Interview with Phil Stutz and Brian Johnson on 'The Tools'

you're listening to the tools an optimal living interview with Phil Stutz and Brian Johnson hi this is Brian welcome back to the optimal living interview series today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Phil Stutz who wrote the great book the tools subtitle transform your problems into courage confidence and creativity I read this book in 2012 and it was hands-down the best book I read that year and is on the top of the list of books that I've ever read it's one of the few books that I read on a Kindle and then bought the hardcover of and marked both of them up I actually bought a copy of the book for everyone on our team and we created a book club just so we can walk through the big ideas from this book that's how transformative I thought it was and just phenomenal so Phil stops graduated from City College in New York and received his MD from New York University he worked as a prison psychiatrist on Rikers Island and then in private practice in New York before moving his practice to Los Angeles in 1982 he's been at this for decades and I'm just thrilled to be chatting with you today Phil I appreciate you taking the time yeah my pleasure are you gonna get get on the show or you call it a show I just want to ask you did you like the book you think so good let's start with the definition like what is a tool and why do we need it why is it important to have conceptualized in our lives okay well let me explain it give you a little backstory on the I was a young psychiatrist sisters in the 70s and there's a point where they they train you to be a psychotherapist as well as obviously trained you to use all these relevant medications and when they taught me the at least at that time was recycle analysis is pretty much King at in assemblies the way they taught me to do psychotherapy I left me very very frustrated and frankly a little bit confused because they would they would always go into the past let's say somebody is afraid of getting on the airplane is focused but somebody else is chronically the press doesn't really matter whatever the symptoms were that were coming up they we would talk to go back into the past and find the cause of the symptoms which are you usually presume to be some kind of family dynamic problem with one parent or another or both and and usually go way back into the past now there was nothing wrong with this and a lot of the information was invaluable but once we had the information I mean these people were suffering if anyone out there is chronically depressed you know what kind of suffering that is if somebody has a social phobia they're afraid to talk or be around other people obviously that's very painful if there's something you want to do and you don't have the courage to do it maybe start a new business or something or you want to start a new art form it's very very painful and I'm not saying I'm a great person or anything like that but since I assume my job was to get these people actually through the problem not just understand the problem I was very very frustrated because it was almost like a lazy stare attitude among the people that were training me basically said it's you know we're kind of proceeding slowly and I don't forget one day said the patient will come up with the solution now that didn't sound right to me at the time that I heard it if the patient could have come up with the solution to his problem they've already done that instead of sit there and you know spend more money and as as a months go by AK sound valid didn't it sound right I felt it was never happening so anyway that's what a back story to what the tools meant to me and basically the simple definition of the tool is a tool is a procedure usually visual but sometimes other things besides visualization that will change your inner state right at the moment you're using the tool okay so if we if you take a look at the depressed person let's say just for example the depressed person it's too depressed to get out and do exercise which is a key note to recovery from depression for instance what a tool would do is it would not just the person wouldn't just understand be the cause of the depression but he would be able to do something about it right at that moment in this case what we're talking about is he would be able to get out and do some exercise another example would be he'd be able to deal with the negative thinking that's very very very much a part of any depression and he'd be able to stop the thinking so a lot of for a lot of people's the first time in their life they could ever control what was going through their heads so we can go on and on if you want to ask me some specific stuff we can but that was the point was the tool puts the power in the hands of the patient which is where it belongs and if they use the tool I can confidently tell them that they will start to make inroads with the symptom and then beyond that those thoughts to make inroads and change as a person when you make the important distinction as well that it isn't just a change in attitude we need to change behavior right and the tool helps us step in notice what problem we might be experiencing and then use the tool so we can actually engage in constructive behavior right yeah let's look at the you talk in the book about the fact that there you've identified four fundamental problems and yeah there are you know the four tools that address those fundamental problems and the fifth tool that kind of is the engine to help us engage in the four I'd love to walk through the four problems and their respective tools and then talk about the fifth and maybe we can start with the first tool which is probably my favorite because I had for so long struggled with fear in dealing with that in my life and the way you described this and reversing our desire and meeting fear head-on and seeing our potential and all that was one of the most transformative ideas for me can you describe the first tool yes again I got to give a little bit of a background so it makes sense especially the summarizing read the book probably the foremost human tendency is to avoid so somebody will avoid making a phone call they need to make the Lavoie going to the gym and working out those available are changing their diet maybe because they have they have a medical illness that requires it especially such etc just as an example as it was very interesting to me because about thirty years ago I moved out to LA you can see the agents and agents are everybody's always interested in agents you know like an entourage you know was a big hit the agent you because they're they're very talkative and they have a big mouth and they're a lot of them of brass you you think they have real cars and I don't avoid things but what I discovered was actually lose a whole strata of executives in the studios that the agents would not approach in other words the agent would approach somebody who was on his level because he was relatively comfortable making the call pitching his client whatever it was but it was somebody on a higher level a lot of agents would come in and I realized they were terrified to make that call just as an example so to me going into ad infinitum why afraid whatever is okay but it certainly would didn't leave them feeling that I had helped them so they would have to so they were avoiding expanding into a realm in which they self frightened or they felt uncomfortable whatever so just by example that was that would be a place to use this tool which is called a reversal of desire now if we and and the tool was specifically to get them to make that call not just understand why they couldn't make the call not just understand the benefits they would get if they made the call that's well and good but not good enough they must actually make the call through the behavior and just flood you too much information but the one way you can speak to the unconscious and probably the strongest way is to change your behavior you know because there's artificial species distinction between you know what we feel and what we do and the you know so then what we feel people tend to get deeper and deeper into the unconscious the aliens get into dreams etc which is good there's nothing wrong with that but it's as if that has nothing to do with behavior and then you have the behaviors and cognitive therapist who focus on that and the studies show that that's actually tends to be more effective in terms of psychotherapy but when I got into this I was kind of shocked that the two worlds didn't collide or somehow you know relate to each other I should they must you know just what do you it wouldn't make sense if they didn't so that's that's where I finally realized what will go on is let's say that aging makes it so he calls a guy who's a chairman of the studio would be very intimidating for him the guy might hang up in his face it doesn't matter all that matters is he took the action now the fact that he acted then feeds back into his unconscious and the unconscious says to itself I mean if you don't mind my making it you know overly simplicity unconscious says oh this person actually is a student of the information I'm giving him the information make it yeah unconscious may give you information a dream sometimes in an instinct sometimes give a shrink to commander shrinks office he's acting on the information I am giving him say the unconscious likes that and it actually opens the door into the unconscious and then all kinds of other things happening a hundred times I've seen somebody make the call and say well I got rejected that was rude to me and I think fine pick somebody else and make another call and I said do I have to here you have to and then the tool allows them to do this which we'll get back to the reversal of desire and this the second call the fourth pole they only fail it doesn't matter the unconscious will start to give him ideas about we'll stick all my no this is great so you're kind of priming the unconscious and in honoring whatever intuition was there and while you do that it is going to work for you and helping you do more of that what you engaged in yeah exactly I actually put this to work myself when I first got to California I was probably thirty-three thirty-four years old I knew nobody and for the first three months that you have any patience I had in the first three months good oh by the tone it wasn't a large number very good zero so I was fine especially my savings so I said this is ridiculous I have to do something but I didn't really know what to do to build up a practice because my first practice was in New York where I'm from so it was easy so it was almost like a little angel sat on my shoulder and said because I would make these lists as people and needed to contact and the angel said contact the scariest person first and to my credit or because I'm crazy I don't know what I actually did it and I would get every morning I looked under listen I would see who wouldn't scare the living out of me and I would I would make that call and most of the polls weren't successful at all but what happened was I noticed every day asked if I make that really difficult call I start to get more ideas I'd start to get ideas about calling people who were never even in every minute of my mind all of a sudden it's like my aunt actress went from a bike path to like a superhighway and I would say within about six weeks believe it or not I had a viable practice and then after that three four months I had I probably had like twenty five patients which to me was a miracle but that and I call that crate of action because you take the action first your relationship with your unconscious becomes more creative than you get more ideas and it's not just true and this kind of a mechanical sense I don't know if we'll have time but it's also true for artists writers people that are trying to solve problems etc anyway the the average person is um is afraid of pain and I can't fear as one example of pain is it's probably the most relevant one there were four people that are just afraid of it of pain per se so the desire of the average person the desire of the average person is to avoid pain and that's how we live and everybody who kicks back and does a doobie when they get home from work is avoiding pain and everyone who doesn't go to gym and workout is avoiding pain the Asian who doesn't call the scary you know studio head is avoiding pain so the reversal of desire says instead of avoiding pain we espouse pains we want pain we desire pain now you know when you tell a patient that the immediate reaction is oh you're right I'm going to tell you these life season and you know you think I'm some kind of a masochist and what are you not so you know the people they're pretty brash out here they'll say you're going to teach me how to live without thing that that by the way is completely impossible now here's a trick of this to love the secret or whatever which is and why would I tell somebody to desire pain the answer is and we call it the secret of pain if you pursue pain and you go right for it the pain actually gets less okay simplistic example think about it pool it's a cold day you stick your toe and your toe turns blue you know yourself but somebody pushes you in the pool with it within about 12 seconds there's no more pain but you first had to go towards the pain so going towards pain diminishes it on the other hand the voiding pain running away from pain makes the pain worse the pain turns into a monster that basically precedes you so that's what we call the reversal of desire I desire pain because it's going to actually reduce so do you want me to talk about the actual yeah if you don't this is awesome this is I love your examples and and really helping I think me and our listeners get context for it in a really great way okay now the good point of this tool is it's really simple and once people understand the secret of painted it tends to make a lot of sense to them now the first thing it has to do was okay let's go back to the agent he's gotta call this guy but he's scared to death so make the call he avoids he makes excuses whatever but we know why he's really avoiding it now the what I ask him to do is to forget it feel the field of fear that he would normally feel before before he would call this person but then take away the person take away the circumstance take away everything just stick with this year bodily physical experience of pain in other words put the pain in your body and don't attest attach it to anything else as if time was playing that now once you've done that you're ready to do the tool and you've isolated the pain I call it pure sensation or you have their resistance say the pain hasn't gone away it's just not attached to anything now so you see that pain in front of you like a cloud and sometimes people have problems with that and what we always tell them in every tool is if you have to modify it a little bit to make it work for you that's absolutely fine but the the best way to do it is you see that pain in front of you like a cloud think of it as like a boulder on a road that you're running down this big obstacle and the only way to get through that absolutely get through it you can't go over it below it around it you got to go right through it that's the pain so that's the way the two sorts you go bring it on and you say 'ok silently but really intensely i don't want to blow out anything we give a seminar we actually screen it so it's like a silent intense scream of bring it on which is those in longer heading if I want this pain and when you say bring it on you move very aggressively right towards that cloud of pain right towards the obstacle okay that's step one step two is you say I love pain again very explosively and you move even more fully even more deeply right into that cloud of pain you want to think of it as I am the pain at that point they actually you've done bring it on I love pain the the cloud of pain itself will spit you out and when it spits you out you feel yourself flying forward I usually see it as a realm of light well I'm flying weightlessly and effortlessly forward almost like you've been shot out of a catapult or something and as you as you're moving forward as you're flying forward you say pain sets me free so and you can read in a book you know the specifics I saw Brian some presentation which is as good or better than mine so you can always look at that online Oh what was I saying right before you the the cloud you moved through and then you have pain sets me all right yeah now if this is if you have to use this tool to use it to again if you want to use it tool right before let's say a phone call for example that you can't get yourself to do you know bring it on I love pain pain sets me free you're flying forward right while you're flying forward you make the call right at that moment it's like a surfer riding a wave you know you have you have something that your back that's pushing you forward or propelling you forward and you want to move right into the phone call so that's the right way to use it to another the second use for this tool and in the second use you use the tool again it sounds strange at first you use it or usually it's fears before the event is happening let's have to give this speech you know in a week right and I don't particularly like public speaking and scares me I'm not very uncommon problem when I think about it this thing is a weekend so it's not tomorrow night it's not it's not the next five minutes it's in seven days but every time I think about being up there and I feel my hands shake oh my voice shakes or whatever I use the tool on my fear right then and there in the present so and what I'm doing is I'm teaching myself to process fear in other words we always tell people is it's fine to be afraid every human being is afraid terrified out of their minds no problem with that but not to process this year to be passive in the face of fear is an act of ignorance and in a certain sense I'm mostly responsibility so that's it this becomes a favorite use of the tool for people it's that use by word is very good for people who are chronically anxious as well because you start to give them the feeling hey I can fight back against my anxiety right now I don't have to wait for meditation to kick in I don't I don't have to wait until my circumstances change I don't have to wait on someone more confident person I don't have to wait for anything because I have this tool and I use it mechanically since I'm getting so you want me to stop well this is this is so rich and then to add a little bit more context here that was implicit but that I think you make explicit in the book that I got so much out of is that why do we want to love this so much not only do we trigger the unconscious but our infinite potential exists on the other side of our fear right yeah that's this amazing gift that outside that cloud of fear is everything we dream of and aspire to create and be right yes so you know we call I think you call it as well we're trying to get into this realm of possibility we don't guarantee anybody anything but we tell them isn't this tool par excellence is an example of it it will put you in a different context and almost like in a different world and the sense of what's possible starts to improve to put it mildly and that sense that I can do things that I didn't think I can do the things are possible that all my life I thought were impossible is really life changing and we don't we don't focus although people we treat her tremendously almost stupidly successful but we actually don't focus on that we don't even mention it what we mentioned is the real success is using let's say the difference is this tool and then moving into that zone of enhanced possibilities so yes I agree that so this was looking that was struck with when I when I read when I saw your podcast about our stuff was the infinite potential yeah yeah that's a shooting for our general philosophy and this is that there's almost a spiritual battle in the universe and on an individual level the battle was over the evolution of the individual so the bad guys as you will we call them call that part X which would be what the next book will be about they don't want you to reach your potential they don't want you to know there's this possibility State they're trying to block your evolution your growth and basically render your life meaningless I will go and actual going for that in detail but these these tools I felt that when I was a young psychiatrist as I developed the tools which it took a long time obviously I felt like okay now we're in the game we can fight back and most patients not all but most I'm talking like 80% probably like that you have 20% that are lazy one other challenge well admit that brings us to another aspect that en was implicit but I'd love the way to describe it there's a higher force at work here can you describe the general idea of a higher force and then the specific one that it applies here yes higher forces are real now so what what are we talking about we're told the best way to think of it is a higher force is a force that you as an individual can use but it doesn't come from you the answer is probably worth repeating and it's a force and you can look at this it's gonna look at it spiritually you want to look at it in terms of the unconscious it doesn't really matter but it's a force moving around floating around that is beyond you it's bigger than you you can't really control it but you can use it well you can join up with it however you want to say it to do things that you couldn't ordinarily do now you know the classic story is you know woman with the car up because her kid is trapped under the car or something you know whether that's apocryphal or really have it doesn't matter but it is it gives you the idea so not only saying you're your potential is greater than you think it is we're also saying that these macro and somewhat difficult to understand but absolutely real forces that will help you reach your potential the tool each tool is designed to trigger a certain one of these higher forces so this one is we call it the force of forward motion and usually for most people who see these things under sandwiches if I'm in motion things just tend to go better if I'm in motion I tend to get these serendipitous events coming out of the left fields that seem to help me so you know reach my destination also if I'm in foremost and I tend to attract be really helpful for me sometimes as employee sometimes as partners sometimes as friends whatever so your relationship with the entire universe how much you get from the universe how difficult your path is going to be all of it depends on having a higher force in this case the force of four motion which is the easiest one for most people to understand I even use this when someone has to make a decision I call it a dynamic and value dynamic evaluation and what that means is when you're not sure about a decision don't make a decision put yourself in forward motion first ask yourself excuse me how am I not in forward motion again in this case other other things I'm avoiding but there are other parts to it like you know discipline um you know lifestyle issues control of thinking but ask myself how I'm not in full motion corrected immediately and then consider the answer to the question well then decide what decision you're going to make and it's I've been very very very successful with this and it's a great I want to say protocol it's a great habit to get in until I guess would be the right way to say yeah that makes perfect sense and the the idea of higher forces which you go into throughout the book and again we just spent a lot of time talking about the first tool the reversal of desire dealing with the problem of avoiding things whether it's pain or fear or any problem and Jillian please yes you know there's thing about higher forces of you listening to the podcast you actually experience the higher force and that's because of Brian because I'm I'm a anxious public speaker anyway but I went into a total flow that I had I didn't even know what I was saying and that the reason for that was him you know I've had another experience like this on a podcast with Marc Maron the point of this is state of the person in this case Brian that was asking me the questions that was guiding me got into me as a higher force and that particular one is called out flow and because it got into me because he's and I don't know him I've never seen him in my life but I but I could tell I'm very sensitive to these things the fact that he had that preparation and he had the empathy and he had no ego and it created this force of outflow and I could feel it and it was you know there was no anxiety it was just completely what's the word facilitating the message it was his ego am i you were out just so that's a higher force and usually people don't want aware of it don't notice that the interesting thing now is in big business really big business they want that force that's why they become obsessed with how the people interact with each other so I know this interrupts the flow this thing but I guess image in my mind so anyway I appreciate that and then I'm honored and I yeah I feel that as you describe that and just two Cowboys Ben go on that I'm gonna go into the outflow which is actually the second tool and that's a form of active love and and whenever we're feeling kind of stuck in our heads might be flowing anxiety ER or rumination or whatever we can let that out so I I'm deeply grateful for your reflection on that and providing that space and then I think one of the reasons why I resonate with your work so much is that we both share the same relationship to those higher forces they're kind of meta business that I created is called n Theo's so the Greek for God within which is the root of enthusiasm and I think the tools the primary end of the tools is how do we more consistently connect to these higher forces such that in my words we can shine with a radiant and give our gifts to the world and that's again why I'm such a student and fan of the work so in the in the construct of the time that we have today I'm thrilled that we went so deeply into the first tool and I encourage people to go get the book drill into the second tool which is about active love and dealing with any any mental loops where we get stuck in what what Phil and Barry called the maze the third tool is dealing with self explores is dealing with expression which is another extraordinarily powerful tool which we can talk about for a weekend the fourth tool is grateful flow and connecting to the source when we're feeling depressed or overwhelmed it's it's phenomenal and then the fifth tool is dealing with willpower I'd love to go into each of those I'm going to talk to Barry later this week which will share separately and well I imagine will touch on some of those but for now talk to us about willpower I'm a huge fan of that being the engine of doing these things you know it's one thing to intellectually get the idea that you just described in the other tools it's an entirely different thing to actually do it in the moment and your distinction about how we all want to be exonerated from future work where we've done the work okay I watch the secret three times and now I don't do anyone work I'm gonna be happy and your point is no every moments gonna give us every day every moments gonna give us an opportunity to grow and to to become and we need to have the willpower the strength of character to do what needs to get done whether we feel like it or not can you talk to us about that fifth tool yeah let me let me start by saying this by the way although you're gonna think I'm nuts this whole conversation is about an infinity and it's about how the human being reaches the infinite parts in himself and how does that connect to the incident for these higher forces that were talking about and how it all was connected most people you know I used to play basketball I was a scrub on a college basketball team I would only get it again I was I was a sub for this kid who was all-american so I did not get any games very much and when when I did get in the game it was always because he either got hurt or fouled out so you don't typically get in a game with three minutes left or something and with the culture I had I was expected to perform you know nobody felt sorry for me and what I what I found what I discovered was I couldn't just have to sitting there for an hour and a half I couldn't just get up you know with thousands of screaming people and and I basically I had to bring the ball up and it was always the press going on so it was a complex thing I had to do and if I wasn't if I was tight at all frightened frozen I just couldn't do it so I got I hit upon the idea of being in the game before I got in the game it was for me the game started the moment they roll the ball out but I was sitting on a bench and what I did basically was I was screaming yelling ice cream with my own players you know if they were missing a miss reading something defensively blah blah blah and it worked really well so so if an hour and a half later if I have actually get in a game and play I was already in this state okay so the question becomes how do we break down this state you know it has aspects of flow and it has aspects of courage in it obviously and overall it has aspects of tapping the best way to say it and you know if you want to phrase it in terms of willpower willpower real willpower cannot just come from you real willpower is your relationship with the higher force of will you know an AAV we say as I said will run riot or something you know so they so they have a negative view of will in their right because that's the will it comes from your ego but there's a second kind of ill-will that comes when you dissolve your ego now the and and I put that under the heading of commitment now listen very carefully to this commitment has nothing to do with your goal it doesn't commitment is a state that we always want to be in for the rest of our lives now let me explain to you why that is and this is why I call commitment the infinity principle the these higher forces were talking about want to help us but the forces are infinite the forces are so strong they could actually burn us away and eliminate us altogether we have to have a like a basket something to take the food home in we need some kind of a vehicle or receptacle to receive these higher forces and that has to come from the higher part of us from the infinite part of us now here's a key the with there's only one way a human being can be infinite every other way we're not incident were in a physical body and that's the will to keep on going forever and whatever it is is your your goal is at the moment you the goals could even change but the point is the attitude has to be I'm going to keep working on this and working this and warfare this and working on this and if I succeed I'm still going to work at it and if I fail I'm still going to work at it why because that's the only way that's the only moment when I actually become infinite now most people don't like that idea because what am I telling you I'm telling you're going to have to work for the rest of your life work on the tools work on some of the behavioral stuff it says for people in life that people think that when they succeed whatever you know whether that means to them they can then kick back and stop making an effort so we call that exoneration and exoneration occurs and what we call the realm of illusion it's an illusionary realm that usually has picture in your mind of what life would be if it was perfect you'd be rich you'd have a better looking wife you'd have four kids all of them went to Harvard it doesn't really matter but once you reach that point there'd be no more pressure on you no more demand no more nothing so you'd be exonerated now the truth is the complete opposite and we call it the truth ceaseless immersion which I'll tell you so about myself in a second so the truth is were ceaselessly immersed in factors that demand that we keep on working on ourselves they demand it and it doesn't go away when I first moved out here I was in the early 80s it was really smoky out here and I would get up in the morning to go to work and I'd seal the Californians and then we were walking through this is like pea soup you know and it didn't seem to bother them and I used to get so angry at them and said what kind of people are these people crazy they don't even say anything about this I just kidding of course six months later guess what I was doing the exact same thing I no longer noticed the smog so once I realized I was ceaselessly immersed in smog it wasn't going anywhere we're just going to be there it's not bothering me I accepted its presence now that's one thing with smog it's not too difficult but when you're talking about the need to really press yourself or the need to use these tools and the need to stop avoiding things as an example then it's not so easy to accept their presence and just so you have it on the podcast there are three basic rules of the universe at least as far as I'm concerned rule 1 pain you'll never go away rule 2 uncertainty it will never go away rule 3 your need for constant work it will never go away now that said you can live a fantastic life you can make a lot of money you can avoid certain of pitfalls of living as long as you understand the basic premise here which is we have to live committed lives and the reason we do will that say the universe will help us by continuing to give us problems so if it for most people to turn upside down wave do you want to say something no I'm laughing for most people they look I didn't say what help yeah they looked at their whole industry sort of based on this you know the bridal industry as one example with just one you know this sports car industry and it's all ok is when we should take it as a joke and and so I'm sure many of the people listening or parents as a parent what I just said in the last 10 minutes is probably the most important thing you can teach to your kids and it's not to say oh that's gonna be terrible it's going to be such a grind that's that's not what the message is but what the message does say is there are going to be problems for you that you're not going to like and that's their the one for the rest of your life and I'm going to teach you as a parent how to look at a problem looking right in the face learn what the correct tools are and then come out stronger which brings me to another you know it some of these ideas and their superficiality don't seem very new like the idea well you know there's a problem or there's an obstacle and you you you become stronger from dealing with it of course everybody is going to say of course what you try to tell me there's a new idea in that you know it says but there is a new idea and because you can tell yourself you're going to learn something from a problem or you can tell yourself you're going to come out stronger but you won't unless you have a specific tool to use against the problem so with the two of us how does it help you solve the problem and do something you know hopefully do something you've never done before but it gives you a way to harvest the value of the problem of the hour people so you'll have it all your life and that's another little discussed asset or benefit of the tools so the tools actually introduce you to a more meaningful life and the only other thing I want to say in this is we're talking about willpower which means basically executing acts will positive acts the two things we like to school people in so to speak are doing things with a sense of urgency instead of the language yeah I'll do it next month or in three weeks or something number one and number two doing things with a sense of intensity and that goes back to the basketball if for anyone who watches restful you know if your team comes down and you take a junction it climbs off the front rim what you have to do with like a flat korone so which means it's probably going to go to the other team and the balls are moving faster than other team is probably going to fast break it means everybody on the offensive team is now all of a sudden turned into a defender and I have to run about 60 or 70 feet as fast as they possibly can including a change of direction because we're going towards their basket and in athletics is one of the more painful things that you could go through now if from the spins you can't see they're on TV it's hard to see but if you're in the game you'll see some people will really run back on defense as hard as they possibly can and others will try to fake it they'll make it look like they're running back in defense but they don't bring themselves into this pain zone so they're not intense now who cares about basketball but the lesson is very clear which is they're people walking around the world would do everything intensely whether it's Brian preparing for this interview because bling that I have been insisting a lot of times or somebody in something physical or some somebody performing somebody who's in the privacy of their own home writing a book was really trying to make it every page every paragraph as good as they can possibly make it that's the minority and if you start to look around become very obviously who those things with more or less intensity it is very about that because he's so for us again the idea of doing doing something with the great sense of urgency and with a great sense of intensity I've until maybe the last ten years and not from therapist but from buddy college life coaches I never heard it discussed at all and it was some point about twenty years ago I said Jesus Christ nobody ever even mentions it is this it's not important and to me it's up there again I cannot remember your question but yeah this is great well we started off talking about willpower and being exonerated and then that I felt beautifully led us into commitment and the infinity principle and ceaseless immersion and the three rules of the universe and urgency and intensity and I think all of it is the expression of those higher forces that yeah your entire work is based on and it seems apparent that our entire job is to stay connected to that energy right and what about that come through us as powerfully and intensely as it can yes it's a wonderful way to think about it because it makes everyday meaningful even using a little tool for two seconds or so okay that means something I'm I'm on my way there something if you could only share one piece of wisdom with someone listening today might have been something you shared but what would that one piece of wisdom be are you up for answering that then we can conclude yeah I study this guy ruler Steiner and of course neither he was a philosopher he died in 1920 five but he and he he's a wonderful his ideas are just spectacular their very hearts understand because I don't know he wasn't a good communicator but everything else he was spectacular and what he said and I found to be true was he said the biggest things and their life through the smallest things and I felt that to be searching is another thing I thought was left out of psychotherapy so what do we mean by the smallest things if somebody says you're gonna write their dreams down when they get up in the morning that's a relatively small thing somebody else says I have a hate on for this person but I'm going to use a tool and dissolve the hatred no matter how much they're bothering me and I might have to do that 30 40 times a day what somebody else says well I'm gonna make that phone call even though it's really I'm really terrified and I know probably nothing good is gonna come of it but I'm gonna do it anyway that's it that's a small thing also personal habits most of most of them devolve into small things but the idea that you can do something smaller than something huge you can enter your life I think the greatest part of it is you it means you could always do something there's always something you can do no matter how small mundane inconsequential the environment is that you're in and eventually you know because you have this socio-economic schism in this country and you know you have I was always fascinated by the ghetto so I mean I came from a middle-class family but I was there all the time you know three four five times a week and this this some idea he's gonna have to be conveyed to everybody particularly people that are less advantaged because it gives them the you know it's like those P times they put into a mountain you know give them a little handhold so they can start to move themselves up but yeah but that's some for me that's that's a big piece of wisdom I love it the biggest things come through the smallest things yeah the fundamentals to go back to your basketball days John Wooden first thing what's what's wearing how to put on our socks right right small good go Bruins well Phil thank you so much for taking so much time and for dedicating your life to doing the work that you do it's inspired me and countless others and I'm very much looking forward to your next book and people can follow you the tools on Twitter what's the best website I think our website if you don't know is through our words I think you know I put you on the spot there let me uh I will confirm I'm almost certain it is the tools book.com I have it linked in the PDF philosophers note I'm gonna draw it up right now just so everyone make sure that you know how to get it lots of helpful stuff there the link is the tools book.com yeah and there we go so I look forward to on the new book and once again thank you deeply appreciate your energy and wisdom thank you so much yeah you're really good at this yeah I look forward to the next time I can be on thank you thanks for we hope you enjoyed this optimal living interview please visit brian johnson dot m e for more

you&#39;re listening to the tools an optimal living interview with Phil Stutz and Brian Johnson hi this is Brian welcome back to the optimal living interview series today I&#39;m thrilled to be chatting with Phil Stutz who wrote the great book the tools subtitle transform your problems into courage confidence and creativity I read this book in 2012 and it was hands-down the best book I read that year and is on the top of the list of books that I&#39;ve ever read it&#39;s one of the few books that I read on a Kindle and then bought the hardcover of and marked both of them up I actually bought a copy of the book for everyone on our team and we created a book club just so we can walk through the big ideas from this book that&#39;s how transformative I thought it was and just phenomenal so Phil stops graduated from City College in New York and received his MD from New York University he worked as a prison psychiatrist on Rikers Island and then in private practice in New York before moving his practice to Los Angeles in 1982 he&#39;s been at this for decades and I&#39;m just thrilled to be chatting with you today Phil I appreciate you taking the time yeah my pleasure are you gonna get get on the show or you call it a show I just want to ask you did you like the book you think so good let&#39;s start with the definition like what is a tool and why do we need it why is it important to have conceptualized in our lives okay well let me explain it give you a little backstory on the I was a young psychiatrist sisters in the 70s and there&#39;s a point where they they train you to be a psychotherapist as well as obviously trained you to use all these relevant medications and when they taught me the at least at that time was recycle analysis is pretty much King at in assemblies the way they taught me to do psychotherapy I left me very very frustrated and frankly a little bit confused because they would they would always go into the past let&#39;s say somebody is afraid of getting on the airplane is focused but somebody else is chronically the press doesn&#39;t really matter whatever the symptoms were that were coming up they we would talk to go back into the past and find the cause of the symptoms which are you usually presume to be some kind of family dynamic problem with one parent or another or both and and usually go way back into the past now there was nothing wrong with this and a lot of the information was invaluable but once we had the information I mean these people were suffering if anyone out there is chronically depressed you know what kind of suffering that is if somebody has a social phobia they&#39;re afraid to talk or be around other people obviously that&#39;s very painful if there&#39;s something you want to do and you don&#39;t have the courage to do it maybe start a new business or something or you want to start a new art form it&#39;s very very painful and I&#39;m not saying I&#39;m a great person or anything like that but since I assume my job was to get these people actually through the problem not just understand the problem I was very very frustrated because it was almost like a lazy stare attitude among the people that were training me basically said it&#39;s you know we&#39;re kind of proceeding slowly and I don&#39;t forget one day said the patient will come up with the solution now that didn&#39;t sound right to me at the time that I heard it if the patient could have come up with the solution to his problem they&#39;ve already done that instead of sit there and you know spend more money and as as a months go by AK sound valid didn&#39;t it sound right I felt it was never happening so anyway that&#39;s what a back story to what the tools meant to me and basically the simple definition of the tool is a tool is a procedure usually visual but sometimes other things besides visualization that will change your inner state right at the moment you&#39;re using the tool okay so if we if you take a look at the depressed person let&#39;s say just for example the depressed person it&#39;s too depressed to get out and do exercise which is a key note to recovery from depression for instance what a tool would do is it would not just the person wouldn&#39;t just understand be the cause of the depression but he would be able to do something about it right at that moment in this case what we&#39;re talking about is he would be able to get out and do some exercise another example would be he&#39;d be able to deal with the negative thinking that&#39;s very very very much a part of any depression and he&#39;d be able to stop the thinking so a lot of for a lot of people&#39;s the first time in their life they could ever control what was going through their heads so we can go on and on if you want to ask me some specific stuff we can but that was the point was the tool puts the power in the hands of the patient which is where it belongs and if they use the tool I can confidently tell them that they will start to make inroads with the symptom and then beyond that those thoughts to make inroads and change as a person when you make the important distinction as well that it isn&#39;t just a change in attitude we need to change behavior right and the tool helps us step in notice what problem we might be experiencing and then use the tool so we can actually engage in constructive behavior right yeah let&#39;s look at the you talk in the book about the fact that there you&#39;ve identified four fundamental problems and yeah there are you know the four tools that address those fundamental problems and the fifth tool that kind of is the engine to help us engage in the four I&#39;d love to walk through the four problems and their respective tools and then talk about the fifth and maybe we can start with the first tool which is probably my favorite because I had for so long struggled with fear in dealing with that in my life and the way you described this and reversing our desire and meeting fear head-on and seeing our potential and all that was one of the most transformative ideas for me can you describe the first tool yes again I got to give a little bit of a background so it makes sense especially the summarizing read the book probably the foremost human tendency is to avoid so somebody will avoid making a phone call they need to make the Lavoie going to the gym and working out those available are changing their diet maybe because they have they have a medical illness that requires it especially such etc just as an example as it was very interesting to me because about thirty years ago I moved out to LA you can see the agents and agents are everybody&#39;s always interested in agents you know like an entourage you know was a big hit the agent you because they&#39;re they&#39;re very talkative and they have a big mouth and they&#39;re a lot of them of brass you you think they have real cars and I don&#39;t avoid things but what I discovered was actually lose a whole strata of executives in the studios that the agents would not approach in other words the agent would approach somebody who was on his level because he was relatively comfortable making the call pitching his client whatever it was but it was somebody on a higher level a lot of agents would come in and I realized they were terrified to make that call just as an example so to me going into ad infinitum why afraid whatever is okay but it certainly would didn&#39;t leave them feeling that I had helped them so they would have to so they were avoiding expanding into a realm in which they self frightened or they felt uncomfortable whatever so just by example that was that would be a place to use this tool which is called a reversal of desire now if we and and the tool was specifically to get them to make that call not just understand why they couldn&#39;t make the call not just understand the benefits they would get if they made the call that&#39;s well and good but not good enough they must actually make the call through the behavior and just flood you too much information but the one way you can speak to the unconscious and probably the strongest way is to change your behavior you know because there&#39;s artificial species distinction between you know what we feel and what we do and the you know so then what we feel people tend to get deeper and deeper into the unconscious the aliens get into dreams etc which is good there&#39;s nothing wrong with that but it&#39;s as if that has nothing to do with behavior and then you have the behaviors and cognitive therapist who focus on that and the studies show that that&#39;s actually tends to be more effective in terms of psychotherapy but when I got into this I was kind of shocked that the two worlds didn&#39;t collide or somehow you know relate to each other I should they must you know just what do you it wouldn&#39;t make sense if they didn&#39;t so that&#39;s that&#39;s where I finally realized what will go on is let&#39;s say that aging makes it so he calls a guy who&#39;s a chairman of the studio would be very intimidating for him the guy might hang up in his face it doesn&#39;t matter all that matters is he took the action now the fact that he acted then feeds back into his unconscious and the unconscious says to itself I mean if you don&#39;t mind my making it you know overly simplicity unconscious says oh this person actually is a student of the information I&#39;m giving him the information make it yeah unconscious may give you information a dream sometimes in an instinct sometimes give a shrink to commander shrinks office he&#39;s acting on the information I am giving him say the unconscious likes that and it actually opens the door into the unconscious and then all kinds of other things happening a hundred times I&#39;ve seen somebody make the call and say well I got rejected that was rude to me and I think fine pick somebody else and make another call and I said do I have to here you have to and then the tool allows them to do this which we&#39;ll get back to the reversal of desire and this the second call the fourth pole they only fail it doesn&#39;t matter the unconscious will start to give him ideas about we&#39;ll stick all my no this is great so you&#39;re kind of priming the unconscious and in honoring whatever intuition was there and while you do that it is going to work for you and helping you do more of that what you engaged in yeah exactly I actually put this to work myself when I first got to California I was probably thirty-three thirty-four years old I knew nobody and for the first three months that you have any patience I had in the first three months good oh by the tone it wasn&#39;t a large number very good zero so I was fine especially my savings so I said this is ridiculous I have to do something but I didn&#39;t really know what to do to build up a practice because my first practice was in New York where I&#39;m from so it was easy so it was almost like a little angel sat on my shoulder and said because I would make these lists as people and needed to contact and the angel said contact the scariest person first and to my credit or because I&#39;m crazy I don&#39;t know what I actually did it and I would get every morning I looked under listen I would see who wouldn&#39;t scare the living out of me and I would I would make that call and most of the polls weren&#39;t successful at all but what happened was I noticed every day asked if I make that really difficult call I start to get more ideas I&#39;d start to get ideas about calling people who were never even in every minute of my mind all of a sudden it&#39;s like my aunt actress went from a bike path to like a superhighway and I would say within about six weeks believe it or not I had a viable practice and then after that three four months I had I probably had like twenty five patients which to me was a miracle but that and I call that crate of action because you take the action first your relationship with your unconscious becomes more creative than you get more ideas and it&#39;s not just true and this kind of a mechanical sense I don&#39;t know if we&#39;ll have time but it&#39;s also true for artists writers people that are trying to solve problems etc anyway the the average person is um is afraid of pain and I can&#39;t fear as one example of pain is it&#39;s probably the most relevant one there were four people that are just afraid of it of pain per se so the desire of the average person the desire of the average person is to avoid pain and that&#39;s how we live and everybody who kicks back and does a doobie when they get home from work is avoiding pain and everyone who doesn&#39;t go to gym and workout is avoiding pain the Asian who doesn&#39;t call the scary you know studio head is avoiding pain so the reversal of desire says instead of avoiding pain we espouse pains we want pain we desire pain now you know when you tell a patient that the immediate reaction is oh you&#39;re right I&#39;m going to tell you these life season and you know you think I&#39;m some kind of a masochist and what are you not so you know the people they&#39;re pretty brash out here they&#39;ll say you&#39;re going to teach me how to live without thing that that by the way is completely impossible now here&#39;s a trick of this to love the secret or whatever which is and why would I tell somebody to desire pain the answer is and we call it the secret of pain if you pursue pain and you go right for it the pain actually gets less okay simplistic example think about it pool it&#39;s a cold day you stick your toe and your toe turns blue you know yourself but somebody pushes you in the pool with it within about 12 seconds there&#39;s no more pain but you first had to go towards the pain so going towards pain diminishes it on the other hand the voiding pain running away from pain makes the pain worse the pain turns into a monster that basically precedes you so that&#39;s what we call the reversal of desire I desire pain because it&#39;s going to actually reduce so do you want me to talk about the actual yeah if you don&#39;t this is awesome this is I love your examples and and really helping I think me and our listeners get context for it in a really great way okay now the good point of this tool is it&#39;s really simple and once people understand the secret of painted it tends to make a lot of sense to them now the first thing it has to do was okay let&#39;s go back to the agent he&#39;s gotta call this guy but he&#39;s scared to death so make the call he avoids he makes excuses whatever but we know why he&#39;s really avoiding it now the what I ask him to do is to forget it feel the field of fear that he would normally feel before before he would call this person but then take away the person take away the circumstance take away everything just stick with this year bodily physical experience of pain in other words put the pain in your body and don&#39;t attest attach it to anything else as if time was playing that now once you&#39;ve done that you&#39;re ready to do the tool and you&#39;ve isolated the pain I call it pure sensation or you have their resistance say the pain hasn&#39;t gone away it&#39;s just not attached to anything now so you see that pain in front of you like a cloud and sometimes people have problems with that and what we always tell them in every tool is if you have to modify it a little bit to make it work for you that&#39;s absolutely fine but the the best way to do it is you see that pain in front of you like a cloud think of it as like a boulder on a road that you&#39;re running down this big obstacle and the only way to get through that absolutely get through it you can&#39;t go over it below it around it you got to go right through it that&#39;s the pain so that&#39;s the way the two sorts you go bring it on and you say &#39;ok silently but really intensely i don&#39;t want to blow out anything we give a seminar we actually screen it so it&#39;s like a silent intense scream of bring it on which is those in longer heading if I want this pain and when you say bring it on you move very aggressively right towards that cloud of pain right towards the obstacle okay that&#39;s step one step two is you say I love pain again very explosively and you move even more fully even more deeply right into that cloud of pain you want to think of it as I am the pain at that point they actually you&#39;ve done bring it on I love pain the the cloud of pain itself will spit you out and when it spits you out you feel yourself flying forward I usually see it as a realm of light well I&#39;m flying weightlessly and effortlessly forward almost like you&#39;ve been shot out of a catapult or something and as you as you&#39;re moving forward as you&#39;re flying forward you say pain sets me free so and you can read in a book you know the specifics I saw Brian some presentation which is as good or better than mine so you can always look at that online Oh what was I saying right before you the the cloud you moved through and then you have pain sets me all right yeah now if this is if you have to use this tool to use it to again if you want to use it tool right before let&#39;s say a phone call for example that you can&#39;t get yourself to do you know bring it on I love pain pain sets me free you&#39;re flying forward right while you&#39;re flying forward you make the call right at that moment it&#39;s like a surfer riding a wave you know you have you have something that your back that&#39;s pushing you forward or propelling you forward and you want to move right into the phone call so that&#39;s the right way to use it to another the second use for this tool and in the second use you use the tool again it sounds strange at first you use it or usually it&#39;s fears before the event is happening let&#39;s have to give this speech you know in a week right and I don&#39;t particularly like public speaking and scares me I&#39;m not very uncommon problem when I think about it this thing is a weekend so it&#39;s not tomorrow night it&#39;s not it&#39;s not the next five minutes it&#39;s in seven days but every time I think about being up there and I feel my hands shake oh my voice shakes or whatever I use the tool on my fear right then and there in the present so and what I&#39;m doing is I&#39;m teaching myself to process fear in other words we always tell people is it&#39;s fine to be afraid every human being is afraid terrified out of their minds no problem with that but not to process this year to be passive in the face of fear is an act of ignorance and in a certain sense I&#39;m mostly responsibility so that&#39;s it this becomes a favorite use of the tool for people it&#39;s that use by word is very good for people who are chronically anxious as well because you start to give them the feeling hey I can fight back against my anxiety right now I don&#39;t have to wait for meditation to kick in I don&#39;t I don&#39;t have to wait until my circumstances change I don&#39;t have to wait on someone more confident person I don&#39;t have to wait for anything because I have this tool and I use it mechanically since I&#39;m getting so you want me to stop well this is this is so rich and then to add a little bit more context here that was implicit but that I think you make explicit in the book that I got so much out of is that why do we want to love this so much not only do we trigger the unconscious but our infinite potential exists on the other side of our fear right yeah that&#39;s this amazing gift that outside that cloud of fear is everything we dream of and aspire to create and be right yes so you know we call I think you call it as well we&#39;re trying to get into this realm of possibility we don&#39;t guarantee anybody anything but we tell them isn&#39;t this tool par excellence is an example of it it will put you in a different context and almost like in a different world and the sense of what&#39;s possible starts to improve to put it mildly and that sense that I can do things that I didn&#39;t think I can do the things are possible that all my life I thought were impossible is really life changing and we don&#39;t we don&#39;t focus although people we treat her tremendously almost stupidly successful but we actually don&#39;t focus on that we don&#39;t even mention it what we mentioned is the real success is using let&#39;s say the difference is this tool and then moving into that zone of enhanced possibilities so yes I agree that so this was looking that was struck with when I when I read when I saw your podcast about our stuff was the infinite potential yeah yeah that&#39;s a shooting for our general philosophy and this is that there&#39;s almost a spiritual battle in the universe and on an individual level the battle was over the evolution of the individual so the bad guys as you will we call them call that part X which would be what the next book will be about they don&#39;t want you to reach your potential they don&#39;t want you to know there&#39;s this possibility State they&#39;re trying to block your evolution your growth and basically render your life meaningless I will go and actual going for that in detail but these these tools I felt that when I was a young psychiatrist as I developed the tools which it took a long time obviously I felt like okay now we&#39;re in the game we can fight back and most patients not all but most I&#39;m talking like 80% probably like that you have 20% that are lazy one other challenge well admit that brings us to another aspect that en was implicit but I&#39;d love the way to describe it there&#39;s a higher force at work here can you describe the general idea of a higher force and then the specific one that it applies here yes higher forces are real now so what what are we talking about we&#39;re told the best way to think of it is a higher force is a force that you as an individual can use but it doesn&#39;t come from you the answer is probably worth repeating and it&#39;s a force and you can look at this it&#39;s gonna look at it spiritually you want to look at it in terms of the unconscious it doesn&#39;t really matter but it&#39;s a force moving around floating around that is beyond you it&#39;s bigger than you you can&#39;t really control it but you can use it well you can join up with it however you want to say it to do things that you couldn&#39;t ordinarily do now you know the classic story is you know woman with the car up because her kid is trapped under the car or something you know whether that&#39;s apocryphal or really have it doesn&#39;t matter but it is it gives you the idea so not only saying you&#39;re your potential is greater than you think it is we&#39;re also saying that these macro and somewhat difficult to understand but absolutely real forces that will help you reach your potential the tool each tool is designed to trigger a certain one of these higher forces so this one is we call it the force of forward motion and usually for most people who see these things under sandwiches if I&#39;m in motion things just tend to go better if I&#39;m in motion I tend to get these serendipitous events coming out of the left fields that seem to help me so you know reach my destination also if I&#39;m in foremost and I tend to attract be really helpful for me sometimes as employee sometimes as partners sometimes as friends whatever so your relationship with the entire universe how much you get from the universe how difficult your path is going to be all of it depends on having a higher force in this case the force of four motion which is the easiest one for most people to understand I even use this when someone has to make a decision I call it a dynamic and value dynamic evaluation and what that means is when you&#39;re not sure about a decision don&#39;t make a decision put yourself in forward motion first ask yourself excuse me how am I not in forward motion again in this case other other things I&#39;m avoiding but there are other parts to it like you know discipline um you know lifestyle issues control of thinking but ask myself how I&#39;m not in full motion corrected immediately and then consider the answer to the question well then decide what decision you&#39;re going to make and it&#39;s I&#39;ve been very very very successful with this and it&#39;s a great I want to say protocol it&#39;s a great habit to get in until I guess would be the right way to say yeah that makes perfect sense and the the idea of higher forces which you go into throughout the book and again we just spent a lot of time talking about the first tool the reversal of desire dealing with the problem of avoiding things whether it&#39;s pain or fear or any problem and Jillian please yes you know there&#39;s thing about higher forces of you listening to the podcast you actually experience the higher force and that&#39;s because of Brian because I&#39;m I&#39;m a anxious public speaker anyway but I went into a total flow that I had I didn&#39;t even know what I was saying and that the reason for that was him you know I&#39;ve had another experience like this on a podcast with Marc Maron the point of this is state of the person in this case Brian that was asking me the questions that was guiding me got into me as a higher force and that particular one is called out flow and because it got into me because he&#39;s and I don&#39;t know him I&#39;ve never seen him in my life but I but I could tell I&#39;m very sensitive to these things the fact that he had that preparation and he had the empathy and he had no ego and it created this force of outflow and I could feel it and it was you know there was no anxiety it was just completely what&#39;s the word facilitating the message it was his ego am i you were out just so that&#39;s a higher force and usually people don&#39;t want aware of it don&#39;t notice that the interesting thing now is in big business really big business they want that force that&#39;s why they become obsessed with how the people interact with each other so I know this interrupts the flow this thing but I guess image in my mind so anyway I appreciate that and then I&#39;m honored and I yeah I feel that as you describe that and just two Cowboys Ben go on that I&#39;m gonna go into the outflow which is actually the second tool and that&#39;s a form of active love and and whenever we&#39;re feeling kind of stuck in our heads might be flowing anxiety ER or rumination or whatever we can let that out so I I&#39;m deeply grateful for your reflection on that and providing that space and then I think one of the reasons why I resonate with your work so much is that we both share the same relationship to those higher forces they&#39;re kind of meta business that I created is called n Theo&#39;s so the Greek for God within which is the root of enthusiasm and I think the tools the primary end of the tools is how do we more consistently connect to these higher forces such that in my words we can shine with a radiant and give our gifts to the world and that&#39;s again why I&#39;m such a student and fan of the work so in the in the construct of the time that we have today I&#39;m thrilled that we went so deeply into the first tool and I encourage people to go get the book drill into the second tool which is about active love and dealing with any any mental loops where we get stuck in what what Phil and Barry called the maze the third tool is dealing with self explores is dealing with expression which is another extraordinarily powerful tool which we can talk about for a weekend the fourth tool is grateful flow and connecting to the source when we&#39;re feeling depressed or overwhelmed it&#39;s it&#39;s phenomenal and then the fifth tool is dealing with willpower I&#39;d love to go into each of those I&#39;m going to talk to Barry later this week which will share separately and well I imagine will touch on some of those but for now talk to us about willpower I&#39;m a huge fan of that being the engine of doing these things you know it&#39;s one thing to intellectually get the idea that you just described in the other tools it&#39;s an entirely different thing to actually do it in the moment and your distinction about how we all want to be exonerated from future work where we&#39;ve done the work okay I watch the secret three times and now I don&#39;t do anyone work I&#39;m gonna be happy and your point is no every moments gonna give us every day every moments gonna give us an opportunity to grow and to to become and we need to have the willpower the strength of character to do what needs to get done whether we feel like it or not can you talk to us about that fifth tool yeah let me let me start by saying this by the way although you&#39;re gonna think I&#39;m nuts this whole conversation is about an infinity and it&#39;s about how the human being reaches the infinite parts in himself and how does that connect to the incident for these higher forces that were talking about and how it all was connected most people you know I used to play basketball I was a scrub on a college basketball team I would only get it again I was I was a sub for this kid who was all-american so I did not get any games very much and when when I did get in the game it was always because he either got hurt or fouled out so you don&#39;t typically get in a game with three minutes left or something and with the culture I had I was expected to perform you know nobody felt sorry for me and what I what I found what I discovered was I couldn&#39;t just have to sitting there for an hour and a half I couldn&#39;t just get up you know with thousands of screaming people and and I basically I had to bring the ball up and it was always the press going on so it was a complex thing I had to do and if I wasn&#39;t if I was tight at all frightened frozen I just couldn&#39;t do it so I got I hit upon the idea of being in the game before I got in the game it was for me the game started the moment they roll the ball out but I was sitting on a bench and what I did basically was I was screaming yelling ice cream with my own players you know if they were missing a miss reading something defensively blah blah blah and it worked really well so so if an hour and a half later if I have actually get in a game and play I was already in this state okay so the question becomes how do we break down this state you know it has aspects of flow and it has aspects of courage in it obviously and overall it has aspects of tapping the best way to say it and you know if you want to phrase it in terms of willpower willpower real willpower cannot just come from you real willpower is your relationship with the higher force of will you know an AAV we say as I said will run riot or something you know so they so they have a negative view of will in their right because that&#39;s the will it comes from your ego but there&#39;s a second kind of ill-will that comes when you dissolve your ego now the and and I put that under the heading of commitment now listen very carefully to this commitment has nothing to do with your goal it doesn&#39;t commitment is a state that we always want to be in for the rest of our lives now let me explain to you why that is and this is why I call commitment the infinity principle the these higher forces were talking about want to help us but the forces are infinite the forces are so strong they could actually burn us away and eliminate us altogether we have to have a like a basket something to take the food home in we need some kind of a vehicle or receptacle to receive these higher forces and that has to come from the higher part of us from the infinite part of us now here&#39;s a key the with there&#39;s only one way a human being can be infinite every other way we&#39;re not incident were in a physical body and that&#39;s the will to keep on going forever and whatever it is is your your goal is at the moment you the goals could even change but the point is the attitude has to be I&#39;m going to keep working on this and working this and warfare this and working on this and if I succeed I&#39;m still going to work at it and if I fail I&#39;m still going to work at it why because that&#39;s the only way that&#39;s the only moment when I actually become infinite now most people don&#39;t like that idea because what am I telling you I&#39;m telling you&#39;re going to have to work for the rest of your life work on the tools work on some of the behavioral stuff it says for people in life that people think that when they succeed whatever you know whether that means to them they can then kick back and stop making an effort so we call that exoneration and exoneration occurs and what we call the realm of illusion it&#39;s an illusionary realm that usually has picture in your mind of what life would be if it was perfect you&#39;d be rich you&#39;d have a better looking wife you&#39;d have four kids all of them went to Harvard it doesn&#39;t really matter but once you reach that point there&#39;d be no more pressure on you no more demand no more nothing so you&#39;d be exonerated now the truth is the complete opposite and we call it the truth ceaseless immersion which I&#39;ll tell you so about myself in a second so the truth is were ceaselessly immersed in factors that demand that we keep on working on ourselves they demand it and it doesn&#39;t go away when I first moved out here I was in the early 80s it was really smoky out here and I would get up in the morning to go to work and I&#39;d seal the Californians and then we were walking through this is like pea soup you know and it didn&#39;t seem to bother them and I used to get so angry at them and said what kind of people are these people crazy they don&#39;t even say anything about this I just kidding of course six months later guess what I was doing the exact same thing I no longer noticed the smog so once I realized I was ceaselessly immersed in smog it wasn&#39;t going anywhere we&#39;re just going to be there it&#39;s not bothering me I accepted its presence now that&#39;s one thing with smog it&#39;s not too difficult but when you&#39;re talking about the need to really press yourself or the need to use these tools and the need to stop avoiding things as an example then it&#39;s not so easy to accept their presence and just so you have it on the podcast there are three basic rules of the universe at least as far as I&#39;m concerned rule 1 pain you&#39;ll never go away rule 2 uncertainty it will never go away rule 3 your need for constant work it will never go away now that said you can live a fantastic life you can make a lot of money you can avoid certain of pitfalls of living as long as you understand the basic premise here which is we have to live committed lives and the reason we do will that say the universe will help us by continuing to give us problems so if it for most people to turn upside down wave do you want to say something no I&#39;m laughing for most people they look I didn&#39;t say what help yeah they looked at their whole industry sort of based on this you know the bridal industry as one example with just one you know this sports car industry and it&#39;s all ok is when we should take it as a joke and and so I&#39;m sure many of the people listening or parents as a parent what I just said in the last 10 minutes is probably the most important thing you can teach to your kids and it&#39;s not to say oh that&#39;s gonna be terrible it&#39;s going to be such a grind that&#39;s that&#39;s not what the message is but what the message does say is there are going to be problems for you that you&#39;re not going to like and that&#39;s their the one for the rest of your life and I&#39;m going to teach you as a parent how to look at a problem looking right in the face learn what the correct tools are and then come out stronger which brings me to another you know it some of these ideas and their superficiality don&#39;t seem very new like the idea well you know there&#39;s a problem or there&#39;s an obstacle and you you you become stronger from dealing with it of course everybody is going to say of course what you try to tell me there&#39;s a new idea in that you know it says but there is a new idea and because you can tell yourself you&#39;re going to learn something from a problem or you can tell yourself you&#39;re going to come out stronger but you won&#39;t unless you have a specific tool to use against the problem so with the two of us how does it help you solve the problem and do something you know hopefully do something you&#39;ve never done before but it gives you a way to harvest the value of the problem of the hour people so you&#39;ll have it all your life and that&#39;s another little discussed asset or benefit of the tools so the tools actually introduce you to a more meaningful life and the only other thing I want to say in this is we&#39;re talking about willpower which means basically executing acts will positive acts the two things we like to school people in so to speak are doing things with a sense of urgency instead of the language yeah I&#39;ll do it next month or in three weeks or something number one and number two doing things with a sense of intensity and that goes back to the basketball if for anyone who watches restful you know if your team comes down and you take a junction it climbs off the front rim what you have to do with like a flat korone so which means it&#39;s probably going to go to the other team and the balls are moving faster than other team is probably going to fast break it means everybody on the offensive team is now all of a sudden turned into a defender and I have to run about 60 or 70 feet as fast as they possibly can including a change of direction because we&#39;re going towards their basket and in athletics is one of the more painful things that you could go through now if from the spins you can&#39;t see they&#39;re on TV it&#39;s hard to see but if you&#39;re in the game you&#39;ll see some people will really run back on defense as hard as they possibly can and others will try to fake it they&#39;ll make it look like they&#39;re running back in defense but they don&#39;t bring themselves into this pain zone so they&#39;re not intense now who cares about basketball but the lesson is very clear which is they&#39;re people walking around the world would do everything intensely whether it&#39;s Brian preparing for this interview because bling that I have been insisting a lot of times or somebody in something physical or some somebody performing somebody who&#39;s in the privacy of their own home writing a book was really trying to make it every page every paragraph as good as they can possibly make it that&#39;s the minority and if you start to look around become very obviously who those things with more or less intensity it is very about that because he&#39;s so for us again the idea of doing doing something with the great sense of urgency and with a great sense of intensity I&#39;ve until maybe the last ten years and not from therapist but from buddy college life coaches I never heard it discussed at all and it was some point about twenty years ago I said Jesus Christ nobody ever even mentions it is this it&#39;s not important and to me it&#39;s up there again I cannot remember your question but yeah this is great well we started off talking about willpower and being exonerated and then that I felt beautifully led us into commitment and the infinity principle and ceaseless immersion and the three rules of the universe and urgency and intensity and I think all of it is the expression of those higher forces that yeah your entire work is based on and it seems apparent that our entire job is to stay connected to that energy right and what about that come through us as powerfully and intensely as it can yes it&#39;s a wonderful way to think about it because it makes everyday meaningful even using a little tool for two seconds or so okay that means something I&#39;m I&#39;m on my way there something if you could only share one piece of wisdom with someone listening today might have been something you shared but what would that one piece of wisdom be are you up for answering that then we can conclude yeah I study this guy ruler Steiner and of course neither he was a philosopher he died in 1920 five but he and he he&#39;s a wonderful his ideas are just spectacular their very hearts understand because I don&#39;t know he wasn&#39;t a good communicator but everything else he was spectacular and what he said and I found to be true was he said the biggest things and their life through the smallest things and I felt that to be searching is another thing I thought was left out of psychotherapy so what do we mean by the smallest things if somebody says you&#39;re gonna write their dreams down when they get up in the morning that&#39;s a relatively small thing somebody else says I have a hate on for this person but I&#39;m going to use a tool and dissolve the hatred no matter how much they&#39;re bothering me and I might have to do that 30 40 times a day what somebody else says well I&#39;m gonna make that phone call even though it&#39;s really I&#39;m really terrified and I know probably nothing good is gonna come of it but I&#39;m gonna do it anyway that&#39;s it that&#39;s a small thing also personal habits most of most of them devolve into small things but the idea that you can do something smaller than something huge you can enter your life I think the greatest part of it is you it means you could always do something there&#39;s always something you can do no matter how small mundane inconsequential the environment is that you&#39;re in and eventually you know because you have this socio-economic schism in this country and you know you have I was always fascinated by the ghetto so I mean I came from a middle-class family but I was there all the time you know three four five times a week and this this some idea he&#39;s gonna have to be conveyed to everybody particularly people that are less advantaged because it gives them the you know it&#39;s like those P times they put into a mountain you know give them a little handhold so they can start to move themselves up but yeah but that&#39;s some for me that&#39;s that&#39;s a big piece of wisdom I love it the biggest things come through the smallest things yeah the fundamentals to go back to your basketball days John Wooden first thing what&#39;s what&#39;s wearing how to put on our socks right right small good go Bruins well Phil thank you so much for taking so much time and for dedicating your life to doing the work that you do it&#39;s inspired me and countless others and I&#39;m very much looking forward to your next book and people can follow you the tools on Twitter what&#39;s the best website I think our website if you don&#39;t know is through our words I think you know I put you on the spot there let me uh I will confirm I&#39;m almost certain it is the tools book.com I have it linked in the PDF philosophers note I&#39;m gonna draw it up right now just so everyone make sure that you know how to get it lots of helpful stuff there the link is the tools book.com yeah and there we go so I look forward to on the new book and once again thank you deeply appreciate your energy and wisdom thank you so much yeah you&#39;re really good at this yeah I look forward to the next time I can be on thank you thanks for we hope you enjoyed this optimal living interview please visit brian johnson dot m e for more

Transcript for:Interview with Phil Stutz and Brian Johnson on 'The Tools'

Transcript for:
Interview with Phil Stutz and Brian Johnson on 'The Tools'