Starting The Year with The Overlooked Tools for Our Mind
In the beginning of last year, I wrote about starting the year with less. I think that was one big theme for me personally in 2022. Learn to make do with less. Learn to understand that less has a true potential to be better like what Dieter Rams said in his documentary created by Gary Hustwit.
Somehow, in the transition of 2022 to 2023, I was drawn into another documentary that felt so heartwarming. I decided to write about it. Is it caused by the “new year, new me” theme? I don’t know. But, it might not be a bad idea to learn from at least one documentary that helpful for us every year. Maybe, cultivating the habit to utilize The Tools can be helpful for me. Not just 2023, but for years to come.
We often busy to equip the new year with new gadgets, new stuffs, and new plants. But yet, I know myself that I don’t put much care to what’s going on in my mind for the past years.
Maybe, it’s the right time to ask, have we equip the right tools for our own mind?
So, what is “The Tools”?
The Tools is a set of do-able practices introduced by psychotherapists Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. I learned about the The Tools from the documentary titled Stutz created by the actor Jonah Hill and Phil Stutz. Let’s take a look on the trailer:
I like how Netflix describes it as an exploration of Stutz’s tools for life in an effort to get real, get personal, and get better.
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How does Stutz come up with The Tools?
I think I am one of the lucky and privileged ones that I still survive this life quite well without professional support from psychological therapy. We all know it tend to be costly for most people, especially in Indonesia. People often said that it’s important to discuss your mental help problems with professionals but we know that the cost is also not cheap. And it’s quite often that I heard it’s not easy for an individual to meet a psychiatrist that can click with us.
Stutz is Hill’s psychiatrist. And they both understand the frustration of going into therapy. Stutz told us the classic therapy that is rarely useful for the patient:
The average shrink will say “Don’t intrude on the patient’s process. They will come up with the answer when they are ready”.
That sucks. That’s not acceptable.
In the beginning of the documentary, Hill said:
And I was thinking how in a traditional therapy, you’re paying this person, and you save all of your problems for them. And they just listen.
And your friends who are idiots give you advice. Unsolicited. And you want your friends just to listen and you want your therapist to give you advice.
They both really set up the mood that this is not gonna be a usual therapy session and usual documentary about mindfulness.
Stutz build The Tools as something that patient can immediately practice to feel that they can start to change right now, right in the moment. It’s not going to be solve their problem right away. But they can have a sense of forward motion. A motion toward something better.
Life Force
First, the documentary introduced us to Life Force just like the first thing Stutz introduced to Hill. Stutz believes that human needs to work on their Life Force because it helps to give a sense of direction and something to do. Something to do to wake up from our bed.
Life Force is the only thing that actually capable of guiding you when you are lost.
Stutz visualize Life Force as a three level of pyramid. The first is our body, the second is our relationship with other people. The top one is our relationship with ourself.
It’s something that we can keep working on. Stutz said:
If you’re lost, don’t try to figure it out.
Let it go and work on your life force first.
The Life Force feels like a constant reminder on what’s important in our life. And yeah, those are things that are hard. But maybe it’s not a bad idea to believe that healthy body will help us to make something that we want to see in this world. And by the end of the day, our relationship with our closed one matters. It might not be an easy thing to do to be more proactive with our Life Force. But, I like the advice on how to be connected better with our inner self.
Stutz on relationship to yourself:
The best way to say it is to get yourself in a relationship with your unconscious. Nobody knows what’s in their unconscious unless they activate it. And one trick is writing. It’s really a magical thing.
Writing is like a mirror that reflects what’s going on in your unconscious. Things will come out, if you write, that you didn’t know. You enhance your relationship with yourself by writing something simple.
Part X, The Shadow, and The Maze
After the introduction of Life Force, I like how Jonah Hill be more open and vulnerable about the process of making this documentary. About his fear of being fake and dishonest. And then they both being more open. About their childhood, about things that they stressed about, about their things they are afraid to talk about. This documentary truly turns out to be an un-orthodox session between the patient and the shrink. And I really like how they joke around with each other. Which then continued by the introduction of Part X of human mind.
Part X is our inner negativity, our mental block, our judgemental mind; it’s the “voice of impossibility.” Part X will said to us that we cannot get better. Stutz said that’s where The Tools come in.
The highest creative expression for a human being is to be able to create something new right in the face of adversity.
The worse the adversity, the greater the opportunity.
However, as this transition in the documentary showed us, it’s really important to be honest and be vulnerable with ourself. Honesty is truly the beginning of all process that later will connect to the acceptance as part of the tool.
Part X will then relate to The Shadow. The Shadow is the version of ourself that we want to hide from the world the most. The part of ourself that we are most ashamed. The Shadow is the version of ourself that we need to pay attention to.
Part X and The Shadow will then be a crucial ingredient for us to get stuck in The Maze.
I think I have been there too. One of the common questions I guess is:
Why is this happening to me?
We asked why. We never got answer. We got angry. And it felt like we’re running around in circle of mixed-emotions.
Stutz mentioned that we often asked for fairness, of what has been done to us. But, that quest for fairness actually put our life on hold.
Most wrongs that people commit cause no lasting damage; if you were to let go of the initial hurt, you could go on with life immediately. But you don’t.
You obsess about what was done to you in the past.
As a result, you turn your back on your own future.When you’re in The Maze, life passes you by.
The Tools
I really like that probably about 60% of the movie tries to dissect the problems that many people face in an honest way. Stutz did not just jump right away into the tools, but the movie invited us first to be honest and be vulnerable together with Stutz and Hill.
“This is either going to be the best or worst documentary” — Stutz joked in the movie.
It’s truly a wonderful work done by Jonah Hill.
You can’t move forward without being vulnerable.
And then they introduce some of The Tools that are practical. I’d like to start with Radical Acceptance.
According to Stutz, Radical Acceptance is the antidote to judgment — judgment of yourself, of others and of what could potentially happen in the future. It’s not about approval either. Instead, it’s about accepting all parts of yourself and allowing them to exist.
And then to understand three Aspects of Reality that consists of Pain, Uncertainty and Constant Work. Those three aspects can’t be avoided. Thus, The Tools are there for us to face the reality of life.
I like how in the Grateful Flow, Stutz really recommend to look for the small things. The things we’ve taken for granted. And then start to feel unforced gratefulness inside us.
I think this one also can be connected with String of Pearls. In Stutz’s illustration, each circle or “pearl” is an action — and, since each pearl is a similar size, you can think of each action having the same value, no matter what it is. This means that every large or small action in your life (brushing your teeth, deciding to end a relationship) is just that: a thing to do. You are the only person who can put the next pearl on the string. But, within each pearl is a dark spot (Stutz calls it a “turd”), which is a reminder that no effort you make will be perfect. The key is to acknowledge that and keep adding to the string anyway.
This part reminds me of the concept of Atomic Habits that we need to keep going making progress no matter how small.
And then the next practice feels close to me. The next tool is Loss Processing.
This one, truly remind me of the belief of Karmany that I learned in high school years.
You have the right to your actions,
but never to the fruits of your actions.Don’t let the fruits be the motives of your activities.
But, don’t be attached to inaction or doing nothing.
I wrote a short thread about it last year.
Somehow it also remind me of the Avatar Aang (the first one). That as human we cannot be fully non-attached to anything. And that’s not the goal.
It’s about working towards no one person or anything leaving you can completely take away your whole existence. I think it’s what I try to process as well after I lost my job in 2020. I try to process it that it’s not an identity loss. I am still whole.
There is still one tool that I believe still painful to be practiced. I know it’s also related to The Maze that might still trapped me. The tool is Active Love.
Stutz recommends us to close your eyes and imagine an entire universe composed entirely of loving energy — then visualize your physical self absorbing all of that love and taking it into your heart. Then, imagine taking all of that concentrated love and emitting it onto another person or a negative experience that has stayed with you. Stutz says that by doing this, you can visualize yourself becoming one with the person or thing that wronged you.
As Stutz emphasizes:
Do you want to be right, or do you want to create something new?
I think it’s really hard part especially to practice it to our closed ones. However, I try to understand that it’s all connected anyway.
I need to start to accept it and let the anger goes. So it’s me that controlling the anger, not the other person that wronged me that controls me.
And the older I get, I try to understand that being right is not the most important thing to get.
Other point that I like about The Tools is how it can help spiritually without forcing us to be religious. And I think religious person can connect the tools to their own respective practices.
For people that having difficulties to read books or article, I think Stutz is a great and touching documentary to start equip our mind with proper tools.
I wish everyone a healthier new year.
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More about The Tools:
