Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

glossy surfaces reflect much more than they reveal.

it’s possible to transcend anything that doesn’t kill you

If you have worked for thirty years doing the same shit you’ve hated day in and day out because you were afraid to quit and take a risk, you’ve been living like a pussy. Period, point blank. Tell yourself the truth! That you’ve wasted enough time, and that you have other dreams that will take courage to realize, so you don’t die a fucking pussy.

Tell yourself the truth!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Write all your insecurities, dreams, and goals on Post-Its and tag up your mirror.

Each step, each necessary point of self-improvement, should be written as its own note.

Whatever your goal, you’ll need to hold yourself accountable for the small steps it will take to get there. Self-improvement takes dedication and self-discipline.

They say there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, but not once your eyes adjust to the darkness, and that’s what happened to me.

my nocturnal fixations became their own kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. One where failure was inevitable because my unchecked fear was unleashing something I couldn’t control: the quitting mind.

I ate and worked out. Worked out and ate.

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.

I worked in the dark, hid my true self from friends and strangers.

“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.

not all physical and mental limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon.

That day, however, the pain was too much and after my eleventh pull-up, I gave in, dropped down, and finished my workout, one pull-up shy. That one rep stayed with me, along with that one pound. I tried to get them out of my head but they wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. They taunted me on the drive home, and at my kitchen table while I ate a sliver of grilled chicken and a bland, baked potato. I knew I wouldn’t sleep that night unless I did something about it, so I grabbed my keys. “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.

All I knew was that there would be pain and there would be purpose. And that I was ready.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Taking someone’s soul means you’ve gained a tactical advantage. Life is all about looking for tactical advantages, which is why we stole the Hell Week schedule, why we nipped Psycho’s heels on that run, and why I made a show of myself in the surf, humming the Platoon theme song. Each of those incidents was an act of defiance that empowered us.

take inventory of your mind and body on the eve of battle. List out your insecurities and weakness, as well as your opponent’s. For instance, if you’re getting bullied, and you know where you fall short or feel insecure, you can stay ahead of any insults or barbs a bully may throw your way.

people who are secure with themselves don’t bully other people. They look out for other people, so if you’re getting bullied you know that you’re dealing with someone who has problem areas you can exploit or soothe.

defeat your own demons before you can take your opponent’s soul.

That means rehearsing answers to the simple question that is sure to rise up like a thought bubble: “Why am I here?” If you know that moment is coming and have your answer ready, you will be equipped to make the split second-decision to ignore your weakened mind and keep moving.

Know why you’re in the fight to stay in the fight!

never forget that all emotional and physical anguish is finite! It all ends eventually. Smile at pain and watch it fade for at least a second or two. If you can do that, you can string those seconds together and last longer than your opponent thinks you can, and that may be enough to catch a second wind.

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.

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!

That may mean acing an exam, or crafting an ideal proposal, or smashing a sales goal. Whatever it is, I want you to work harder on that project or in that class than you ever have before. Do everything exactly as they ask, and whatever standard they set as an ideal outcome, you should be aiming to surpass that.

If your coach doesn’t give you time in the games, dominate practice. Check the best guy on your squad and show the fuck out. That means putting time in off the field. Watching film so you can study your opponent’s tendencies, memorizing plays, and training in the gym. You need to make that coach pay attention.

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!

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.

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.

if you accept the pain as a natural process and refuse to give in and give up, you will engage the sympathetic nervous system which shifts your hormonal flow. The sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight reflex.

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.

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.

The cost of quitting would be lifelong purgatory.

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.

those that know don’t speak, and those who speak, well, they don’t know jack shit.

“The only way to guarantee failure is to quit right now, motherfucker!”

looking for an arena that would either destroy me completely or make me unbreakable.

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.

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.

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?

visualization will never compensate for work undone.

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.

victory doesn’t always mean you came in first place.

asphalt and perfectly flat, save a brief

would definitely impress that masochistic

In my mind, strategy was the enemy of the moment, which is where I needed to be.

If I was gonna make it, this shit would have to get personal.

If you aren’t prepared in advance, if you allow your mind to remain undisciplined in an environment of intense suffering (it won’t feel like it, but it is very much a choice you are making), the only answer you are likely to find is the one that will make it stop as fast as possible.

“Because you are one hard motherfucker,”

I did this!

We all need small sparks, small accomplishments in our lives to fuel the big ones. Think of your small accomplishments as kindling.

utilizing past successes to fuel you to new and bigger ones.

it all begins and ends in the mind.

If you’re at home, focus on pull-ups or push-ups. Do as many as possible in two minutes. Then try to beat your best.

If you’re more focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before, or read a record number of books in a given month.

gratifying pain and basking in the afterglow of my greatest

Before me was an opportunity, and if you give me an opportunity, I will break that motherfucker off!

I dug deep

What am I capable of?

We habitually settle for less than our best; at work, in school, in our relationships, and on the playing field or race course.

trying to keep it real!

I knew I had to find more

Fuck that shortcut bullshit.

I’ve learned that it’s only when I push beyond pain and suffering, past my perceived limitations, that I’m capable of accomplishing more

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.

callous your mind, day after day.

chase pain like it’s your damn job!

The first step is to remember that your initial blast of pain and fatigue is your governor talking. Once you do that, you are in control of the dialogue in your mind, and you can remind yourself that you are not as drained as you think. That you haven’t given it your all. Not even close.

in every failure there is something to be gained

that next test is coming. That’s a guarantee.

We must remove our governor.

Research is one part of preparation; visualization is another.

We must create a system that constantly reminds us who the fuck we are when we are at our best, because life is not going to pick us up when we fall.

You will be made fun of.

You must recognize what you are about to do, highlight what you do not like about it, and spend time visualizing each and every obstacle you can.

we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training

There is no finish line, Goggins. There is no finish line.

The main objective here is to slowly start to remove the governor from your brain.

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.

The bottom line is that life is one big mind game. The only person you are playing against is yourself. Stick with this process and soon what you thought was impossible will be something you do every fucking day of your life.

“backstop” is a navigation term. It’s the mark I made on my map. An alert that we’d missed a turn or veered off course.

you take someone’s soul—at the end of a race, not at the beginning.

anybody could change their life, so long as they kept an open mind, abandoned the path of least resistance, and sought out the difficult and most challenging tasks they could find.

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.

There are 168 hours in a week!

It means scheduling your life like you’re on a twenty-four-hour mission every single day.

Look, we all have work obligations, none of us want to lose sleep, and you’ll need time with the family or they’ll trip the fuck out. I get it, and if that’s your situation, you must win the morning.

Each hour of his week is dedicated to a particular task and when that hour shows up in real time, he focuses 100 percent on that task. That’s how I do it too, because that is the only way to minimize wasted hours.

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!

I don’t see or spend time with a lot of people. My circle is very tight. I post on social media once or twice a week and I never check anybody else’s feeds because I don’t follow anyone.

Analyze your schedule, kill your empty habits, burn out the bullshit, and see what’s left.

Is it one hour per day? Three? Now maximize that shit.

Use your smartphone for productivity hacks, not click bait. Turn on your calendar alerts. Have those alarms set.

If you get injured or other complications arise that prevent you from working on your primary passion, refocus your energy elsewhere.

Always be ready to adjust, recalibrate, and stay after it to become better, somehow.

Most people waste four to five hours on a given day, and if you can learn to identify and utilize it, you’ll be on your way toward increased productivity.

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’s time to rest, actually rest. No checking email or bullshitting on social media.

UNCOMMON AMONGST UNCOMMON

we fall back on really good training, and it’s important that the point where we fall back is so high, we know we’re gonna outperform the enemy.

my job at night was to rest, recharge, and get my body and mind right for battle again the next day.

I refused to compromise who I was to conform to their unwritten rules.

the uncommon among uncommon don’t take breaks!

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.

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.

I focused hard and refused to show any weakness.

A true leader stays exhausted, abhors arrogance, and never looks down on the weakest link.

when it comes to mindset, it doesn’t matter where other people’s attention lies. I had my own uncommon standards to live up to.

I was determined to go to war with myself to find more

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.

There is always more to do.

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.

get to it.

we got after it

we were training our minds, not our bodies.

My workouts weren’t designed to make us fast runners or to be the strongest men on the mission. I was training us to take torture so we’d remain relaxed in extraordinarily uncomfortable environments.

You can push yourself to a place that is beyond the current capability or temporal mindset of the people you work with, and that’s okay. Just know that your supposed superiority is a figment of your own ego.

I fed off being the only one in a room. I brought the war to people and watched my excellence explode small minds. I didn’t sit back and cry about being the only. I took action, said go fuck yourself, and used all the prejudice I felt as dynamite to blow up those walls.

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.

they weren’t even tumors, much less malignant.

I blocked that shit out. Had to.

To me a failure is just a stepping stone to future success.

Show no weakness remained my motto, but that didn’t mean I felt strong.

I’m better than this!

A lot of us surround ourselves with people who speak to our desire for comfort. Who would rather treat the pain of our wounds and prevent further injury than help us callous over them and try again.

We need to surround ourselves with people who will tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear, but at the same time not make us feel we’re up against the impossible.

Most wars are won or lost in our own heads, and when we’re in a foxhole we usually aren’t alone, and we need to be confident in the quality of the heart, mind, and dialogue of the person hunkered down with us. Because at some point we will need some empowering words to keep us focused and deadly.

In life, there is no gift as overlooked or inevitable as failure. I’ve had quite a few and have learned to relish them, because if you do the forensics you’ll find clues about where to make adjustments and how to eventually accomplish your task.

in every failure a lot of good things will have happened, and we must acknowledge them.

You can’t let a simple failure derail your mission

Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Take aim on what you are willing to earn!

I stayed humble and sidestepped my entitled mind

We are all guilty of allowing so-called experts, or just people who have more experience in a given field than we do, to cap our potential.

If I was going to be the next athlete to smash popular perception, I’d need to stop listening to doubt, whether it streamed in from the outside or bubbled up from within, and the best way to do that was to decide that the pull-up record was already mine.

play Going the Distance on a loop.

achieving goals or overcoming obstacles doesn’t have to be fun.

I wasn’t in that gym to get happy or do what I wanted to be doing. I was there to turn myself inside out if that’s what it took to blast through any and all mental, emotional, and physical barriers.

It takes great strength to be vulnerable enough to put your ass on the line, in public, and work toward a dream that feels like it’s slipping away.

Our family and friends are watching, and even if you’re surrounded by positive people, they will have ideas about who you are, what you’re good at, and how you should focus your energy. That shit is just human nature, and if you try to break out of their box you’ll get some unsolicited advice that has a way of smothering your aspirations if you let it.

I went ugly, I got dark.

Life is a head game.

I wasn’t doing it for adulation.

life is one long motherfucking imaginary game that has no scoreboard, no referee, and isn’t over until we’re dead and buried.

I would remain in constant pursuit. I wouldn’t leave anything on the table. I wanted to earn my final resting place.

Control your mindset. Dominate your thought process. This life is all a fucking mind game. Realize that.

If I worked a twenty-hour day, I’d work out for an hour and sleep for three, but I made sure to get that motherfucker in.

scan the horizon, ask what’s next, and get it done.

I wasn’t meant to be this person! I had to fight myself at every turn, and my destroyed body was my biggest trophy.

In this life there are countless trails to self-realization, though most demand intense discipline, so very few take them.

pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind. One that leads to both peak performance and beautiful silence.

peaceful but never satisfied.

The Buddha famously said that life is suffering.

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 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.

What if is an exquisite fuck-you to anyone who has ever doubted your greatness or stood in your way.

We live in a world with a lot of insecure, jealous people. Some of them are our best friends. They are blood relatives. Failure terrifies them. So does our success.

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.

What if?