Endure Chapter 10: Chop Wood, Carry Water

Welcome to chapter 10 of my book, Endure. My name is Ben Greenfield, and every week here on this channel I'll release to you a snippet of a chapter from my new book, Endure, which you can find in both physical and Digital version@getindoor.com where you'll be able to grab this guide to spiritual stamina. Let's begin chapter 10 chop wood, carry Water A mentor once told me that one of his primary keys to success in life was to simply wake up and do the most extraordinary job he could with whatever God had put on his plate for that day. As a matter of fact, I've always been the kind of guy who simply wakes each morning, does the best job I personally can with whatever opportunities God has brought my way, then sits back and just kind of enjoys the adventures in life that this approach seems to bring me. Another way to think about this concept is that the most important work to be done is the work of the day. Speaking of this idea of plodding along and just doing the work for the day, Doug Wilson writes in his book A Practical Theology of Work and wealth. So my responsibility is, so to speak, whatever is in front of me there on my workbench or desk or counter, I should do a first rate job with that and other things will fall into place in the book Every Good Endeavor. Author Timothy Keller writes similarly, if God's purpose for your job is that you serve the human community, then the way to serve God best is to do the job as well as it can be done. In other words, wake up, chop wood, carry water, rinse, wash, repeat, and do it all to the glory of God with as much excellence as you possibly can. Well, so since I, in the last chapter, may have given you the impression that life is all about traipsing naked through a pastoral field with a flower tucked in your hair and doesn't really involve any grit or hard work and just creation and beauty. Well, I'd like to explore in this chapter the concept of how I approach the working and the doing bits of life, beginning with two examples of chopping wood, carrying water, and accomplishing the work of the day, then moving on to a couple of important sieves through which to filter this philosophy. Two stories well, I really have no clue where I originally heard the first story, the so called Parable of the Trucker, but it highlights the importance of putting your nose to the grindstone and doing your work to the very best of your ability. To the story from my approximate remembrance and with apologies to anyone who knows the actual tale well, and may grimace over my bastardization of it goes something like this. There is a trucker who is driving along his usual route, and as he drives he's asking himself over and over again, why am I here? What is my purpose? What am I meant to do? Then suddenly, as he rounds a corner, he slams on his brakes as there's a giant tree that has fallen across the road. Naturally, being a gritty trucker, he gets out, fires up his electric chainsaw and carves enough of the tree of up to be able to manhandle out of the road and clear the path. He then hops in his truck and keeps driving, continuing to ask himself over and over again, why am I here? What is my purpose? What am I meant to do? All the while, a stream of cars behind him pass through the unblocked road successfully and thousands of happy citizens make it to work on time and enjoy their daily commute without having to hassle with a giant tree in the road. See, the trucker's purpose was right there in front of him the whole time, and he didn't really even know it. But by doing his job of chopping wood, in this case in the literal sense, and carrying water, how much he was positively impacting the world around him. The work to be done was simply the work of the day. Well, next there's the tale of one boy's journey to achieve his lifelong goal of becoming a samurai warrior, as told by author Joshua Medcalf in the book Chop Wood, Carry Water, how to Fall in Love with the Process of Becoming Great. In this book, the primary protagonist, a boy named John, is in love with samurai culture and possesses a relentless desire to become a samurai archer. All the seemingly mundane tasks assigned to him by his wise sensei that John must complete in order to achieve his goal are similar to the mundane tasks you too may experience in your daily grind, like making your bed, doing the dishes, weeding the garden, sweeping the floor, putting away the groceries, paying the bills, replying to emails, making 50 cold calls, doing 20 push ups every hour, or writing 200 words a day. That last one is my own minimum requirement, which technically allows me to write the equivalent of an entire novel yearly with that minimum amount of words, though I often exceed that word count. So anyways, Joshua explains in the book that it seems everyone wants to build the next Apple or Facebook, but nobody wants to sell matches door to door. Everyone wants to become a samurai warrior, but few are willing to faithfully chop wood, carry water like the boy John until their sensei graduates them to shooting arrows, swinging swords, and other forms of samurai training. After all, it just isn't sexy to chop wood and carry water every single day, right? People instead dream of easy, instant success. Winning the lottery, getting noticed by a talent recruiter, hitting it big on Instagram, getting retweeted by a celebrity. Few, however, willing to chop wood and carry water. As Joshua writes, everyone wants to be great until it's time to do what greatness requires. He explains that for many years it might feel as if nothing is happening, but you must trust the process and continue to chop wood and carry water day in, day out, regardless of what is happening around you. Well, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I'll use my own personal success, if that's what you want to call it, as an example of chopping wood, carrying water, and simply waking up each day to do the most extraordinary job I can with whatever God has placed on my plate for the day. And I'm self conscious as I do this just because it sounds a bit narcissistic and braggadocious for me to illustrate this to you, but I think it's a good illustration nonetheless. In high school, I'd wake and rise at 4am to work on medical insurance claims for my dad's ambulance service, then go deliver newspapers, then bus butt to finish all my studies. I was homeschooled by 11am after which I coached tennis for three to four hours to save up money for college, and finally I operated an evening babysitting service for our neighborhood and friends. During my subsequent university studies, I took 28 to 32 credits a semester for five years in a row while simultaneously waking at 5am to work at a bakery, moonlit as a personal trainer in the evening, taught kids sports camps and wellness classes in between my regular classes, managed a coffee shop and continued to teach tennis lessons. Once I graduated and began to open a series of personal training studios and gyms, I'd wake at 4am, ride my bike 12 miles through rain, sleet and snow to train clients the entire day, then return home around 7pm, eat a quick bowl of food, then stay up until 2 or 3am programming websites and teaching myself to code so I could launch an online personal training business over the next several years while traveling the world and competing in Ironman Triathlon. While still managing and operating all those personal training studios, I sat hunched over a laptop in tiny taxis in Thailand and airport coffee shops, jamming away on my word processor while writing my first New York Times best selling book called Beyond Training. Then in between writing books, training clients and training myself. I published a daily newsletter for my website, wrote one to two articles a week, and launched a weekly podcast in an effort to establish the fitness media empire I now operate, which really began with me and the best tiny video camera I could afford from the local Best Buy. I mean, even now, as you're listening to the audio recording of this book, I wake at 3:30 each morning to record these chapters for you because, well, that's when I need to wake to chop the wood and carry the water, when the home is quiet and I have the luxury of time to be able to speak to you. Well, ultimately I've chopped a lot of wood and carried a lot of water and things eventually snowballed. But kind of like a snowball one rolls up a hill one single sweaty roll at a time, and not a snowball one easily pushes from the top of a hill. As an example of this slow snowball effect, I remember my first monthly affiliate check from Amazon in 2009, which was the fruits of publishing half a dozen articles a month that I disseminated about the Internets. The check amounted to $1.37, but in 2021 my monthly affiliate check from Amazon was around $20,000. My first royalty book payment was about $17. My last royalty book payment was well over a quarter million dollars. I began posting instructional videos to Instagram a few years ago with next to zero followers. Last I checked, followers were well over 350,000. Granted, none of these examples are metrics of my worth as a human being, and I completely acknowledge that by the grace of God I would have accomplished absolutely nothing at all. But they do highlight the fruits I've experienced by simply waking up each day, putting my nose to the grindstone, and doing the very best job I can with whatever God has put on my plate for the day. And this success has come slowly, but has been built upon a solid foundation of blood, sweat, and even sometimes tears, and not a shaky foundation of getting lucky or taking a shortcut. Of course, the entire journey itself has been character building and allowed me to learn plenty of valuable life lessons I can now teach to my children and teach to others in the form of books such as the one you're listening to right now. Serendipity as you engage in your own process of chopping wood and carrying water, there's another important consideration you should be aware of, something I wish I'd come to a realization about earlier in my life. If your life has been anything like mine, you may occasionally be presented with opportunities of a so called serendipitous nature. Serendipity is defined as the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not actually sought for. These often refreshing, welcome and sometimes fortunate breaks from your monotonous or mundane tasks of doing the daily grind may be marked by a pleasant level of surprise and spontaneity when they occur. Some call them luck. Some call them happenstance, some good fortune. I call them God's providence. After all, random good things don't just happen. Instead, God delights in occasionally surprising us and giving us a seemingly random passing moment of unexpected meaning or importance, such as meeting someone in a coffee shop you haven't seen in years, receiving a random call about the chance for, say, a new book deal or insight into a problem you've been trying to solve, getting a raise or promotion, or receiving a networked introduction that turns out to be exactly the person you need in your life at that moment for a project you've been working on. Ultimately, if you've been doing your daily work of chopping wood and carrying water, these serendipitous opportunities are more likely to be sent your way by God. You've no doubt heard this wise perspective on luck before. Chance favors the prepared mind. Diligence is the mother of good luck. The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. Luck occurs when smart, prepared people are in the right place at the right time. You get the idea. What's important for you to understand is not to shrug off these seemingly random occurrences as luck, but as a meaningful opportunity that may very well materialize into something big for you. So pay close attention to all these occurrences, both large and small. They aren't accidents. I spent much of my life shrugging off the idea that nothing happens by accident as woo and weird superstition and a view that might cause one to waste too much time looking for meaning and relatively meaningless chance happenings. But I've realized in the past several years that I couldn't have been more wrong. For example, when someone randomly pops into my head, I don't shrug it off as my brain simply firing off a few random neurotransmitters. But I now call that person or email them or text them. When I'm trying to solve a problem and I accidentally knock a book off my bookshelf, I pop the book open and immediately start thumbing through it for the answer to my problem. Don't laugh. If I'm creating a new recipe and I hear a song that names a random spice or herb it's time to part. Every rose has its thorn. Pour some sugar on me. I'll fumble around for that ingredient. Call me weird and superstitious, but I do indeed now pay very close and mindful attention to every moment, to what some would say what the universe is telling me, but what I say God is telling me, even if it does occasionally result in rose petals on the roast chicken. Of course, what we often consider to be serendipity is simply the result of the manifestation of bringing something tangible into our lives through attraction and belief. You've no doubt also heard of this concept before, couched within phrases such as if you think it, it will come, ask and your prayer shall be answered, or think and grow rich. Manifestation simply involves making everything you want to feel and experience a reality via your thoughts, actions, beliefs and emotions. So if you're working on a book, you not only write down your daily word count, but you tell others you're working on a New York Times bestseller. If you're launching a new company, you not only set your alarm for 5am every morning to work, but you create a vision board of your big, hairy, audacious company goals in your office. If you're trying to lose 100 pounds and race an Ironman triathlon, you sign up for the race and buy your Ironman race suit in the exact size you need it to be in long before the actual event occurs. See in the Bible, Jeremiah 29:11 13 says that God knows the very plans he has for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. He tells you to call on him and come and pray to him, and he will listen to you. In addition, Psalm 139 says, for you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven into the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet, there was none of them. That's right. God planned everything out for you before you're even born. All you need to do is wake up each day, do the hard work of chopping wood and carrying water, and pay very close attention to every opportunity, even the seemingly random ones he sends your way, tackling each of those opportunities with wisdom and discernment. Ultimately, every moment in your life was meant to be hell. Yes or no? Well, Finally, I'm often asked by keeping myself open to such opportunities, even the seemingly serendipitous ones, somewhat flexible with a so called life plan and focused on attending primarily to the work of the day, including all those new opportunities that come my way, I assess whether an opportunity is a true fit. After all, I'd be overloaded with work. In addition to constantly having coffee with every random person who asked me to coffee. As an aside, I never do coffee meetings doing quick calls with everyone who wants to pick my brain. I also allow for zero brain picking investing in every new startup that comes my way. I invest in about 0.1% of the companies that contact me daily for this and reading every book that's recommended to me. If I don't get through the first 10 pages without highlighting something in a book, it gets shelved related to these kinds of decisions the wise modern day philosopher Naval Ravikant says if you can't decide, the answer is no. The equally wise modern day entrepreneur Derek Sivers says if it's not a hell yes, it's a no. I would even modify that to say if it's not a full body hell yes, it's a no. But I would add two clarifications and considerations. First, sometimes an opportunity arises and you're not in the correct state of mind, which usually means you're in a tired or stressed state of mind to properly assess whether the opportunity is a fit. So don't react with a blanket yes or no. Pray on it, walk on it and sleep on it. Come back refreshed and undistracted, then decide. Second, have rules through which you filter new opportunities. For example, I know that 99% of coffee meetings have turned out to be a relative waste of time. Random phone calls to answer quick questions turn into an enormous time suck of me explaining to someone something they could have found on Google for free. Most new startups fail, and a book that doesn't intrigue and enchant me within the first chapter usually will not deliver anything extraordinary in later chapters. Hence the rules for the type of opportunities that I just described. In other words, do indeed stay open to new opportunities, but also be wise, be discerning, and don't be a say yes to everything because you never know type of person. So let's review the most important parts of having this daily philosophy of chopping wood and carrying water. First, work hard to the best of your ability and in full excellence, to the glory of God. Chopping wood and carrying water every day and doing the very best job with whatever God has put on your plate for that day. Next, understand that the seemingly random so called serendipitous opportunities, meetings and networked introductions that may arise are not random but planned by God and manifested by your own actions, words and thoughts. So pay attention to each with wisdom and discernment regarding those random opportunities. Only say yes to the Hell Yeses. But remember that you do need to set boundaries and rules and that the yes or no doesn't need to be an immediate gut response. Sometimes a hell yes or Hell no may take a bit of praying, walking and sleeping on to materialize. And should you be tempted to think your work is too small or to glance at envy at the size of your neighbor's garage, Instagram follower size, or monthly paycheck, consider the words of First Corinthians 15:58 where Paul writes that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. He was speaking of Christian ministry. But this can ultimately be true of all work. As Doug Wilson notes in the book, remembering the finitude of your labors will keep you humble. Recognizing that your labors have a place in God's cosmic intentions for the universe will keep you from thinking that your tiny labors are stupid laborers. They are nothing of the kind. Finally, I highly recommend you read two books. First, Productivity, the book I mentioned that considers the theology behind technology, work and mission, and advice on how to be productive and how to think about productivity in the digital age. And then also read the book Every Good Endeavor. I'll link to both of those if you go to getindore.com chapter 10. That's getindore.com chapter 10 and that good endeavor book addresses three questions. Why do you want to work? That is, why do we need to work in order to lead a fulfilled life? Why is it so hard to work? That is why is it often so fruitless, pointless, and difficult? And how can we overcome the daily difficulties and find satisfaction in our work? As a matter of fact, let's finish with a quote by author Timothy Keller from his book Every Good Endeavor. In it, Keller says, all human work, especially excellent work done by all people, is a channel of God's love for his world. They will be able to appreciate and rejoice in their own work, whether it is prestigious or not, as well as in the skillful work of all other people, whether they believe it or not. So this biblical conception of work as a vehicle for God's loving provision for the world. Now how about you and your approach to work? Do you view it as a way to love others, no matter how small or how much of a daily grind your work may be. Do you wake up in the morning and stack each brick you've been handed one by one, knowing that someday, even if you're perhaps not personally around to see it finished, a great and glorious mansion will be the eventual result? Do you chop wood and carry water with a giant, satisfied, stupid grin on your face, doing so to the glory of God, no matter how mundane the work may seem to be? If not, how do you plan to start based on what you've learned in this chapter? Well, if you go to getindoor.com, you can access the physical or digital version of this book where there's some handy note taking sections for you to dwell upon and ruminate upon the questions that I've just asked you and hopefully write down and answer them because interacting with this book I guarantee will give you an even better experience. And for resources, references, links and additional reading and listening material for this chapter you can visit getindoor.com chapter 10 that's getindoor.com chapter 10.