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Time To Come Alive

After reading The Tools by Barry Michels & Phil Stutz, I decided that I liked the idea of having tools to access in your mental tool shed that helped me move through the day. I am still practicing Bring It On, Active Love and Jeopardy. And I looked for more tools, which I found in their newer book, Coming Alive.

What makes these tools great, like the last ones, is the ease of implementation. Instantaneously, you can change your state by following simple steps. As the saying goes, it is simple and not easy. The hardest part of using these tools is remembering to use them. Each requires you to pause before responding or taking action. And that takes practice.

The tools in this book focus on becoming the best version of ourselves by tapping into our innate wisdom:

The belief that an invisible animating energy underlies our existence is
thousands of years old. Unlike our modern, mechanical notion of energy, which we understand via mathematics, this is a living energy that we feel inside us. In Eastern religions, this energy, or Life Force, is known variously as prana (in Indian philosophy and medicine), lung (in
Tibetan Buddhism), and chi (in Chinese philosophy and medicine). In the Old Testament, it was called ruach, the breath of God, which gave mankind not only life, but the spirit to evolve. (pg 11, Coming Alive)

By experiencing this energy deeply, we can come to see the Life Force around us expressed in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. They are the true forces that make life meaningful:

To put it simply, Truth reveals your path, Beauty inspires you to walk it, and Goodness enables you to spread virtue along the way. It is on this path that you gain the greatest reward: you know who you are and why you are here. Your soul finds its true place in the universe. (pg 230, Coming Alive)

Come Alive!

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More Tools For Improvement

As a coach, I have shelves full of self-help, personal development, and life-affirming inspirational books. They usually come from recommendations, curiosity, or the need to find an answer–or another answer. The Tools by Phil Stutz & Barry Michels came from all of those incentives. Brian Johnson of Optimize.me often extols the value of Stutz’s Tools, and I am often looking for an exercise that might help my clients.

This book provides simple and profound tools to inspire us to have a great day, every day. There was one tool that was really a knock on the side of the head reminding me that I probably have most of the answers already. I need to practice them.

The tool is called Jeopardy. The chapter on this tools starts with a persuasive argument:

This book puts a special power in your hands–the power to change your life. There’s only one thing you need to do–use the tools. As a reward for doing this, you’ll discover a better and newer version of yourself. Who doesn’t want that?

I certainly assumed my patients did. The tools I gave them worked as promised; they became more confident and creative, more expressive and courageous. The results were so good, I was completely shocked by what happened next: almost every patient stopped using them. I was stupefied. I’d shown my patients the path to a new life and, for no good reason, they’d stepped off it–even the most enthusiastic ones quit.

pg 181, The Tools, Phil Stutz & Barry Michels

Convicted. I have shelves full of similar books. They all promise a better life and all we need to do is use the information that is inside.

This is one of the few books, of its genre, that I am determined not to collect dust. To help me practice using their tools, I have installed a habit. When writing my daily plan in the morning, I add at least one of the tools to my to-do list (grateful flow and active love are easy ones to incorporate). Now, in order to complete my day, I need to check it off as done or I need to move it to the next day where I am reminded to do it. And, I don’t let two days go by when I have not practiced using the tool.

These small practices have brought some extra sunshine into my world. And I will have to see what other tools on my shelf that can fuel my growth.