Interview: The Tools (Part 3!) with Phil Stutz & Barry Michels

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels. This is going to be part three in our discussion on their great book, the Tools. I've raved about this book throughout our notes in our prior chats and Phil and I chatted and then Barry and I chatted and we covered three of the five tools. So there are five tools. And you can go back and listen to those interviews to hear the first three, reversal of desire, which is basically dealing with fear. The second one we talked about was inner authority, dealing with your shadow and insecurity, that sort of thing. And the third one we talked about was willpower and realizing you're never going to be exonerated from challenges and times ticking. We're not going to live forever. So check out those interviews for that. This is part three. We're going to talk about the two tools we have yet to discuss, which are active love and grateful flow. That's a long intro. Phil and Barry really appreciate you guys taking the time and excited to explore.

We are, too. Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

All right, so let's start on a high level for those who might be listening to this chat. First, can you tell us what the tool tools are and how we use them in our lives? And then we'll talk about them in detail.

Okay. I think just to give you a little prelude or introduction to both of us. We were old school and we were taught to do therapy in the old school way, which isn't as popular anymore. But basically you would explore the cause of somebody's problems. You trace that cause from their past, and then everybody would be clear what the problem was, what caused it. But then the process would stop. We had no way to do anything about the present real time effect of the whatever it was, whatever the disorder was or the problem was. So both of us, almost like in a combination of rage, disappointment, curiosity, creativity, we decided we were going to go into that gap right there. It's like when other therapists stopped. We were going to begin, basically. So that's my way of introducing the idea of a tool. So a tool is a procedure, usually visual, not always. That will change your state, your state of mind right at the moment you're using it. And just as an example of that, we'll talk against a little bit later, let's say somebody is a warrior and you trace their worrying backwards. Let's say they're, let's say it's me. My father was always claiming impending bankruptcy just as an example. So he basically taught me to worry, and he made me afraid not to worry. It's like if you're not worried, something terrible might really happen. So let's say I was the patient. We uncovered all that stuff. We found the effect on me of having a worried father, et cetera, et cetera. That's great, but that doesn't solve the problem. So the tool. But in this case, it's the tools of grateful flow. The tool would then show the patient that they could control the worry right in real time. And people are afraid to solve their problems, believe it or not. So it's not only can you control the worry and diminish the problem, but you're not going to get penalized for it. You're not going to get punished for it. It's really okay. So that's why I say a tool. So in this case, the symptom would be worrying, and the change of state would be a change to a state of gratefulness. But what the patient wants to know is, will I be less worried? Can I sleep tonight? Et cetera. So you want to say anything about that?

Yeah, that's a great explanation. You know, when I was a student, I'm a little bit younger than Phil, I was frustrated with this seeming dichotomy in the field of psychology. And the dichotomy was between depth psychology, which is what Phil essentially described. It goes deeply into your past, and at its best, it really tries to explore forces in the unconscious that because they're unconscious, we're not aware of. And it was always set up as that's one sort of field of psychology. And then the other field, at the opposite end of the spectrum is behaviorism, essentially the sort of premise of which is we're all just programmable computers, in a sense, and forget about all this depth and unconscious stuff. If you take a habit and I give you a way to change the habit, I'm going to give you something in real time, and if you use it, it'll overcome the habit kind of thing. Depth psychology frustrated me because there were never any solutions. You could just go deep and deep and deeper and deeper and deeper, but they would never give you a solution. And cognitive behavioral psychology bothered me because it just seemed so superficial. It was almost like, take a pill, you. You're better kind of thing. And I just sensed that human beings were deeper than that. What was so revelatory about meeting Phil, now 30 years ago, was that he had melded the two together, and tools are the way he melded them together. Because a tool not only changes a habit. Like, if your habit is worry, you can use a tool and you will stop worrying at that moment. But it also calls upon and evokes forces that are so deeply buried in your unconscious, you never knew they existed. So I saw it as a melding of two extremes in psychology where you could not only change habits, but also feel that you were evolving as a human being. You were expanding, in a sense, and.

Connecting to those unconscious powers. Right. And channeling them.

So there's kind of a paradox, which is you get your chops. You learn how to use these unconscious powers based on your problems. But that's just the beginning. Once you can solve the problem, you become very confident, and it's almost like the sky's the limit. Things were possible that I did not know were possible. And that's really what we're about, not just solving the immediate problem.

And let me underscore something that Phil just said, which is it really changes your whole feeling about problems. Most of us just say, oh, God, I don't want any more problems. When you use the tools enough, you almost look forward to problems because you know that they're just going to evoke more and more potential that lies inside of you.

It's amazing to become fuels for growth. I mean, bring it on, right? Our first tool. If everything is an opportunity to grow. Yeah. This is, again, why I get so fired up.

Go ahead, Go ahead, Phil.

The one thing I want to say, though, is especially now, because therapy has advanced a lot in the last 15 years. There are a lot of people that nominally and verbally say, yes, Right. And that's the way to go, which is great, but it's not enough. The tools are very, very specific. The patient won't use the tool unless it's very specific. And they have to understand how it works, why it works, et cetera. That's why we have a lot of tools.

Yes. And the bottom line is tools leverage.

Problems into possibility in five specific ways in five specific problems. And the first book, and I'm really excited to hear about the second book we're going to talk about toward the end of our chat today. But basically, four primary problems. Right. The fear, the shadow, insecurity, and then we're going to talk today about. We mentioned worry, which is what we use Grateful Flow for. Right. Let's drill into that. So talk to us about grateful Flow, the problem it's solving and how we can use that as fuel for our growth via grateful flow.

Okay, that's me, right?

Yes.

Okay. You know, before I get into exactly what the tool is, I think it's worth a two minute discussion about the power of thinking and its effect on people. You know, it's been said, it's trite, but it's been said so many times, the world is not how it is, it's how you think it is. And you know, at this point it almost sounds ridiculous, but everybody forgets it all the time. So your thoughts will dominate and dictate how you see the world. And how you see the world to a very large extent is going to determine how happy you are, how meaningful your life is, how successful you become, even your health. And now this is now been accepted by the straight psychiatrist. The reason it's been accepted is because they now have functional ways of studying the brain and brain activity. So they can see, they can see it both on the front end how, let's say worrying would affect the brain. And they can also see it on the back end. If you can correct the worrying, how does that affect the brain? And one of the things that has the brain is very flexible and pliable, Much, much, much more so than they ever dreamed. So that's a way of introducing the importance of this. Now the other thing, and I guess it's inevitable we're going to get into this anyway because the second book is about Part X. Part X is the devil. It's the part in every single human being that wants to screw you up. It wants to limit you. It wants you not to reach your potential. It wants you to be unhappy. It wants you to hate other people and ultimately wants you to hate God on top of everything else. So it's this sneaky little devil wandering around in your unconscious. Now here's the thing about this, that'll help people to use the tool. If the average person says, well, I'm worried, but I have good reason to be worried, it's very logical why I'm worried right now. And that makes it harder for the shrink. Now, the first time I realized what was really going on, I was in medical school. I was in the. I was, I was finished the second year of medical school. And the second year there are a lot of really difficult tests. I wasn't sure if I was going to pass the tests or not. And finally the last day came and I realized I passed all the tests and I was really worried. Worry, worry, worry. I couldn't sleep. I'm gonna have to repeat the year, whatever. But I passed. I remember this as clear as day. I was walking into my dorm room, school was over. I was packing up all my crap to take it home. And the test must have been ended maybe 15 minutes before that. And I heard myself worry, oh, you don't have a girlfriend. You're not going to have a date this summer. You're going to be alone all summer. And at that time I was 22, 23. I said, something weird is going on here. I didn't even get a 15 minute break. And I was just as worried about the girl situation as I was about the test, which also didn't make very much sense. And that was my first exposure to what we call part X. You want to say anything?

No, I think you're doing great. It propagates worry and it has an incentive to, because one of the fastest ways to limit a human being. I mean, think about it. If you were the devil, how would you want to limit a human being? Just flood them with negative thoughts all day long. What that's going to do is limit their conception of their own potential. But it's also going to shift their conception of the world. You know, the world becomes a very hostile, dangerous place when you're thinking negatively all the time. It's not a place that's going to support you for your ideas, that's going to celebrate you in any way. People who think negatively really end up feeling like, ugh, why bother? The best I can hope for is just to get by.

Yeah. So that brings us to, I think two things that are before we teach the tool to just remember which is, number one, most of what you're thinking is wrong. The worse you feel, the more depressed you are, the more negative the thoughts are, the greater the chances that that's wrong. It's not 100%, but it's up there. 98, 99%. That's insulting to people. They don't like it. We're very egotistical about our thought processes and our minds. You know, we think we're the smartest thing in the universe. Don't tell me I'm wrong. I don't know what I'm talking about. They would rather have the thought be right if it was going to ruin their life, then have to say to themselves, I'm wrong. It's a peculiarity of human nature. That's number one. Number two, the content of the thinking, which is what I've told you that story about medical school. The content of the thinking is geared by Part X. Not to describe reality, not to tell the truth, not to help you, not to illuminate. It's designed for one purpose and one purpose only. It's just what Barry said, which is to cripple you, destroy your potential and place you in this imaginary but very, very negative world. Now, once you accept this, the game is changed altogether. And we like to do this because once we've changed the game, then it becomes alright just to focus on the tool and just to focus on stopping the worry itself. But in some patients, it takes them a while. It takes them a while to believe it's possible. And it takes a while to convince them that most of these thoughts are ridiculous.

Can I just say one thing? And it's an act of faith for most people to say. I have to work on these thoughts rather than trying to prove or disprove whether they're true. Yes. Like they're bad for me. Even if they turn out to be true, it's bad for me to worry.

Yes. I always use the famous example. I mean, I'm almost 70, so let's say in 20 years I'll be dead. There'll be a worm crawling right here. No question about it. Unless they get cremated or something. But would it be a good idea for me to think about that? It's a true thought, but how could it possibly help me thinking about that? Now, there's a different way you can think about that worm, which is, I don't have much time left. I better get going here. Which would be a positive. But mostly the effect of these thoughts are even if they're right, what Barry said, it doesn't matter. They're still destructive. Now, should I go into the Black Cloud bar first before we give him the tool? What do you think?

Sure. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. I love that image.

Okay, so if you. I'm gonna have a picture of it. It's in the book. Think about it like this. You're a typical crotchety person, you know, maybe your uncle or your cousin or something. If it's you, don't admit it. You just pretend it's a relative, but it's the person walking around spewing out negativity. Some of it they're telling you, oh, it's a cloudy day, it's going to rain, my income tax was too high, whatever. But most of most of it's just internal. Okay? But it never stops. It's a voice that's negative that never stops. Now what happens is just you can visualize this. All these negative thoughts. Remember, I Told you before that your view of the world is dictated by what you think, not necessarily by reality. Think of all these negative thoughts, like floating up and creating this cloud. And it's a big cloud. You know, if you take a really little kid and you take them out on a cloudy day and you know like a 4 year old, 3, 3 year old would have to be, and you tell them, you know, it's cloudy out, but there's a sun above there, the kid won't believe you. He'll say, wow, no, I don't see any sun. Right, well, that's how the human psyche is. I don't see any sun. It's not because it's not there. It's because our mind's been inundated, crippled, paralyzed and brainwashed to view things through this black cloud. And what happens after? I mean, anybody can put themselves in the black cloud if they really were stupid enough to want to do that. But what happens over years and years? It becomes a habit. And people have habits of thinking that are terrible for them, but they don't want to change the habit. The reason they don't want to change the habit is it's very familiar. It's like, this feels horrible, but this is me. This is the real me. So. And when you. What we're trying to instill in a person is the drive, the insistence and in the sense, the entitlement. I don't have to function as if that's all there is. I want to dispel the black cloud and see the sun and you know, if we have time, we'll talk about the sun obviously as a symbol. The other thing you should know before we teach you the tool is the part X and negative thoughts it creates move very fast. They move so fast you wouldn't believe it. So your. You're being brainwashed quicker than you can actually think yourself. It's like some guy putting a hypodermic needle in your neck and just injecting these negative thoughts right into. And that's to say they're not really measured thought through, logical conclusions, they're just poisons. Barry likes to use the metaphor. I don't know, whatever it is. Like if you had a glass of water and you took a drop of black ink and you dropped it in, in about three seconds, the whole glass would be black. Right? You just dropped the whole thing in. So that kind of spreading of negativity happens. But it's not a glass of water, it's human beings. And it spreads very easily from one human being. To another.

Which.

And then you're getting into other issues, issues of leadership. You know, a bad leader is somebody who lets that kind of negativity run rampant. And believe me, Pardex, if you are any kind of leader in bizarre and your family partx is always there trying to do that, it's trying to poison your mind and then spread the poison out into the social environment. And this is a thing that's not discussed enough as far as I'm concerned. Again, it's better than it used to be.

And I just want to add one thing to that, Phil, which is, you know, most people, when they hear that, say, well, I may think negatively, but I keep it to myself. It doesn't matter. The truth is, when you're in the black cloud, people around you sense it and they start to absorb that energy. And we see this all the time in families and marriages because it's kind of like a single organism. And if one part of the organism is always thinking negatively, you may never speak a word of it. But your kids will pick it up, your spouse will pick it up, and the whole family kind of goes down a notch as a result of that.

Yeah. Listen very carefully because this is another power people don't realize they have. And we call it family forces. Let's say you're a warrior. We give you this tool and you use the tool and it kind of works a little bit. You know, you're a little more positive, you have a little more control over your mind, etc. That accomplishment will be conveyed to the other family members. Not, not consciously, not. Not didactically. They will smell it, they'll feel it, and it go right inside them. So while you're controlling your own thinking and your own negativity, you're actually helping the other family members. My experience is it helps them more than if you talk to them about it, because if you talk to somebody about it, he can consciously resist what you're saying. Family forces go in unconsciously. The person doesn't even know.

And there are going to be a lot of examples of that in the new book where one person works on himself or herself and uses tools over and over and over again. And those family forces sort of spread out into the family and sometimes into business organizations, and they start to see everyone around them functioning on a higher level as a result of what they've done, even though the other people have no idea that they're working on themselves.

Yeah, let's say that again. So somebody who can control their mind, particularly this kind of Thing worrying because most people have never been able to control their mind for two seconds. It wouldn't even occur to them. But if they've tried, they've failed miserably. So once you can sell them on that, everything moves up to a higher level. What were you just saying, Barry?

That the new book is going to have a lot of examples of individuals using tools and literally seeing changes, improvements in the people around them as a result of their use of the tool.

Yeah. And you know one thing that's very helpful if you believe everything you were saying, which is then if you're a leader, you're actually responsible for controlling your state of mind. It's not just, well, it'll be nicer and feel better. That's a big part of your job. And both of us train a lot of executives, and it's one of the big things we do is we give them a sense of emotional and spiritual responsibility. All right, let me show the tool. I mean, there's a lot more stuff we could talk about. You have any questions on this, Brian?

Just soaking it up. And you know, all the way back to that glass with the one drop of black ink. Not only does it affect the family, but I imagined your mind is then colored that quickly.

Yes.

The speed with which negativity comes in was really impactful for me. And just that practice of slowing down and how our society is constantly click baiting us and getting us to go from thing to thing to thing and training ourselves, really. Right. To have no control of our mind and to default into the negative really resonated. And again, just making me more excited to check out this part. X. But no, all of it is great. And I'm excited to hear its antidote via the application of this tool.

You know, I've kind of. I don't feel that good today. I don't know if I'm up to it. No, I'm playing with you.

You gotta control that thought. Let's get some flow going here. There's a bright sun out, Phil. There's a bright sun out. You just gotta look up there.

Okay, thank you. I feel better. Okay, here's the way you do this. And I'll teach the tool first, and then I'll explain it afterwards. All you need is a couple of things you're grateful for, first of all. And when we do the tool, you'll need them specifically. Here's the key. You can have a big thing like, my kids are healthy, I just got a huge promotion, whatever. But the little things actually are more Helpful. And we'll explain why that is. So the little thing is I. I'm grateful I had enough money to eat lunch. I'm grateful I had a good teacher in the second grade. I'm grateful the clouds went away. I'm grateful the waves look good. As for him, he's California. So you're searching for. You're going to search for things to be grateful for, but you want to make sure many of them are off the beaten path. I have a thing with hot water, so I'm very grateful. When the hot water works, I'm happy.

I came up with a new one today. Phil, can I see? I did my senior thesis in 1970 on a Smith Corona. So most of your audience probably doesn't know what that means. What it means is that if you have to switch around a paragraph or switch one section, you have to type the whole 150 page thesis over again. So the gratitude that I have for a computer being able to block, edit things and move things around is just. It's unbelievable to me.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like a miracle.

Look, let me just say to the audience, he's a lawyer, so I don't know if they. I won't say anything more. Okay, so here we go. Here we go. Back again, again. And I'll explain it later. Just let me take you through the procedure. So basically, you want to do it for a very short period of time. Maybe 10 minutes, 10 seconds, 15 seconds. Not a long time, but you want to get at least three, four different items in. Okay, so I'm grateful I love my grandmother. I'm grateful I had a good breakfast today. I'm grateful there's a beautiful sky. I'm grateful the elevator works. Whatever now. So you say, I am grateful. Oh, and before we get into this, a lot of people will tell me, I don't need this tool. I'm grateful. Of course I'm grateful. I get up every morning, I feel good. That's good. But it's not good enough. This is a procedure to fight part X. And believe me, it's not going to go down easily. If you just say to part X, Y, I'm pretty grateful. He'll say, ha, ha ha. You wait till you see what I'm going to inject. And you're thinking in five minutes. So this is a war and you have to carry the procedure out. The procedures, you know, in terms of what is the tool. They are made to be done easily and quickly. But usually you got to put in 30 seconds of concentration and Modern person doesn't even want to do that anyway. So you're going to say these things slowly. I'm grateful. I like my older brother. I'm grateful. I'm good in mathematics. I'm grateful. It doesn't usually get below 30 degrees in California. Whatever. Nice and slow. And as you create the thought, you want to feel the gratefulness. And I would say try to feel it right around your chest and your solar plexus, or right around near your heart. And so what you're doing is you're creating a series of items to make yourself aware that you're grateful for them. Nice and slow. Now, once you've done that, you want to keep remain aware of this force from your heart that's been creating these thoughts, maybe after you've gotten four of them. But you don't want to create any more thoughts. You just want to feel the force itself. So it's a force that's grateful and wants to create something else to be grateful for, but you won't let it because you want it to just feel it as an upward moving force. And you could say it moves up into your chest. Some people just keep it in their chest area now. And that's the grateful flow. But we're not finished yet. Once you have that grateful flow right over here, you want it. So all you've done is you've named your four things. You've stopped the words from coming. Just feeling the force of gratefulness moving up. Then you want to feel your chest soften, really soften, almost like it's no longer solid. And as your chest melts, you want to feel the presence of something, of otherworldly compassion and giving. Don't try to understand it. Don't try to think what it. What it is. Don't define it. Don't do anything like that, because that's more thinking. You just want to feel it giving you everything right in your chest area and let it in. Okay, now that. Okay, you can open your eyes. That's the basis, basic picture of the tool. Do you want to say anything about.

No, I thought that was great. That's exactly right. I would give a couple of tips. One is the way I had to learn this tool was just to start simply by generating five grateful thoughts. And then after I had done that for a couple of days, maybe a week, then I moved on to the next step, which is to actually feel my heart softening and feeling gratitude. And then after I practiced that a bunch of times, then I could feel this otherworldly presence. Kind of approaching me. So I just don't want people to think they got to get it all right the first time. It's okay to practice these things and get them in increments. We're talking about a truly powerful spiritual practice. And it doesn't necessarily come easily unless you practice it and forgive yourself for your mistakes and just do it over and over and over again. It took me a while to realize that the thoughts were not just thoughts. They were openings in my heart for feelings that I hadn't felt in a long, long time.

Yeah. Let me just tell you two things, which is, number one, Barry's the best person. I'm not saying patient. Forget about that. Best person I've ever seen in terms of his work ethic. It's extraordinary. And when someone does these tools, if they tell me, well, I try, I went home and I tried it for 10 minutes, it works great. Everything's great. They're just not being honest. In other words, it's a fight to learn how to do these tools. And it's a fight to concentrate once you know how to do them. And then it's even a bigger fight once you feel better because you want to stop doing them. By the way, I guess I should mention, so I don't forget, this is one of the tools that you might do ritualistically, meaning you might do it when you get up in the morning, when you go to sleep, meals, anything like that. Most of the tools don't lend themselves to that, but this one does very much now. So let me just take everybody through it again once really fast so they can feel it while going, okay, so close your eyes and just slowly create things you're grateful for. Try for four. Okay, that's good. Keep the flow going now. But no words, no thoughts, no nothing. Just a pure force moving right through your heart. Wants to create. And now feel your chest soften, like down to jello. Completely soften. You're going to feel this beneficent, benign, giving force. Very concerned with giving to you. And you're just going to feel it approach you. And the sense of melting is now going to be melting into and becoming part of that force, however that comes out. Okay, that was excellent. Okay. You know, as I talk now, try to stay a little. You want to say something, Brian?

No, I was just experiencing that. Coming back out of that.

Okay, good. So again, remember, there's two things you gotta remember. Saying, I'm grateful, believing in the tool. All that stuff is nice, but you actually have to do this. And I discovered it 25, 30 years ago. I still have to do it. Everybody does. So we're trying to build up, besides the technology, the tools, trying to build up this aggressive, you know, willingness. The other thing is a little more technical. When you're trying to name these things, don't always say the same four things. And the reason for that is, again, you want to force yourself to do the work. The work of mixing new ideas directs your willpower to this beneficent force, which we call it the source.

If you want to say that in another way, the universe is always creating new things. So you want to kind of make yourself like. Make your heart and your mind like the universe. So it takes a certain amount of creativity just to come up with new things each time. And that's why, Phil, I think you originally called the tool the grateful flow. It's that flow of newness that actually syncs you up with something greater than you.

Just reflect back some of the experience I have as I listen to you guys share. We know scientific way that gratitude is so powerful. Just doing it once a week for documenting five things increases your happiness by as much as 25% or something ridiculous like that. But what I love about your work is the practice aspect of it and just being able to notice when that black cloud of worry thoughts comes over. And to discipline ourselves with the intensity that Barry talked about and lives with rigorously and relentlessly. And to make it a practice and to get better and better at it incrementally is what inspires me the most. Just to feel that and to have that if then trigger, if this comes in, then I do this. And I won't do it well in the beginning because I've got decades of experience of not doing that. But if I give it time, I'm going to more consistently tap into more deeply this extraordinary force. So this is what I love so much about this and everything else that we're talking about.

Yeah, it's very exciting if you get into it, because, I don't know, I got into this early for some reason. I remember even as a kid, I couldn't articulate it, but the notion that we as human beings are given consciousness and free will and that we can use that to actually change ourselves, that really excited me. I don't know why. I was a weird little kid, I guess, but it really turned me on. And that's why the tools turned me on so much, was because here were very specific ways that I could leverage problems into potential. And it really does become a Very exciting thing for those who can really apply it diligently.

And it's not, if I can highlight that for a moment, it's not just the depth psychology, archaeological dig therapy of going from negative 10 to negative 5 to 0. It's okay, cool, we got that now. What's the infinite potential that we're capable of? If we actually practice this and again use these challenges and problems in quotes as fuel, then it's literally like strapping on the rocket boosters and getting detour. The upper limits of potential. Right.

That's what's so exciting about it, to see how far you can actually evolve as a human being. And it really gives you a feeling of limitlessness.

Yeah, yeah. I remember when I. I was on the freshman basketball team and this kid had played the school St. Francis in Brooklyn. It was a good school, I gave out scholarships. Anyway, this kid, John Clifton, had scored 37 points on the freshman team, which was the school record. But there were five minutes left in the game and the game was tight. And I remember it to this day, I was 16 years old. The coach said it's really okay to score more than 37 points. You can keep going just because you hit the record, you don't have to stop. And it stuck in my mind. It was 50 years ago and that's what we're about here, you know, and telling people that. And that really, that really makes it fundamentally different from most of the therapies. I want to say something about Brian. You know, I saw him. I think it was by accident, I don't know, but I saw one of your clips teaching our stuff. The first thing I said is, who is this? The second thing I said is, geez, he's better at it than I am. But the third thing I realized is you actually had that work ethic. And I think the more there's like a overview group of people that are willing to do that, the better.

Well, I mean, this is this. Thank you. I feel that in my heart and I appreciate your kind words and it means a lot and that's the quality that I aspire to have the most. We're on video chatting, but I don't know if you can see that, but arete is the Greek word for their meta virtue of in this moment are you showing up most fully. And so I really appreciate that reflection and that intensity and that work ethic is something that I aspire to continue to cultivate. So thank you. I feel like that was great. I really like your meditation. I really felt that obviously we can talk about it some more, but I feel great about it. If you guys feel good and we can talk about active love.

Sounds great.

Yeah.

Okay, let's do that. So, active love. Yeah. Again, let's talk about this, because this one has really impacted me as well, particularly in my intimate relationship with my wife. And there's that maze of. Okay, it's easy to run around and kind of. Barry and Phil will tell us about the maze. But from my experience, there's this pattern we have of worry, which we just talked about. And there's also that kind of anger and that frustration of I'm right, you're wrong kind of thing. And finding all the reasons why someone's wrong and to really move from that into using this tool of active love has been transformative for me, not just in our relationship, but in all relationships. If anytime I feel that niggling of anger, this is such a beautiful tool to apply. So I'm really excited for you guys to explore that, however you feel most inspired.

That's great, Brian. Yeah. Let's start with the problem first. Active love is a tool that's designed for a particular state of mind, which Phil and I call the maze. It's the state of mind. Everybody recognizes it, Everybody gets into it. When you've been wronged in some way and you can't stop thinking about the person who wronged you, you go over it, what they did to you in your mind, you can't let go of it. And it's like. It literally is like a maze because you get trapped in it. So your boyfriend flirts with someone and now you're plotting how to humiliate him back. A co worker dismisses an idea of yours, and you didn't say anything about it, and now you're coming up with brilliantly cutting remarks that are going to put him down, you know, et cetera. I actually saw this in action a couple of months ago. I took an Uber ride, and the driver was in the maze. You know, a passenger about a week before that had gotten into his car incredibly drunk and had vomited all over his upholstery.

Don't you tell them what the maze is?

Yeah, it's this state of mind where you can't get over the wrong that's been committed to you so he'll never see this guy again. But he couldn't let go. He was talking about it with me a week later for the entire ride. So what happens when unfair things happen to us is we feel like it shouldn't have happened. And look, maybe in some perfect world, it shouldn't have happened. There's only one problem with that, which is it did happen. And no amount of thinking about it or anger about it is going to change that fact. So your job is to get past it, to actually minimize its effect on you. Otherwise, you're letting this person who wronged you and what they did to you, you're letting that eat your mind. So whatever you decide to do about it, you may decide to confront the person, you may decide to let it go. The first step is to get yourself out of the maze. Whether you confront the person or not is actually a strategic decision. And you can't make good strategic decisions when you're in the maze. I'm a good example of that. One evening. This was about 20 years ago, thank God, but I spent the entire night composing the nastiest, most poisonous letter I've ever written to a contractor who had kind of screwed me. And I have to say, it was some of the best writing I've ever done. But when I woke up, I realized I can't send this letter. I actually need this guy to complete the job. It was a complete waste of my time. So the question becomes, how do you get out of the maze? And to get out of the maze, you need something stronger than your ego. See, the ego is the part of you that actually makes judgments about what should happen and what shouldn't happen. And it's already decided that this shouldn't happen. It was unfair. And like a little kid, it's going to dig its heels in and stick with that until the wrong gets righted. And good luck with that, because, frankly, most wrongs never get righted. You know, the slights and the injuries and the insults just come in, and you have to let go of them.

Yeah, my favorite was at the beginning of Hamlet, you know, where his father's been killed and his father comes back as a ghost. And he says to Hamlet, you must set the balance straight. You know, Flora and Shakespeare. And if you read the play, it didn't work too well. Everybody was dead again.

Yeah, it didn't work too well.

No, it's great.

So while you're in the maze, while you're waiting for the wrong to be righted, all that really happens is life goes on without you. Everyone else is moving on, and you're stuck in this horrible state of mind. So if the ego isn't enough to get you out of the maze, you need something else. And what you need is something greater than you. Now, in our first book. We call that a higher force. It doesn't have religious connotations. If you're agnostic or atheistic, don't be put off by it. It just means that it's something bigger than your ego. And in this instance, we identify the higher force that we're talking about with the word outflow. Think of outflow as a force that just loves life in all of its forms. Good, bad, beautiful, ugly, fair, unfair. It just completely accepts everything that exists without the judgments and differentiations that the ego makes. It's kind of like sunlight. It just shines on everybody. They don't have to merit it or deserve it. It just shines on them, you know, kind of thing. And it's the force that really embodies. There's this beautiful quote from Rainer Maria rilke, this early 20th century poet, where he says, life is in the right always, which means you have to accept everything. Outflow is that force that he's describing. Now what the tool act of love does is it syncs you up. It synchronizes you with this force of outflow so that you can out of the maze and back into life and start participating again, fair or unfair.

So.

I think probably the best thing for me to do is to actually give you the tool and have you practice it and see how you do. Probably the best way for me to teach the tool is for you to imagine that someone has wronged you. Just pick an incident from the past or predict something that's going to happen in the future. All of our examples, because we live in la, come from traffic. So somebody cuts you off on the freeway or just stops in the middle of the street or whatever, so you've got that wronged feeling going on inside of you. That's where we can start with the tool. The tool has three steps. The first step is called concentration. Just imagine that you are surrounded by a warm liquid light that is infinitely loving. And what I want you to do is feel your heart expand far beyond you so that you can become one with this love. Now, as you bring your heart back to normal size, this infinite energy concentrates itself inside your chest. It's this unstoppably compressed loving force that just wants to give itself away. Now we can move on to step two. This is called transmission. Focus on the person who has triggered your anger. Obviously, in this instance, they're not physically in front of you, and usually they're not. So just visualize their presence. And now what I want you to do is send all of the love in your chest directly to them, hold absolutely nothing back. It's like completely expelling a deep breath. And then comes step three, which is called penetration. Follow the love as it leaves your chest. And when it enters the other person at their solar plexus, don't just watch that happening. Feel it enter them. This will give you the sense that you're actually completely one with them. It erases the distinction between you and them. And now just relax. You'll feel yourself once again surrounded by infinite love. And it returns to you all of the energy that you gave away. At that point, you should feel. That's it. It's three steps. So it's concentration where you're concentrating this force of outflow inside your heart. It's transmission where you're sending the outflow to the other person. And its penetration, where, in a sense, the object world disappears. Any distance between you and the other person disappears. And you're over it. You're completely through it.

Beautiful.

Now, let me say one other thing about this. Most people, their biggest problem with this is that they get hung up on whether or not they should address the person who did the wrong to them. And their minds keep flipping back to, yeah, but should I talk to them or should I not talk to them? What should I do? Or should I confront them? Et cetera, et cetera. And I just want to make an appeal to anyone who's listening to this. Always get yourself out of the maze first before you make that decision. Because you can't make good decisions in the maze. And it's, you know, in a sense, the philosophy behind active love is very important. The philosophy is your state of mind is ground zero. It comes first. It has to be more important than anything else that you do, whether you get back at the person or address them or confront them or not. So you can't control most of what happens to you in the outside world. That's why your state of mind is ground zero. Because you can control your state of mind, your response to what happens in the outside world. And that's a kind of power that most people never experience. It's what Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, was really trying to address when he said, he who conquers others is strong, but he who masters himself is mighty. And that's the kind of might that act of love creates. It says, I will never disconnect myself from outflow, no matter what you do to me. And if you reread Martin Luther King's speech on loving your enemies, you'll see the whole spirit of this is embodied in that speech. I mean, there's never been. Well, there have been, but this is a man who was really severely persecuted by almost every state in the South. And he said in this speech, I refuse to hate, I refuse to seek revenge. That would be the worst thing that I could do to myself. And I won't let that happen. Yeah.

I just want to add a couple of things. Do we have to stop?

No. That was amazing.

That was awesome.

Thank you.

Two things. Number one, you. If people always say, well, especially where I grew up, you know, are you a sissy? You know, you're gonna let somebody diss you or step to you. And the answer is very interesting, which is, if, I mean now, in my old age, if I had to punch you in the face, I would want to do the tool and be in full outful. And the reason would be, I would need less from you. The whole. The purpose of the tool is don't try to get what you need from the other person because that gives them power over you. So what do you get in this tool? You get the sense of connection to the whole. You get the sense you're part of the universe. You get the sense that no matter how egregious, heinous, evil the other person is, they can't stop you anymore from being in this outflow state. Now, that outflow state and punching somebody in the face are very similar, actually. Now, if you're in the maze, oh, you did this to me. And you, I can't believe. You better apologize. You stiffen up and you're not going to be as good of a fighter. So I'm not. It's not a license to do that, obviously, but just to deal with that. Objection. The second thing that's very interesting is if you have to confront somebody or tell them something or be in an uncomfortable situation, send act of love to them first, send it right into the situation. You'll find to your amazement, I'd say about 50% of the time, that will change the valence. It'll change the trajectory of the meeting. And sometimes you think the guy's going to jump right on your case and you do that and somehow the peace of mind gets transmitted to him. Also, he's a little bit nicer to you.

Can I give an example of that? This is an amazing example. This happened to me like 25 years ago. My mother was a. Phil knew her actually. She was a difficult woman. She was an amazing mother in many, many ways. Incredibly creative, really bright. I mean, just taught me philosophy from A very early age. But she was very difficult. And the people she was the hardest on were my older s. And just to give you an example, when I was a young parent, I mean, my kids were very, very young, I was working incredibly long hours. I would see like 10 patients a day, come home at about 8 o', clock, grab some dinner, maybe spend a little bit of time with them, go to sleep, and then get up the next morning. It would just be like that every day of the week. One night I came home, it was about 8 o'. Clock. I was just exhausted. The kitchen was a mess. I made myself some dinner. I was just sitting down to it, and the phone rang. And I picked up the phone, it was my mother on the other end. And she didn't even say hello. She literally said, barry, there's a light bulb out over my bed and if you don't get over here and change it now, I'm going to find another son who will. Click. This is my mother.

Did that bother you?

What'd you say?

Did that bother you?

And this was fairly routine for my mother. I must have used active love 20 or 30 times after that phone call. And I decided to get in my car and go over there. And she answered the door and I went in and I changed the light bulb. I don't think I could have done this without the tool. I sat down with her and said, now look, you've alienated everyone in your life except for me. You can't ever speak to me that way again. Do you understand that? And amazingly, for a woman who was so hard, she burst into tears and she said, I know, I'm so sorry. I feel abandoned so easily that I come out swinging and that's why people abandoned me kind of thing. It was an amazing moment and it's indicative of those family forces that we were talking about earlier. If you can change yourself, very often, I'm not saying it's a guarantee or anything, but very often other people rise to the level that you've achieved.

I have a question. When we discuss these tools, each of them in their own right is obviously so powerful. Is the way to build the capacity to practice them? Practicing them and. Or is there a meta practice that you encourage your patients and clients to follow? I'll leave it at that.

Well. Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say practicing them is number one. Number two is making connections with other people, whether it's in the form of a tools group, which, by the way, there is one that has formed in New York and there are others around the country. But even just having one person to check in with regularly and discuss whatever problem you're having and get advice on which tool to use and report into someone about whether or not you're using it, times that you've lapsed, times that it just, you know, just like a 12 step group, you know, keeps people sober. Any kind of contact, regular contact with someone else keeps you straighter in your use of tools.

That's great, Phil, Were you going to say something?

There's a thing in couples therapy. See, these tools apply to couples therapy as well as regular therapy. Now here's what happens in couple therapy. First of all, 50% of the therapists are not very good at it. So forget them because they make things worse. The other 50% they will. The key to couples therapy is what I call the interface. It doesn't matter who did what to who 32 years ago. It doesn't matter where you go. The only thing that matters is how you interact every day when you are together. And the classic interface time is the husband comes home from work at 7:30 at night, his wife is tearing her hair out, there's two little kids destroying the living room. That's his interface. But interface could be any, anytime. You're basically coming back into contact with somebody now. So. And they're fairly classic problems with the interface. So here's the most common. When somebody tends to be withdrawn, right? Let's say the guy, he gets home and he wants to withdraw and read all the newspapers and his, his phone and all this stuff, right? So, and he'll overdo it. Now that's his part X. The fact that he wants to do that, he wants withdrawal. Now the wife's part X, very commonly, not all the time of course, is clinginess, neediness, fear of abandonment. That's her part X. Okay? Then you get an interlock between the two exes. He starts to withdraw, she starts to feel abandoned. Just what Barry was saying. He feels she's clinging, she's on his case, he'll withdraw even more, she'll then get more abandoned. So we call that interlocking X's. It's the neurotic part of the personalities dancing with each other. That's their interface.

It's literally a self reinforcing cycle where each part X is reinforcing the part X in the other.

Yes, that's an escalating cycle.

I've never experienced that.

You live in a monastery then.

Maybe it was yesterday morning, I don't know.

Now here's the Thing, okay, so I'm in the shrink, so I see it's clear what the problem is, right? So I can tell the husband stop withdrawing, be more present. And I can tell the wife back off, give him some room. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's fine. At least if the shrink knows that it sees it as well, that's great. But it's not great enough because you got Pardix screwing the pooch here, you know, trying to mess it up. So they need tools. So just to go back to the tool, this fantastic presentation Barry just gave, let's say in this case it would probably be more applicable to the husband because he's trying to withdraw, she's on his case, he's getting angry. Then he's starting to get sullen, and he's complaining about things she did 22 years ago to him, whatever. He has to use that tool right in that moment. It doesn't matter what he knows. If he doesn't use the tool, he can't change his state. If he can't change his state, her part X is still going to be on his case. She won't believe it. And people are mistrustful anyway. So this is. It's really not that complex. But it's one of the things, one of the reasons this particular tool is so important. It's almost like a world level importance. Because to me, this is the problem in the world right now. And it's great for people to talk about it, but it's not great enough. That's one of our missions, is to try to get these things out.

I want to add something onto what Phil said. Two things, actually. The first is that another amazing concept that I learned from Phil that's directly applicable to couples therapy is unilaterality. Means that husband is going to have to use that tool, act of love, regardless of whether his wife is working on herself or not. Because there are times when everyone lapses and forgets or just is too roughed up by their own part X to use the tool, and what we want in couples therapy is to get the couple to the highest common denominator, not the lowest common denominator. If you're only willing to use a tool when your partner's using the tool, you're functioning at the lowest common denominator. If you're using a tool unilaterally, like, I don't care whether she does it or not, I'm doing it for myself, then very likely she'll rise up to that level and vice versa. I'm not being sexist about it. I just, you know, it's a. It's a place where we all tend to absolve ourselves of individual responsibility. And the answer is, I'm taking that responsibility for myself. That's it. It's bottom line. Yeah.

And that's real emotional leadership. Not just talking about it. That's doing it.

And it's amazing, too, because it's only when both individuals in a dyad are in that X state that the real fireworks occur. Right. If one of you is up, even if it's not using a tool, you just happen to be in a better mood and you don't get down, then it won't happen. So it's just fascinating for me to observe that in my own relationship and to do what you're talking about of, well, it's unilateral responsibility. Of be the one that's stepping up when it's, you know, when that little X is trying to get you to see all the reasons why the other person is being the one. If they just change, everything would be okay.

It's amazing because my wife is a shrink also, and I'm a shrink, so I observe myself and there are times when I can't control my part X. And I notice that if my wife doesn't respond and she just does her, I can feel my ex wanting to pull her in and wanting to provoke her. And I'm watching my part X lose, and I'm so grateful to her at the same time for not feeding into it. It's kind of amazing to watch her.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

Well, this is good. We covered a ton. Thank you so much for your.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you. You really bring out the best in us.

Well, it's really inspiring. I hope everyone gets as much as I got out of our chat today. Again, can't wait for the next book. Part X is the title. Working title.

We don't have a title yet, to be honest with you, but Part X is the. The subject of the book. That's what we're going to get into.

This is good. Early 2017 is what Barry and Phil are planning on. I really look forward to getting a copy of that and having another one of these chats timed around your release of that book. For now, remind me the best place that people can go to discover more the Tools book.

And you can sign up there for bimonthly newsletters that we send out with inspiring stories and other information about the tools and all of that good stuff.

Okay. Fantastic. Thetoolsbook.com I've already praised it so much I will praise it one more time. Awesome. Get it. Check it out. Transformative. Practice it. Barry and Phil, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hey, this is Brian with one more quick note before we wrap up today's chat. I hope you enjoyed Barry and Phil's wisdom and if you did, check out their website. As Barry said, the toolsbook.com and while you're there, you may want to sign up for their newsletter. They send out twice a month with stories, new ways to use the tools, and other inspiring goodness. Great stuff you can't get anywhere else. I hope you enjoy and I look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day. See ya.

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