Book SummaryThe Tools, by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary 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...

The Tools Summary 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...

The Tools Summary 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.

Why It’s Important to Embrace Pain

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...

The Tools Summary 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.

(Shortform note: In _[Strengths Based...

The Tools Summary 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.

(Shortform note: It can be difficult to accept that you can’t control a situation and move on because it may feel like you’re giving up. In The Obstacle is The Way, Ryan Holiday explains...

The Tools Summary 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.

(Shortform note: In The Secret, Rhonda Byrne explains that gratitude not only helps you become more aware of the good things you already have in life, it also helps bring more good things into your life. She says that the opposite is also true—negativity cultivates more negativity. She says this is because the universe reflects your thoughts and actions back to you. This theory is...

The Tools Summary 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.

(Shortform note: Some experts say that in order to stay motivated to achieve your goals, it’s important to be driven by intrinsic motivation (your drive to do...

Shortform Exercise: Embrace Something Uncomfortable You’ve Been Avoiding

Stutz and Michels say that facing discomfort leads to a fulfilling life. In this exercise, you’ll brainstorm how you can embrace discomfort and pain.

Describe one type of pain that you’re currently avoiding. What does it feel like? Does avoiding it make you feel better or worse?