The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower--and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion

The Tool in Brief See yourself lying on your deathbed. Having run out of time, this older self screams at you not to waste the present moment. You feel a deep, hidden fear that you’ve been squandering your life. This creates an urgent desire to use whichever basic tool you need at that moment.

The Comfort Zone makes us feel good in the moment. Who cares what the future penalty will be?

To be whole, we need to stay connected to something beyond ourselves. The constant effort that requires means that a human being can never be more than a work in progress.

Inner strength comes only to those who move forward in the face of adversity.

The great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was the first to say that everyone has a Shadow regardless of their accomplishments, talents, or appearance. The Shadow is one of many “archetypes” we’re born with. An archetype is a patterned way of perceiving the world.

When you’re in a self-righteous rage, it feels like you shouldn’t send love to the person who put you in that state. Usually, we think of love in a moralistic or religious context; we try to be loving because it’s the “right” thing to do.

All you get is the sense that you’re “right”; the ultimate booby prize.

The tool trains you to desire the pain you associate with a particular event—not the event itself.

Pillar 1: Thinking about higher forces is worthless, you have to experience them.