What Is Life Force?
Stutz shares tools to help us deal with Part X of ourselves and activate our life force.
Super Sunday is a weekly newsletter helping readers explore and learn tools for developing success habits through mindfulness and mindfitness. If that’s your vibe, please share with like-minded friends to help me grow it.
Hello friends! 👋
As always, welcome to all the new subscribers who are joining us in this community and a big thank you to everyone helping spread the word! 🙏
I wanted to dedicate this week’s newsletter to someone whose ideas and concepts have had a major impact on my life and its philosophy - Phil Stutz.
I’ve been in few coaching sessions with Phil, as well as having read his two books The Tools and Coming Alive (summaries of these coming soon).
I highly recommend you watch the show (STUTZ) and read the books if you find the concepts interesting.
The latest documentary featured on Netflix was directed and played by Jonah Hill and is one of the first of its kind; a documentary on therapy and patient-practitioner relationship.
Right off the bat, I loved all parts of this short movie even though it was pretty brief, and only covered a tiny portion of what Phil teaches.
I would have loved for a series; whereby more teaching can come to life in each episode. Hopefully this movie receives the right feedback it deserves, and Netflix can explore expanding into that.
This week I want to cover a few major concepts helpful in dealing with life’s challenges (some covered in the documentary and others outside) - you will see the themes are similar to what we’ve been talking about here at Super Sunday.
📌 THE THREE ASPECTS OF REALITY
Life has three aspects that we cannot deny:
There will be pain: this reminds me of the first of the Four Noble Truths of mindfulness - it is wise for us to work with this than waste time resisting it. We have to build what Phil calls emotional stamina.
There is always uncertainty: nothing can be fully forecasted and known, and to be frank it would be boring if so. We are made to explore life not figure it out.
There is no exoneration: we will always be asked to put in work, whether in our selves, relationships, or in the things we passion. Which eloquently reminds me of Campbell’s hero’s journey.
Accepting (and respecting) these allows us to work with life more wisely, and build a more empowering relationship with life, as we carve our way to reach our desired outcomes.
💎 LIFE FORCE
Phil teaches us that there is a Life Force that we can activate to create momentum for us.
This is the force that generates guidance and sense of direction in our lives - it helps us find our way when lost and keeps us moving forward.
Activating your Life Force is done by focusing on the below
Your relationship with your body (sleeping, moving, eating.)
Your relationship with others (they help you move forward and are like those “pitons that help you climb the mountain”)
Your relationship with yourself (knowing yourself enough to go after what you truly value and are passionate about)
You can see this has a lot of similarity to what I shared in this post on the three sources of happiness we all have to work on and create goals in.
As we covered before; our physiology drives our psychology. The fundamentals we talked about in the first Super Sunday post are essential for activating our best self.
And they show up time and time again as long as we are talking about reaching our potential.
In Phil’s model the body is the bottom of the pyramid - the foundation through which you reach the higher levels, much like Maslow’s hierarchy.
❌ PART X & THE TOOLS
What I love most about Phil’s way is how real it is.
While the concepts he teaches are mostly through visualizations, they are very real and this makes them very power.
Without sharing any spoilers, I will cover few points here that I find very valuable - I definitely recommend the movie and the books for a deeper dive.
We all have a part of us that Phil calls Part X:
This is the part responsible for slowing you down, adding self doubt, shame, fear.
It is very intelligent in creating systems and stories to serve the above purpose.
There is no escaping Part X but there are tools that can be used to effectively deal with it.
Happiness is not about defeating Part X but rather the process of dealing with it through the tools
The Tools
They have the power to alchemize the situation and turn adversity into opportunity.
These are usually through visualizations - you will see in the documentary few moments where Phil directs Jonah through a visualization which you can take part in too.
While pain is inevitable, suffering is optional - these tools help us snap out of creating any further suffering.
You can explore the tools by clicking on this link - a helpful reference to share details on the tool and how to try it out.
If you want to dive deeper into the tools and their concepts then buying the book is your best option.
Have fun with it and enjoy the process of overcoming your challenges!
Community Questions (Leave a comment if you like)
Do you spend time reflecting/writing to build a deeper relationship with yourself?
Are you willing to try out new ways to deal with your Part X?
Till next week.
Have a Super Sunday! 💪
Hashim
I have been writing my reflection journal for almost 18 months now, but I would like to be more consistent. When I am not sure what to write about, I simply talk about what I did throughout the day and I find myself reflecting on one aspect that will spontaneously show up such as a feeling or thought. What helped me organize my thinking process is the SRP you discussed last week, which gives my reflection a framework. I find it useful and easy as it does not require a lot of writing so when I don't have much time, I write it in bullet points and still feel accomplished :)
This article was very interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more about "Part X" and applying the tools provided in my daily life. One thing that caught my attention is when the author explained there is no way to avoid Part X, but there are strategies for dealing with it, and how we process and handle it leads to happiness.