PNTV: Coming Alive by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels (#343​)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another episode of Philosopher's Notes tv. It's been a while. In fact, it's been over a year since I did my last episode. And the last time I took a long break a few years ago, I came back from that and covered one of my favorite books called the Tools by Phil Stutts and Barry Michaels. And over the last few years, I've gotten to know Phil and Barry. I've fallen even more in love with their ideas and with them. And I started working one on one with Phil Stutts, which has been absolutely amazing. So when I came back from this little break, I decided to start with their new book, Coming Alive. Coming Alive. Barry Michaels, Phil Stutz Subtitle 4 Tools to Defeat your inner enemy, ignite creative expression and unleash your soul's potential. They say that this book is like a can opener for your soul. And what we do is we learn how to fight our inner enemy, which we will talk about in a moment that is known as Part X in their vernacular. But great book, phenomenal book. And as always, we've got a philosopher's note with a bunch of my favorite big ideas. And. And as always, we've got five of them that we're gonna talk about today. So Coming Alive, if you want to come alive, the first and most important thing to realize, according to Barry and Phil, is that there's a part of you that is actively fighting against you. Coming alive, they call that Part X. Part X is that voice in your head that's constantly narrating all the things that you can't do. They call it a prophet of the impossible. A prophet of the impossible. Not just hard. That voice isn't telling you that's going to be hard, but if we put in a lot of work, we can do it. That actually be kind of helpful. A growth, mindset, incremental approach. Right. But part X is telling you things are impossible that aren't in fact impossible. They're just really hard. So we want to start paying attention to that voice, Part X, and notice how often it's dampening our life force. So the idea is there's this force within you, and all the ancient traditions had different words for it. Whether it's qi or prana or whatever you want to call it, there's a life force within you that we want to align with and allow to come forward and through us. So I love the idea of the ancient Greek Concept of enthusiasm entheos God within. When we allow that life force to come out, and through us, we live at a higher level of potential. Part X is what's dampening that. So again, take a quick inventory. Notice that voice within your head. That's part X. How do we deal with part X? Well, the tools. So the first book that they wrote was called the Tools. We did an episode on it and a philosopher's note on it. And in this note, I quickly go through the five tools and that Phil and Barry tell us we need to use to address five common issues that we face. In this book, they give us four more tools. They tell us how to deal with impulse control, how to deal with energy when you're feeling low on energy, or when you're feeling disillusioned and disappointed by setbacks in life, or when you're feeling let down by other people. So they have four tools in this book that they walk us through. I give a quick overview in the note. For now, what I want to stress is the fact that these are tools that we need to use right in the moment that we're feeling part X taking over our lives. So right in the moment when we're feeling disconnected from our life force, that's when we need to use the tools. So when I. We're going to create a little handbook of all of the plus ones that I'm doing these days, right? And we're going to call it the handbook in honor of Epictetus, Enchiridion. So enchiridion literally means ready at hand, and it's translated as handbook. But the idea is more like it's ready at hand. This wisdom that Epictetus had, like a tool or like a weapon, it's in your hand, it's ready. You can use it right now, in this moment, for whatever challenge you're facing in your life. So we want to orient toward part X with these tools and use them right now. And they say that every time you face a problem, if you train yourself to use the tool and to deal with part X and to allow life force to come through more and more consistently, you will flourish. That's the basic idea. So think about the tools that you have in your life even before you learn more about the tools and the tools. Incoming, alive. You. You have tools. You have things that you do when you're on, right? You feel challenged. Well, what do you do when you're on? You just need to train yourself to do that more often, moving from theory to practice. And they say you do that all the time, you're going to spiral up into a truly extraordinary life. We'll talk about that more at the end here. So that's our second idea. The third one is self control is what leads to self confidence. So if you want self confidence, most people think you get there, either you have it or you don't. And they don't even think that you can actually cultivate it. But what Barry and Michael tell us is Barry and Phil tell us is that it's all about the tiny things. It's all about what Phil comes back to in our work again and again and again. He describes it as micro transactions. We tend to think that it's the big things in life where we're going to really kind of shape our destiny. And Barry and Phil tell us it's not those things are important, but those are nowhere near as important as the micro transactions. Paradoxically, the big things come through the little things, the tiniest little things in our lives, those moment to moment opportunities where we can step forward into growth or back into safety. That's when our destiny is shaped and, and decided. So we want to get really good at cultivating our self control via those microtransactions. And what that does is that creates a deep level of confidence. Again, remember the Latin root of the word confidence, confidere, which means intense trust. Intense trust in what? Intense trust in yourself to be able to deal with whatever life throws at you. And, and if you don't have self control and every single time life gets challenging, you kind of go off the rails, well then you don't, you shouldn't have trust in yourself. You haven't earned it. And the way you earn that trust in yourself is by showing up and doing your best moment to moment to moment in these microtransactions. Then you have an earned sense of trust that you can in fact stay on track, right, Work the protocol and, and do what needs to get done whether you feel like it or not, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the idea here. Self control leads to self confidence, that intense trust through the micro transactions. And then this is an idea that wasn't actually in the book. In our interview, Barry and I chatted about something I think is really, really cool. The dreamer and the doer, which is related to our control and confidence. So there's a part of you that dreams and then of course we have part X that's telling you why that dream is not possible. Right? But there's a part of you that dreams right now think about what you want to see in your life. And I didn't mention it in the prelude, but they start the book by saying, all of us have this sense that there's this entirely different life we could be living, one in which we meet challenges fearlessly, we live with a sense of joy, et cetera. And it's this part X that is dampening that party. We want to cultivate our self control, use the tools, etc. And we want to make it such that dreamer part of ourselves, that part of us that can see what's possible and the doer have a really, really good relationship. So if you dream something but you don't trust that you'll actually do it, that's super disorienting. But if you dream something and you know that your doer is actually going to do that, what you dream, there's an incredible power that comes from there. And again, how is that cultivated? It's cultivated via your control over the microtransaction. So we want to have a really, really good relationship between our dreamer and our doer as we create a truly great life. So one of the big ideas we feature in here and that Phil and I come back to in our one on one work all the time is the fact that we need to be willing to go all in in life. In one of our chats, Phil spontaneously said, that's the psychology of utter commitment. The psychology of utter commitment when you're willing to go all in. And he says there's a huge price tag to living a timid life where you're constantly backpedaling and not willing to go all in. And most people aren't willing to go all in on anything in their lives because when you go all in and it doesn't work, it really, really hurts. And it's a lot easier to kind of sort of hedge yourself and not go all in because then you've always got the excuse that you didn't go all in. And oh, if you'd really gone for it, you could have made it happen. Well, that's a pretty expensive thing in the big picture. When we step back and see that our potential is waiting for us and we need to be willing to go all in, activation energy style, 451 degrees, 212 degrees, etc. But the problem is, well, the problem is when you go all in, you need to be willing to embrace problems. Most people are running away from problems and creating a small life where they don't get too challenged and they don't risk too much hurt or failure. They say we need to flip it completely around. We need to get really clear on what we want. That dreamer side of ourselves. Let our life force come through rather than part X dampening it, then go all in and then realize that, that we're going to face challenges, we're going to have problems. But when we orient from this place with our tools, we actually embrace those problems. We say, bring it on. That challenge is facing us. Well, of course, as Phil says in my one on one work with them, that's a reverse indicator. Problems are no longer a sign that something's wrong. They're a sign that something's right. Right. What's right is I'm willing to go all in and I'm seeing these challenges and problems I didn't used to have because I'm willing to step up. Then we see that when we use the tool, every single moment that we face a challenge, we use the tool, our power goes like that. We're constantly assuming more power each time we face a problem, use a tool on it, our power grows. Face a problem, use a tool on it, power grows. It's a virtuous cycle that you only get when you're willing to step up and dream and then do what needs to get done. Continue to master yourself as you cultivate the confidence to deal with higher and higher level problems. Again, using the tool moment to moment to moment, facing part X, smiling at him, channeling your life force and letting it rip. That is a very quick look at this great book. Huge fan of both Phil and Barry. When I was deciding which one of them I wanted to work with, I jokingly told them I knew I wanted to work and get deeper into their work. I said picking between the two of them was kind of like picking between Obi Wan Kenobi in Barry and Phil being Yoda. Obi Wan Kenobi, Yoda, two geniuses. I appreciate them and their work. I highly recommend both the Tools and Coming Alive. Check out the notes the other episodes and if you're feeling it, dive in more deeply. I'm thrilled to be back. Can't wait to share more. For now, have another awesome day. See you. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me. Hi, this is Brian with some super exciting news. Optymyze is now absolutely free. All 600 philosopher's notes, the 50101 masterclasses, thousand optimized, plus ones free. So what do you want to optimize today your productivity, habits, sleep, mental toughness. 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