SECRET TO SUCCESS ~A motivational speaker opened his remarks by saying, “The secret to my success is that I have always followed the two ‘Rules of Success,’ Rule number 1, ‘Never tell everything you know,’ … The audience waited with baited anticipation for the second rule and then it dawned on them after a long pause that Rule 1 was the clue to not telling the second rule.

Some woodcarvers want everything spelled out for the carving of a particular project that leaves nothing to the imagination. Well there is no easy path to learning to carve. There is only “learning by doing” that becomes the best path for learning to carve. The WOOD BEE CARVER’S motto: “Would be carvers would be carvers if they would carve wood,” is the rule of success for carving.

Launch out on your own by laying aside the anxiousness about making a mistake. Mistakes are simply learning experience in disguise and to quit because the disguise did not spell it all out is to miss the lesson about learning.

Learn by doing:  not being able to imagine a particular carving project can be overcome through learning by doing in order to see in one’s mind that carving project and imagining how to carve that project.  Imagination will guide the carving process resulting in improvement in carving.

Learn by doing:  do not know which cutting action to use to accomplish the shaping of a part of the carving project can be overcome by practicing for twenty minutes a day using the cutting tool in all kinds of cuts to learn what can be done with that cutting tool. Do not have confidence in sharpening a carving knife, well one can learn in the twenty minutes a day to hone the skill of sharpening. The key is to do it and learn by doing.

Woodcarvers, as a general rule are in the twilight of their years who lament that they did not start earlier in life to learn to carve. None of us are able to go back but we can go forward.

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” so begin to live by beginning again with a fresh start. A good friend of cherished memories is a photographic artist who shares his observations and philosophy of life with a footnote description to photographs of the Emerald Coast on his blog. Read the hodgepodge collection of his words and apply these words to the art of woodcarving as well as to the beginning of the rest of your life. David Alexander writes: Although no one can go back in time and make a brand new start…Anyone can start from today…and make a new ending…It is never too late to make a new ending… Life is too short to wonder what could have been…Every morning you have two choices…continue to sleep with dreams or wake up and chase your dreams…Follow your dreams, they know the way… Take a chance, because you never know how perfectly things could turn out to be…I don’t regret the things I’ve done, I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance…Share a smile today…and every day!…. Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can spend it, but you can’t keep it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back…Your attitude and the choices you make today will be your life tomorrow…Enjoy this beautiful day!

Woodcarvers ~ it is never too late to make a new ending by beginning again to carve as often as possible because the more one carves the better one will carve. A New Year invites us to make this a year of carving and learning a little every day.

“There seems to have been two classes of the old-fashioned American whittlers-those who whittled to aid their thought and those who thought to aid their whittling.” ~ Phillip Fagans, 1933

The Secret to Success is discovered on one’s own journey of learning by doing.