Tap into the life force to deepen your emotional and spiritual experience and realize your full potential with this transformative book by the New York Times bestselling authors of The Tools (and the resident shrinks on Goop).

In The Tools, Barry Michels and Phil Stutz revolutionized the world of personal growth and self-actualization by offering doable, dynamic actions that transformed challenges into opportunities for change. Now, in Coming Alive, they provide four vital tools for tapping into the Life Force that resides within each of us—a wellspring of positive energy that is the source of creativity, renewal, confidence, and engagement.

The first step in gaining mastery over one’s life is identifying the enemy within, which Michels and Stutz have named Part X. This formidable adversary is a shape-shifter—it may be the voice in your head that is a torrent of negativity, persuading you of the futility of finding love, starting a business, or pursuing a creative passion; it may sap you of energy, convincing you that your inner resources are limited; it may take the form of outside forces that conspire against you. In whatever guise it appears, Part X aims to derail your progress, keep you small and stuck, and defeat hope.

The tools in Coming Alive help you connect to the Life Force and harness the energy and will to combat Part X. These are tools of ascendance—they activate your aspirational self; they spark creativity and resilience; they help you to transcend the mire of negative thoughts and circumstances and align with a powerful ally that unites us in our common desire to live lives of meaning and engagement.

Drawing insights from their decades of psychotherapeutic practice, their lived experience, and their moving and generous understanding of our interconnectedness, Michels and Stutz have created a paradigm-shifting guide to achieving optimal mental health and spiritual well-being.

Includes a bonus PDF with images from the book.

Advance praise for Coming Alive

“There is something indescribably beautiful about living life in integrity. The tools Barry and Phil teach in Coming Alive gave me the courage and clarity to align myself with the truth—no matter how hard or painful it seemed at the time.”—Gwyneth Paltrow

“What a gift! A riveting exploration of four (bone-chillingly relatable) modern ailments and their thrillingly practical solutions . . . Singular in its approach and deeply spiritual in its concerns, Coming Alive is a book I’ll be pressing on friends and foes alike.”—Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Barry Michels and Phil Stutz are the New York Times bestselling authors of The Tools and the resident therapists on Goop. They have appeared on Nightline, Charlie Rose, and The Dr. Oz Show and have been featured in such print and online publications as The New Yorker, Time, Psychology Today, and Vanity Fair. Michels, a psychotherapist, has a BA from Harvard, a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MSW from the University of Southern California. Stutz, a psychiatrist, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from City College in New York and received his MD from New York University.