The Tools

Friedrich Nietzsche, a daring thinker of the late nineteenth century, put it best in his famous aphorism: “Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.” His idea that adversity has a positive value was new.

For the Reversal of Desire, the first cue is obvious—right before you’re about to do something you want to avoid. Let’s say you have to call someone who intimidates you, or you really need to get down to work, but you feel restless and distracted. At these moments, focus on the exact pain you’d feel if you began the action. Use the tool on that pai

To develop courage, you have to give up this illusion of future certainty. This frees you to focus on the present—the only place you can find the courage to act.

Oliver Wendell Holmes in “The Voiceless” wrote: “Alas for those that never sing, / But die with all their music in them.” It is a tragedy to die with your song unsung. What’s worse is that we are guilty of stilling our own voices—we silence ourselves. Yet

Use the tool when you need to take an action you’ve been avoiding. We avoid doing the things that are most painful for us, preferring to live in a Comfort Zone that severely limits what we get out of life. The tool lets you act in the face of pain and helps you get your life moving again.

Nietzsche’s statement makes it sound like adversity itself makes you stronger. It doesn’t. Inner strength comes only to those who move forward in the face of adversity.

Courage is the ability to act in the face of fear. That this seems impossible to most people is because of the way we experience fear. Fear is almost always linked to an image you have of something terrible happening in the future. If I speak up, I’ll get fired. If

love inside your chest.

There may be many positive things in your future—great joy and fulfillment. But inevitably, life will never exempt you from facing more pain. Once you accept this, your goal will no longer be for pain to stop; it will be to increase your tolerance for it—which is exactly what the Reversal of Desire will do for you.