Are You Using Your 'Tools'?

By Dr. Marcus Mottley

“The World has the tools to end the pandemic. They’re not being used properly.” That was one of the headlines on CNN yesterday. The statement was attributed to Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

In his interview, Dr. Hunter contended that like all pandemics, this one will fade away and out of view as a result of human ‘tools’ like vaccine development, contact tracing, genomic analysis, containment measures and international cooperation. In other words, “the world has a toolkit to bring an end to the pandemic as quickly as possible.

Yes! But…

His major complaint is that even after almost two years, those ‘tools’ are not being put to their best use.   

So… there it is…. We have the ‘tools’… but we are not putting them to the best use!

Not globally… not regionally… not locally!

That forced me to think about the degree to which we are using our ‘tools’ personally!

To what degree are we using:

• Our emotional skills?
• Our resiliency skills?
• Our critical thinking skills?
• Our knowledge?
• Our relationships and relational skills?
• Our experiences and expertise?
• Our lessons from life?
• Our support systems?
• Our community?
• Information from mentors?
• Advise from those we consult with?
• Help from our coaches and counselors?
• Common sense recommendations from our family and friends?
• The books (ebooks included) that we have purchased?
• Information from trainings that we have attended?
• Videos from YouTube and TedTalks?
• And… so much more…

As I reviewed that list, I was forced to come to the conclusion, that I can do much more with all the ‘tools’ that I have available for me to use to achieve my goals!

This is also something that many of the people that I coach, train and counsel willingly identify as a problem.

This is one of the reasons that I developed a program where every person can have tons of tools in one place that they can use to strengthen, uplift, motivate, inspire, educate, empower themselves! They can heal their emotional hurts, develop emotional competence, build critical thinking skills, build better relationships, deal with difficult people, handle challenging conversations… and so much more.