How the Tools® found me
I will never forget the moment the Tools found me. It was when I was still a teacher in the food industry. I was at a point in my life where I was really fed up with my work life. I no longer enjoyed it. At the end of a regular working day, I was in the car on my way home. The radio was on and the 6 o’clock news rang through the speakers. Nothing special, because I followed the news closely. Both at home and abroad, radio or TV, news sites and apps with push notifications at ‘breaking’ events. I thought it was extremely important to be as well informed as possible about the goings on in the world. That showed interest and also allowed me to participate in the discussion about current events. In the evening I went to sleep, listening to Twee Today, and in the morning I got up again, scrolling through news sites. In election time I also followed all kinds of opinion programs and talk shows with politicians. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the news was my latest, supposedly healthy, addiction.
But that day I was suddenly completely done with it. I didn’t feel like listening to those monotonous voices with their negative information anymore. The penny dropped. I realized that I could spend my time more usefully than following all the news. I wanted to listen to something that would enrich me and wondered if there was such a thing as audiobook apps. When I stopped for a break along the highway at a gas station, for a greasy snack and a sneaky cigarette at a picnic table next to the parking lot (yes I still did that back then!), I found out that there was such an app. I was already scrolling through the many books about personal development with a cigarette butt on my lip. I picked a few and got back into the car.
In the very first book I listened, a tool from the book ‘the Tools’ was discussed. It sounded so interesting that I immediately wanted to know more about this and I immediately switched to the audiobook De Tools. With the first sentences already, it was raining quarters. I was hooked! I have, so to speak, turned this audiobook gray and the reading book that I subsequently bought is my most read book. This was exactly what I needed. I went to practice the Tools, practice and practice some more. I was Tools, I tasted Tools, I breathed Tools.
Since then, not a day has gone by that I don’t use a Tool. For me, and for many others who work with them, they are truly BRILLIANT. You only know what the Tools do for you when you do them. For me, it turned out that seven months after that one day that I downloaded that first audiobook: I was 8.5 kg slimmer, because I ate healthier and I had stopped smoking for good. In the meantime, intermittent fasting had also come my way. At the time, I was travelling alone on a plane to San Francisco to participate in a workshop by psychologist Phil Stutz (the creator of the Tools).
Through this workshop I learned even more, and of course about myself. I also met some great people there, who I am still in touch with. These were people who were in the same boat as me, and who also chose to no longer accept a mediocre and shallow life of short-term gratification. They also took control of their own lives and chose to take action, precisely on the points that bothered them most.
The Tools have enriched my life on a level I never thought possible before. Six years earlier, I woke up, knew what I didn’t want. But thanks to the Tools, something completely different happened: I was now really wide awake and now knew what I did want! While singing I walked there, alone, over the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge, to the direction I wanted my life to go: helping people to make their lives a masterpiece, in all it’s facets.