Are You Using All of Your Tools?
By Jennifer Hoffman | Enlightening Life

March 8, 2015 

Every life experiences comes with tools and information that we can use to create the next step on our path. Often those tools don’t look very helpful, we don’t know we have them, or we don’t know how to use them. And sometimes they come from a source that we don’t think is helpful, so we don’t recognize them as providing us with the tools we need because they’re often the least helpful people in our life.


Moving forward faster (and that’s a relative term) is easier when we look at all of our experiences expecting to find useful tools to help us on our next steps. Then we have to use all of them with the intention of becoming more efficient and effective in how we clear our path. I got this message this weekend when I was using yard tools my mother gave me to clean my yard and realized that I wasn’t using all of the tools to create my outcome (getting all of the leaves picked up). Once I realized I had all of the tools I needed and formulated a plan to use them more effectively, I finished the work in record time.


My mother gave me her yard tools when she sold her house. One of the tools, a big leaf blower and vacuum, would be helpful with my annual leaf cleanup. I have a big yard and lots of big trees, that shed lots of leaves every year.  But she didn’t show me how to use them, she just handed me a plastic bag with the attachments and instructions. I put everything in the garage, put the bag on my yard tool holder, and forgot about it.


Every year I would get the leaf vacuum out and clean my yard. But the vacuum was slow and I had to empty the bag every few minutes. So I would just clean up my garden beds and leave the rest. According to the instructions, there was a blower attachment but I couldn’t figure out where it was or how to use it, as I thought it was part of the vacuum attachment. After searching online for directions, I gave up and did the best I could with my rake and leaf vacuum.




This year I was determined to clean up all of the leaves and as I got started, I heard the message ‘Are you using all of your tools?’ I found the blower attachment, hanging exactly where I had left it several years before, figured out how to use, and with the new leaf scoops I bought last weekend, started  on the yard. With the right tools and process, I made lots of progress today and will achieve my goal of cleaning my yard this year.




I had all of the tools, even though I didn’t know it, and I wasn’t using them together in the best way. And when I had asked my mother about the blower, she said she didn’t use it so she didn’t know. She had all of the tools too, but she wasn’t using them either, mainly because she doesn’t like yard work and did the minimum possible.  I like yard work and I wanted to get it all done.


Discouragement, fatigue, fear, and overwhelm make us forget that we have all of the tools we need. Instead of looking at a big job from the perspective of how long it’s going to take, it’s better to look at our own resources and come up with new ways to use the tools we have. It all depends on how we view a situation, our skills, our gifts, and whether we have confidence in our abilities.


Here are some questions to ask so you’re using all of your tools as productively, effectively, and efficiently as possible. Whether you are doing yard work or contemplating the next step on your path, using all of your tools will get the job done much faster.

1. How are you judging the situation? Judgment blocks energy flow, so if you’re telling yourself how much you don’t like something, or how hard it is, how you wish you didn’t have to do it, or questioning your abilities, you’re blocking the energy flow that you need to get it done. And your judgments prevent you from uncovering the hidden value in your tools.
   

2. What tools do you have and how can you put them together in new ways? Every lesson has a blessing and every experience teaches us something. You may call something a failure but now you know what you don’t want to do. What are your take-aways and how can you use them to make new choices and decisions now? Knowing what you don’t want is a very powerful time and energy saver.
   

3. How can you create a better flow for the energy? All manifestation happens faster when the energy flows, meaning there are no blocks or limitations. Whether it’s your thoughts or what you’re doing in each moment, if you create a flow, things will move. I used all of the tools to clean my yard quickly, by using the blower to create piles of leaves, the leaf scoopers to quickly fill the bag, and the vacuum to pick up the smaller pieces. How can you create a better flow by organizing your thoughts, releasing the ones that don’t serve you, and replacing them with more powerful ones?
   

4. Are you asking the right person for advice? I thought my mother would be helpful, since it was her yard tools but she didn’t know because she only used what she thought she needed to do the little bit of yard work she had to do. Someone who liked yard work would be more enthusiastic and interested in helping me figure it out. If you need advice, seek out a reliable resource who is as interested in the situation or outcome as you are.
   

5. This is the most important — be confident and stop trying to be perfect. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, there is only the best way for you, and everyone has a different standard of perfection. When we seek perfection, what we really want is to be ‘beyond reproach’, to be so good that no one can judge or criticize us. We only have to do what is good enough or perfect for us. And you are confident when you believe in yourself and in your abilities, when you are aligned with your outcome, and know that you have all the tools you need to do anything you want to do. If something isn’t working, try something else and when you stop judging yourself, you open up the pathways for the energy to flow.
   

Are you ready to use your tools to create new paths in your life? It helps to remember that you are unique and you will always do things your way. You can’t copy someone else’s results that you think are fabulous, and maybe judge yourself because you don’t think you are capable of that, but you can create your own, unique fabulous results. And once you know how to use your tools to create the outcomes you want, you can use them again and again, achieving better results each time because practice creates perfection.

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Copyright (c) 2015 by Jennifer Hoffman and Enlightening Life OmniMedia, Inc.. All rights reserved. You may quote, copy, translate and link to this article, in its entirety, on free, non-donation based websites only, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website. All other uses are strictly prohibited.