What I Learned from The Tools Book

I read tons of materials on personal productivity,psychotherapy, and innovative tools for your brain.  Just about anything I think that is valuable in helping people with their minds and improving their lives.

I recently came across this book, The Tools, by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, respectively in LA.  This book has very practical tools to help people “transform” their problems into potential so I wanted to share it.

There are 5 main tools they discuss:

Tool 1 – The Reversal of Desire (The Force of Forward Motion)

This tool is used for when you need to take action with something you have been avoiding.  You are fighting against avoiding pain.  You use the tool by embracing the pain and realizing that through pain there is gain.  The higher force that drives life is Forward Motion.  If you let the tool connect you to the force of Forward Motion then life should be more full of energy and less intimidating.

Tool 2 – Active Love (Outflow)

This tool is used for when something enrages you and you cannot stop thinking about it.  It could be a person or some circumstance and you can’t stop being upset by it.  They call this a Maze and you are so upset it puts your life on hold while the world moves on without you.  You are fighting against the childlike belief that the world should treat you “fairly” and you don’t want to move forward until you get revenge or circumstances are rectified.  This puts you in a trap.

The way you get out of this situation is to use the Active Love tool which is to use your mind and heart to realize the world of infinite love around you.  Think of the love you have for that other person that offended you and use love to get out of the Maze.  The Maze does you no good so it is in your best interest to use the Active Love which creates Outflow.  Outflow they describe as the force that accepts everything as it is.  When you use this force it removes your sense of unfairness so you can give of yourself without reservation.

Tool 3 – Inner Authority (The Force of Self-Expression)

This tool helps you fight against insecurity.  Many of us have insecurities about many different things.  They discuss how this insecurity is caused by something deep inside us which they call “The Shadow” — an embodiment of all our negative traits that we are terrified someone will see.  The idea is to use this tool during intimidating situations when you feel insecure.

You use the tool by focusing on your shadow and embracing your shadow as a combined unit with yourself.  This allows you to embrace the Force of Self-Expression to reveal your true self without worrying about others’ approval.

Tool 4 – The Grateful Flow (Gratefulness)

This tool helps you deal with self-hatred, worry, and other negative thoughts.  I think we all have been there where a Black Cloud is over us in “our minds” and negatively impacts us from doing anything.  Life becomes a struggle since your mind is so negative.

Whenever you are attacked by negative thoughts you should use this tool of Gratefulness.  Silently state to yourself the specific things you are grateful for particularly items you take for granted.  Focus on the physical sensation of gratefulness.

Tool 5 – Jeopardy (Willpower)

This tool is very critical.  During all their practice of using the other 4 tools and the amazing results they saw from people practicing them they still found people stopped using them.  Jeopardy is what is used to stop you from quitting using the tools that make your life better.  You need to use Jeopardy in any situation where you feel you need to use the tools but you are not using them.

Jeopardy in my mind is somewhat similar to the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People’s Begin with the End in Mind concept.  It is when you imagine yourself lying on your deathbed and you think of you only have a certain amount of time in life and do not squander it.  The higher force you are using here is Willpower.

***Hopefully I’ve described the highlights enough to give you “some” insight but I really encourage just about anyone who is interested in improving themselves to get a copy of the book and go deeper into the Tools. You can find more details on the book on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/thetools