Michael had to be away from both work and coaching his daughter’s basketball team as he recovers. During that time, Social Connect loses their largest client. They have just two months to find new clients to replace the revenue loss, or they will need to shut the business down. J shares three main points of “The Way”, his Heart of Success Model – Love, Serve and Care. He tells Michael that you love, you serve, and you show people you care. It’s the simplest, most powerful and greatest success model of all time. In this spirit, the key to becoming a powerful success builder is to make a difference to one person, one moment at a time. You do it each day, with each person, in each moment as part of each interaction, and over time you powerfully impact a lot of people.. Always remember that a big mission starts with a small group of people. If you want to impact millions of people, you have to start with one. If you want to impact billions, start with twelve, once person at a time. – J. Emanuel” -Jon Gordon. After becoming multi-million selling, Grammy-winning superstars with their 1970 breakthrough “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” Richard and Karen Carpenter would win over fans worldwide with a record-breaking string of hits including “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Top of the World” and “Yesterday Once More.” There are a lot of interesting other ideas around childrearing, largely based on science, but studies are only a gentle secondary presence in this book. I think there is a temptation with raising children, like in many other aspects of life, to hope for a "recipe for success," a series of steps that if you follow it will results in a successful outcome. To let go of that certainty is both freeing and terrifying, but necessary, I believe. In some ways I have realized that the type of parent you are is something that emerges in a surprising way sometime after this tiny creature is handed to you. While my daughter has surprised me, I think perhaps what has surprised me more is the way you become someone entirely different than you were before. I do not miss the aspects of my old life that I thought that I would. They are just different- transformed. I still value most of the same things, but the light that I see the world in has subtly and importantly shifted. I think few gardeners would argue that the time spent in their garden has changed them, too. J. gives Michael great advice in saying “I want to encourage you to talk to yourself instead of listening to yourself. It’s a powerful tool to build your success.”

The late and great Nelson Mandela said it best: ‘I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.'” 2. Negative Thoughts are Nails Rough carpenters, also known as frame carpenters, specialize in the construction of the basic framework of structures so that the foundation of your home is level, plumb and square. After working as a journeyman for an extended period of time, a carpenter becomes known as a master carpenter. In the United States, this graduation is an informal one that simply means the carpenter has the skills and expertise required to perform nearly any carpentry job. Keep in mind that a master carpenter will often charge more per hour than a journeyman. LicensureShe brings some of her own personal biases into the story. For example, she says the 3 types of childraising are parenting, aloparenting and grandMOTHERING. So... grandfathers just don't exist? Maybe because she is divorced (which I don't even want to know about, she just brings it up multiple times in the book) she wants to get a little dig in on her ex and say grandfathers don't count. However, this book makes a lot more sense after realizing that it isn’t narrowly focused on the carpenter and gardener metaphor and instead broadly surveys relevant research in developmental psychology and more. From mating strategies in monkeys to how children play, from the ethics of raising children to why children ask why, this book covers a lot of ground. Failure can be a gift if you don’t give up and are willing to learn, improve, and grow because of it. In the mid-1980s, John Carpenter stumbled upon a comic book story set in a world where aliens were secretly controlling the entire human race. A lifelong fan of science fiction, Carpenter saw a metaphor lurking there that tied the aliens to Reagan-era Republican politicians, and a story began brewing in his mind. That story became They Live, Carpenter’s cult masterpiece about an American everyman who sees the world for what it really is with the help of a very special pair of sunglasses.

I bought this book after reading 'Meet the parenting expert who thinks parenting is a terrible invention’ from The Correspondent — which appealed to me. Parents shouldn’t try so hard to mould the perfect child, but provide a safe space in which the child can grow up and explore and make mistakes. (This also matches how my parents raised me.) And that article gripped me in a way the book never did. When you love, you serve, and when you serve, you sacrifice. Service requires a sacrifice of something. Whether it’s time, energy, money, love, effort, or focus, serving others always costs you something, but with service and sacrifice, you gain so much more. Like many of his films, Carpenter also served as a composer for They Live, working once again with composer and sound designer Alan Howarth for what turned out to be a largely improvisational process. “I walked into Alan’s studio with a complete blank,” Carpenter said, and noted that he has taken a similarly blank slate approach to many of his films. Drawing upon his work with countless leaders, sales people, professional and college sports teams, non-profit organizations and schools, Jon Gordon shares anentertaining and enlighteningstory that will inspire you to build a better life, career, and team with the greatest success strategies of all. This premise of this book is a paradox. On the one hand, I felt like the carpenter and gardener comparison was well summarized in a few paragraphs in a WSJ article by Gopnik. On the other hand, I greatly admire Gopnik’s research in academia and trust her judgment in composing a book.

Questions to Ask a Carpenter

If you’re looking for very specific detailed strategies to implement, not here. There are guidelines and lessons to employ but nothing like “step one: write a note, step two: analyze your profits every two days, step three: take a client to a burrito shop for lunch on Tuesday.” 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. The scene in which Nada comes upon a supermarket full of aliens (or ghouls, to use Carpenter’s preferred term) was more complicated because every visible label in the store had to be replaced with a plain white label revealing the subliminal messaging. According to Carpenter, the crew attempted to shoot the scene on location at a real market, but they simply couldn’t cover everything, so a set had to be built instead. Some of my favorite points and tidbits were focused around the whole thing. I don't know about you but I am a work in progress. I can improve every day.

I love, serve, and care because __________ (you fill in the blank.) 9. Are You a Pretender or a Contender? For the role of “John Nada,” They Live's central character, Carpenter was on the hunt for an everyman who could embody the blue collar working class. A lifelong wrestling fan, Carpenter was intrigued by the prospect of meeting with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, and the two were introduced by Piper’s manager after Wrestlemania III. Piper was interested in getting into more acting roles, but later admitted he had no idea who Carpenter was before meeting him. In some ways, this is a book that is best summarized by its title. When we act as parents, Dr. Gopnik is telling us, we should think of ourselves more as gardeners than as carpenters. The relevant difference is that the gardener is focused on growth, but doesn't usually try to insure details such as exactly how many leaves grow on the plant or where, just that there be about the right amount of leaves growing. A carpenter, on the other hand, usually does a lot of rather precise measuring and cutting, insuring a certain final outcome where all the pieces fit together. Gopnik appears to be concerned that modern "parenting" (she dislikes the verb, by the way, preferring the noun "parent") is becoming too similar to carpentry in its aspirations, and not enough like gardening. I have read every book Jon has published and I am a real fan! In this book Jon really brings his storytelling skills to an intricate level in this charming real-world feeling story that you can see with your mind. The Carpenter is a wise soul that shares wisdom in useable practical ways, and you can use them the same day you read them. I love books that give you tools that work in everyday situations, not in just a one-off way to do something a bit different, this book delivered that beautifully. If you’re new to the world of carpentry, you might not realize that there are a few different types of carpentry on the scene.This point is illustrated when J. is talking to Michael about the importance of designing the entertainment center before he starts to build. Through this dialogue, he starts to discuss how it’s important to live our lives in the same manner. He begins to ask Michael some compelling questions: With that in mind, here are 10 big ideas from The Carpenter … 1. Life and Success are About What You Choose to Believe Richard has performed on Steinway grand pianos on all but one of the Carpenters albums, as well as on the new Piano Songbook album. He also has two Steinways in his suburban Los Angeles home.