A tool is something that can change your inner state immediately in real time. It takes an experience that is normally unpleasant and turns it into an opportunity.
- a real-time visualization exercise that you do in your head.
- a tool is a bridge between what you realize the problem is (the cause of the problem) to actually gaining some control over the symptom.
- It all has to do with possibility. It means you feel yourself acting differently.
Life force – When we don’t have a sense of direction, we can always work on our life force. The only way to find out what you should be doing (who you are) is to activate your life force, because your life force is the only part of you that can guide you when you’re lost.
- If you’re lost, work on increasing your lifeforce so you can see what you are passionate about.
- Step one is to being passionate about connecting to your own life force.
Levels are your relationship to your Body, People, and Yourself.
- As kids we never view exercise or diet as beneficial for mental health but instead are propositioned to us for physical image.
- You have to take the initiative; you can’t wait for others to take the initiative. It will always be positive, that person represents the world.
- The highest tier is the relationship with yourself. Get yourself in a relationship with your unconscious because nobody knows what’s in their unconscious unless they activate it.
Part X – When adversity comes, it’s an opportunity to face the judgemental (antisocial) part of you that wants to keep you from changing or growing, that wants to block your evolution or your potential.
- Part X would be the villain and the tools would be the hero’s that you can use to fight the villain.
- Part X creates a primal fear. Impossibility. You can defeat it temporarily, but it comes back.
The 3 aspects of reality are Pain, Uncertainty, and Constant Work. Learn to love the process of those three things. Identify and then use a tool to nullify it.
- A shadow is a version of yourself that you want to hide from the world the most.
- The Snapshot (aka the realm of illusion). You are looking for the perfect experience (wife, amount of money). You cripple yourself with your snapshot.
The highest creative expression for a human being is to be able to create something new, right in the face of adversity (greater opportunity).
Re-source: Reequip
supply again with the necessary items for a particular purpose
Active Love – feel yourself taking in all the love in the universe. Send all this concentrated love towards the other person. Hold nothing back and feel your love enter the other’s body.
- Become one. Forgiveness is to make you feel whole and get you out of “the maze.”
Radical acceptance – Every event has something in it that you can learn from. “Squeezing the juice out” means finding something meaningful.
- Find a state of not negativity but actually training yourself to say, “What am I going to do about it now?”
- Don’t tell yourself anything negative. Find something that’s positive about it.
- Squeezing the juice out of the lemon means you are not only willing to do this but have faith that there is something there that is valuable. What happens is, everything begins to become more meaningful. You don’t get to the world of meaning through big things, you get it through small things.
- You need to look at all events as having value. If you can do that, you enter the zone of tremendous opportunity.
The Grateful Flow – The grateful flow is not the thing you are grateful for- it’s the process of creating these things.
- Close your eyes. Think of 2-4 of the things you are most grateful for. The smaller the better because it forces you to concentrate gratefulness. Do it nice and slow. You want to feel the gratefulness.
- Now keep adding more. Keep creating that stream of gratefulness.
- The next thing you do is feel like you are going to create another grateful thought, but you don’t. You block it, and all you feel is the force that would create a grateful thought. And as it gets stronger and stronger, you feel taken over by it.
- That process itself will change your mood.
- Gratefulness is the state you want to be in as much as possible because it’s the state that breaks through the cloud. And once you’re up there, you’re in a different world.
- “I continue to make adjustments every day and most of them are helpful.”
Loss Processing is a tool that allows you to process loss. Most people are very bad at it, but before loss they’re worrying about it. The goal is the get a “potency of nonattachment.” Pursue something but be willing not to have it. Be willing to lose it.
- Pick something that you feel you have become attached to. It can be something small but it it is something to loathe to get rid of.
- Now imagine grasping this thing (even if it isn’t a real thing) like you are holding a branch to a tree. It’s scary and you are afraid to let go; but you let go anyway.
- When you let go you start to fall. It’s not a bad sensation. The falling is actually slow and gentle to your surprise. Say, “I am willing to lose everything.” You have to say it silently but really feel the intent behind it. And the moment you say that, you hit the surface of the sun and your body burns up.
- You are radiating outward in all directions a very loving outflowing sensation. And then you look around and see and infinite number of other suns just like the one you’re inside of and all of them are radiating outwards. All say in unison, “We Are Everywhere.”
Happiness depends on how you accept that you will never figure everything out.
- The goal is not to be non-attached but to work towards it.
craving and resource from Stutz (by Psychiatrist Phil Stutz and Jonah Hill)
