Skip to main content

Best Quotes From Chop Wood Carry Water – How to Fall in Love With the Process of Becoming Great:

Top Quotes From Chop Wood Carry Water By Joshua Medcalf

  1. The only thing that is truly significant about today, or any other day, is who you become in the process…What good is it to reach the top if you skip steps to get there? Would you want the person flying your plane, performing your surgery, or handling your money to have cheated?

  2. Every little thing we do, no matter how mundane, matters greatly when it is multiplied by the number of times we do it. Over time, even the smallest habit or choice can change our lives immensely.

  3. Everything you choose to read, listen to, or look at. Everything you think about, dream about, or focus on. And especially, your circle – the people you surround yourself with and allow to influence you – can make all the difference in who you become.

  4. In a world where anyone can look up information online, it’s deceptively easy to gain ‘knowledge.’ You can get pretty confident by reading everything you can get your hands on about a certain subject, it’s called ‘artificial maturity.’ But knowing about how to do something and having practical experience actually doing something are radically different.

  5. Every now and then a person comes along and accidentally gets it the first time, but most of us have to learn the hard way through multiple failed experiments, which allows us to learn lessons and skills those who had it easier did not develop.

  6. Everyone wants to be great, until it’s time to do what greatness requires. Don’t believe the myths. Greatness is far from sexy, it is dirty, hard work, usually required to be done in the dark, when no one is watching, while your dreams are so far off they feel like fairytales.

  7. The secret is to understand that nothing is a test, but only an opportunity to learn and grow. Many people never fulfill their potential, because they look at every situation in life as a test. If you look at something as a test, then you will focus only on passing the test instead of maximizing your growth through the experience.

  8. You don’t find any traffic after going the extra mile, and there’s a very good reason for that: most people won’t do what it takes to get there. But if you choose to do what others won’t, eventually you will get to do what others can’t.

  9. You fuel your heart with six things: what you watch, what you read, what you listen to, who you surround yourself with, how you talk to yourself, and what you visualize.

  10. Most people never realize their potential, because when things get hard, or they experience failure, they just quit. Most people settle for average and what comes easy. They never give their very, very best and exhaust themselves in order to protect their ego. They enjoy being able to say, ‘I didn’t even really try,’ or ‘I didn’t really care.’ Because if they did really give it their best, and still failed, that would be too much for their ego to handle.

  11. Comparison is the thief of all joy, and the grass isn’t greener on the other side. The grass is greener where you water it. You have grown up in a society where things like social media and twenty-four hour television have established a culture that is hyper-focused on comparison. But if you are constantly comparing, you will have all the joy sucked out of you.

  12. You may not have control over how other people talk to you, but you do have control over how you talk to yourself, And that is hugely important, because…Words put pictures in your mind, Pictures in your mind impact how you feel. How you feel impacts what you do. What you habitually do impacts your destiny.

  13. Goals actually allow you to shirk responsibility. But a mission? Only the person in the mirror can stop you from living that out. I think one of the reasons so many young people are floundering around chasing all the wrong things, is because they are bored with goals. They need a compelling mission.

  14. The ultimate illusion of the human experience is control. The person you want beside you in battle is the one who has surrendered the outcome, and surrendered to the fact that he might die. When you surrender the outcome, you are freed up to be at your best, to be in the moment, and to trust your training. It is the one who has surrendered the outcome who ironically has the greatest chance of survival.

  15. Be courageous and never listen to ‘they.’ Once you break out they will call you a genius, and tell everyone how talented you are. They will try and neatly sweep all of your years of sweat, turmoil, and uncommon persistence under the rug. Why? Because it is so much more comfortable to believe talent is reserved for the chosen few than it is to work your ever-loving butt off to become the best you are capable of being.

The Market is a Mirror – It Reveals Your Level of Commitment to the Craft of Trading:

Within Chop Wood Carry Water, a young boy named John is in training to become a samurai archer, and the lessons he learns along the way from his sensei, Akira, provide him with the mental toughness to not only complete the long, tedious journey, but also enjoy it along the way. Almost every lesson shared in this book has parallels to trading. The most critical one, in my opinion, is that pursuing any skill-based endeavor will inevitably reveal your level of commitment. Most people give up at the first sign of resistance, and as a result, never display the perseverance and grit required to become great. They succumb to comfort, effectively choosing average levels of fulfillment.

3 Steps to Eliminate Emotional & Financial Pain From Trading

To become a consistently profitable trader, you can’t cheat the process. Yet almost all traders still try to. They search for foolproof systems and hot picks because they want shortcuts. It’s no surprise that these routes never seem to work. You can’t cheat the market – it won’t give you anything you haven’t earned. By focusing too heavily on the outcome, the process gets ignored, and you end up cheating yourself. Many people think that trading success is only for the chosen few who are lucky or gifted, but it’s actually for the few who choose to grow and evolve. It’s hard for many to accept, but there are no naturals when it comes to trading. As humans, we’re not naturally wired to operate within the market environment, which is why it requires a legitimate paradigm shift in order to succeed.

Luck vs. Skill – Luck Doesn’t Last. It’s Actually More of a Curse Than a Blessing:

When given the choice, people tend to choose luck over skill. This is because luck requires absolutely no effort. You get rewarded without a reason why. Skill, however, requires sacrifice, dedication, focus, and intention to attain. It’s not the tempting and fun thing to do – it’s dirty, hard work. At times, the consistent repetition required to build an automatic, subconscious skill can even be boring. To top it off, it usually requires delaying gratification, which people are notoriously bad at, especially in today’s world of social media. There are far too many platforms providing us with the instant gratification that we crave – and it’s having a negative impact.

what you want most consistent trading

These are the main reasons why there are so few profitable traders out there. Most people don’t choose the tedious and hard path to mastery, even though it’s the only legitimate way to achieve consistent trading success. Instead, they choose the exciting and easy get-rich-quick route. Ironically, taking the get-rich-quick route at the start will actually make your journey to trading success slower and more expensive. This is why I urge traders to build the foundation necessary for success by developing core skills and the proper mindset, but many times it’s like talking to brick walls. I understand because I once was the person who thought hot stock alerts would work, but I know better now. The shortcuts I tried to take deprived me of the work ethic and persistence required to succeed.

Overall, it’s actually quite discouraging to see the tremendous popularity of alert services even though they don’t tend to work for subscribers, while legitimate trading courses, programs, and services out there that are actually focused on creating self-sufficient traders struggle to attract students. In the end, the vast majority of people who attempt to become traders have it backwards.

Most people aren’t interested in learning or changing, but the path to self-mastery requires both. Choose your path wisely.

Learn More in the Trading Success Framework Course

Written by Matt Thomas (@MattThomasTP)

Related Pages:

Matt Thomas

Founder of TradingParadigm.com, Creator of the Trading Success Framework Course & Trading Paradigm Skool Community, and Intraday Futures Trader Using Auction Market Theory & Profiling (Volume & Market Profile).

2 Comments

  • Alblue says:

    Thanks for sharing these quotes from chop wood carry water by Joshua Medcalf. Most of the quotes are really inspiring to me, particularly the number ten. I’ve seen a lot of my friends satisfied with what they’re doing currently, but they don’t want to try to live out their comfort zone. I saw their potential in the past, so I’m sure they can achieve greater things if they really want to. This is a reminder for me to always strive for greater things in my life. Thanks 

  • Fatoumata says:

    I liked these quotes from Chop Wood Carry Water. They are life lesson quotes people have been living for centuries, and some of these if done people will love themselves and the world. Make us all strive to good, but that’s not always the case.

    My personal favourite. Is the with how words can impact you and your deeds. Taking what everyone tells you into heart will affect your mind, thoughts and then your actions. Whether these words are bad or good it will have some consequences in your life and the life of the people around you. So we should be heedful.

Leave a Reply