The Tools Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus The Tools

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Zusammenfassung von The Tools

Name: The Tools
Rating: 4.4 (440 reviews)
Author: Phil Stutz & Barry Michels

Phil Stutz & Barry Michels

5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower--and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion

4.4 (440 Bewertungen)

16 Min.

Themen

Skills Critical Thinking & Problem Solving Self-Help Confidence

Inhaltsübersicht

The Tools
in 6 Kernaussagen verstehen

Audio & Text in der Blinkist App

Kernaussage 1 von 6

What’s in it for me? Master your demons with five simple tools.

Isn’t it frustrating when you finally get around to that nagging home repair, only to find out you don’t have the correct screwdriver?It’s even more troubling when you are unequipped to navigate bigger challenges in life, such as grief, difficult relationships, and professional setbacks, to name just a few. You may seek help in therapy to get to the root of the problem, yet still walk away frustrated without any actionable steps to effect immediate change. That’s because so much of traditional talk therapy leaves us just that: unequipped.

In this Blink to Phil Stutz and Barry Michels’s The Tools, you’ll receive an actionable toolkit to tackle any part of your life that needs repair: including pushing through pain points to achieve goals, managing difficult interactions with people, using your insecurities to your benefit, appreciating what you have, and finding the motivation to keep doing the work.

Each of The Tools are quick mental exercises you can use in the everyday. Just like literal tools, it’s completely on you to choose the best one for the job and do the work. The best part is that all can be put into action right away. You’re still on your own with the DIY home repairs, but there’s plenty on YouTube for that!

Tool #1: Welcoming Adversity

What’s on your immediate must-do list that fills you with dread or even fear? Is there anything you’ve been putting off for longer?

While it’s human nature to avoid what we don’t like, uncomfortable and even painful situations are inevitable. In most cases, the challenges themselves aren’t what hold people back from achieving their greatest potential; it’s the avoidance of taking the next step to unlock the possibilities.

The first tool helps you not only power through tough situations but learn to use them to your benefit. We are not talking about just accepting adversity, but actually being glad to see it when it inevitably appears. It sounds bizarre, but it’s a powerful way to reframe the role difficulty has in your life.

Here’s the exercise: First, visualize the emotion surrounding the task or situation. The emotion may be fear of a difficult conversation going badly. Perhaps it’s the humiliation if you slip up while giving a speech. It may be a less rational emotion, such as having a fear of flying despite statistics showing air travel is much safer than driving.

Whatever the pain is, give it a visual in your mind, and ask it to envelop you. As it does, accept it eagerly with the belief it will bring something good. Focus your mind on that good as you move yourself through and out, thanking the pain as you go for what’s on the other side.

Regardless of the outcome, you’ll gain power in overcoming the mental block, which is a win in itself. That satisfaction will encourage you to use the tool again and again to the point where you will naturally welcome pain points. Meanwhile, you are moving forward, which is the force that drives life itself.

Using this tool also builds your capacity for commitment, which is essential for making meaningful, long-term changes. Take the authors’ example of a beat cop who had initially pursued his talent for writing in college, only to drop out. Storytelling remained his passion, as evidenced by his ability to keep listeners engaged in tales he shared at the bar after work. However, he had an aversion to the extra focus needed to commit those stories to writing. Using the tool to overcome his uncomfortable feelings about concentration, he finally reignited his writing ability and pursued the career he’d always wanted.

While this tool helps overcome daunting situations, the next will help with difficult people.

Tool #2: Channelling Love

John Lennon’s “All You Need Is Love” has a handy chorus to remember when using this second tool, which is choosing love to cope with difficult people, or rather, difficult behavior by other people.

Now, let’s define “difficult.” It could be your significant other blatantly flirting with someone else at a party, an obnoxious driver cutting you off in traffic, or a flippant boss who also isn’t noticing how much you deserve a raise. You get the gist: These are the last people you feel like loving in the moment.

Tool #3: Embracing Your Whole Self

Few people lack insecurities, and most of us allow them to plague even our best efforts. The third tool teaches you how to bring your entire self to situations – insecurities and all. Since no one really wants to think about themselves being their biggest obstacle, we’ll start with the authors’ story about someone else who was in that boat.

A patient was a first-generation high-school graduate and small-town native who left to make her way in a large city. There, she tried to integrate into her idea of big-city sophistication, and worked hard to set her child up for success. She didn't want him to feel like an outsider, like she did. But despite her efforts, other mothers still seemed to shun her, even when her son was accepted to a prestigious soccer program.

Tool #4: Creating a Gratitude Loop

Does anything keep you up at night? If you’re losing sleep over it, chances are it fills your waking hours, too. Add it to the list of any potential thing that could go wrong in a day, and you may not want to get out of bed in the morning. That is, if you’re allowing worst-case scenarios to dictate your existence.

It’s so easy to succumb to negative thoughts, especially if you’re a worrier. You may have good health, a happy family, fulfilling work, and even moments of joy amid it all, and yet you’ll find something to agonize over.

Tool #5: Keeping a Sense of Urgency

You’re now fully equipped with four critical tools to tackle every problem in your life, but no one is going to make you use them. That’s why the fifth tool speaks to motivation. Get ready, because it’s going to sound absolutely terrible, especially if you cringed about owning your insecurities to use the third tool of personal agency.

Here we go.

Final Summary

Hopefully you’ve come away with an ultimate toolkit of five tools to tackle any part of your life that needs building or repair. With the first tool, you learned how to practice welcoming adversity to push through your pain points and achieve major goals. With the second tool, you learned how to harness and channel love to better deal with difficult people and calm your own mind. Third, you learned how to build confidence by bringing your whole self to intimidating situations by visualizing, connecting with, and acting in tune with your “shadow” self that embodies your insecurities. The fourth tool spells out the method of practicing gratitude for all that you have, which shifts your energy from a focus on anything that’s lacking. And with the fifth and final tool, you learned the way to motivate continuous improvement is by continuously reminding yourself how you’d feel if you suddenly ran out of time. No one wants to end life with great regrets, and with these tools, you won’t have to.

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Worum geht es in The Tools?

The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower—and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion (2012) outlines five mental exercises to immediately tackle common challenges that may be holding you back in life. The coauthors are therapists and include patient cases and sketches to elaborate on how to use each tool.

Wer The Tools lesen sollte

People seeking immediately actionable methods for life improvement
Those frustrated with traditional therapy
Anyone looking to interact more positively with other people

Über den Autor

Phil Stutz is a sought-after psychiatrist and coach who received his MD from New York University. In 2022, his pioneering therapeutic methods were the subject of actor Jonah Hill’s documentary Stutz.

Barry Michels is a psychotherapist practicing since 1986, with a BA from Harvard University, a law degree from the University of California Berkeley, and a Master of Social Work from the University of Southern California. He and Stutz have also coauthored the 2017 best seller Coming Alive.

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Personal Development Creativity

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