lessons For Living and Coming Alive. After being disappointed with the traditional psychiatric approach to mental health, Stutz followed his spiritual intuition and collaborated with his clients to develop an arsenal of strategies that helped them address stressful problems and unlock personal growth. When he found that these practical strategies helped his clients, he began sharing them with the public through seminars.
It was during one of these presentations that he met Barry Michels. Michels, a psychotherapist, was also interested in a more practical approach to mental health. The two of them began working together to spread Stutz’s approach, and they eventually compiled his strategies into this book.
The Source of the Five Strategies
The strategies in this book are meant to put you in touch with a variety of higher forces that Stutz and Michels have experienced. They explain that these forces—which we’ll call universal powers—help you fulfill your potential and improve the lives of everyone around you. Each universal power supports your growth in a different area of your life. The powers the authors identify are positive momentum, personal truth, radiant love, and gratitude (all of which we’ll cover in greater detail later). In this section, we’ll discuss what fulfilling your potential means to the authors and explore how to get in touch with the universal powers.
What Does It Mean to Reach Your Full Potential?
According to the authors, reaching your full potential means becoming a changemaker (or what the authors call a creator). When you become a changemaker, your actions will be aligned with the universal powers: You see it as your purpose to make positive changes in the world. As a changemaker, you’ll view life’s challenges as opportunities to improve yourself and help those around you.
The authors say that when you’ve successfully implemented their strategies in your daily life, you’ll begin to live in accordance with these three changemaker principles:
- You’ll leave the world a better place than you found it.
- You’ll have the courage to do what you think is right, regardless of the opinions of others.
- You’ll be disciplined enough to overcome immediate gratification and stay focused on your goals.
In contrast to changemakers are stagnators. The authors explain that stagnators aren’t interested in improving themselves or contributing to the world around them. Instead, they expect the world to serve them. When life presents stagnators with difficulties, they feel unfairly treated and unmotivated to overcome those challenges.
How Do You Get In Touch With the Universal Powers?
According to the authors, life challenges can be catalysts for connection with universal powers. This is because challenges present opportunities to apply the authors’ strategies, which they say will help you take actions that embody the universal powers’ qualities. In other words, obstacles push you to the doorstep of the universal powers, and the authors’ strategies open the door.
For example, you might be faced with a sudden responsibility in your personal life that demands a lot of discipline from you. So you turn to the authors’ strategy of embracing pain (which we’ll explore later) to persist through the difficulty.
The authors explain that we all form unique, personal relationships with the universal powers. We all have our own obstacles in life and we all conceptualize universal powers a little differently. Stutz and Michels say it’s crucial to embrace the individuality of your spiritual journey. However you conceptualize the universal powers, faith means fundamentally trusting in these powers to support you when you need help. The authors admit that they can’t prove the existence and influence of the universal powers through scientific evidence or logic—but they say you can experience these powers through their five strategies.
In the following sections, we’ll present each of the authors’ five strategies and explain how to effectively integrate them into your daily life.
Strategy #1: Embrace Pain
Stutz and Michels explain that our natural avoidance of pain—emotional or physical—keeps us from stepping out of our comfort zones and engaging with opportunities that lead to a fulfilling life. For example, say you deeply desire the love and companionship of a pet, but you’re overwhelmed by your fear of the inevitable pain you’d experience from losing them someday. As a result, you deprive yourself of a meaningful relationship full of wonderful experiences.
To help us overcome our limiting fear of pain, Stutz and Michels explain that we should train ourselves to enthusiastically embrace pain. In this section, we’ll further explore why it’s important to embrace pain, then guide you through the steps for overcoming discomfort in your daily life.
Reason 1: Embracing Pain Makes It Bearable; Running Away Makes It Worse
Avoiding the discomfort of a difficult situation not only allows the problem to plague you for longer, but it wastes time and energy that you could spend overcoming the issue and moving on. Instead, embracing problems puts you in sync with the natural, universal power of positive momentum: onward movement that keeps you in motion. When you persist through challenges rather than run from the pain they might cause, you also build positive momentum by proving to yourself that you’re capable of overcoming challenges. This builds your confidence, which helps you more readily embrace the discomfort of future challenges.
Reason 2: Perseverance Makes Suffering Meaningful
The authors point to Victor Frankl, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, as an example of how you can view loss and suffering as opportunities to grow spiritually. Although Frankl lost all his loved ones and material wealth, he still preserved his integrity and spirit to move forward. He says that if he hadn’t done this, he would’ve succumbed to the suffering he experienced.
Reason 3: Embracing Pain Allows You to Chase Your Purpose
The authors explain that when you aren’t deterred by the discomfort that’s inherent in meaningful pursuits, you can pursue them without reservation and live a more fulfilling life. For example, if you’re a romantic person who’s too afraid to ask someone out because you fear the pain of rejection, overcoming this fear will allow you to express and receive the romantic love that will fulfill you.
How To Embrace Pain
When you notice yourself dreading the pain of an uncomfortable situation, perform the following thought exercise: Visualize whatever pain you’re facing as a cloud. Welcome the pain by saying to yourself, “Bring it on.” Next, enter the cloud and say to yourself, “I love pain.” Finally, imagine the cloud spitting you out and say, “Pain sets me free.”
Strategy #2: Accept Yourself
It can be difficult to step out of your comfort zone if you’re insecure about who you are. Stutz and Michels explain that to overcome debilitating doubts about yourself, you need to accept all of your negative attributes and transform them into strengths. In this section, we’ll explain why embracing what you least like about yourself helps you overcome social anxiety. We’ll also explain the authors’ strategy for becoming more secure and confident.
Why You Should Accept All of Yourself
By becoming vulnerable with yourself and others about your strengths and weaknesses, you’ll stop wasting energy on hiding insecurities and redirect it toward performing better in your daily life. For example, if you’re insecure about your struggle with technical tasks at work, but you have a talent for building positive relationships with coworkers and clients, you could have an honest conversation with your boss about your skill set. As a result, they might move you into a more communication-focused role. This will allow you to focus your energy on what you do best, rather than worrying about the inefficiency of your work elsewhere.
Accepting yourself helps you feel confident to express your true thoughts and feelings, which improves all of your relationships. When you’re in touch with your deepest thoughts and feelings, you’re able to express yourself to people more honestly and clearly. This will help you make others feel more appreciated and allow them to be more openly expressive with you, leading to stronger connections.
How to Accept Yourself
When you feel performance anxiety, imagine an embodiment of your negative attributes standing next to you. (The authors call this your shadow, but we’ll refer to it as your “dark side.”) Whatever manifestation you choose, make sure it’s personal. What’s important is that you feel its presence. For example, if you’re experiencing imposter syndrome at a new job, you might envision your insecurity as a nervous dog.
Focus on this embodiment of your negative attributes and imagine it working with you as an ally. By doing this, the authors say, you’ll tap into the universal power of personal truth. Embodying your personal truth means acknowledging your true thoughts and feelings—positive and negative—and then allowing yourself to express them wholly.
Once you’re partnered with your dark side, turn your attention to whatever audience you’re anxious about engaging with and internally demand their attention. The authors explain that doing this should fill you with confidence and help you communicate more clearly. For example, suppose imposter syndrome at a new job has kept you from feeling confident enough to speak your mind at company meetings. In that case, you might imagine yourself picking up the nervous dog that represents your insecurity and comforting it. You’d then picture yourself and the dog together calling for your audience’s attention.
Strategy #3: Love Radically
In addition to discussing internal hurdles, Stutz and Michels explain that we sometimes have to reconcile with problematic people in our lives. In this section, we’ll explain why it’s important to overcome your negative emotions about others and show you how to manage this in your daily life.
Why You Need to Heal Your Resentments
When you chronically ruminate on your negative thoughts about someone, you’re hindering your growth by pulling your attention away from self-improvement. The authors explain that you can’t change the past and you can’t always achieve satisfactory justice. By accepting this, you’ll be able to move on. For example, if you experience a difficult breakup, you might yearn to change how you behaved leading up to the separation or wish to receive a sincere apology from your former partner. You can’t change what happened, but you can do your best to learn from it and love better moving forward.
Resentful feelings can also aggravate your interactions with others. If you feel strong negative emotions toward someone you’re having a conversation with, this will be obvious and it may provoke an intense emotional reaction from them. This will only put you in a position to hurt each other. On the other hand, if you approach a difficult conversation or problematic person from a place of love, you’ll exude a calm confidence. This will help you manage your negative emotions and express yourself more clearly. When you’re calm and clear, you’ll also help the person you’re speaking with remain calm. As a result, your conversations will be more constructive.
How to Love Radically
When someone does something to make you upset or you’re about to deal with a difficult person, the authors say to imagine your heart expanding to accept the infinite love of the universe. Next, send the limitless love in your heart to whoever you’re experiencing negative feelings toward. Finally, imagine the love you’re sharing with them returning to you in an exchange that brings you together as one.
This exercise taps into the universal power of radiant love (the authors refer to this as outflow); that is, it helps you mimic the loving forces of the universe. To help you grasp the concept of radiant love, it might be useful to imagine the pure, unconditional love of a beloved pet. Despite our circumstances or attitude, our pets love us unceasingly.
Strategy #4: Let Gratitude Guide You
Stutz and Michels say that when you notice yourself stuck in a downward spiral of negative thought, gratitude can stop your descent. Gratitude—one of the universal powers—makes you more aware of the loving, creative forces of the universe. In this section, we’ll explain why gratitude is worth practicing. We’ll also describe the authors’ strategy for fostering gratitude.
Why Gratitude Is Important
Gratitude expands your perspective so you can see more of the positive things in life, helping you see past the negativity you’re ruminating on. Chronic negativity can be debilitating, harming your personal life and performance at work.
More specifically, gratitude removes some of the burden we place on ourselves. By practicing gratitude, you’ll realize how much help you receive every day to be where you are. This takes some of the responsibility off your shoulders and helps you relax. The authors argue that along with helping you realize how many people love and help you, gratitude connects you to a spiritual source of love and life that cares for your well-being. Awareness of this source will help you feel less alone and conquer negativity more easily.
Additionally, gratitude helps you become more creative. By actively trying to think of things you’re grateful for, you’ll put yourself into a creative flow state. This flow state can carry over and assist you in other areas of your life. For example, as you become more aware of qualities in a loved one that you’re grateful for, you’ll more readily express things you appreciate about them. This will ultimately help them feel more seen and loved.
How to Unlock More Gratitude
When you notice you’re stuck in negative thought patterns, start by listing several things you’re grateful for. For example, you could try to think of different ways that people in your life have loved and supported you.
Next, sit quietly with the feeling of gratitude this exercise has stirred up. Imagine your heart opening to a spiritual source of limitless generosity and concern for your wellbeing.
Strategy #5: Stay Disciplined
Finally, the authors emphasize that discipline is an essential strategy because it will help you be diligent about practicing the rest of the strategies. Discipline does this by helping you overcome moments when you feel resistant to using the strategies for your benefit. This resistance might happen because you doubt the other strategies’ effectiveness, you feel demoralized, or you’re overconfident in your ability to overcome challenges without these strategies. Unlike the other strategies, discipline doesn’t originate from a universal power—it originates in you. In this section, we’ll explain why discipline is difficult to maintain, then we’ll explain how to use the authors’ strategies with discipline every day.
Why Discipline Falters
One reason we lose discipline is because we feel unmotivated. Life’s relentless difficulties can make us feel like our strategies for self-improvement have failed to help. We may also just feel exhausted and unconfident.
If our strategies pay off and we succeed in achieving our goals, we may think we’ve grown past the need for discipline. The authors warn that once we feel like we’ve reached a good place in life, it’s easy to get too comfortable and abandon the healthy habits that brought us there in the first place.
Finally, Stutz and Michels explain that the main reason we lose sight of our goals and let discipline fade is because we falsely believe our lives are eternal. This causes us to take each present moment for granted because we feel like there’ll always be more time to pursue our goals. When we believe that there’s always another tomorrow to get started on our goals, it’s easier to justify slacking off in the present.
How to Maintain Discipline
How can we create a sense of urgency to accomplish our goals and be who we aspire to be? The authors prescribe a thought exercise: envision yourself on your deathbed and imagine all of the regrets you might have because you didn’t live in the moment more and strive to fulfill more of your potential. Let your fear of ending up in this regretful place spur you into action.
