Joshua Medcalf (00:00):
I played golf with a friend who his father actually mentored Tony Robbins. Tony was a huge influence in my life when I started out and awakened the giant within my mom took me to unleash the power within. And so I looked it up yesterday and Tony Robbins doesn't have a single book that outsells chopped wood carry water on Amazon.
Michelle MacDonald (00:35):
Well, I'm really excited to be welcoming on the podcast today. None other than the author of one of my favorite books, Chop Wood, Carry Water, and I'm excited to deep dive into that and the meaning of it and how we should embrace that book. So we're here with Joshua Medcalf. Joshua, welcome to the show.
Joshua Medcalf (00:54):
Thank You so much for having me, Michelle. It's a pleasure and an honor to get to be here with you today.
Michelle MacDonald (01:00):
So you're a snowboarder, I think.
Joshua Medcalf (01:01):
Yes. I used to do a ton of snowboarding, but now it's mainly golf. I got a hernia three years ago snowboarding, and so it's been a little bit tricky to get on the mountain, but I do plan to get back up for my birthday in January.
Michelle MacDonald (01:20):
I was a snowboarder too. I don't know if you know that, but I was a snowboarder a long time ago. I feel like it was another lifetime. I lived in Whistler for, I don't know, like six to eight years and never thought I would leave there. But I was on your gram and I saw a picture of you in a park, in a snowboard park, and you were talking about living your life and not being, I'm going to mangle this, so I apologize, but not ending up on your deathbed and going, oh, I'm so glad I played at stake.
Joshua Medcalf (01:51):
So the quote is, the purpose of life is not to arrive safely at death. And I try and be very cautious doing things that don't set my soul on fire and don't really make me feel alive. But anytime there's something that I love to do, whether that's jumping off of waterfalls, whether that's snowboarding, anything like that, I am a lot more what most people would consider reckless because if that's how I went out, well then I'm okay going out that way because I do believe that the purpose of life is not to arrive safely at death, and I don't want to get to my death bed and be like, man, I'm so glad that I played it safe, because typically on our death bed, the regrets of the dying, if you were to look or study, those things tend to be, I wish I would've lived a life that was true to myself and not what others expected of me. And it's a lot more about regrets of inaction versus the times we did take action and failed. So I've to make a very concerted effort in my life to live in that manner.
Michelle MacDonald (03:04):
I love that. So that's going to segue into my first question, which is where did all this writing come from? You're a very prolific writer. What was the source of all that? I'd love to hear your background story and I think the audience would love to know too. Yeah,
Joshua Medcalf (03:19):
Great question. So I actually don't love writing. I've come to love writing. I grew up speaking, I was winning preaching competitions whenever I was seven years old, so speaking has been the thing that I had done. I got a communications degree from Vanderbilt Vander. I loved going out on the road and speaking. I didn't even write my master's thesis at Duke, so I don't have a master's from Duke. And all I needed to do was to have written a 55 page thesis to have gotten that. And I wrote the director of the program an email that said, I'm not going to write a paper that collects dust on somebody's desk. I'm going to create an organization that changes the world. And that was probably a little bit arrogant and naive at the time, but I was willing to do the work. And 10 years later, I published 10 books and have possibly done a lot of what I set out to do, especially in terms of getting that life-changing wisdom out to the masses.
(04:34):
I played golf with a friend who his father actually mentored Tony Robbins, and it got me thinking and just a little bit of the competitiveness, but also just curiosity. Tony was a huge influence in my life when I started out and awakened the giant within my mom took me to unleash the power within. And so I looked it up yesterday and Tony Robbins doesn't have a single book that outsells chop wood carry water on Amazon and Chop wood carry water is self-published. It doesn't have any marketing. It's almost 10 years old. And so I've been really blessed and grateful that the strategies and things that I've done trying to be relentless in the pursuit of what sets my soul on fire has allowed me to get out and take what I learned at Duke and share it with the world and study that. And so I was a talented athlete, but who always struggled to let that talent come through.
(05:42):
I got kicked off the team five times in two and a half years at Vanderbilt on a soccer scholarship. They ended up cutting our program. I ended up getting a full ride scholarship to play on the number one team in the country at Duke the following year based off of word of mouth recommendation from the guy that kicked me off the team five times in two and a half years. And that's when I got exposed to Sports Ecology and I was the last pick on the team when we'd play pickup games. And so I was really open for the first time in my life, probably to a guy that I knew wasn't an ex-professional athlete. I knew had it been some high level division one athlete. He was just a professor, but I was the last pick on the team. So I attempted to do what he talked about very quickly.
(06:28):
I went from being the last pick on that team to the Duke student Athlete of the week, the a CC player of the week. And I finished second in points on that team to the very best player in the country, Mike Illa, who would open his career at United with a hat trick. And so then I got frustrated because I was like, why did I have to get to Duke to learn all of this? Why isn't this taught in elementary schools? Why isn't this taught in middle schools? Why isn't this taught everywhere? And so that's what I made my mission. I skipped scholarships to law school. I moved across the country into a homeless shelter. It was in that homeless shelter that I sent the email to the director of my program at Duke. And then I lived and served there for seven months. Then I moved into the closet of a gym.
(07:09):
I lived in the closet of a gym for nine months. I started going into the toughest housing project in the country in Watts in South Central Los Angeles. I trained the athletes there for three years. My mom came out, she didn't like me living in the closet of a gym. We got an apartment together. We lived together for five years. My family kind of ended up migrating out and I built my organization. And so that's kind of how the writing started. There was a woman named Robin Pinton who was coaching Missouri women's basketball. And after going out to work with her program, it was like 1230 at night. And she just looks at me and she goes, Joshua, I have 23 handwritten pages of notes. When are you going to write your book? And that was kind of the impetus for me saying, okay, maybe I really do need to start putting some of this stuff down on paper. And I was speaking for five hours or six hours in talks and I could hold people's attention, but it was still just like, maybe I need to start putting some of this down off paper.
Michelle MacDonald (08:18):
I love that. So I'm sure your parents were thrilled when you did not pursue law school. I'm sure they're thrilled now, but at the time I'm like, intervention is needed. And I know that you thread a lot of your faith through your work. And when you talk on your grandma and your social media, various social media platforms, I don't know, is your family religious as well?
Joshua Medcalf (08:46):
Yes. I grew up in the Bible Belt. So like I said, I was doing AANAs. I was doing preaching competitions that was very growing up in Oklahoma. I was in Oklahoma from nine until 18. So yes, that was very much embedded into the fabric of my life
Michelle MacDonald (09:10):
Does. I would really love to know what of that background drove you to write chop wood carry water, because there you are in the closet, you're choosing the hard path, right? You're choosing the uncommon path, the path that most people shy away from. And you had an open door to walk through this much gentler, more traditional approach, but you chose to go into the desert, you chose the heart, which I love that as a coach, the heart is where the magic happens, right? The champions are built on those tough days. What drove you? Was there an epiphany? Was there a moment or was it more mundane than that? I know you love that word, mundane. What was it?
Joshua Medcalf (09:59):
So chop wood carry water in particular, that was the third book that I wrote. And it came about because IMG Academy in Bradenton, the largest boarding school for athletes in the world today. My college roommate just rung the bell on New York Stock Exchange. He now runs IMG Academy. And so he had introduced me to them, and I had heard about Trevor from IMG. Trevor's now passed away, but when I was speaking, people always said, oh, you sound like Trevor from img. You sound like Trevor from img. And then after Trevor left, they replaced him with Justin er. And then when Justin er left, they reached out to me to head up mental conditioning and leadership. And I told 'em no a couple times I wasn't really interested. I'm more of an entrepreneur at heart. That's how Wired, I'm independent. But then my mom was kind of like, you should at least go out there and check things out and see.
(10:58):
And so when I went out there, I was kind of intrigued, but the big issue was if I took that role, they would own my work product. And I knew that nobody had written the Go-to book in Sports Ecology. And so I came home and I didn't really leave bed for about 45 days, and I started writing a book called Start Here, mental Training Finally Made Simple. And I sent John Gordon the manuscript. It was about a hundred pages, and there was a 45 page part of that manuscript called Chop Wood Carry Water. That was this little small fable that illustrated some of these ideas and concepts and tools. And he said, throw out the rest of the book, expand that fable. That's the book. And I fought him on it for a little bit. And then finally I went with it. And really it was supposed to be, and it is a tool that you can hand almost anybody, and it's the 1 0 1 of Life Skills Sports Psychology.
(12:01):
It's the Go-to book for the NBA, the NHL, the NBA, the Navy Seals that I look across at. It gets used in all these different environments, but it gets used by bankers, teachers, forensic scientists. It's crazy how that book gets used, but it goes back to my original frustration of why isn't this taught anywhere? Why hasn't this been summarized in this way? And so I just tried to, in a Fable format, think about all the lessons and all the tools that were the really basic stuff that it was like if you would just do these basic things, your life would transform your game, would transform your business, would transform, your relationships, would transform. And so how do I create a tool? One of the questions I've always asked myself is, what do I wish I would've known? What do I wish my teachers would've had?
(12:56):
What do I wish my coaches would've had? What tools, what wisdom? And I just tried to create that. And then I also, at the same time, I wrote my memoir Hustle. And so I put those out at the same time. It was pretty clear that Chop Wood Carry water was going to be special. It only sold 300 copies the first month, then it sold 600 the next month, and it sold 1200 the next month, and it sold 2,400 the next month, and it grew almost exponentially until October. So for 10 months. And that's just the exact opposite of what happens with traditional books. They have a big push at the beginning. So it's this peak of sales. They sell 50,000 or a hundred thousand or 200,000 books, but then it falls off the face of the map because they're selling widgets. They're not actually selling a real book.
(13:47):
Nobody reads it, and people definitely don't share it. And what was happening with this book is people were reading it, number one, but number two, as you've experienced because you got it not from anything to do with me, somebody gave it to you. People go, Michelle, you have to read this book. And then once you read it, you tell people you have to read this book. And so that's kind of what has happened with that particular book. So it's been pretty neat to see. But again, it was really start here, mental training finally made simple.
Michelle MacDonald (14:24):
Okay, so in a sense then, the drive to get this book out was because you knew that. I think you knew you needed to get something out, but you had an opportunity to work somewhere and you thought, well, if I work there, then anything that I do produce is going to be owned by these other guys. Yes.
Joshua Medcalf (14:43):
It's like the business impetus. It was very, you could call it selfish almost, but I was just trying to protect. I knew that I was one of the people, if they're asking you to head up mental conditioning and leadership, that you're one of those people, maybe 10, 15 people in the world that have that skillset. And then mom has always said, I'm optimistically delusional. And I've just sat and I said, maybe I can do this. So what's the worst that can happen? I've published 10 books. Not all of them do that well, but I've always been willing to get in the arena, throw something into the marketplace and see how it does.
Michelle MacDonald (15:24):
I love it. Maybe that was the win that the last win that you needed, the win being, we want you to have this job. And that was that little last win that you're like, God, I got to get some work out because I'm really good at this stuff. You have a calling for it in a way.
Joshua Medcalf (15:39):
Yeah, it pushed me to write more is what it really did. And that, like I said, that's never, maybe a few years ago, I started to understand the power of writing and I really started to fall in love with it. But if you were to ask me whether I would rather go speak in front of 20,000 people or write another book, I would say I'd rather go speak in front of 20,000 people
Michelle MacDonald (16:03):
Because writing is that challenging.
Joshua Medcalf (16:06):
I just think I'm kind of a born entertainer. And so when I get on stage, there's something that happens inside of me that it makes me come alive in different ways. It reminds me of, there is an old preacher that they said he would set himself on fire and everybody would come to watch him burn. And that's kind of what I did and do is that when I get on stage, there's just something that kind of comes over me half the time before I go on stage, I'll forget stories. I'll try and do a rundown of what I think I may want to talk about and I can't remember it. And then I get on stage and I don't know what happens, but it's like I can pull quotes, I can pull stats from books I read 10 years ago, and it just comes to me in the moment. And I've tried to move away from, it's how I do coaching as well. When people say, oh, what's your program? I'm like, I don't have a program. I get on the phone and I say, so what do we need to talk about today? What's going on? And then yesterday with my client, Brad, four hours later, we finish up. But there's no, I'm not trying to control it. I just try and be radically present and I try and really, really listen and then I trust my training and go from there.
Michelle MacDonald (17:35):
I love that you surrendered the outcome.
Joshua Medcalf (17:38):
Yes.
Michelle MacDonald (17:39):
Okay. I know that the readers or the people listening here, I'm going to pretend I'm asking the questions for them. So with that book, chopped Wood Carry Water, what does it symbolize for you in the context of personal growth?
Joshua Medcalf (17:56):
So what chopped wood carry water really embodies to me, it's an ancient Buddhist phrase. It's a phrase that Phil Jackson used to say to all the teams and guys that he coached. To me. My dad didn't know anything about sports. My dad grew up in a trailer park. He grew up dirt poor. He didn't play sports, but he always told us, do the basics, just do the basics. And it was always fascinating to me. It's still fascinating to me today, one of the biggest breakthroughs in science and medicine is that when people actually wash their hands before going into the operating room, the impact that has on the reduction of infection, the amount of lives that are saved, the amount of money that's saved, but we're fascinated in most cultures by the new, the sexy. But it's the basics. It's just do the basics over and over and over and over and over again.
(19:03):
It's do the unremarkable with remarkable consistency. And if you'll do that for a consistent amount of time, the results tend to be pretty spectacular. You may not see it right away, you may not see it in three months or six months, but if you stick with it over a year, over three years, over five years, the results just tend to add and compound over time. And I just think that there's so much power there, and it doesn't really matter what your talent level is. It doesn't matter what your socioeconomic background is, it doesn't matter. So many things that we think really, really matters if you'll just be ridiculously faithful to what's in your hand and what you have control over and do the basics really, really well. I mean, in Proverbs it says, do you see any truly competent workers? They will serve kings rather than mere men. And when you read that as a kid, and my mom had me read Proverbs basically every single day growing up, you go Truly competent. That's the bar. Truly competent. But I just traveled for the last three weeks and the amount of truly competent workers that we came across, it's very, very rare. And when you find 'em, you're like, that's the person. That's the person.
Michelle MacDonald (20:36):
Yeah. There was a girl in Capri, right? She was running a store and you felt the need to put her in one of your books.
Joshua Medcalf (20:42):
Yes, yes, yes. Julia, you were
Michelle MacDonald (20:43):
So Julia amazed by her work ethic,
Joshua Medcalf (20:46):
Julia, she's amazing. And she understands these simple principles of just treat people really, really well. Be present with them, do little stuff really well. And yeah, she's very special to me. And there's quite a few, I probably have 20 or 30 people like Julia around the world that I've run into that I'm just like, man, you're really special because you just do what is common sense. But common sense isn't commonly practiced. Common sense is one of the most rare things around. And it's funny because when I would go work with really high level teams and performers, I would feel like some of the stuff I would tell them is just so simple. And I'm like, well, why don't you do this? And they're like, well, then they start doing it, and it's like, whoa. And to me, I'm just like, this is the basics. One of my friends, she runs a travel agency, and about a month ago right before I left to travel, she was telling me how things in the Middle East, she likes to take groups to Egypt and stuff had gotten shut down.
(22:08):
And then a couple other trips that she tried to put together, there were different logistical issues. And I said, oh, you should just take a group to Mexico. And she was like, nobody's going to want to go to Mexico. We do these ultra lux. And I said, just put together a trip to Mexico. I was like, if you do it, it's going to be special. It's not going to be a regular just Cabo or Cancun trip, just put together a trip to Mexico. I get back and she calls me and she says, I wanted to wait until you got back, but my trip sold out in five minutes. And I was like, sometimes it's just these little things right in front of us that if we'll just do the basic things well, there's just so much fruit that's available there that you and coaching. If you could just get people to walk for 20 to 40 minutes a day and drink eight ounces of water every single hour, just that alone, the impact is wild. There's so many little things that you could do for health and fitness, your business that are just these very basic things. But again, the basics aren't sexy. And like James Clear says, if something is easy to do, that also means it's easy not to do. And then that whichever direction you go, that's added up and compounded over time.
Michelle MacDonald (23:37):
Why do you think chop wood and carry water resonates with so many people? Because it is a fable. It's very simple. It's your teenager. Your kids even could read it and pull from it, but it's so popular. I lead a course in my coaching where we walk through the chapters and talk about and unpack it. Why is it so popular? Why do you think it resonates with so many people, especially at this time in the world?
Joshua Medcalf (24:05):
Yeah, I don't know exactly. My guesses on it are, like I said, that it is so simple that it's easy to read. It's a two hour read. When people ask me what it is, I say it's the modern day combination of the Alchemist and the Karate Kid. But I also think that it's very real. It's very palatable. And I think that for, again, people that had seen some of this stuff in different places, they'd maybe gone to a Tony Robbins thing, or they really like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, or maybe they had a coach that taught them a couple things. I don't know why it was Mind Gym back in the day, but Mind Gym was a baseball book, and it was all about baseball stories. And I was very careful when creating Chop Wood carry water to make it universal to make it, the reason why it's a Samurai Archer is because nobody really knows about Samurai Archers.
(25:13):
So it's specific enough that you can pull from it, but it's generic enough that it applies to everything. And then again, the knock on it, if you read the one star reviews is, oh, he writes like a second grader. Well, also, the reading comprehension level in the world is like third grade or fourth grade, fifth grade. And so sometimes it's really important to meet people where they're at. And really, I've gone and I've trained the PhDs at West Point. I've gone and I've spoke and worked with people that have PhDs in forensic engineering and things like that, that I have no clue and don't understand. And I can speak at a level that they understand in a language and linguistics and vernacular that's akin to their education level. But most of the time, one of the things when I was interning in high school to become a lawyer, that had been the path for a long time of being a trial lawyer.
(26:14):
My dad's lawyer was one of the best lawyers in the Midwest, and one day he came in and he caught me playing a word game on the computer, and his name is Chuck Richardson. And he said, what are you doing, Joshua? And I said, oh, I'm working on my vocabulary because I think that it's really important if you're going to be a great trial lawyer, to have a really good vocabulary. And he said, no, not at all. He said, you need to be able to communicate complex things incredibly simply. He said, so you need to focus on simple words, simple phrases, and dissecting things down and breaking things down in a way that even a little child can understand them. And so with all the people that I've gotten to work with groups and et cetera, one of the coolest moments that I had was probably eight years ago in Orange County, and I sat down on the floor because the parents of this 7-year-old team, they were all sitting at the table, which I found really weird.
(27:20):
It was a workshop for the kids, but the parents are sitting at the table, the kids are sitting on the floor. And I sat down on the floor and I taught them about self-talk. I taught them about identity, I taught them about visualization, and I just taught them these really basic principles and watching the looks on their face, and then hearing months later, the impact that had that to me was so special because it was like, if I can communicate this stuff to seven year olds, that's really what I wanted. Why didn't I learn this whenever I was really young? We don't have to make it about neuroscience and brainwave technology, just make it really simple and practical. And I think that's what chop wood carry water does. And then also, I think sometimes when things go viral, they just take on lives of their own. I still don't think it's the best book that I've written. It's not my favorite book that I've written. But again, that's part of being an entrepreneur and putting things out into the marketplace, and the marketplace gets to decide. I don't get to decide that the marketplace does.
Michelle MacDonald (28:36):
How can focusing, because this is so important to you and it percolates through other books, why is focusing on the process so important to you? It seems like it's such an impactful message that you have to get across to the reader. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Joshua Medcalf (28:53):
So it's incredibly important because it's what you have control over. And if you focus on the outcomes, which is what most people do, and sometimes people get this confused and they think, oh, you're just supposed to throw out outcomes and not care. No, you need to observe the outcomes and you need to see is what we're doing creating good results? And also you want to find other people that have gone before you and see what processes are the best to be doing. But you want to surrender the outcome because you want to focus on what you actually have control over. And if you, in a lot of things, there's zero sum games. So especially in sports, which is where I started, it's a zero sum game. You have a winner and you have a loser. Focusing on winning is just a foolish idea because oftentimes on your deathbed, the winning isn't going to be what's most important.
(29:55):
When you ask a lot of professional athletes, when you ask a lot of ex-college athletes, what was most important? It's like all the non-sport stuff, the bonding and the competing and all of those things. But if you're so focused on the outcome, then oftentimes what you're going to do is you're going to hurt the things that actually matter in the process. Instead of if you're focused on, we define true mental toughness in chop wood carry water as having a great attitude, giving your very, very best treating people really, really well, having unconditional gratitude regardless of your circumstances, if you focus on that. And then if you have a growth mindset believing that anything that happens to me today is in my best interest and an opportunity to learn and grow, if those are the two things that you focus on, true mental toughness, a growth mindset you cannot lose, no matter how tough your circumstances are, no matter how much you get cheated, no matter what the results end up being, you cannot lose.
(31:00):
If you focus on winning, if you're most likely going to sacrifice true mental toughness, you're going to sacrifice having a growth mindset. You're going to try and cut corners at the altar of potentially winning. And so it's just a better strategy. It is a much, much better strategy, and it actually gives you the best chance of getting more of the outcomes that you want by surrendering the outcome. The people that understand this the best, and one of the reasons why chop wood carry water is like the Bible for the Navy Seals is because when they go into battle, if you have not surrendered the outcome, if you have not surrendered to the fact that you could die, you increase the likelihood that you're going to die because you're going to freeze. You're not going to trust your training, you're going to get like this. But when you surrender that, then you're actually freed up to be at your best.
(32:01):
You're freed up to allow your training to come through. You're freed up to actually do what you have trained to do, but when you try and squeeze the water, you just lose it. And so that's why it's so important to, it's a win-win strategy. You're going to win more. You're going to give yourself a better chance of letting your potential come out, but you're also not going to sacrifice your character in your relationships in the process. So that's what I love about true mental toughness. That's what I love about a growth mindset that no matter what you're doing, it's going to help you with the two most important things, which are becoming a better human being via parent, coach, athlete, friend, competitor, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever that is, it's going to help you develop those characteristics. And then it's also by having that growth mindset of constantly learning and growing, believing that anything is in your best interest, it keeps you away from being a victim, and it just allows you to keep growing and growing and growing.
(33:11):
And if you keep growing at that pace, then that person is going to win in the long run over the person that is so focused on winning, that they're cutting corners and they're not focused on growth, they're not focused on learning. Eventually the person with the growth mindset is going to leapfrog the person that's just focused on winning. And I saw this when I lived in the closet of the gym. When I lived in the homeless shelter, I was around so many people who, you know their names today, I don't like saying their names, but I was around a lot of people that are a-list, celebrities or people that were and then have fallen off. And the ones that focused on the process, the ones that had that growth mindset, the ones that didn't let ego get involved, they're the ones today that are still thriving.
(33:58):
The ones that were way more talented than me, that were way far ahead of me back then, I've leapfrogged most of them because they were so caught up in trying to win, in trying to control things and focused on the wrong stuff. They weren't focused on true mental toughness. Give your very, very best treat people really, really well, have a great attitude and regardless of your circumstances, and then they weren't focused on anything that happens to me today is in my best interest and an opportunity for me to learn and grow. And so they're just better strategies than not focusing on the process and focusing on all these arbitrary outcome-based goals that you cannot control.
Michelle MacDonald (34:46):
I love this. So then, if we don't have an aura with us, if we don't have a cure with us, how do we coach ourselves to persevere with the mundane, when we're facing struggle, when we've hit those plateaus or when we're triggered into our ego, into our emotional space to do those things that take us, that don't serve us, that take us away from our focus? How do we craft our own Akira?
Joshua Medcalf (35:14):
So I didn't have an Akira. People ask me that all the time. In Pound the Stone, I have this mentor character named Russ, and I've had different people for short periods maybe embody a few of the characteristics, but really the characters that I've created that are the mentor characters in these books, again, it's what I wish that I would've had. It's what I've to be for those that I've had the privilege of having an influential role in their lives. I used books, used autobiographies, I used YouTube. There's podcasts. When Eric Thomas first created Motivational Mix tapes, I was listening to those. Then I created my own for people. And so to me, it goes back to what we fuel our heart with. So when people introduce me, if I'm going to speak, they oftentimes say, Joshua's an expert in mental training. But we're all experts in mental training because every single day we read stuff, we listen to stuff, we watch stuff.
(36:19):
We have a circle of people that we surround ourself with, we visualize things and we talk to ourselves. And so those are the things that we do that fuel our heart every single day. But oftentimes, we get caught up putting shitty calories and shitty fuel into our heart with politics and news, with social media drama, with reality tv, and the stuff that's T tantalizing, the stuff that is like, Ooh, did you hear about this? It's so salacious, and that feels good in the moment, but again, it's not helping us grow. It's not helping us get better. It's pushing us to focus on stuff that's not helpful. And so what we read, what we watch, what we listen to, our self-talk, our circle and what we visualize, those are the things that we're fueling our heart with. So today it's easier for me, a couple of the characters or people in my real life.
(37:26):
So Finish Empty is the sequel to Chop Wood Carry Water that came out about six weeks ago that I'm really proud of. I love the way the story came together. And two of the characters in that book are two of the people you're talking about that I have sought out. I found them Pon Par, Dave Hilman. And when I find those people, I gravitate towards them. I try and talk to them on the phone almost every day. I try and spend as much time with them as possible. And I think that there are seasons in people's lives. So I've had different people like that that have come along in my life that anytime I see somebody that embodies characteristics that I think are beneficial or that I struggle in, Dave Hillman is the most optimistic, joyful human being I've ever met. That's not something that comes naturally to me.
(38:19):
So for the last two years, I play most of my rounds of golf with him. When we finish this podcast, I will go meet him on the golf course. He'll have teed off at maybe 30 minutes ago, and I'll go, even if I get five, six holes, he's in town. So I'm going to go spend time with them. And whenever I was really poor, when I was making no money, I was reading autobiographies of people that I admired. I was finding stories. I was trying to consume as much fuel as I could so that when people said, you're crazy, I would say, oh, maybe I'm on the right path. Because that's what they said about Steve Jobs. That's what they said about Phil Knight. That's what they said about Nelson Mandela. That's what they said about Malala. That's what they said about on down the list.
(39:13):
So maybe I'm on the right path. I didn't allow their discouragement, their perspective on things. I mean, like you said, think about how my mom, my dad passed away before I made some of those decisions. He passed away when I was 22. But my mom begged me to go back and write my master's thesis when Pepperdine came and said, we want you to teach sports psychology. All you need is a master's in anything. My mom said, Joshua, go beg them. Just write your thesis. Please get that done. And I said, no, there's better things out there for me.
(39:56):
It's just if you've studied the people that you admire, you tend to see they had the same journey. You think Nike's some big great organization that never struggled for 10 years. He barely kept the lights on, and then boom, things started to take off, and now Nike is what it is. But 10 years, that's crazy. 10 years. Nelson Mandela sat in prison for so long, they offered him an out many times, but not under his terms and not accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish. And so he said, Nope, I'll stay JK Rawling. I mean, she was living on welfare in project housing with her child after being abandoned by the father. And then they tried to change her name to sound like a man's name. They did all these things and she just kept persevering and kept doing it. And so when you see that, it's so much easier to be encouraged instead of discouraged because you realize, oh, yeah, this is just a part of the process. Process. This is just a part of the journey. This is just a part of taking the road less travel. It's just a part of it.
Michelle MacDonald (41:18):
So in a sense then really being purposeful with what you're reading, what you're listening to. If you have somebody in your life that could be a mentor, even if it's somebody that you can talk to that just seems to have a perspective that maybe is more, they have more equanimity potentially instead of gravitating towards things that get you riled up and you take your hands off the driving wheel where you're not focusing on the things that you need to focus to get the growth that you're looking for. Anything else you'd like to add to that?
Joshua Medcalf (41:57):
Yeah. One of the things too that is very sad to me, and the older I get, the more experience and maturity I get, the sadder this is, we're so quick to upgrade our shoes, our cars, our homes, our phones. Yet what percentage of Western population seeks out and hires a coach? It's such a small percentage. The guy that I played golf with the other day told me that at 25, he hired scientists to write out a longevity plan for him. He's been seeking this stuff out. He's 73 years old, and he said, and again, his dad created programs that still are sold today that influenced the world that he helped mentor Tony Robbins. And yet he said, Joshua, I'd like to spend more time with you to learn more from you. I want to sit down with you and learn more. I'm half his age, and yet he's sitting there with that growth mindset up.
(43:11):
Maybe I can learn something from Joshua. John Wooden when he was in his eighties, would be sitting on the front row at talks with a pen and a paper ready to take notes. Anson do. When I went in and worked with the greatest dynasty in college sports, sports and Anson sitting back there taking notes for two and a half hours. And I've just noticed that that is the mentality of the greats, that the top 1%, the top half a percent of people, they're hiring coaches, they're finding people that are going to help them. They're finding wisdom. They're listening to podcasts, they're reading books. They're constantly striving to learn, grow, and fill in their blind spots. And so I don't really talk about this. I don't know if I've ever said this publicly before, but use what you have until you have the resources and then go find a coach.
(44:15):
Go find mentors. Go find groups, mastermind groups. Get in these situations where you can't help but grow where you can't help but get better if you were around people that are doing more better, have better relationships, have better marriages, they're better parents, they're better at strength training, they have better cardio. They have whatever it is. The more time you spend around them, the more you are going to get better just from being around them. And then the next level to that is, is finding and hiring a coach, coaches throughout your life that are going to help get you to the next level. Because just like the example I always use is Jay Z. Jay-Z sold drugs to get out of the Marcy housing projects. My dad sold drugs to help get out of the situation that he was in growing up in abject poverty and fighting his way across the railroad tracks.
(45:18):
But if you never switch gears and change strategies, then you can't get to the next level. Jay-Z had to stop being a drug dealer to become a proficient rapper. He had to stop being just a rapper to become a businessman. He had to shift from being a businessman to being a mogul at every level. You have to understand that what got you here probably isn't going to get you to the next level. And you need to get around people. They're going to help you shift gears and change strategies to help you keep getting better and better and better and better and better and better, because we're either getting better or we're getting worse.
Michelle MacDonald (46:05):
Thanks everybody. That was an unbelievable introduction to the brilliance of Joshua Medcalf. You guys know I'm a huge fan of his book, Chop Wood Carry Water. Come back next episode. We're going to dive into his other book, and he's got many, this one's called Pound the Stone, and you can expect to hear 'em explain the metaphor behind Pound the stone, the significance of perseverance, how the book explores deeper issues like identity, mental health, and the importance of focusing on the process rather than the outcome. And that is, I underlined that all the time with my clients. Be in love with the process. Don't worry about the goals, aim high. But if you focus on being present with your process, great things are going to happen. Thanks for listening, guys. Don't forget to leave a rating and a review. We don't advertise on this podcast, and it's up to you to help us get this to the top of the charts. Share this episode with a friend.