The Sweat Pledge
I don’t know for sure about you, but before you met me to represent you in your job injury claim caused by something out of your control, you were working a job that was either on your way to a better job, a job you were stuck in because of your dumb boss, or a job that was there because you could not find another one.
I get it. Maybe you need a higher education or more skills/experience to get a better, more attractive job. But have you even thought you were fortunate just to be working, no matter how dirty the job was?
One of my favorite TV characters is Mike Rowe. You know him as the man who does the dirty jobs and shows us those people who perform them, willingly and without complaining.
That is the point. Mike Rowe wants us to realize that a young person does not require a four-year college education to earn $100,000 or more per year. Vocational training is almost without college debt and is quick placement in good paying jobs to start with as an apprentice and then to move up the ladder in two or three years to earn a good salary, have job satisfaction, start a family early and maybe, just maybe, enjoy your work.
Mike has been very successful with his Dirty Jobs series that started on TV in 2008. There are a number of DVD’s of all the dirty jobs he provided for TV. Lately he has started a scholarship program to grant young folks a money reward for choosing dirty jobs instead of four-year college. This is a very successful program.
Most recently, he has developed what he calls the SWEAT pledge. This is an acronym that means: Skill and Work Ethic Aren’t Taboo.
The first letter of the pledge is gratitude. Mike wants us to develop an attitude of gratitude. We should decide to be grateful. When you count your blessings, he says, you cannot feel sorry for yourself. He states: “I believe that I have won the greatest lottery of all time. I am alive. I walk the Earth. I live in America. Above all things, I am grateful.”
Mike is convinced that Americans do NOT appreciate hard labor. We want instant results. We have a skills gap because we do not know how to do many things; we have no skills because we haven’t been taught many skills, just ideas (and those have not been very helpful looking at the far-left wing thoughts/attitudes that are spewed out by our young folks coming out of college).
An attitude of gratitude: it is a Biblical principle that Mike has polished and re-polished it in a very persuasive way, linking it to employment in a skill-based work environment.
Check Mike out on TBN Network. He is great. I will explain the rest of the SWEAT pledge in another blog.