The Carpenter: A Story About The Greatest Succe...
The Carpenter: A Story About The Greatest Succe... ->>> https://urlgoal.com/2tE56X
Drawing upon his work with countless leaders, sales people, professional and college sports teams, non-profit organizations and schools, Jon Gordon shares an entertaining and enlightening story that will inspire you to build a better life, career, and team with the greatest success strategies of all.
Best-selling author Jon Gordon does it again with his book The Carpenter. This fun, inspiring story is about the greatest success strategies of all, which can be applied to any business owner, leader, sports team, coach or parent.
VII ARTS AND CRAFTS -- GREAT TECHNICAL SCHOOLS.The most interesting social movement in our time is undoubtedly that of the arts and crafts. Its central idea is to lift the workmen up above the mere machine that he is likely to become, as the result of the monotonous occupation at some trade that requires him only to do a constantly repeated series of acts, or direct one little portion of machinery and so kills the soul in him. Of course, the other idea that a generation of workmen shall be created, who will be able to make beautiful things for the use of the household as well as the adornment of the house is another principal purpose. Too many people have mistaken this entirely secondary aim of the movement for its primary end. It is because of the effect upon the workman himself of the effort to use his intellect in the designing, his taste in the arrangement, and his artisan skill for the execution of beautiful things, that the arts and crafts movement has its appeal to the generality of mankind.The success of the movement promises to do more to solve social problems than all the socialistic agitation that is at present causing so much dismay in some quarters and raising so many hopes that are destined to be disappointed in the hearts of the laboring classes. The solution of the problem of social unrest is to be found, not in creating new wants for people and giving them additional wages that will still further stimulate their desire to have many things that will continue to be in spite of increased wages beyond their means, but rather to give them such an interest in their life work that their principal source of pleasure is to be found in their occupation. Unfortunately work has come to be looked upon as a drudgery and as men must spend the greater portion of their lives, at least the vast majority of them must, in doing something that will enable them to make a living, it is clear that unhappiness and discontent will still continue. Blessed is the man who has found his work, blessed is the man to whom his work appeals with so much interest that he goes from it with a longing to be able to finish what he has been at, and comes back to it with a prospect that now he shall be able to accomplish what time and perhaps fatigue would not allow him to proceed with the day before.This is the best feature of the promises held out by the arts and crafts movement, that men shall be interested in the work they do. This may seem to some people an unrealizable idea and a poetic aspiration rather than a possible actuality. A little study of what was accomplished in this line during the Thirteenth Century, will surely prove even to the most skeptical how much of success is capable of being realized in this matter. The men who worked around the Cathedrals were given opportunities to express themselves and the best that was in them as no class of workmen before or since have ever had the opportunity. Every single portion of the Cathedral was to be made as beautiful as the mind of man could conceive, his taste could plan and his hands could achieve. As a consequence the carpenter had the chance to express himself in the woodwork, the village blacksmith the opportunity to display his skill in such small ironwork as the hinges or the latch for the door and every workman felt called upon to do the best that was in him.It is easy to understand under these circumstances with what interest the men must have applied themselves to their tasks. They were, as a rule, the designers as well as the executors of the work assigned them. They planned and executed in the rough and tried, then modified and adapted, until finally as we know of most of the Cathedrals, their finished product was as nearly perfect in most particulars as it is ordinarily given to man to achieve. Their aim above all was to make such a combination of utility with beauty of line yet simplicity of finish, as would make their work worthy counterparts of all the other portions of the Cathedral. The sense of competition must have stirred men to the very depths of their souls and yet it was not the heartless rivalry that crushes when it succeeds, but the inspiring emulation that makes one do as well as or better than others, though not necessarily in such a way as to belittle others' efforts by contrast or humble them by triumph. In these old medieval days England used to be called Merrie England and it is easy to understand that workmen would be profoundly merry at heart, when they had the consciousness of accomplishing such good work. Men must have almost tardily quitted their labor in the evening while they hoped and strove te accomplish something that would be worthy of the magnificent building in which so many of their fellow workmen were achieving triumphs of handicraftsmanship. Each went home to rest for the night, but also to dream over what he might be able to do and awoke in the morning with the thought that possibly to-day would see some noteworthy result. This represents the ideal of the workman's life. He has an interest quite apart from the mere making of money. The picture of the modern workman by contrast looks vain and sordid. The vast majority of our workmen labor merely because they must make enough money to-day, in order that they may be able to buy rood enough so as to get strength to work to-morrow. Of interest there is very little. Day after day there is the task of providing for self and others. Only this and nothing more. Is it any wonder that there should be social unrest and discontentment How can workmen be merry unless with the artificial stimulus of strong drink, when there is nothing for them to look forward to except days and weeks and years of labor succeeding one another remorselessly, and with no surcease until Nature puts in her effective demand for rest, or the inevitable end comes.It would be idle to say that these men who knew how to make the beautiful things for these cathedrals were not conscious of the perfection of the work that they were accomplishing. The very fact that each in his own line was achieving such beautiful results must have stamped him as thoroughly capable of appreciating the work of others. The source of pleasure that there must have been therefore, in some twenty towns in England alone, to see their Cathedral approaching completion, must have been of itself a joy far beyond anything we can imagine as possible for the workmen of the present day. The interest in it was supreme and was only heightened by the fact that it was being done by relatives and friends and brother workmen, even though they might be rivals, and that whatever was done was redounding first to the glory of the Lord to whom they turned with so much confidence in these ages of faith, and secondly, and there was scarcely less satisfaction in the thought, to the reputation of their native town and their fellow-townsmen.This is the feature of the life of the lower classes in the Thirteenth Century which most deserves to be studied in our time. We hear much of people being kept in ignorance and in servitude. Men who talk this way know nothing at all of the lives of the towns of the Middle Ages and are able to appreciate not even in the slightest degree the wonderful system ot education, that made life so much fuller of possibilities for intellectual development for all classes and for happiness in life, than any other period of which we know. This phase of the Thirteenth Century is at once the most interesting, the most significant for future generations, and the most important in its lessons for all time.We have been following up thus far the exemplification in the Thirteenth Century of John Ruskin's saying, that if you wish to get at the real significance of the achievements of a period in history, you must read the book of its deeds, the book of its arts and the book of its words. We have been turning over a few of the pages of the book of the deeds of the Thirteenth Century in studying the history of the establishment of the universities and of the method and content of university teaching. After all the only deeds that ought to count in the history of mankind are those that are done for men -- that have accomplished something for the uplift of mankind. History is unfortunately occupied with deeds of many other kinds, and it is perhaps the saddest blot on our modern education, that it is mainly the history of deeds that have been destructive of man, of human happiness and in only too many cases of human rights and human liberties, that are supposed to be most worthy of the study of the rising generation. History as written for schools is to a great extent a satire on efforts for social progress.We shall continue the study of the book of the deeds of the Thirteenth Century and its most interesting and important chapter, that of the education of the masses. We shall find in what was accomplished in educating the people of the Thirteenth Century, the model of the form of education which in spite of our self-complacency does not exist, but must come in our time, if our education is to fulfil its real purpose. Perhaps the most interesting phase of this question of the education of the masses will be the fact that in studying this book of the deeds, we shall have also to study once more the book of the arts of the Thirteenth Century. All their best accomplishment was linked with achievement and progress in art. Yet it was