The Tools

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If you are looking to know what Phil Stutz has added to his Book The Tool then here is a brief summary of the book I got the audiobook after watching the first 30 minutes of the Netflix documentary stutz. Great practical tools for the average consumer of self betterment products. The tools are great. Towards the end, the book takes an unexpected and intolerable turn towards cultish rhetoric under the name of new spirituality, Which is may be something that these days publisher require or populace needs to buy into self betterment. So what are the Tools? Conceptually, Stutz describes each of them as a simple step, an action or a bit of forward motion. They can change your inner state almost immediately, according to Stutz, taking unpleasant experiences and thoughts and transforming them into opportunities. Stutz says his Tools “turn problems [in]to possibilities,” and give people the propulsive feeling that they can make big changes. In practice, the Tools are visualization exercises. In Stutz, each Tool is accompanied by cards with hand-drawn illustrations that, according to Stutz, render even the biggest, most complicated concepts into something manageable. This one is different. Specific. Practical. Actually helpful. For example, here's a nugget that got me through a recent festering tangle of procrastination/anxiety: "Pain is not absloute. When you move toward it, pain shrinks...the more intense the pain-- the more you move into it-- the more energy you create."

Active Love, or how to escape loops of revenge and feelings of injustice by tapping into a much greater force and using it to rid oneself of toxicity. Really useful after getting riled up on social media. Our next meeting will be Sunday, November 12th from 10-11:30am PT.We will spend the time answering questions and working with as many people as possible. When I was going through the most difficult years of my life, I was able to use this method to find my strength. We all have the ability to save ourselves, yet we need guidance when we are lost. In Coming Alive you can find the road map to enlightenment.” —Drew Barrymore The Grateful Flow, or how to use the power of gratitude to ground oneself, be OK with oneself and the world.Phil Stutz helps people in learning how to bring courage, confidence, and creativity, on their way to a flourishing life. There is something indescribably beautiful about living life in integrity. The tools Barry and Phil teach in Coming Alive gave me the courage and clarity to align myself with the truth—no matter how hard or painful it seemed at the time. It’s an incredibly fulfilling and meaningful way to live.” —Gwyneth Paltrow I really liked this, more than I thought I would. Partially I think I liked it because I'd read the New Yorker piece, so I was primed to be open to these guys. PHIL: Definitely I'm standing on his shoulders, yes, and it's a privilege. But there tends to be a circularity in the Jungian unconscious, and sometimes, you can't afford that. How do you approach the unconscious with specific goals in mind that speak to specific problems you're having? This is where The Tools come in. A good feature that this book does provide is a helpful summary, and a Q & A session, on each tool at the end of chapters.

I was going to give this book 5 or 4 stars, because first 4 techniques are elegant, enjoyable, easy to use and do seem to make a real difference in one's daily life. I encourage everyone to familiarise themselves with the presented techniques. The tools in Coming Alive help you connect to the Life Force and harness the energy and will to combat Part X. These are tools of ascendance—they activate your aspirational self; they spark creativity and resilience; they help you to transcend the mire of negative thoughts and circumstances and align with a powerful ally that unites us in our common desire to live lives of meaning and engagement. Active Love: Uses the force of Outflow to dissolve your sense of unfairness so you can break free of the maze of ruminative thoughts and allow yourself to accept what (and who) is. There is something indescribably beautiful about living life in integrity. The tools Barry and Phil teach in Coming Alive gave me the courage and clarity to align myself with the truth—no matter how hard or painful it seemed at the time.” —Gwyneth Paltrow Barry has given workshops at a variety of venues, including In goop Health summits in Los Angeles in 2017, in Vancouver in 2018, and in London in 2019. He has given a Google Talk, and has spoken at 20th Century Fox Television, the University Club of Chicago, the Omega Institute, the Writers’ Guild, the 92nd Street Y, and the Endeavor 2019 annual retreat.PHIL: This is not a curative approach that says, let's get rid of the problem and go on living. Instead, the problem itself is the foundation of creating meaning in your life. You start to see that problems are meaningful. In their book _The Tools_, Phil Stutz and Barry Michels share the tools that have worked for them (and their clients) in dealing with this painful existential given. Their fours tools (and the “higher forces” which power them) are:

JOHN: Don't claim to know that something is bullshit or doesn't work before you've had the humility to try it. All that aside, I cannot bring myself to strongly endorse a book that is as philosophically and methodologically problematic as this one. First and foremost, the authors establish the legitimacy of their method by stating that they have tried The Tools in their practice and it works. This is a huge red flag for anyone trained in the social sciences. This particular problem (relying on the clinicians judgment to gauge the effectiveness of the treatment) plagued psychotherapy for its first century. Inside the book, readers will find the thoughts of Phil and his partner Barry Michels who are well-educated psychiatrists and psychotherapists). They have added thoughts that will help people with self-help.As far as we came to know about Phil Stutz then he is the author of books titled Coming Alive: 4 Tools to Defeat Your Inner Enemy, Ignite Creative Expression, and Unleash Your Soul’s Potential and The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower—and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion. All his these books have been written by him as co-author with Barry Michels. We’re trained as a society to expect, even demand, immediate gratification. And we have an extraordinary ability to rationalize this weakness. Instead of admitting we’re avoiding pain, we tell ourselves we’re being virtuous; Vinny had convinced himself he was refusing to “sell out.” We end up with a distorted worldview that makes avoidance seem right, even brave and idealistic. This is the worst sin of all—lying to ourselves. It makes change impossible.” JOHN: Most psychiatrists wouldn't combine the psychological and the spiritual. There's kind of a classic divide that way and most psychological thought seems to reside more on the secular, intellectual side. JOHN:So The Tools operate on spiritual and psychological truths and work on a patient in a much more proactive way.