Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins
Location 19:
You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.
Location 39:
Very few people know how the bottom feels, but I do. It’s like quicksand. It grabs you, sucks you under, and won’t let go. When life is like that it’s easy to drift and continue to make the same comfortable choices that are killing you, over and over again.
Location 46:
So I sought out pain, fell in love with suffering, and eventually transformed myself from the weakest piece of shit on the planet into the hardest man God ever created, or so I tell myself. Odds are you have had a much better childhood than I did, and even now might have a damn decent life, but no matter who you are, who your parents are or were, where you live, what you do for a living, or how much money you have, you’re probably living at about 40 percent of your true capability.
Location 797:
You aren’t missing out on opportunities, making shit money, and getting evicted because of America or Donald fucking Trump or because your ancestors were slaves or because some people hate immigrants or Jews or harass women or believe gay people are going to hell. If any of that shit is stopping you from excelling in life, I’ve got some news. You are stopping you! You are giving up instead of getting hard! Tell the truth about the real reasons for your limitations and you will turn that negativity, which is real, into jet fuel. Those odds stacked against you will become a damn runway! There is no more time to waste. Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert. That’s why it’s okay to be cruel to yourself as long as you realize you’re doing it to become better. We all need thicker skin to improve in life. Being soft when you look in the mirror isn’t going to inspire the wholesale changes we need to shift our present and open up our future.
Location 822:
From then on, I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort. If it was raining, I would go run. Whenever it started snowing, my mind would say, Get your fucking running shoes on. Sometimes I wussed out and had to deal with it at the Accountability Mirror. But facing that mirror, facing myself, motivated me to fight through uncomfortable experiences, and, as a result, I became tougher. And being tough and resilient helped me meet my goals.
Location 839:
Living with purpose changed everything for me—at least in the short term. During my senior year in high school, studying and working out gave my mind so much energy that hate flaked from my soul like used-up snake skin. The resentment I held toward the racists in Brazil, the emotion that had dominated me and was burning me up inside, dissipated because I’d finally considered the fucking source. I looked at the people who were making me feel uncomfortable and realized how uncomfortable they were in their own skin. To make fun of or try to intimidate someone they didn’t even know based on race alone was a clear indication that something was very wrong with them, not me. But when you have no confidence it becomes easy to value other people’s opinions, and I was valuing everyone’s opinion without considering the minds that generated them. That sounds silly, but it’s an easy trap to fall into, especially when you are insecure on top of being the only. As soon as I made that connection, being upset with them was not worth my time. Because if I was gonna kick their ass in life, and I was, I had way too much shit to do. Each insult or dismissive gesture became more fuel for the engine revving inside me.
Location 848:
By the time I graduated, I knew that the confidence I’d managed to develop didn’t come from a perfect family or God-given talent. It came from personal accountability which brought me self respect, and self respect will always light a way forward.
Updated Oct 15, 2019:
Location 985:
Later that week the doctors reversed their decision. They didn’t specifically say it was safe for me to continue, but they said the trait wasn’t yet well understood and allowed me to decide for myself. When I reported back to training the Master Sergeant (MSgt) informed me that I’d missed too much time and that if I wanted to continue I would have to start over from day one, week one. Instead of less than four weeks, I’d have to endure another ten weeks of the terror, rage, and insomnia that came with water confidence. These days, that kind of thing wouldn’t even register on my radar. You tell me to run longer and harder than everyone else just to get a fair shake, I’d say, "Roger that," and keep moving, but back then I was still half-baked. Physically I was strong, but I was not even close to mastering my mind. The MSgt stared at me, awaiting my response. I couldn’t even look him in the eye when I said, "You know what, Master Sergeant, the doctor doesn’t know much about this Sickle Cell thing, and it’s bothering me." He nodded, emotionless, and signed the papers pulling me out of the program for good. He cited Sickle Cell, and on paper I didn’t quit, but I knew the truth. If I had been the guy I am today, I wouldn’t have given two fucks about Sickle Cell. I still have the Sickle Cell Trait. You don’t just get rid of it, but back then an obstacle had appeared, and I’d folded.
Location 999:
It was challenging work with intelligent people, but sadly I was never proud of it and didn’t see the opportunities offered because I knew I was a quitter who had let fear dictate my future.
Location 1003:
I wanted to be big because being big hid David Goggins. I was able to tuck this 175-pound person into those 21-inch biceps and that flabby belly. I grew a burly mustache and was intimidating to everyone who saw me, but inside I knew I was a pussy, and that’s a haunting feeling.
Location 1017:
Darkness was a friend indeed. I worked in the dark, hid my true self from friends and strangers. Nobody would have believed how numb and afraid I was back then because I looked like a beast that no one would dare fuck with, but my mind wasn’t right, and my soul was weighed down by too much trauma and failure. I had every excuse in the world to be a loser, and used them all.
Location 1033:
Only one-third of the men who begin BUD/S make it through Hell Week, and in all of my time in Pararescue training, I couldn’t remember feeling as awful as these men looked. They were swollen, chafed, sleep-deprived, and dead on their feet, and I was jealous of them. The longer I watched the more certain I became that there were answers buried in all that suffering. Answers that I needed. More than once the camera panned over the endless frothing ocean, and each time I felt pathetic. The SEALs were everything I wasn’t. They were about pride, dignity, and the type of excellence that came from bathing in the fire, getting beat the fuck down, and going back for more, again and again. They were the human equivalent of the hardest, sharpest sword you could imagine. They sought out the flame, took the pounding for as long as necessary, longer even, until they were fearless and deadly. They weren’t motivated. They were driven. The show ended with graduation. Twenty-two proud men stood shoulder to shoulder in their dress whites before the camera pushed in on their Commanding Officer.
Location 1041:
"In a society where mediocrity is too often the standard and too often rewarded," he said, "there is intense fascination with men who detest mediocrity, who refuse to define themselves in conventional terms, and who seek to transcend traditionally recognized human capabilities. This is exactly the type of person BUD/S is meant to find. The man who finds a way to complete each and every task to the best of his ability. The man who will adapt and overcome any and all obstacles."
Location 1066:
Every sailor in that office—all of them white—were surprised to see me except Schaljo. If I was a heavyweight, Schaljo was a lightweight at 5’7", but he didn’t seem fazed by my size, at least not at first. He was outgoing and warm, like any salesman, though I could tell he had some pit bull in him. He led me down a hall to weigh me in, and while standing on the scale I eyed a weight chart pinned to the wall. At my height, the maximum allowable weight for the Navy was 191 pounds. I held my breath, sucked in my gut as much as I could, and puffed out my chest in a sorry attempt to stave off the humiliating moment where he’d let me down easy. That moment never came. "You’re a big boy," Schaljo said, smiling and shaking his head, as he scratched 297 pounds on a chart in his file folder. "The Navy has a program that allows recruits in the reserves to become active duty. That’s what we’ll use for this. It’s being phased out at the end of the year, so we need to get you classed up before then. Point is, you have some work to do, but you knew that." I followed his eyes to the weight chart and checked it again. He nodded, smiled, patted me on the shoulder, and left me to face my truth.
Location 1129:
That’s when I first realized that not all physical and mental limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon. I also knew that it would take every ounce of courage and toughness I could muster to pull off the impossible. I was staring at hours, days, and weeks of non-stop suffering. I would have to push myself to the very edge of my mortality. I had to accept the very real possibility that I might die because this time I wouldn’t quit, no matter how fast my heart raced and no matter how much pain I was in.
Location 1154:
When depression smothers you, it blots out all light and leaves you with nothing to cling onto for hope. All you see is negativity. For me, the only way to make it through that was to feed off my depression. I had to flip it and convince myself that all that self-doubt and anxiety was confirmation that I was no longer living an aimless life. My task may turn out to be impossible but at least I was back on a motherfucking mission.
Location 1174:
"You cut corners and you are not gonna fucking make it," I said, out loud, as I drove back to the gym. "There are no shortcuts for you, Goggins!" I did my entire pull-up workout over again. One missed pull-up cost me an extra 250, and there would be similar episodes. Whenever I cut a run or swim short because I was hungry or tired, I’d always go back and beat myself down even harder. That was the only way I could manage the demons in my mind. Either way there would be suffering. I had to choose between physical suffering in the moment, and the mental anguish of wondering if that one missed pull-up, that last lap in the pool, the quarter mile I skipped on the road or trail, would end up costing me an opportunity of a lifetime. It was an easy choice. When it came to the SEALs, I wasn’t leaving anything up to chance.
Location 1206:
"You gotta tell me what I got on this fucking test, man," I said. He peered up at me, surprised, but he didn’t buckle. "I’m sorry, son. This is the government. There’s a system for how they do things," he said. "I didn’t make the rules and I can’t bend them." "Sir, you have no idea what this test means to me, to my life. It’s everything!" He looked into my glassy eyes for what felt like five minutes, then turned toward his machine. "I’m breaking every rule in the book right now," he said. "Goggins, right?" I nodded and came around behind his seat as he scrolled through files. "There you are. Congratulations, you scored 65. That’s a great score." He was referencing my overall, but I didn’t care about that. Everything hinged on my getting a 50-spot where it counted most. "What did I get on mechanical comprehension?" He shrugged, clicked and scrolled, and there it was. My new favorite number glowed on his screen: 50. "YES!" I shouted. "YES! YES!" There was still a handful of others taking the test, but this was the happiest moment in my life and I couldn’t stifle it. I kept screaming "YES!" at the top of my lungs. The administrator damn near fell out of his chair and everyone in that room stared at me like I was crazy. If they only knew how crazed I’d been! For two months I’d dedicated my entire existence to this one moment, and I was damn well gonna enjoy it. I rushed to my car and screamed some more. "FUCK YEAH!" On my drive home I called my mom. She was the one person, aside from Schaljo, who witnessed my metamorphosis. "I fucking did it," I told her, tears in my eyes. "I fucking did it! I’m going to be a SEAL."
Location 1230:
When I was done, I’d swim a mile or two, then head to a pond near my mother’s home. Remember, this was Indiana—the American Midwest—in December. The trees were naked. Icicles hung like crystals from the eaves of houses and snow blanketed the earth in all directions, but the pond wasn’t completely frozen yet. I waded into the icy water, dressed in camo pants, a brown short sleeved t-shirt, and boots, laid back and looked into the gray sky. The hypothermic water washed over me, the pain was excruciating, and I fucking loved it. After a few minutes I got out and started running, water sloshing in my boots, sand in my underwear. Within seconds my t-shirt was frozen to my chest, my pants iced at the cuffs. I hit the Monon trail. Steam poured from my nose and mouth as I grunted and slalomed speed-walkers and joggers. Civilians. Their heads turned as I picked up speed and began sprinting, like Rocky in downtown Philly. I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could, from a past that no longer defined me, toward a future undetermined. All I knew was that there would be pain and there would be purpose.
Location 1240:
The first step on the journey toward a calloused mind is stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis. Dig out your journal again and write down all the things you don’t like to do or that make you uncomfortable. Especially those things you know are good for you. Now go do one of them, and do it again.
Location 1244:
This is not about changing your life instantly, it’s about moving the needle bit by bit and making those changes sustainable. That means digging down to the micro level and doing something that sucks every day. Even if it’s as simple as making your bed, doing the dishes, ironing your clothes, or getting up before dawn and running two miles each day. Once that becomes comfortable, take it to five, then ten miles. If you already do all those things, find something you aren’t doing.
Location 1249:
Doing things—even small things—that make you uncomfortable will help make you strong. The more often you get uncomfortable the stronger you’ll become, and soon you’ll develop a more productive, can-do dialogue with yourself in stressful situations.
Location 1306:
Despite all that, the first hour of Hell Week was actually fun. During breakout, that mad rush of explosions, shooting, and shouting, you are not even thinking about the nightmare to come. You’re riding an adrenaline high because you know you’re fulfilling a rite of passage within a hallowed warrior tradition. Guys are looking around the Grinder, practically giddy, thinking, "Yeah, we’re in Hell Week, motherfuckers!" Ah, but reality has a way of kicking everyone in the teeth sooner or later.
Location 1412:
Everything in life is a mind game! Whenever we get swept under by life’s dramas, large and small, we are forgetting that no matter how bad the pain gets, no matter how harrowing the torture, all bad things end. That forgetting happens the second we give control over our emotions and actions to other people, which can easily happen when pain is peaking. During Hell Week, the men who quit felt like they were running on a treadmill turned way the fuck up with no dashboard within reach. But, whether they ever figured it out or not, that was an illusion they fell for.
Location 1416:
I went into Hell Week knowing I put myself there, that I wanted to be there, and that I had all the tools I needed to win this fucked-up game, which gave me the passion to persevere and claim ownership of the experience. It allowed me to play hard, bend rules, and look for an edge wherever and whenever I could until the horn sounded on Friday afternoon. To me this was war, and the enemies were our instructors who’d blatantly told us that they wanted to break us down and make us quit!
Location 1427:
I was running with a log on my shoulders, vomiting blood. Bloody snot streamed from my nose and mouth, and the instructors periodically grabbed me and sat me down nearby because they thought I might drop fucking dead. But every time they turned around I was back in the mix. Back on that log. Kenny kept hearing the same refrain over the radio that night. "We need to get Goggins out of there," one voice said. "Roger that, sir. Goggins is sitting down," another voice crackled. Then after a beat, Kenny would hear that radio chirp again. "Oh shit, Goggins is back on the log. I repeat, Goggins is back on the log!"
Location 1443:
Adagio in Strings was the score to one of my favorite scenes in Platoon and with bone-chilling fog wrapping all around us, I stretched my arms out like Elias when he was getting gunned down by the Viet Cong, and sang my ass off. We’d all watched that movie together during First Phase, and my antics had a dual effect of pissing off the instructors and firing up my crew. Finding moments of laughter in the pain and delirium turned the entire melodramatic experience upside down for us. It gave us some control of our emotions. Again, this was all a mind game, and I damn sure wasn’t going to lose.
Location 1485:
So I deployed a process that I now call "Taking Souls." I turned to Brown. "You know why I call you Freak?" I asked. He looked over as we lowered the boat, then lifted it up overhead like creaky robots on reserve battery power. "Because you are one of the baddest men I’ve ever seen in my damn life!" He cracked a smile. "And you know what I say to these motherfuckers right here?" I tipped my elbow at the nine instructors gathered on the beach, drinking coffee and talking bullshit. "I say, they can go fuck themselves!" Bill nodded and narrowed his eyes on our tormentors, while I turned to the rest of the crew. "Now let’s throw this shit up high and show them who we are!" "Fucking beautiful," Bill said. "Let’s do it!" Within seconds my whole team had life. We didn’t just lift the boat overhead and set it down hard, we threw it up, caught it overhead, tapped the sand with it and threw it up high again. The results were immediate and undeniable. Our pain and exhaustion faded. Each rep made us stronger and faster, and each time we threw the boat up we all chanted. "YOU CAN’T HURT BOAT CREW TWO!" That was our fuck you to the instructors, and we had their full attention as we soared on a second wind. On the toughest day of the hardest week in the world’s toughest training, Boat Crew Two was moving at lightning speed and making a mockery of Hell Week.
Location 1499:
Since that night in Hell Week, I’ve deployed the Taking Souls concept countless times. Taking Souls is a ticket to finding your own reserve power and riding a second wind. It’s the tool you can call upon to win any competition or overcome every life obstacle. You can utilize it to win a chess match, or conquer an adversary in a game of office politics. It can help you rock a job interview or excel at school. And yes, it can be used to conquer all manner of physical challenges, but remember, this is a game you are playing within yourself.
Location 1552:
"Follow me," he said as he charged up the beach. I caught up and we ran north for a good mile. By then we could barely see the boats and their bobbing lights through the mist and over the waves. "All right, Goggins. Now go swim out and find your fucking boat!" He’d landed a hollow point on my deepest insecurity, pierced my confidence, and I was stunned silent. I gave him a look that said, "Are you fucking kidding me?" I was a decent swimmer by then, and surf torture didn’t scare me because we weren’t that far from shore, but an open water, hypothermic swim a thousand yards off shore in a storm, to a boat that had no fucking idea I was heading their way? That sounded like a death sentence, and I hadn’t prepared for anything like it. But sometimes the unexpected descends like chaos, and without warning even the bravest among us must be ready to take on risks and tasks that seem beyond our capabilities. For me, in that moment, it came down to how I wanted to be remembered. I could have refused the order, and I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble because I had no swim buddy (in SEAL training you always have to be with a swim buddy), and it was obvious that he was asking me to do something that was extremely unsafe. But I also knew that my objective coming into SEAL training was more than making it through to the other side with a Trident. For me it was the opportunity to go up against the best of the best and distance myself from the pack. So even though I couldn’t see the boats out past the thrashing waves there was no time to dwell on fear. There was no choice to make at all. "What are you waiting on Goggins? Get your fucking ass out there, and do not fuck this up!" "Roger that!" I shouted and sprinted into the surf. Trouble was, strapped with a buoyancy vest, nursing a wounded knee, wearing boots, I couldn’t swim for shit and it was almost impossible to duck dive through the waves. I had to flail over the white wash, and with my mind managing so many variables, the ocean seemed colder than ever. I swallowed water by the gallon.
Location 1589:
Nine months earlier, I had topped out at 297 pounds and couldn’t even run a quarter mile. Back then, when I was dreaming of a different life, I remember thinking that just getting through Hell Week would be the biggest honor of my life so far. Even if I never graduated from BUD/S, surviving Hell Week alone would have meant something. But I didn’t just survive. I was about to finish Hell Week at the top of my class, and for the first time, I knew I was a bad motherfucker.
Location 1592:
Once, I was so focused on failing, I was afraid to even try. Now I would take on any challenge. All my life, I was terrified of water, and especially cold water, but standing there in the final hour, I wished the ocean, wind, and mud were even colder! I was completely transformed physically, which was a big part of my success in BUD/S, but what saw me through Hell Week was my mind, and I was just starting to tap into its power.
Location 1625:
Choose any competitive situation that you’re in right now. Who is your opponent? Is it your teacher or coach, your boss, an unruly client? No matter how they’re treating you there is one way to not only earn their respect, but turn the tables. Excellence.
Location 1636:
Whoever you’re dealing with, your goal is to make them watch you achieve what they could never have done themselves. You want them thinking how amazing you are. Take their negativity and use it to dominate their task with everything you’ve got. Take their motherfucking soul!
Location 1712:
Time stood still as I realized for the first time that I’d always looked at my entire life, everything I’d been through, from the wrong perspective. Yes, all the abuse I’d experienced and the negativity I had to push through challenged me to the core, but in that moment I stopped seeing myself as the victim of bad circumstance, and saw my life as the ultimate training ground instead. My disadvantages had been callousing my mind all along and had prepared me for that moment in that pool with Psycho Pete.
Location 1716:
I remember my very first day in the gym back in Indiana. My palms were soft and quickly got torn up on the bars because they weren’t accustomed to gripping steel. But over time, after thousands of reps, my palms built up a thick callous as protection. The same principle works when it comes to mindset. Until you experience hardships like abuse and bullying, failures and disappointments, your mind will remain soft and exposed. Life experience, especially negative experiences, help callous the mind. But it’s up to you where that callous lines up. If you choose to see yourself as a victim of circumstance into adulthood, that callous will become resentment that protects you from the unfamiliar. It will make you too cautious and untrusting, and possibly too angry at the world. It will make you fearful of change and hard to reach, but not hard of mind. That’s where I was as a teenager, but after my second Hell Week, I’d become someone new. I’d fought through so many horrible situations by then and remained open and ready for more. My ability to stay open represented a willingness to fight for my own life, which allowed me to withstand hail storms of pain and use it to callous over my victim’s mentality. That shit was gone, buried under layers of sweat and hard fucking flesh, and I was starting to callous over my fears too. That realization gave me the mental edge I needed to outlast Psycho Pete one more time. To show him he couldn’t hurt me anymore I smiled back, and the feeling of being on the edge of a blackout went away. Suddenly, I was energized. The pain faded and I felt like I could stay under all day. Psycho saw that in my eyes. I tied off the last knot at leisurely pace, glaring at him the whole time. He gestured with his hands for me to hurry up as his diaphragm contracted. I finally finished, he gave me a quick affirmative and kicked to the surface, desperate for a breath. I took my time, joined him topside and found him gasping, while I felt strangely relaxed. When the chips were down at the pool during Air Force pararescue training, I’d buckled. This time I won a major battle in the water. It was a big victory, but the war wasn’t over.
Location 1734:
Hell Week is designed to show you that a human is capable of much more than you know. It opens your mind to the true possibilities of human potential, and with that comes a change in your mentality. You no longer fear cold water or doing push-ups all day. You realize that no matter what they do to you, they will never break you, so you don’t rush as much to make their arbitrary deadlines. You know if you don’t make it, the instructors will beat you down. Meaning push-ups, getting wet and sandy, anything to…
Location 1762:
Similar to using an opponent’s energy to gain an advantage, leaning on your calloused mind in the heat of battle can shift your thinking as well. Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in so you can power through obstacles.
Updated Oct 21, 2019:
Location 1769:
Those mornings when going on a run is the last thing you want to do, but then twenty minutes into it you feel energized, that’s the work of the sympathetic nervous system. What I’ve found is that you can tap into it on-call as long as you know how to manage your own mind. When you indulge in negative self-talk, the gifts of a sympathetic response will remain out of reach. However, if you can manage those moments of pain that come with maximum effort, by remembering what you’ve been through to get to that point in your life, you will be in a better position to persevere and choose fight over flight. That will allow you to use the adrenaline that comes with a sympathetic response to go even harder.
Location 1779:
You can tolerate doubt as a backseat driver, but if you put doubt in the pilot’s seat, defeat is guaranteed. Remembering that you’ve been through difficulties before and have always survived to fight again shifts the conversation in your head.
Location 1786:
Physical training is the perfect crucible to learn how to manage your thought process because when you’re working out, your focus is more likely to be single pointed, and your response to stress and pain is immediate and measurable. Do you hammer hard and snag that personal best like you said you would, or do you crumble? That decision rarely comes down to physical ability, it’s almost always a test of how well you are managing your own mind.
Location 1791:
The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated. That’s why I loved PT in BUD/S and why I still love it today. Physical challenges strengthen my mind so I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, and it will do the same for you.
Location 1806:
Airplanes have always made me claustrophobic, so I decided to take the train from San Diego to Chicago, which gave me three full days to think, and my mind was all fucked up. On the first day I didn’t know if I wanted to be a SEAL anymore. I had overcome a lot. I beat Hell Week, realized the power of a calloused mind and conquered my fear of the water. Perhaps I’d already learned enough about myself? What else did I need to prove? On day two I thought about all the other jobs I could sign up for. Maybe I should move on and become a firefighter? That’s a bad-ass job, and it would be an opportunity to become a different sort of hero. But on day three, as the train veered into Chicago, I slipped into a bathroom the size of a phone booth and checked in with the Accountability Mirror. Is that really how you feel? Are you sure you’re ready to give up on the SEALs and become a civilian fireman? I stared at myself for five minutes before I shook my head. I couldn’t lie. I had to tell myself the truth, out loud. "I’m afraid. I’m afraid of going through all of that shit again. I’m afraid of day one, week one."
Location 1862:
I felt like I’d been stripped of everything, but I was still breathing, which meant I had to find a way to keep going. I had to compartmentalize doubt and find the strength to believe that I was born to be more than some tired-ass Navy SEAL reject. After Hell Week I’d felt I had become unbreakable, yet within a week I’d been zeroed out. I hadn’t levelled up after all. I still wasn’t shit, and if I was going to fix my broke-down life, I would have to become more! On that sofa, I found a way. By then I’d learned how to hold myself accountable, and I knew I could take a man’s soul in the heat of battle. I had overcome many obstacles, and realized that each of those experiences had calloused my mind so thick, I could take on any challenge. All of that had made me feel like I’d dealt with my past demons, but I hadn’t. I’d been ignoring them. My memories of abuse at the hands of my father, of all those people who called me nigger, didn’t vaporize after a few victories. Those moments were anchored deep in my subconscious, and as a result, my foundation was cracked. In a human being your character is your foundation, and when you build a bunch of successes and pile up even more failures on a fucked-up foundation, the structure that is the self won’t be sound. To develop an armored mind—a mindset so calloused and hard that it becomes bulletproof—you need to go to the source of all your fears and insecurities.
Location 1877:
I was rejecting my past and therefore rejecting myself. My foundation, my character was defined by self-rejection. All my fears came from that deep-seated uneasiness I carried with being David Goggins because of what I’d gone through. Even after I’d reached a point where I no longer cared about what others thought of me, I still had trouble accepting me. Anyone who is of sound mind and body can sit down and think of twenty things in their life that could have gone differently. Where maybe they didn’t get a fair shake and where they took the path of least resistance. If you’re one of the few who acknowledge that, want to callous those wounds, and strengthen your character, its up to you to go back through your past and make peace with yourself by facing those incidents and all of your negative influences, and accepting them as weak spots in your own character. Only when you identify and accept your weaknesses will you finally stop running from your past. Then those incidents can be used more efficiently as fuel to become better and grow stronger.
Location 1891:
Going forward it became very important for me to rehash my life, because when you examine your experiences with a fine-toothed comb and see where your issues come from, you can find strength in enduring pain and abuse. By accepting Trunnis Goggins as part of me, I was free to use where I came from as fuel. I realized that each episode of child abuse that could have killed me made me tough as hell and as sharp as a Samurai’s blade. True, I had been dealt a fucked-up hand, but that night I started thinking of it as running a 100-mile race with a fifty-pound ruck on my back. Could I still compete in that race even if everyone else was running free and easy, weighing 130 pounds? How fast would I be able to run once I’d shed that dead weight? I wasn’t even thinking about ultras yet. To me the race was life itself, and the more I took inventory, the more I realized how prepared I was for the fucked-up events yet to come. Life had put me in the fire, taken me out, and hammered me repeatedly, and diving back into the BUD/S cauldron, feeling a third Hell Week in a calendar year, would decorate me with a PhD in pain. I was about to become the sharpest sword ever made!
Location 1956:
Yes, it was miserable, but I fucking loved it. I thrived off of the barbaric beauty of seeing the soul of a man destroyed, only to rise again and overcome every obstacle in his path.
Location 2013:
Our first training run that day was my trial by fire, and I did the best I could to run with my hip flexors. Usually we let our feet and lower legs drive the rhythm. I had to reverse that. It took intense focus to isolate each movement and generate motion and power in my legs from the hip down, and for the first thirty minutes the pain was the worst I’d ever felt in my life. The tape cut into my skin, while the pounding sent shockwaves of agony up my slivered shins. And this was just the first run in what promised to be five months of continual pain. Was it possible to survive this, day after day? I thought about quitting. If failure was my future and I’d have to rethink my life completely, what was the point of this exercise? Why delay the inevitable? Was I fucked in the head? Each and every thought boiled down to the same old simple question: why?
Location 2024:
"People have a hard time going through BUD/S healthy, and you’re going through it on broken legs! Who else would even think of this?" I asked. "Who else would be able to run even one minute on one broken leg, let alone two? Only Goggins! You are twenty minutes in the business, Goggins! You are a fucking machine! Each step you run from now until the end will only make you harder!"
Location 2087:
Again, the average person thinks 2,000–3,000 thoughts per hour. Rather than focusing on bullshit you cannot change, imagine visualizing the things you can. Choose any obstacle in your way, or set a new goal, and visualize overcoming or achieving it. Before I engage in any challenging activity, I start by painting a picture of what my success looks and feels like. I’ll think about it every day and that feeling propels me forward when I’m training, competing, or taking on any task I choose. But visualization isn’t simply about daydreaming of some trophy ceremony—real or metaphorical. You must also visualize the challenges that are likely to arise and determine how you will attack those problems when they do. That way you can be as prepared as possible on the journey.
Location 2093:
You can’t prepare for everything but if you engage in strategic visualization ahead of time, you’ll be as prepared as you possibly can be. That also means being prepared to answer the simple questions. Why are you doing this? What is driving you toward this achievement? Where does the darkness you’re using as fuel come from? What has calloused your mind? You’ll need to have those answers at your fingertips when you hit a wall of pain and doubt. To push through, you’ll need to channel your darkness, feed off it, and lean on your calloused mind.
Location 2100:
It takes relentless self-discipline to schedule suffering into your day, every day, but if you do, you’ll find that at the other end of that suffering is a whole other life just waiting for you.
Location 2378:
I asked Kate to grab some Motrin and anything she thought might be helpful from John Metz. And when she was gone, my body continued to decline. My stomach rumbled and when I looked down I saw bloody piss leak down my leg. I shit myself too. Liquefied diarrhea rose in the space between my ass and a lawn chair that would never be quite the same again. Worse, I had to hide it because I knew if Kate saw how bad off I really was she would beg me to pull out of the race. I’d run seventy miles in twelve hours with no training, and this was my reward.
Location 2404:
That’s when I finally realized that this fight wasn’t about Operation Red Wings or the families of the fallen. It was to a point, but none of that would help me run nineteen more miles before 10 a.m. No, this run, Badwater, my entire desire to push myself to the brink of destruction, was about me. It was about how much I was willing to suffer, how much more I could take, and how much I had to give. If I was gonna make it, this shit would have to get personal. I stared down at my legs. I could still see a trail of dried piss and blood stuck to my inner thigh and thought to myself, who in this entire fucked-up world would still be in this fight? Only you, Goggins! You haven’t trained, you don’t know dick about hydration and performance—all you know is you refuse to quit.
Location 2430:
Why?! Why are you still doing this to yourself, Goggins?! "Because you are one hard motherfucker," I screamed.
Location 2436:
I remembered as a kid, no matter how fucked up our life was, my mother always figured out a way to stock our damn cookie jar. She’d buy wafers and Oreos, Pepperidge Farm Milanos and Chips Ahoy!, and whenever she showed up with a new batch of cookies, she dumped them into one jar. With her permission we’d get to pick one or two out at a time. It was like a mini treasure hunt. I remember the joy of dropping my fist into that jar, wondering what I’d find, and before I crammed the cookie in my mouth I always took the time to admire it first, especially when we were broke in Brazil. I’d turn it around in my hand and say my own little prayer of thanks. The feeling of being that kid, locked in a moment of gratitude for a simple gift like a cookie, came back to me. I felt it viscerally, and I used that concept to stuff a new kind of Cookie Jar. Inside it were all my past victories. Like the time when I had to study three times as hard as anybody else during my senior year in high school just to graduate. That was a cookie. Or when I passed the ASVAB test as a senior and then again to get into BUD/S. Two more cookies. I remembered dropping over a hundred pounds in under three months, conquering my fear of water, graduating BUD/S at the top of my class, and being named Enlisted Honor Man in Army Ranger School (more on that soon). All those were cookies loaded with chocolate chunks.
Location 2451:
From then on, the Cookie Jar became a concept I’ve employed whenever I need a reminder of who I am and what I’m capable of. We all have a cookie jar inside us, because life, being what it is, has always tested us. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.
Location 2464:
If you don’t have any big accomplishments to draw on yet, so be it. Your small victories are your cookies to savor, and make sure you do savor them. Yeah, I was hard on myself when I looked in the Accountability Mirror, but I also praised myself whenever I could claim a small victory, because we all need that, and very few of us take the time to celebrate our successes. Sure, in the moment, we might enjoy them, but do we ever look back on them and feel that win again and again?
Location 2469:
I’m talking about utilizing past successes to fuel you to new and bigger ones. Because in the heat of battle, when shit gets real, we need to draw inspiration to push through our own exhaustion, depression, pain, and misery. We need to spark a bunch of small fires to become the motherfucking inferno.
Location 2475:
The Cookie Jar became my energy bank. Whenever the pain got to be too much, I dug into it and took a bite. The pain was never gone, but I only felt it in waves because my brain was otherwise occupied, which allowed me to drown out the simple questions and shrink time. Each lap became a victory lap, celebrating a different cookie, another small fire. Mile eighty-one became eighty-two, and an hour and a half later, I was in the nineties. I’d run ninety fucking miles with no training! Who does that shit? An hour later I was at ninety-five, and after nearly nineteen hours of running almost non-stop, I’d done it! I’d hit one hundred miles! Or had I? I couldn’t remember, so I ran one more lap just to make sure. After running 101 miles, my race finally over, I staggered to my lawn chair and Kate placed a camouflaged poncho liner over my body as I shivered in the fog. Steam poured off me. My vision was blurred. I remember feeling something warm on my leg, looked down and saw I was pissing blood again. I knew what was coming next, but the port-a-potties were about forty feet away, which may as well have been forty miles, or 4,000. I tried to get up but I was way too dizzy and collapsed back into that chair, an immovable object ready to accept the inevitable truth that I was about to shit myself. It was much worse this time. My entire backside and lower back were smeared with warm feces.
Location 2491:
I came to, on the kitchen floor, a few minutes later. My back was still smeared with shit, my thighs caked in blood and urine. My feet were blistered up and bleeding in twelve places. Seven of my ten toenails were dangling loose, connected only by tabs of dead skin. We had a combination tub and shower and she got the shower going before helping me crawl toward the bathroom and climb into the tub. I remember lying there, naked, with the shower pouring down upon me. I shivered, felt and looked like death, and then I started peeing again. But instead of blood or urine, what came out of me looked like thick brown bile.
Location 2609:
What am I capable of? I couldn’t answer that question, but as I looked around the finish line that day and considered what I’d accomplished, it became clear that we are all leaving a lot of money on the table without realizing it. We habitually settle for less than our best; at work, in school, in our relationships, and on the playing field or race course. We settle as individuals, and we teach our children to settle for less than their best, and all of that ripples out, merges, and multiplies within our communities and society as a whole. We’re not talking some bad weekend in Vegas, no more cash at the ATM kind of loss either. In that moment, the cost of missing out on so much excellence in this eternally fucked-up world felt incalculable to me, and it still does. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Location 2636:
I loved waking up at 5 a.m. and starting work with three hours of cardio already in the bank while most of my teammates hadn’t even finished their coffee. It gave me a mental edge, a better sense of self-awareness, and a ton of self-confidence, which made me a better SEAL instructor. That’s what getting up at the ass crack of dawn and putting out will do for you. It makes you better in all facets of your life.
Location 2699:
This being my second race, I was starting to understand the rhythm of ultra. It’s a constant dance between competition and camaraderie, which reminded me of BUD/S. Luis and I were both racing the clock and each other, but we wanted one another to make it. We were in it alone, together, and he was right. We were a couple of fucking idiots.
Location 2728:
By now, I’m sure you can tell that it doesn’t take much for me to become obsessed. Some criticize my level of passion, but I’m not down with the prevailing mentalities that tend to dominate American society these days; the ones that tell us to go with the flow or invite us to learn how to get more with less effort. Fuck that shortcut bullshit.
Location 2742:
Sadly, most of us give up when we’ve only given around 40 percent of our maximum effort. Even when we feel like we’ve reached our absolute limit, we still have 60 percent more to give! That’s the governor in action! Once you know that to be true, it’s simply a matter of stretching your pain tolerance, letting go of your identity and all your self-limiting stories, so you can get to 60 percent, then 80 percent and beyond without giving up. I call this The 40% Rule, and the reason it’s so powerful is that if you follow it, you will unlock your mind to new levels of performance and excellence in sports and in life, and your rewards will run far deeper than mere material success.
Location 2748:
There are always challenges, and whether we are at work or school, or feeling tested within our most intimate or important relationships, we will all be tempted to walk away from commitments, give up on our goals and dreams, and sell our own happiness short at some point. Because we will feel empty, like we have no more to give, when we haven’t tapped even half of the treasure buried deep in our minds, hearts, and souls.
Location 2752:
I understand the temptation to sell short, but I also know that impulse is driven by your mind’s desire for comfort, and it’s not telling you the truth. It’s your identity trying to find sanctuary, not help you grow. It’s looking for status quo, not reaching for greatness or seeking wholeness. But the software update that you need to shut your governor down is no supersonic download. It takes twenty years to gain twenty years of experience, and the only way to move beyond your 40 percent is to callous your mind, day after day. Which means you’ll have to chase pain like it’s your damn job!
Location 2870:
Our minds are fucking strong, they are our most powerful weapon, but we have stopped using them. We have access to so many more resources today than ever before and yet we are so much less capable than those who came before us. If you want to be one of the few to defy those trends in our ever-softening society, you will have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity, which requires an open mind. It’s funny, being open minded is often tagged as new age or soft. Fuck that. Being open minded enough to find a way is old school. It’s what knuckle draggers do.
Location 3002:
I closed my eyes and saw Jurek and Olson, Akos and Karl Meltzer. All of them had something I didn’t. They understood how to drain every last drop and put themselves in a position to win the world’s most difficult races, and it was time to seek out that feeling for myself. I’d prepared like a madman. I knew myself and the terrain. I stayed ahead of the quitting mind, answered the simple questions, and stayed in the race, but there was more to be done. There was still somewhere higher for me to rise. A cool breeze rustled the trees, dried the sweat from my skin, and soothed my aching bones. It whispered in my ear and shared a secret which echoed in my brain like a drumbeat that wouldn’t stop. There is no finish line, Goggins. There is no finish line.
Location 3010:
First, a quick reminder of how this process works. In 1999, when I weighed 297 pounds, my first run was a quarter mile. Fast forward to 2007, I ran 205 miles in thirty-nine hours, nonstop. I didn’t get there overnight, and I don’t expect you to either. Your job is to push past your normal stopping point. Whether you are running on a treadmill or doing a set of push-ups, get to the point where you are so tired and in pain that your mind is begging you to stop. Then push just 5 to 10 percent further. If the most push-ups you have ever done is one hundred in a workout, do 105 or 110. If you normally run thirty miles each week, run 10 percent more next week.
Location 3223:
I learned quickly that I was my own best prop. Sometimes I’d dress in a SEAL t-shirt with a Trident on it, run fifty miles to a speaking engagement, and show up soaking wet. Or I would do push-ups for the first five minutes of my speech, or roll a pull-up bar out on stage and do pull-ups while I was talking.
Location 3237:
The race started at 4 a.m. on a Saturday, departing from the city of Leadville, a working-class ski town with frontier roots, and traversing a network of beautiful and harsh Rocky Mountain trails that range from 9,200 feet to 12,600 feet in elevation. When I finished at 2 a.m. on Sunday, a teenager from Denver who attended a school I’d visited a few days earlier was waiting for me at the finish line. I didn’t have a great race (I came in 14th place, rather than my typical top five), but I always made sure to finish strong, and when I sprinted home he approached me with a wide smile and said, "I drove two hours just to see you finish!" The lesson: you never know who you’re affecting. My poor race results meant less than nothing to that young man because I’d helped open his eyes to a new world of possibility and capability that he sensed within himself. He’d followed me from his high school auditorium to Leadville because he was looking for absolute proof—my finishing the race—that it was possible to transcend the typical and become more, and as I cooled down and toweled off he asked me for tips so he could one day run all day and night through the mountains in his backyard. I have several stories like that. More than a dozen kids came out to pace and crew for me at the McNaughton Park Trail Race, a 150-miler held outside of Peoria, Illinois. Two dozen students trained with me in Minot, North Dakota. Together we ran the frozen tundra before sunrise in January when it was twenty below zero!
Location 3252:
Wherever I went, whether the students were interested in a military career or not, they always asked if they had the same hardware I had. Could they run a hundred miles in one day? What would it take to reach their full potential? This is what I’d tell them: Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.
Location 3287:
Evaluate your life in its totality! We all waste so much time doing meaningless bullshit. We burn hours on social media and watching television, which by the end of the year would add up to entire days and weeks if you tabulated time like you do your taxes. You should, because if you knew the truth you’d deactivate your Facebook account STAT, and cut your cable. When you find yourself having frivolous conversations or becoming ensnared in activities that don’t better you in any way, move the fuck on!
Location 3295:
It’s up to you to find ways to eviscerate your bullshit. How much time do you spend at the dinner table talking about nothing after the meal is done? How many calls and texts do you send for no reason at all? Look at your whole life, list your obligations and tasks. Put a time stamp on them. How many hours are required to shop, eat, and clean? How much sleep do you need? What’s your commute like? Can you make it there under your own power? Block everything into windows of time, and once your day is scheduled out, you’ll know how much flexibility you have to exercise on a given day and how to maximize it.
Location 3312:
The whole point of the twenty-four-hour mission is to keep up a championship pace, not for a season or a year, but for your entire life! That requires quality rest and recovery time. Because there is no finish line. There is always more to learn, and you will always have weaknesses to strengthen if you want to become as hard as woodpecker lips.
Location 3444:
Lock everything into place in fifteen- to thirty-minute blocks. Some tasks will take multiple blocks or entire days. Fine. When you work, only work on one thing at a time, think about the task in front of you and pursue it relentlessly. When it comes time for the next task on your schedule, place that first one aside, and apply the same focus. Make sure your meal breaks are adequate but not open-ended, and schedule in exercise and rest too. But when it’s time to rest, actually rest. No checking email or bullshitting on social media. If you are going to work hard you must also rest your brain.
Location 3551:
"Goggins," my OIC said after giving me the good news, "you are the type of motherfucker who wishes you were a POW just to see if you have what it takes to last."
Location 3597:
In BUD/S I’d always lead my boat crews, often with tough love, but in general I didn’t care how the guys in the other boat crews were doing or if they quit. This time, I wasn’t just putting out, I was also looking after everybody. If I saw someone having trouble with navigation, patrolling, keeping up on a run, or staying awake all night, I made sure we all rallied together to help. Not everybody wanted to. The training was so difficult that when some guys weren’t on the clock being graded, they did the bare minimum and found opportunities to rest and hide. In my sixty-nine days at Ranger School I didn’t coast for a single second. I was becoming a true leader.
Location 3625:
No matter who you are, life will present you similar opportunities where you can prove to be uncommon. There are people in all walks of life who relish those moments, and when I see them I recognize them immediately because they are usually that motherfucker who’s all by himself. It’s the suit who’s still at the office at midnight while everyone else is at the bar, or the badass who hits the gym directly after coming off a forty-eight-hour op. She’s the wildland firefighter who instead of hitting her bedroll, sharpens her chainsaw after working a fire for twenty-four hours. That mentality is there for all of us. Man, woman, straight, gay, black, white, or purple fucking polkadot. All of us can be the person who flies all day and night only to arrive home to a filthy house, and instead of blaming family or roommates, cleans it up right then because they refuse to ignore duties undone. All over the world amazing human beings like that exist. It doesn’t take wearing a uniform. It’s not about all the hard schools they graduated from, all their patches and medals. It’s about wanting it like there’s no tomorrow—because there might not be. It’s about thinking of everybody else before yourself and developing your own code of ethics that sets you apart from others. One of those ethics is the drive to turn every negative into a positive, and then when shit starts flying, being prepared to lead from the front.
Location 3657:
A true leader stays exhausted, abhors arrogance, and never looks down on the weakest link. He fights for his men and leads by example. That’s what it meant to be uncommon among uncommon. It meant being one of the best and helping your men find their best too.
Location 3701:
I had just come from Ranger School, a place where nobody has any rank at all. Even if a General had classed up, he’d have been in the same clothes we all had to wear, that of an enlisted man on day one of basic fucking training. We were all maggots reborn, with no future and no past, starting at zero. I loved that concept because it sent a message that no matter what we’d accomplished in the outside world, as far as the Rangers were concerned we weren’t shit. And I claimed that metaphor for myself, because it’s always and forever true. No matter what you or I achieve, in sports, business, or life, we can’t be satisfied. Life is too dynamic a game. We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse. Yes, we need to celebrate our victories. There’s power in victory that’s transformative, but after our celebration we should dial it down, dream up new training regimens, new goals, and start at zero the very next day. I wake up every day as if I am back in BUD/S, day one, week one. Starting at zero is a mindset that says my refrigerator is never full, and it never will be. We can always become stronger and more agile, mentally and physically. We can always become more capable and more reliable. Since that’s the case we should never feel that our work is done. There is always more to do. Are you an experienced scuba diver? Great, shed your gear, take a deep breath and become a one-hundred-foot free diver. Are you a badass triathlete? Cool, learn how to rock climb. Are you enjoying a wildly successful career? Wonderful, learn a new language or skill. Get a second degree. Always be willing to embrace ignorance and become the dumb fuck in the classroom again, because that is the only way to expand your body of knowledge and body of work. It’s the only way to expand your mind.
Location 3716:
Sure, all the guys I worked with over the years were relatively hard guys and highly skilled. They enjoyed the challenges of the job, the brotherhood, and being treated like superstars. They all loved being SEALs, but some weren’t interested in starting at zero because just by qualifying to breathe rare air they were already satisfied. Now, that is a very common way of thinking. Most people in the world, if they ever push themselves at all, are willing to push themselves only so far. Once they reach a cushy plateau, they chill the fuck out and enjoy their rewards, but there’s another phrase for that mentality. It’s called getting soft, and that I could not abide.
Location 3755:
My job as head of PT wasn’t to demand that my guys live up to the Navy SEAL legend I loved, it was to help them become the best version of themselves. But I never listened, and I didn’t lead. Instead, I got angry and showed up my teammates.
Location 3768:
"We are a bunch of good ol’ boys," one of them said, "and we need to know how you’re gonna handle hearing black jokes, bro." Most of their questions were a variation on that one theme and through it all, I smiled and thought, How are you white boys gonna feel when I’m the baddest motherfucker in here?
Location 3856:
A lot of people think that once they reach a certain level of status, respect, or success, that they’ve made it in life. I’m here to tell you that you always have to find more. Greatness is not something that if you meet it once it stays with you forever. That shit evaporates like a flash of oil in a hot pan. If you truly want to become uncommon amongst the uncommon, it will require sustaining greatness for a long period of time. It requires staying in constant pursuit and putting out unending effort. This may sound appealing but will require everything you have to give and then some. Believe me, this is not for everyone because it will demand singular focus and may upset the balance in your life.
Location 3866:
Torch the complacency you feel gathering around you, your coworkers, and teammates in that rare air. Continue to put obstacles in front of yourself, because that’s where you’ll find the friction that will help you grow even stronger. Before you know it, you will stand alone.
Location 3913:
This particular road march course has a reputation of being brutal; there was one hill that as I was going up I could almost reach out in front of me and touch the ground, it was that steep. At this point, there was only one guy in front of me and I saw footprints that were twice as long as my stride length. I was in awe, my exact thought was, "This is the craziest shit I have seen; that dude ran up this hill." Throughout the next couple of hours, I was expecting to come around a corner and find him laid up on the side of the road, but that never happened. Once finished, I was laying out my gear and I saw David hanging out. He had been done for quite a while. Though Selection is an individual event, he was the first to give a high five and say, "Nice work." —T, in an email dated 06/25/2018
Location 4276:
After seventeen hours of pain, around 3 a.m. on January 20, 2013, I did my 4,020th and 4,021st pull-up, and the record was mine. Everyone in the gym cheered, but I stayed composed. After two more sets and 4,030 total pull-ups, I took my headphones out, stared into the camera and said, "I tracked you down, Stephen Hyland!" In one day, I’d lifted the equivalent of 846,030 pounds, nearly three times the weight of the Space Shuttle! Cheers spread to laughter as I pulled off my gloves and disappeared into the back room, but much to everyone’s surprise, I was not in the mood to celebrate. Does that shock you too? You know that my refrigerator is never full, and it never will be because I live a mission-driven life, always on the hunt for the next challenge. That mindset is the reason I broke that record, finished Badwater, became a SEAL, rocked Ranger School, and on down the list. In my mind I’m that racehorse always chasing a carrot I’ll never catch, forever trying to prove myself to myself. And when you live that way and attain a goal, success feels anti-climactic.
Location 4286:
After logging more than 67,000 pull-ups in nine months, it was time to put them in my Cookie Jar and move on. Because life is one long motherfucking imaginary game that has no scoreboard, no referee, and isn’t over until we’re dead and buried.
Location 4295:
Think about your most recent and your most heart-wrenching failures. Break out that journal one last time. Log off the digital version and write them out long-hand. I want you to feel this process because you are about to file your own, belated After Action Reports. First off, write out all the good things, everything that went well, from your failures. Be detailed and generous with yourself. A lot of good things will have happened. It’s rarely all bad. Then note how you handled your failure. Did it affect your life and your relationships? How so? How did you think throughout the preparation for and during the execution stage of your failure? You have to know how you were thinking at each step because it’s all about mindset, and that’s where most people fall short. Now go back through and make a list of things you can fix. This isn’t time to be soft or generous. Be brutally honest, write them all out. Study them. Then look at your calendar and schedule another attempt as soon as possible.
Location 4308:
And if you fail again, so the fuck be it. Take the pain. Repeat these steps and keep fighting. That’s what it’s all about.
Location 4578:
The Buddha famously said that life is suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but I know what he meant and so do you. To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss. That’s just nature. Each specific life comes with its own personalized portion of pain. It’s coming for you. You can’t stop it. And you know it. In response, most of us are programmed to seek comfort as a way to numb it all out and cushion the blows. We carve out safe spaces. We consume media that confirms our beliefs, we take up hobbies aligned with our talents, we try to spend as little time as possible doing the tasks we fucking loathe, and that makes us soft. We live a life defined by the limits we imagine and desire for ourselves because it’s comfortable as hell in that box. Not just for us, but for our closest family and friends. The limits we create and accept become the lens through which they see us. Through which they love and appreciate us. But for some, those limits start to feel like bondage, and when we least expect it, our imagination jumps those walls and hunts down dreams that in the immediate aftermath feel attainable. Because most dreams are. We are inspired to make changes little by little, and it hurts. Breaking the shackles and stretching beyond our own perceived limits takes hard fucking work—oftentimes physical work—and when you put yourself on the line, self doubt and pain will greet you with a stinging combination that will buckle your knees. Most people who are merely inspired or motivated will quit at that point, and upon their return, their cells will feel that much smaller, their shackles even tighter. The few who remain outside their walls will encounter even more pain and much more doubt, courtesy of those who we thought were our biggest fans. When it was time for me to lose 106 pounds in less than three months, everyone I talked to told me there was no way I could do it. "Don’t expect too much," they all said. Their weak-ass dialogue only fed my own self doubt. But it’s not the external voice that will break you down. It’s what you tell yourself that matters. The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself. You wake up with them, you walk around with them, you go to bed with them, and eventually you act on them. Whether they be good or bad. We are all our own worst haters and doubters because self doubt is a natural reaction to any bold attempt to change your life for the better. You can’t stop it from blooming in your brain, but you can neutralize it, and all the other external chatter by asking, What if? What if is an exquisite fuck-you to anyone who has ever doubted your greatness or stood in your way. It silences negativity. It’s a reminder that you don’t really know what you’re capable of until you put everything you’ve got on the line. It makes the impossible feel at least a little more possible. What if is the power and permission to face down your darkest demons, your very worst memories, and accept them as part of your history. If and when you do that, you will be able to use them as fuel to envision the most audacious, outrageous achievement and go get it.
Location 4607:
But if they are truly the great people you always believed them to be, their jealousy will evolve, and soon their imagination might hop its fence, and it will be their turn to change for the better. I hope that’s what this book has done for you. I hope that right now you are nose-to-concrete with your own bullshit limits you didn’t even know were there. I hope you’re willing to do the work to break them down. I hope you’re willing to change. You’ll feel pain, but if you accept it, endure it, and callous your mind, you’ll reach a point where not even pain can hurt you. There is a catch, however. When you live this way, there is no end to it.
Location 4644:
Whatever failures and accomplishments pile up in the years to come, and there will be plenty of both I’m sure, I know I’ll continue to give it my all and set goals that seem impossible to most. And when those motherfuckers say so, I’ll look them dead in the eye and respond with one simple question. What if?
Updated Oct 29, 2019:
Location 2436:
I remembered as a kid, no matter how fucked up our life was, my mother always figured out a way to stock our damn cookie jar. She’d buy wafers and Oreos, Pepperidge Farm Milanos and Chips Ahoy!, and whenever she showed up with a new batch of cookies, she dumped them into one jar. With her permission we’d get to pick one or two out at a time. It was like a mini treasure hunt. I remember the joy of dropping my fist into that jar, wondering what I’d find, and before I crammed the cookie in my mouth I always took the time to admire it first, especially when we were broke in Brazil. I’d turn it around in my hand and say my own little prayer of thanks. The feeling of being that kid, locked in a moment of gratitude for a simple gift like a cookie, came back to me. I felt it viscerally, and I used that concept to stuff a new kind of Cookie Jar. Inside it were all my past victories. Like the time when I had to study three times as hard as anybody else during my senior year in high school just to graduate. That was a cookie. Or when I passed the ASVAB test as a senior and then again to get into BUD/S. Two more cookies. I remembered dropping over a hundred pounds in under three months, conquering my fear of water, graduating BUD/S at the top of my class, and being named Enlisted Honor Man in Army Ranger School (more on that soon). All those were cookies loaded with chocolate chunks.
Updated: Aug 29, 2021
Living with purpose changed everything for me—at least in the short term. During my senior year in high school, studying and working out gave my mind so much energy that hate flaked from my soul like used-up snakeskin. The resentment I held toward the racists in Brazil, the emotion that had dominated me and was burning me up inside, dissipated because I’d finally considered the fucking source. I looked at the people who were making me feel uncomfortable and realized how uncomfortable they were in their own skin. To make fun of or try to intimidate someone they didn’t even know based on race alone was a clear indication that something was very wrong with them, not me. But when you have no confidence it becomes easy to value other people’s opinions, and I was valuing everyone’s opinion without considering the minds that generated them. That sounds silly, but it’s an easy trap to fall into, especially when you are insecure on top of being the only. As soon as I made that connection, being upset with them was not worth my time. Because if I was gonna kick their ass in life, and I was, I had way too much shit to do. Each insult or dismissive gesture became more fuel for the engine revving inside me.
By the time I graduated, I knew that the confidence I’d managed to develop didn’t come from a perfect family or God-given talent. It came from personal accountability which brought me self-respect, and self-respect will always light a way forward.
I wanted to be big because being big hid David Goggins. I was able to tuck this 175-pound person into those twenty-one-inch biceps and that flabby belly. I grew a burly mustache and was intimidating to everyone who saw me, but inside I knew I was a pussy, and that’s a haunting feeling.
That’s when I first realized that not all physical and mental limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon. I also knew that it would take every ounce of courage and toughness I could muster to pull off the impossible. I was staring at hours, days, and weeks of nonstop suffering. I would have to push myself to the very edge of my mortality. I had to accept the very real possibility that I might die because this time I wouldn’t quit, no matter how fast my heart raced and no matter how much pain I was in.
When I was done, I’d swim a mile or two, then head to a pond near my mother’s home. Remember, this was Indiana—the American Midwest—in December. The trees were naked. Icicles hung like crystals from the eaves of houses and snow blanketed the earth in all directions, but the pond wasn’t completely frozen yet. I waded into the icy water, dressed in camo pants, a brown short sleeved T-shirt, and boots, laid back and looked into the gray sky. The hypothermic water washed over me, the pain was excruciating, and I fucking loved it. After a few minutes I got out and started running, water sloshing in my boots, sand in my underwear. Within seconds my T-shirt was frozen to my chest, my pants iced at the cuffs. I hit the Monon trail. Steam poured from my nose and mouth as I grunted and slalomed speed-walkers and joggers. Civilians. Their heads turned as I picked up speed and began sprinting, like Rocky in downtown Philly. I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could, from a past that no longer defined me, toward a future undetermined. All I knew was that there would be pain and there would be purpose.
"Follow me," he said as he charged up the beach. I caught up and we ran north for a good mile. By then we could barely see the boats and their bobbing lights through the mist and over the waves. "All right, Goggins. Now go swim out and find your fucking boat!" He’d landed a hollow point on my deepest insecurity, pierced my confidence, and I was stunned silent. I gave him a look that said, "Are you fucking kidding me?" I was a decent swimmer by then, and surf torture didn’t scare me because we weren’t that far from shore, but an open water, hypothermic swim a thousand yards off shore in a storm, to a boat that had no fucking idea I was heading their way? That sounded like a death sentence, and I hadn’t prepared for anything like it. But sometimes the unexpected descends like chaos, and without warning even the bravest among us must be ready to take on risks and tasks that seem beyond our capabilities. For me, in that moment, it came down to how I wanted to be remembered. I could have refused the order, and I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble because I had no swim buddy (in SEAL training you always have to be with a swim buddy), and it was obvious that he was asking me to do something that was extremely unsafe. But I also knew that my objective coming into SEAL training was more than making it through to the other side with a Trident. For me it was the opportunity to go up against the best of the best and distance myself from the pack. So even though I couldn’t see the boats out past the thrashing waves there was no time to dwell on fear. There was no choice to make at all. "What are you waiting on Goggins? Get your fucking ass out there, and do not fuck this up!" "Roger that!" I shouted and sprinted into the surf. Trouble was, strapped with a buoyancy vest, nursing a wounded knee, wearing boots, I could barely swim for shit and it was almost impossible to duck dive through the waves. I had to flail over the white wash, and with my mind managing so many variables, the ocean seemed colder than ever. I swallowed water by the gallon.
I remember my very first day in the gym back in Indiana. My palms were soft and quickly got torn up on the bars because they weren’t accustomed to gripping steel. But over time, after thousands of reps, my palms built up a thick callous as protection. The same principle works when it comes to mindset. Until you experience hardships like abuse and bullying, failures and disappointments, your mind will remain soft and exposed. Life experience, especially negative experiences, help callous the mind. But it’s up to you where that callous lines up. If you choose to see yourself as a victim of circumstance into adulthood, that callous will become resentment that protects you from the unfamiliar. It will make you too cautious and untrusting, and possibly too angry at the world. It will make you fearful of change and hard to reach, but not hard of mind. That’s where I was as a teenager, but after my second Hell Week, I’d become someone new. I’d fought through so many horrible situations by then and remained open and ready for more. My ability to stay open represented a willingness to fight for my own life, which allowed me to withstand hailstorms of pain and use it to callous over my victim’s mentality. That shit was gone, buried under layers of sweat and hard fucking flesh, and I was starting to callous over my fears too. That realization gave me the mental edge I needed to outlast Psycho Pete one more time. To show him he couldn’t hurt me anymore I smiled back, and the feeling of being on the edge of a blackout went away. Suddenly, I was energized. The pain faded and I felt like I could stay under all day. Psycho saw that in my eyes. I tied off the last knot at leisurely pace, glaring at him the whole time. He gestured with his hands for me to hurry up as his diaphragm contracted. I finally finished, he gave me a quick affirmative and kicked to the surface, desperate for a breath. I took my time, joined him topside and found him gasping, while I felt strangely relaxed. When the chips were down at the pool during Air Force pararescue training, I’d buckled. This time I won a major battle in the water. It was a big victory, but the war wasn’t over.
Those mornings when going on a run is the last thing you want to do, but then twenty minutes into it you feel energized, that’s the work of the sympathetic nervous system. What I’ve found is that you can tap into it on call as long as you know how to manage your own mind. When you indulge in negative self-talk, the gifts of a sympathetic response will remain out of reach. However, if you can manage those moments of pain that come with maximum effort, by remembering what you’ve been through to get to that point in your life, you will be in a better position to persevere and choose fight over flight. That will allow you to use the adrenaline that comes with a sympathetic response to go even harder.
I was rejecting my past and therefore rejecting myself. My foundation, my character was defined by self-rejection. All my fears came from that deep-seated uneasiness I carried with being David Goggins because of what I’d gone through. Even after I’d reached a point where I no longer cared about what others thought of me, I still had trouble accepting me. Anyone who is of sound mind and body can sit down and think of twenty things in their life that could have gone differently. Where maybe they didn’t get a fair shake and where they took the path of least resistance. If you’re one of the few who acknowledge that, want to callous those wounds, and strengthen your character, it’s up to you to go back through your past and make peace with yourself by facing those incidents and all of your negative influences, and accepting them as weak spots in your own character. Only when you identify and accept your weaknesses will you finally stop running from your past. Then those incidents can be used more efficiently as fuel to become better and grow stronger.
Our minds are fucking strong, they are our most powerful weapon, but we have stopped using them. We have access to so many more resources today than ever before and yet we are so much less capable than those who came before us. If you want to be one of the few to defy those trends in our ever-softening society, you will have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity, which requires an open mind. It’s funny, being open-minded is often tagged as new age or soft. Fuck that. Being open-minded enough to find a way is old school. It’s what knuckle draggers do.
I learned quickly that I was my own best prop. Sometimes I’d dress in a SEAL T-shirt with a Trident on it, run fifty miles to a speaking engagement, and show up soaking wet. Or I would do push-ups for the first five minutes of my speech, or roll a pull-up bar out on stage and do pull-ups while I was talking.
Wherever I went, whether the students were interested in a military career or not, they always asked if they had the same hardware I had. Could they run a hundred miles in one day? What would it take to reach their full potential? This is what I’d tell them: Our culture has become hooked on the quick fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.
No matter who you are, life will present you similar opportunities where you can prove to be uncommon. There are people in all walks of life who relish those moments, and when I see them I recognize them immediately because they are usually that motherfucker who’s all by himself. It’s the suit who’s still at the office at midnight while everyone else is at the bar, or the badass who hits the gym directly after coming off a forty-eight-hour op. She’s the wildland firefighter who instead of hitting her bedroll, sharpens her chainsaw after working a fire for twenty-four hours. That mentality is there for all of us. Man, woman, straight, gay, black, white, or purple fucking polka dot. All of us can be the person who flies all day and night only to arrive home to a filthy house, and instead of blaming family or roommates, cleans it up right then because they refuse to ignore duties undone. All over the world amazing human beings like that exist. It doesn’t take wearing a uniform. It’s not about all the hard schools they graduated from, all their patches and medals. It’s about wanting it like there’s no tomorrow—because there might not be. It’s about thinking of everybody else before yourself and developing your own code of ethics that sets you apart from others. One of those ethics is the drive to turn every negative into a positive, and then when shit starts flying, being prepared to lead from the front.