Interview: The Tools with Phil Stutz

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, subtitled Transform youm 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 Stutz 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. I was eager to get on the show, or if 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 me. I was a young psychiatrist, this was in the 70s, and there's a point where they train you to be a psychotherapist as well as obviously train you to use all the relevant medications. And when they taught me, at least at that time, psychoanalysis was pretty much king. In the 70s, the way they taught me to do psychotherapy left me very, very frustrated and frankly, a little bit confused because they would always go into the past. Let's say somebody is afraid of getting on an airplane, phobic, or somebody else is chronically depressed. It doesn't really matter. Whatever the symptoms were that were coming up, we were taught to go back into the past and find the cause of the symptoms, which are usually presumed to be some kind of family dynamic problem with one parent or another or both. And usually we 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 to understand the problem, I was very, very frustrated because it was almost like a laissez faire attitude among the people that were training me. Basically said, it's, you know, we'll kind of proceed slowly, and I'll never forget one guy 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 would have already done that instead of sit there and, you know, spend more money. And as the months go by, I found not only didn't it sound right, I felt it was never happening. So, anyway, that's a backstory to what the tools meant to me. And basically, the simple definition of a 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 you take a look at the depressed person, let's say just for example, the depressed person is too depressed to get out and do exercise, which is a keynote to recovering from depression. Just as a. For instance, what a tool would do is it would not just the person wouldn't just understand 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 for a lot of people, for 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 the point was, a tool puts the power in the hands of the patient, which is where it belongs.

And.

And if they use the tool, I can confidently tell them that they'll start to make inroads with the symptom. And then beyond that, they'll start to make inroads and change as a person, as a human being, which we can discuss later.

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?

Yes, that's exactly right.

Let's look at the. You talk in the book about the fact that you've identified four fundamental problems, and there are 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 in their respective tools and then talk about the 5th. And maybe we can start with the first tool, which is. 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?

Yeah, sure. Again, I got to give a little bit of a background, so it'll make sense, especially for someone who hasn't read the book. Probably the foremost human tendency is to avoid. So somebody will avoid making a phone call they need to make, they'll avoid going to the gym and working out, they'll avoid changing their diet, maybe because they have a medical illness that requires it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Just as an example, was very interesting to me because about 30 years ago, I moved out to LA. You would see the agents. And agents are. Everybody's always interested in agents, you know, like Entourage, you know, was a big hit. The agent, because they're very talkative and they have a big mouth, and a lot of them are brash. You think they have real courage and they don't avoid things. But what I discovered was actually there was 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 if 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 they're afraid, whatever is okay. But it certainly 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 felt frightened or they felt uncomfortable, whatever. So just by example, that would be a place to use this tool, which is called the reversal of desire. Now. 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. Well, that's well and good, but not good enough. They must actually make the call, do the behavior, and just flood you with 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 this artificial species distinction between, you know, what we feel and what we do. And, you know, so then the what we feel. People tend to get deeper and deeper into the unconscious. The Jungians get into dreams, et cetera, 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 behaviorists and the cognitive therapists who focus on that. And the studies show that that 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 relate to each other. They must. It just wouldn't make sense if they didn't. So that's where I finally realized what would go on is let's say that agent makes. Let's say he calls a guy who's the chairman of a studio who 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 overly simplistic, the unconscious says, oh, this person actually is a student of the information I'm giving him. The unconscious may give you information in a dream, sometimes in an instinct, sometimes if you have a shrink, it will come out. Shrink's office. He's acting on the information I am giving him. The unconscious likes that. And it actually opens a door into the unconscious. And then all kinds of other things happen. A hundred times I've seen somebody make the call and say, well, I got rejected. The guy was rude to me. And I say, fine, pick somebody else and make another call. And the guy said, do I have to? Yeah, you have to. And then the tool allows them to do this, which we'll get back to the reversal of desire and. And the second call, the fourth call, they all may fail. It doesn't matter. The unconscious will start to give him ideas about who else to call. Am I telling too?

No, this is great. So you're kind of priming the unconscious and honoring whatever intuition was there. And while you do that, it's going to work for you and helping you do more of that, which you engaged in.

Yeah, exactly. I actually put this to work myself. When I first got to California, I was probably 33, 34 years old. I knew nobody. And for the first three months. You know how many patients I had in the first three months?

Guess by the tone. It wasn't a large number.

Very good. It was zero. So I was trying to spend 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 from. So it was easy. So it was almost like a little angel sat on my shoulder and said, because I make these lists of people I 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'd look down the list and I would see who would scare the living shit out of me. And I would make that call. And most of the calls weren't successful at all. But what happened was I noticed every day if I make that really difficult call, I'd start to get more ideas. I'd start to get ideas about calling people who never even entered my mind. All of a sudden, it's like my unconscious 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 about three, four months, I had. I probably had like 25 patients, which to me was a miracle. But that. And I call that creative action. Because you take the action first, your relationship with your unconscious becomes more creative and you get more ideas. And it's not just true in 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 average person is afraid of pain. And I count fear as one example of pain. It's probably the most relevant one. There are also people that are just afraid 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. Everybody who kicks back and does a doobie when they get home from work is avoiding pain. Everyone who doesn't go to the gym and work out is avoiding pain. The agent 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 pain. We want pain, we desire pain. Now, you know when you tell a patient that, their immediate reaction is, oh, yeah, right, I'm going to pay you these high fees. And, you know, you think I'm some kind of a masochist. And what are you, nuts? So, you know, people, they're pretty brash. You're going to teach me how to live without pain? That, by the way, is completely impossible. Now, here's a trick of this tool or 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 a pool. It's a cool day. You stick your toe in, your toe turns blue. You know, you say, oh, shit. But somebody pushes you in the pool, 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, avoiding pain, running away from pain makes the pain worse. The pain turns into a monster that basically pursues you. So that's what we call the reversal of desire. I desire pain because it's going to actually reduce my pain. So do you want me to talk about the actual.

Yeah, I mean, this is awesome. This is. I love your examples and really helping. I think me and our listeners get context for it in a really great way.

Okay, now, the good part of this tool is it's really simple. And once people understand the secret of pain, it tends to make a lot of sense to them. Now, first thing you have to do is, okay, let's go back to the agent. He's got to call this guy, but he's scared to death to make the call. He avoids. He makes excuses, whatever, but we know why he's really avoiding it. Now, what I ask him to do is to feel the fear that he would normally feel before he would call this person. But then take away the person, take away the circumstance, take away everything. Just stick with the sheer bodily, physical experience of pain. In other words, put the pain in your body and don't attach it to anything else if you have time. I'll explain that. Now, once you've done that, you're ready to do the tool. You've isolated the pain. I call it pure sensation. All you have there is a sensation. 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 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, and there's this big obstacle, and the only way to get through that obstacle is 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 the way the two starts, you go, bring it on, and you say it silently, but really intensely. I don't want to blow out anyone's eardrums, but we give a seminar, we actually scream it. So it's like a silent, intense scream of bring it on. Which goes along the heading of 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, after you've done bring it on, I love pain. The cloud of pain itself will spit you out. And when it spits you out, you'll feel yourself flying forward. I usually see it as a realm of light where I'm flying weightlessly and effortlessly forward, almost like you've been shot out of a catapult or something. And as you're moving forward, as you're flying forward, you say, pain sets me free. So you can read in the book the specifics. I saw Brian's presentation, which is as good or better than mine, so you can always look at that online. What else did I want to say? What was I saying right before the.

Cloud, you move through, and then you have pain sets me free. Yeah.

Now, if this is. If you have to use this tool, there's two uses. If you want to use the tool right before, let's say a phone call, for example, that you can't get yourself to do. You go, bring it on. I love pain. Pain sets me free. And 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 something at 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 the tool. Now there's a second use for this tool, and in the second use, you use the tool. And again, it sounds strange at first. You use it for. Usually it's fears before the event is happening. Let's have to give a speech in a week, Right. And I don't particularly like public speaking. It scares me, you know, not very uncommon problem. When I think about it. This thing is a weekend. It's not tomorrow night. 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 hand shake or 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, what 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 the fear. To be passive in the face of fear is an act of ignorance and in a certain sense, almost irresponsibility. So this becomes a favorite use of the tool for people. That use, by the way, 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 medication to kick in. I don't have to wait until my circumstances change. I don't have to wait until I'm a more confident person. I. 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 or should I keep.

Well, this is so rich. And then to add a little bit more context, too, 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?

Yes.

That's this amazing gift that outside that cloud of fear is everything we dream of and aspire to create and be. Right?

Yes, That's Very, very, very well put. 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 what we tell them is, and this tool par excellence is an example of it, it will put you in a different context, 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, that things are possible that all my life I felt were impossible, is really life changing. And we don't focus, although people we treat are tremendously, almost stupidly successful, but we actually don't focus on that. We don't even mention it. We, we mention is the real success is using, let's say, for instance, this tool and then moving into that zone of enhanced possibilities. So, yes, I agree with that. It's one of the things I was struck with when I read, when I saw your podcast about our stuff was the infinite potential. Yeah, yeah, that's what we're shooting for. Our general philosophy on this is that there's almost a spiritual battle in the universe on an individual level. The battle is over the evolution of the individual. So the bad guys, if you will, we call that part X, which will be what the next book will be about. They don't want you to reach your potential. They don't want you to know that this is possibility state. They're trying to block your evolution, your growth, and basically render your life meaningless. And we'll go next, we'll go into that in detail. But these tools, I felt that when I was a young psychiatrist and as I developed the tools, which 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, that brings us to another aspect that Ian was implicit. But I love the way you 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 applies here?

Yes, Higher forces are real now. So what are we talking about? 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. Okay, it's probably worth repeating again, it's a force. And you can look at this if you want to look at it spiritually or 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 or you can join up with however you want to say it to do things that you couldn't ordinarily do. Now, you know, the classic story is, you know, a woman lifts a car up because her kid is trapped under the car or something. You know, whether that's apocryphal or really it doesn't matter, but it gives you the idea. So not only are we saying your potential is greater than you think it is, we're also saying that these macro 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, it's the easiest thing to understand, which is 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 left field that seem to help me go reach my destination. Also, if I'm in forward motion, I tend to attract people who will be really helpful for me. Sometimes as employees, 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, on having higher force. In this case, the force of forward 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, dynamic evaluation. And what that means is when you're not sure about a decision, don't make the decision. Put yourself in forward motion first. Ask yourself, excuse me, how am I not in forward motion? Again, in this case, other things I'm avoiding, but there are other parts to it, like discipline, lifestyle issues, control of thinking. But ask myself how I'm not in forward motion. Correct it immediately and then consider the answer to the question. Then decide what decision you're going to make. And I've been very, very, very successful with this. And it's a great, I don't want to say protocol. It's a great habit to get into, I guess would be the right way to say it.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And 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. Things, whether it's pain or fear or any problem. And just.

Brian, can I interrupt you for that, please?

Yes.

You know this thing about higher forces, if you're listening to the podcast, you actually experience the higher force. And that's because of Brian, because I'm a anxious public speaker anyway, but I went into a total flow state. I didn't even know what I was saying. And the reason for that was him. I have had another experience like this on a podcast with Mark Maron. The point of it is the 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 Outflow. And because it got into me, because he. And I don't know him, I've never seen him in my life, but I could tell I'm very sensitive to these things. The fact that he had the preparation and he had the empathy and he had no ego in 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. His ego and my ego were out. So that's a higher force. And usually people aren't aware of it, don't notice it. The interesting thing now is in big business, really big business, they want that force. That's why they've become obsessed with how the people interact with each other. So I know this interrupts the flow of the thing, but I guess it was in my mind.

So, anyway, I appreciate that and then I'm honored and I. Yeah, I feel that as you described that, and just to couple ways we can go on that I'm going to go into the outflow, which is actually the second tool, and that's a form of active love. And whenever we're feeling kind of stuck in our heads, might be feeling anxiety or rumination or whatever, we can let that out. So I'm deeply grateful for your reflection on that in 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. The kind of meta business that I created is called entheos, 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 enthusiasm 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 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 mental loops where we get stuck in what Phil and Barry call the maze. The third tool is dealing with self. The higher force is dealing with expression, which. 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 phenomenal. And then the fifth tool is dealing with willpower. I'd love to go into each of those, and I'm going to talk to Barry later this week, which we'll share separately, and I imagine we'll touch on some of those. But for now, talk to us about willpower. I'm a huge fan of. Of that being the engine of doing these things. 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 watched the Secret three times, and now I don't need to do any more work. I'm going to be happy. And your point is? No. Every moment is going to give us. Every. Every moment's gonna give us an opportunity to grow and 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 start by saying this, by the way, although you're gonna think I'm nuts. This whole conversation is about infinity. And it's about how the human being reaches the infinite parts in himself. And how does that connect to the infinite forces, these higher forces that we're talking about? And how is all this connected most people? You know, I used to play basketball. I was a scrub on a college basketball team, and I would only get in a game. I was a sub for this kid who was all American. So I did not get into games very much. And when I did get in a game, it was always because he either got hurt or were fouled out. So, you know, typically I get in a game with three minutes left or something, and with the coach I had, I was expected to perform. You know, nobody felt sorry for me. And what I found, what I discovered was I couldn't just. After sitting there for an hour and a half, I couldn't just get up, you know, with thousands of screaming people, and. And basically I had to bring the ball up, and there was always a press going on. So it was a complex thing I had to do. And if I was tight at all, frightened, frozen, I just couldn't do it. So I hit upon the idea of being in the game before I got in the game. For me, the game started the moment they rolled the ball out. But I was sitting on the bench, and what I did basically was I was screaming, yelling. I'd scream at my own players, you know, if they were missing, misreading something defensively, blah, blah, blah. And it worked really well. So if an hour and a half later, if I had to 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 in it. It has aspects of courage in it, obviously. And overall, it has aspects of tapping. The best way to say it, 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, in aa, they always say, how do they say it will Run riot or something? So they have a negative view of will. And they're right, because that's the will that comes from your ego. But there's a second kind of will that comes when you dissolve your ego. And I put that under the heading of commitment. Listen very carefully to this. Commitment has nothing to do with. With your goal. It doesn't. Commitment is a state that we always want to be in for the rest of our lives. Let me explain to you why that is. And this is why I call commitment the Infinity principle. These higher forces we're talking about want to help us, but the forces are infinite. The forces are so strong they could actually burn us away, eliminate us altogether. We have to have a. Like a basket, something to take the fruit 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 the key. There's only one way a human being can be infinite. Every other way. We're not infinite. We're in a physical body. And that's the will to keep on going forever. And whatever it is that your goal is at the moment, the goals could even change. But the point is, the attitude has to be, I'm going to keep working on this and working on this and working on 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, or 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 you're going to have to work for the rest of your life. Work on the tools, work on some of the behavioral stuff, etc. People don't like that. People think that when they succeed, whatever, you know, whatever that means to them, they can then kick back and stop making an effort. So we call that exoneration. And exoneration occurs in what we call the realm of illusion. It's an illusionary realm that usually has some 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 whom 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 the truth ceaseless immersion, which I'll tell you a story about myself in a second. So the truth is we're 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, it was the early 80s. It was really smoggy out here. And I would get up in the morning to go to work and I'd see all the Californians and we were walking through this, it was like pea soup, you know, and it didn't seem to bother them. And I used to get so angry at them and say, what kind of people are they? Are these people crazy? They don't even say anything about this. They just get in their car 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. It was just going to be there. It stopped 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 for 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 one, pain. It'll never go away. Rule two, uncertainty. It will never go away. Rule three, your need for constant work. It'll never go away. Now, that said, you can live a fantastic life, you can make a lot of money, you can avoid certain of the 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 well, let's say the universe will help us by continuing to give us problems. So for most people, this is an upside down wave. Did you want to say something?

No, I'm laughing. For most people, they look at it and say, what? I thought you're gonna help.

Yeah, look, there are whole industries that are based on this, you know, the bridal industry, as one example, but just one, you know, the sports car industry, blah, blah, blah. And it's all okay as long as you take it as a joke. And I'm sure many of the people listening are 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, life's going to be terrible, it's going to be such a grind. 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 going to go on for the rest of your life. And I'm going to teach you as a parent how to look at a problem, look it right in the face, learn what the correct tools are, and then come out stronger. Which brings me to another. You know, some of these ideas and their superficiality don't seem very new. The idea, well, you know, there's a problem or there's an obstacle and you become stronger through dealing with it. Of course, everybody is going to say of course. Well, you're trying to tell me there's a new idea in that, you know, et cetera. 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 what, the tool does not only 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 or the obstacle so that 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. Willpower has to do with acts. The two things we like to school people in, so to speak, are doing things with a sense of urgency instead of a 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. For anyone here watches basketball, if your team comes down and you take a jump shot and it clangs off the front rim, what you have to do, it's like a flat chrome. So, which means it's probably going to go to the other team and the ball is going to be moving fast and 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 they have to run about 60 or 70ft as fast as they possibly can, including a change of direction because they're going towards their basket. And in athletics, it's one of the more painful things that you could go through. Now, from the stands, you can't see it, or 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 on 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 there are people walking around the world that do everything intensely, whether it's Brian preparing for this interview, because believe me, I've been interviewed a lot of times, or somebody in something physical or somebody who's performing, somebody who's in the privacy of their own home writing a book, but is 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, it will become very obvious to you who does things with more or less intensity. You could ask Barry about that because he's obsessed with it and he has some good ideas on it. So for us, again, the idea of doing something with a great sense of urgency and with a great sense of intensity until maybe the last 10 years. And not from therapists, but from. What do you call it? Life coaches. I never heard it discussed at all. And it was Some point about 20 years ago, I said, jesus Christ, nobody ever even mentions it, as if it's not important. And to me it's up there again, I cannot remember the question, but I definitely gave you an answer.

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 your entire work is based on. And it seems apparent that our entire job is to stay connected to that energy. Right. And let that come through us as powerfully and intensely as it can.

Yes, that's correct. And it's a wonderful way to think about it because it makes every day meaningful. Even using a little tool for two seconds. Okay, that means something. I'm on my way to 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 studied this guy, Rudolf Steiner. I don't know if you ever heard of him. Of course, he was a philosopher. He died in 1925. But he. And he's wonderful. His ideas are just spectacular. They're very hard to 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 it to be true, was he said the biggest things enter life through the smallest things. And I felt that to be so true. It was another thing I felt was left out of psychotherapy. So what do we mean by the smallest things? If somebody says they're going to 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. Or somebody else says, well, I'm going to make that phone call even though I'm really terrified and I know probably no good is going to come of it, but I'm going to do it anyway. That's a small thing. Also, personal habits, most of them devolve into small things. But the idea that you can do something Small and something huge you can enter your life. I think the greatest part of it is it means you can 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 socioeconomic 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 idea is going to have to be conveyed to everybody, particularly people that are less advantaged because it gives them the, you know, it's like those pitons they put into a mountain, you know, it gives them a little handhold so they can start to move themselves up. But any. Yeah, but that's. For me, 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, let's learn how to put on our socks. Right, right. The smallest thing.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

So 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, I think. What is it called? The Tools book or something.

You know, I put you on the spot there. Let me. I will confirm. Almost certain it is the toolsbook.com I have it linked in the PDF Philosopher's Note. I'm going to draw it up right now just so everyone makes sure that you know how to get it. Lots of helpful stuff there. The link is TheToolsBook.com yeah, and there we go. So I look forward to 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. I look forward to the next time I can be on it. Thank you.

Thanks, Phil. We hope you enjoyed this optimal living interview. Please visit BrianJohnson me for more.