On this episode of The Karen Kenney Show, I talk about what happens when we walk through life with only one “tool”.

Which is usually our default reactions like - anger, shutting down, the silent treatment, judgment, or trying to fix everyone but our damn selves – and how that keeps our world and our relationships wicked small.

I tell a story about my love for Swiss Army knives and Leatherman tools when I was a kid and ​use them ​as a metaphor for expanding your emotional and spiritual toolkit - ​now that we're grown-ass adults. 😆

We dive into why curiosity is such a powerful tool, how ​our old patterns can limit our ability to respond wisely, and I share some simple practices that you can start using when you feel anxious, activated, or in conflict.

You’ll also learn:

📌 How “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” shows up in your life

📌 Why a lack of curiosity can damage relationships and keep you stuck

📌 New emotional and spiritual “tools” you can add to your inner toolkit

📌 Practical ideas for communicating better and regulating your nervous system

If you’re ready to move through the world with more calm, clarity, compassion, and choice, then this episode is gonna' be right up your alley!

KAREN KENNEY BIO:

Karen Kenney is a writer, speaker, podcaster, certified spiritual mentor, and coach.

She’s known for her dynamic storytelling, her sense of humor, her Boston accent, and her no-bullshit approach to spirituality, self​-development, and transformational change work.

Karen helps people to navigate this whole “being human” experience using a variety of practical tools, personal stories, and universal principles.

She's been a yoga teacher for 25+ years, has been a Thai Yoga Massage practitioner since 2008.

She's also a Gateless Writing Instructor, the creator of WRITE CLUB , and the host of The Karen Kenney Show podcast.

She coaches clients individually in her 1-to-1 program: THE QUEST and in her HEART-TO-HEART DAYS using Voxer. She also leads a group program and community called THE NEST.

CONNECT WITH KAREN:

Website: http://karenkenney.com/

Podcast: https://www.karenkenney.com/podcast

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karenkenneylive/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karenkenneylive/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KarenKenney

It's the Karen Kenney show. Hey, you guys!

Welcome to the Karen Kenney Show. I'm super duper excited to

be here with you today. We're just gonna start. We're just

gonna jump right in with a little story. So I was in my car

today, earlier today, on my way to the gym, and you know I have

to put something in my console. And when I was looking in my

console, I see down in there two things that I get very excited.

So down in my console, I keep you know there's a couple of

things in there, but two of the things that I keep in there is

one is I have a Swiss Army knife, you know, a Swiss Army

little toolkit tool thing, and then I also have a Leatherman.

So when I was a kid, I loved Swissami knives. Like Double

Aman, hands if you can relate, right? I was a wicked tomboy. I

loved like GI Joes and like all all all the all the stuff that

people would say like quote unquote the boys like. Like I

think everybody can like everything. I'm just saying this

is what we called it back in the day, right? So when I was a kid,

I loved Swiss Army knives, and then later in the '80s, they

came out with a called Leatherman, like Leatherman

craft tools. And what I loved about these things is that they

were multi-purpose units, right? That they were multi-tools. And

what I realized is, so like for example, the Swiss Army knife is

kind of built around the knife, but some of the Swasami knives

also have screwdrivers, and they have little things for like

digging into stuff and threading things. They have cork screws,

right? And then the Leatherman is built more around like

pliers, and then it has these multi things around them, so you

can like pop open, and there's a screwdriver. You can pop open

this like little mini scissors, right? So like everything you

need is like built into these little things. And when I was

thinking about these multi tools and what really resonated with

me is I love the idea that in one little thing you can totally

expand your toolkit. And when I started to think about human

beings, right? My sweetie and I were talking about this the

other day, and I was thinking about human beings. What happens

so often is that people do not expand their toolkit. They don't

expand the tools in their toolkit. And another way of

saying that is that they don't expand their perspectives,

right? And we'll get into all of that in a minute. So I want to

get into this idea of why it's important that we expand our

quote-unquote toolkit or our set of tools, and it goes back to

this quote that maybe you have heard. Now people have

attributed these quotes to like different people, like Mark

Twain, whatever. Mark Twain. There's obviously like no proof

that he ever said this, but the reason why we don't want to have

a small toolkit is because it really limits how we not only

see the world but how we respond to the world. It it changes how

we see problems in solutions, and it changes how we interact

with other human beings in our relationships, right? So Abraham

Maslow said. So back in 1966, a guy named Abraham Maslow said

this in the Psychology of Science. He says this: If you,

if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat

everything as if it were a nail. Another way that this got said

around the same time is it says if one has a hammer, one tends

to look for nails. So we can already see how only having one

tool it limits your scope not only of problem solving, but it

limits your perspective. If the only thing you have is the

hammer, everything not only starts to look like nails, like

that's the tool you need to use, but you'll also only you'll

start to look for nails. You'll start to look for problems that

maybe don't even exist. And then Abraham Kaplan, who was a

professor of philosophy at UCLA, he also said this back in the 60

s. Something very similar, and this is called the Kaplan's Law

of the Instrument.

It's also sometimes called the first law of the instrument, and

this is what it states. He says, "Give a boy a hammer, and

everything he meets has to be pounded. Another way that this

has been kind of paraphrases this: I did research. You guys

know I always look shit up. I do like I love words. I love like

phrases and quotes and and getting to the to the happy like

the origin story of stuff. So another way that this has been

said is this: If you give a boy a hammer, he suddenly finds that

everything needs pounding. Think about that. Let's just hit boop

boop. Let's hit the pause button for a second and think about

this. If you have only one tool, you. Start to see everything

through the lens of this is the solution for everything, and if

this is the only thing you have, you think that's the only way to

view things through, right? And so it becomes very limiting. And

I'm going to apply this in a broader perspective in a moment.

So here's the thing: if you only have a hammer, that's all you'll

ever use, and you don't even sometimes know that there are

other options or other ways or other tools out there. So one of

the things that is deeply, deeply required, and I cannot

say this enough, is you must be a person who has curiosity. Now

I'm just going to go out there and say this, and this might

make me sound mean or judgmental or a jerk or whatever, but I

really, really do feel this deeply. I find people who have a

lack of curiosity so excruciatingly dull. People who

are not interested in other human beings, people who aren't

interested in other points of view, people who aren't

interested in learning, people who aren't interested in hearing

the story, people who don't want to know what it's like to stand

in another person's shoes, people who don't want to

understand another person's perspective. Like, if you're not

curious, one of the things that I have said to my yoga students

for a gazillion years, and I say it to people in the nest. I say

it to people in my yoga classes. I say it to people in mentoring

and in my writing. My writing, you know, write club. I do

writing workshops every month. The number one thing that I tell

them is you must be curious. If you are not curious, oh my God,

I see it so often too. As a podcaster, I see people who

interview other human beings, and they are just not curious

enough. They just ask the same old questions that everybody

asks. They don't get under the under. They don't lean in. They

don't ask people about themselves, and you also see

this in bad dates. On bad dates, when the other person all they

do is talk about themselves, and they don't ask you a single

thing about yourself. And I also see this. There's so much

suffering that I have seen with humans I have worked with in

relationship to their families, and they'll say to me, like,

think about like their siblings, their parents, their people,

their quote unquote people, and they'll say they never ask me

about myself, and I'm like, they don't ask you about yourself

because they've already decided who they think you are. They put

you, they slapped a bunch of labels on you, they put you in

the boxes of their own making. They've decided that this is who

you are, and you could be six months later, six years later,

60 years later, and they just have lost all curiosity about

you, for you, towards you, whatever. And it is just lazy,

and it's dull, and it's uninspiring. And if that makes

me an asshole, I guess that's what I am because I just I just

do not understand now what why people have a lack of curiosity

about other people's humanities and stories and why they are the

way that they are and why they think that and why they do that.

I mean, I just think like, oh my god, you cannot be a writer and

a storyteller. You cannot be a good teacher. I don't think you

can be a good coach.

I don't think you can be a good mentor or a good therapist or

even a good parent for that matter. If you're not leaning

into and trying to get more tools in your toolkit for

understanding the other humans and animals and world around

you, so how? Like again, think about it. If all you have is a

hammer, but the person or the problem or the situation

requires needle nose tweezes, then you're fucked, and the

person that you're dealing with is also fucked because if you

only have a hammer when the situation, the person, the

whatever requires a little bit more tenderness, or mercy, or

compassion, or quiet, or care, or whatever, then damage will be

done. You will end up leaving a mark. And one of the ways that I

saw this, I'll never forget. So here I am, like a total mass

hole, right? I grow up in Lawrence, Mass. I go to BU. I

live in Boston for five years, whatever, and then I move out to

LA. That's a longer story for another. I would say read the

book, read the read the memoir when it comes out. But it was

so, it was so mind blowing to me, like my experience in Los

Angeles, in L.A. in California, when I look back to what my life

was like in Lawrence and in Boston and stuff like that, I

would not be the same person that I am. I've said this before

about my mother too. I'm like, if my mother hadn't been killed,

like if my mother didn't die when I was. Younger, I don't

think I'd be the same person that I am today, and I can tell

you 100% straight up facts, facts. I would not be the same

person I am today if I hadn't left home, gotten the fuck out

of Mass Hole City, right? And I, you know me, I love being a

little masshole. Hashtag evolved masshole, right? But to leave my

roots, to leave my quote-unquote people, to leave the family, and

to move 3000 miles away to the opposite coast, right? I went

from the northeast to the southwest. You know, it's like

what a total different experience, and I remember like

it was so fascinating because my sweetie has talked about this

too because he's a kid that grew up in Dover, New Hampshire, and

same thing he moved out to LA. We were both out in LA at the

same time, probably circling around each other. Our paths

didn't cross, although we're convinced that we were in the

same places at the same time, but just didn't know each other.

But he too also says, like when we were out there, like people

who were local, like local native Californians. A lot of

times, it's like they didn't get they didn't get the sarcasm,

they didn't get the harshness, they didn't get the like teasing

as a form of affection. Right? It was just like foreign to

them. It was like, what, what, what is this, right? And they

didn't always understand like the East Coast. And I often say,

I'm an East Coast kid, like I'm an East Coast kid with like a

West Coast sensibility in a lot of ways. Because being in

Burbank, being in in Montecito and Santa Barbara with Marianne,

right? Marian Williamson being down in San Diego, like just

being on the West Coast and experiencing their point of

view, like experiencing Hollywood, experiencing like all

the movie styles, experiencing the glam and the grit,

experiencing just the level and depth of of you know, a lot of

people like oh the the Californians are crazy it's all

woo woo out there, but I will tell you the spiritual

experiences the spiritual exposure that I got in

California I would not be the same person. So if you're

somebody who finds themselves always reaching for the hammer,

and let's just think about this. Let me give you a concrete

example. Let's say that when you get into an argument with your

sweetie, you guys fall into your patterns because you don't have

any tools. So one of you starts slamming shit or slamming doors

or whatever, and the other one does the silent treatment, and

like that's your mo.

The only way that you need to, the only way that you seem to

have to show your dissatisfaction, your

unhappiness, your annoyance, your anger, whatever, is that

you stop speaking to your partner. And somebody was

telling me the other day, they're like, "Oh yeah, I've

known people who they don't talk. They live in this little

space, this little apartment, and they haven't talked to each

other in two weeks. And I just think like, what the fuck is

that? Like, what does that look like, right? And I'm not, I'm

not judging those people, but what it usually tells me is they

don't have more tools in their toolkit for finding out how to

express or sharing how they feel with the other person, right?

Let's say that your immediate tool is like anger, like you you

don't have any other way of like expressing yourself again. When

all you have is a hammer, everything and everybody starts

to look like a nail that needs to get pounded. So it limits us.

It limits our ability to respond appropriately. And again, let's

say something you know needs a screwdriver, but all you have is

a chisel. Like that's not going to work. So it's so important

that we learn how to expand our toolkit to get different tools,

and we could also apply this to ourselves with ourselves. Like

let's say that you're somebody who has panic attacks, or

somebody who gets anxious, or somebody who has whatever. It's

really, really helpful to be able to have different things in

your toolbox, like breathing exercises, or knowing that you

can take something cold and put it on the back of your neck, or

put cold water on your face, or knowing that you could hum like

some sounds to help your vagus nerve, or knowing that you could

suck on a super sour candy because that will pull you in,

knowing that you could do EFT tapping or bilateral stimulation

or 1000 other tools, but you have to be curious enough and

have a strong enough desire to want to help yourself, that you

learn those things, and some very simple things that you can

do. Because I get it, right? Me going, leaving Lawrence and

going to Boston and being at Boston University around kids

who came from such different lives than me, kids who had so.

Much money, whose parents were like they didn't have the money.

Their parents had the money, right? Kids who had famous

parents, kids who just came from different religions and

backgrounds, and all kinds of stuff. Like that was another

like like the door swung open on my life, and I was able to meet

people from the Midwest, and I was able to meet like Jewish

friends, and I was able to be exposed to people who were from

Ghana. Like, I mean, my whole world was just woo, just like

grew in size, right? And then moving to California, that it

did that too, right? All the experiences I got to have with

the Course in Miracles and working in bookstores and da da

da da, like all these things, right? So not everybody though

can go off to college. Not everybody wants to. Not

everybody can possibly leave home or leave their hometown.

Sometimes you're stuck where you're stuck for whatever

reason. You don't have transportation. You don't have

money. You don't have support. You don't know where to go. You

don't know how to go. Whatever. But some of the things that we

can simply do to grow our toolkit in our own. When you're

you're just like, hey, I don't have a ton of resources, and I'm

like, everybody can get a library card. I don't know if

you have to walk to the library. I don't know if you're able to

get to the library. Maybe a friend can like. Maybe you can

call, find out whatever. Again, but you need to be curious. You

need to be willing to step a little outside of your comfort

zone to learn new tools, right? But if you cannot leave home,

then leave your apartment, leave your house, leave whatever, and

go to the library, go to the bookstore, right? Libraries are

free.

That's the beautiful thing: is you can get a library card and

reading in libraries, and again, not everybody maybe can read,

but you can do books on audio if you can listen, right? And

again, there's always nuances and exceptions to all of the

things that I might say, so I don't know all the solutions,

and I can't possibly in this short amount of time, you know,

give you give you like all the solutions. But what I'm saying

is, there are ways to help educate yourself, to expand your

perspective, to see from other people's point of views. This is

what books do: is they give us insights into the quote unquote

quote unquote. I'm doing little air quotes. Others, right? I

often think this. I just think people from different political

parties should talk to each other. Straight people should

talk to gay people. Black people and white people should maybe

have a conversation. People who are all different from each

other, people who come from maybe organized religion, should

talk to some atheists. People who love yoga should talk to

people who don't like whatever. But if we all got curious about

each other. If we all got curious about wanting to have

more tools beyond just having that one hammer or that one

screwdriver or that one set of pliers, right? If we could get

curious enough and expand our toolkit, then we could respond

more appropriately to the humans in our life, to the situations

in our life, to the climate that we find ourselves in right now,

you know. And another thing we can do too is talk to, like I

just said, talk to people who are different than you. Talk to

people who you would normally not talk to. Find out. Be

curious. Expand your perspective. Because again, like

I love being a Swiss Army knife. I have now kind of become that.

Like I look at my life, and you know, sometimes it's a struggle

when it comes to marketing, and people like, "What do you do?

And I'm like, "Oh Jesus Christ on a cracker! Because I'm not

just one thing. Like my sweetie's like I'm a musician,

and yeah, he's a multi instrumentalist and he's a

singer and he's a songwriter, but he's a musician. When people

are like, "What do you do? I'm like, "Oh my god! Like, where do

I start? I do so many things, so it makes a little bit hotter

sometimes. But I love that I have a lot of different skill

sets. I love that I'm a podcaster and I'm a writer

working on a memoir, and I love that I've been a yoga teacher

forever. I love that I do Thai yoga massage, right? Thai yoga

body work. I love that I host Write Club every month. I love

that I have the Nest, my my spiritual mentoring group

coaching membership. I love that I work one to one with people.

Like I love that I like I you know Reiki, like all the things,

just all the things, right? I love that I'm kind of like a

little Swissami toolkit, right? A Swiss Army knife, and I think

for all of us, especially as we get older, because for a lot of

people, when they get older, they lock in. They lock in to

their way being the only way, to their tools being the best

tools, to their way being the right way. You know what I mean?

We we make our lives and our minds very very very small, and

it limits our capacity to connect to have deep

relationships. You know, it's like if if you just stopped

assuming you already knew what your sweetie was gonna say or

what you already knew your sibling was. Gonna do, or if you

already whatever, if you stop showing up to the potty with

your one tool, and instead went in and said, "My toolkit's a

little lacking. I need to expand this toolkit. I need to get more

tools in my toolkit, right, so that I can make different

choices, so that I can see things differently. So this is

an invitation for us to like all of us, me too, to kind of look

at how we have been kind of like what's the tool I've been

picking up a lot? Is it expectation? Is it assumptions?

Right? Is it putting people in boxes?

Is it like oh, I've been using my judgment tool like a wicked

lot lately or whatever? You know what I'm saying? And we can get

creative and apply whatever we think tools are. There's literal

tools, hammers, nails, whatever. There's tools that we use for

healing, right? There's tools that we use for what's word like

even our bodies. Like a lot of times, yoga teachers just think

yoga is the one and the only way, and it can heal everything.

No, it can't. No, it can't. And especially if you're of a

certain age, you might want to get some strength training in.

That's the other thing. I used to be a personal trainer, right?

Used to be a professional organizer. I have dabbled and

fucked around and found out, and I have a lot of tools in my

toolkit. But I love it because when I am, you know, hired to

help somebody, whether it's simply somebody coming to my

yoga class or somebody showing up on my mat for Thai yoga body

work, which is Thai yoga massage, but in New Hampshire

you have to be very careful, right? So whenever somebody is

showing up, if I only knew how to how to stretch, right, work

on people who are wicked flexible, it would totally limit

my thing. If I always insist on my yoga class and it's going to

be done this way and it's going to be a fast class and it's

going to be da da da da, half the so many people in my class

would not be able to participate or keep up. We have to be

multifaceted as human beings. We have to do it in our work. We

have to do it in our relationships. We have to do it

in our relationship with ourselves. We have to do it in

our craft, right? We have to. And I think for me, one of the

greatest tools that I have in my toolkit is my curiosity. I'm

also wicked resilient. I'm also persistent, you know. So there's

different kind of tools that we can have, not just physical

tools, not just physical skill sets, but it's also how I look

at the world. I also can handle a pretty good plot twist, you

know. I'm pretty good in an emergency, like whatever it is.

So I want to invite you to take a look at your own toolkit and

just notice, like, where am I maybe lacking? Like, my

communication skills aren't so great. I'm kind of, I, I am

straight up, straight out of patience, right? My patient's

coffee maybe could be refilled, but I need a little more toolkit

in the patience, you know, slot or zone or whatever. And I like

to think of this. I'm a very visual thinker, right? So, like

some of you may have had grandparents in double may amen

hands if you did, but you might have had grandparents or uncles

or aunties or whoever who in the garage or in their basement or

in their little workstation or their what do people have their

little artist studio in the house whatever however you grew

up, you know they might have had either a shelf or a wall. But

I'm thinking of the ones like in the old days. You know those

paddle boards that had all the holes in them, so you can put

little hooks in, and people would like hang up their tools

and then trace the tools. So if you lent it to somebody or your

neighbor took it, you would know when it was missing, like on the

wall or whatever, and then you could ask for it back, and it's

like, oh yeah, like Marty next door has the hammer or whatever,

right? So when you see, right, so I think of it like that. You

could literally picture it like you're like one of those red

metal toolboxes with the latches, like click, click, you

know, and opening them up, or you could see it like more of a

like a tool belt that's around your waist, or whatever. However

you visualize this, but I'm thinking of the one with the

outlines right now, right? A wall toolkit. You know, imagine

looking at that and being wicked honest with yourself and saying

like, what's on my wall? What's missing from my wall. What tools

maybe could I use?

Because again, if all you have is a hammer, you'll walk around

thinking everybody needs to be pounded. And what I mean by that

is, if you grew up like as a asshole, and your solution to

everything was to suck it up and stuff it down, when somebody

else comes to you with a problem, or your child comes to

you and they're upset, you and you don't know compassion,

tenderness, mercy, listening, right? Like really hearing them,

reflecting back what they just said to you, asking them. Like

one of your tools, a really good tool to have is to ask somebody,

"What do you need from me right now? Do you just want me to

listen?" Or do you want me to help you find some solutions,

right? If you don't have that toolkit, if you don't have that

tool in your toolkit, you just think to pick up your hammer and

say, "Suck it up, you know, "suck it up. This happens to

everybody. You don't know how bad I had it back in the day. If

you if you bring everything back to you, or you're not able to be

compassionate towards their situation, you are lacking some

tools, my friend. You know, so we get to take an honest, as

they say in 12-step programs, you take a fearless moral

inventory. Well, right now we're just taking a fearless and

wicked honest like tool inventory, right? And and ask

myself, where has my toolbox? Is there an attrition rate, right?

Do you have even less tools now as you got older because you

started to specialize in something and you really started

to drink the Kool-Aid that this way is the only way, or this is

how my family has always done it? Because sometimes, right?

And if you're sometimes, you know, if you're somebody who's

like, as we call it, or it is sometimes called idiot

compassion or idiot empathy, right? Where you're way you cut

people way too much slack all the time, when sometimes they

need a little boot in the ass, lovingly, as I always say,

loving but firm, right? As I was taught from my teaches, multiple

teaches, Ashwaran, one of them, you know, taught me that loving

but firm, because we don't. It's it's not helpful to anybody to

let them treat you like shit to be a doormat. Letting people get

away with being total colossal assholes is not helpful to them

or to you. So I can just go on and on and on giving different

examples, but I think you're wicked smart. My I know my

listen is a super duper smarty pants, so you're picking up what

I'm putting down. But I do think, right? I mean, so much of

this podcast is I would love for us to be able to move through

the world, right? Move through the world, right? With with more

confidence and more calm, more creativity, more connection,

more compassion, all the things. All if you listened to my

episode last week about talking to the younger you, I talked

about the 8c's of self-that capital S self-and when you're

in your capital S self way of being, all those C's I just

said, right? Like there's eight of them, but like compassion,

clarity, confidence, courage-you know, creativity, connection,

curiosity. When you're in that state, that calm, then your

tools are so much more available to you. But first of all, we got

to take a look around and say: Do I even have any tools? Do I

keep using the old tools? Is it time to update my tools? Throw

out the old ones, get some new ones, whatever, and then also

again, you know, it's like if you only have a hammer, that's

all you're going to ever use, and the person standing in front

of you might really need something different. So we have

to get curious enough also to pay attention, to lean in, to

listen, and then to respond appropriately, and we want to be

able to do that to ourselves too, especially when those

younger parts of ourselves, right, are needing some of our

attention. So I hope this has been helpful in some way. That

is always my desire: is that I leave you guys better than how I

found you, and that I share something that either, at the

very least, I say the very least. At least you're

entertained.

At least you don't get to the end of it feeling like you're

wasting your time and you had a good time while you were here.

So, thank you so much for tuning in and listening. As always, if

you want to get on my email newsletter list, I don't over

whatever. I you know on Thursdays you'll get the podcast

right into your inbox, and once in a while, on the other days, I

just let you know what's going on. Whether there's a new Write

Club coming up, or if I have openings for Thai yoga body

work. If you know my yoga class is almost always sold out, but

sometimes there's a space for somebody to do a drop in once in

a blue moon. But whatever I'm up to, right, joining the Nest, any

of those things, just go to my website. If you want to get on

the on the the email list, though, it's karenkeney.com/sign

up. Everything else, just go to karenkenney.com. You'll see it

all up in the header. You can navigate to where you want to

go. So thank you for being here, you guys. I hope you find

yourself being more like a Swiss Army knife or a Leatherman that

you are expanding your toolkit every day, also, and I just

appreciate you being here as one of my. Maybe you're a loyal

listener, or maybe you're new. And if you're new here, hi, and

thank you for joining. I appreciate it. Okay, you guys,

wherever you go, may you leave the animals, the other people,

yourself, the planet, and the environment better than how you

first found it. Wherever you go, may you and your energy and your

attitude and your presence and your love and your curiosity and

your Swiss Army knife be a blessing. Bye. Hey, thanks so

much for listening to the show. I really love. Spending some

time together now. If you dig the show or know someone that

could benefit from this episode, please share it with them and

help me to spread the good word and the love. And if you want to

be in the know about all of my upcoming shenanigans, head on

over to karenkenney.com/signup and join my list. It'll be

wicked fun to stay in touch. Bye.