David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL; the only member of the Armed Forces to complete Navy SEAL Training, Air Force Tactical Air Controller training, and US ArmyRanger School; and an elite endurance athlete. He is an author known for his bestselling book, Can’t Hurt Me, a part-memoir, part-self-help title about training your mind to overcome challenges and succeed in life. His readers – including many professional athletes and NFL coaches – admire him because his focus on doing consistently great work. His Instagram followers tune in for short videos with nuggets of wisdom dispatched while he’s running or lifting or doing other exercises. Life wasn’t always so successful for Goggins, though. He is himself a true blue story of transformation. His book details how he overcame an impoverished and abusive childhood, found himself overweight and working part-time as an exterminator, feeling like a total failure in life, to being inspired to become a Navy SEAL, and ultimately becoming the elite athlete and evangelist of grit he is today. Below is a summary of the five most valuable tools Goggins describes in Can’t Hurt Me, and used to radically change the direction of his life.
“The ritual was simple. I’d shave my face and scalp every night, get loud, and get real. I set goals, wrote them on Post-It notes, and tagged them to what I now call the Accountability Mirror, because each day I’d hold myself accountable to the goals I’d set.”
David began to lose interest in his classes in high school, and fell behind dramatically. He had crushingly low self-esteem, no motivation, and a fourth grade reading level. After deciding to become a Navy SEAL, he knew his normal routine wasn’t going to get him there. So, he got honest with himself, in what he calls the Accountability Mirror. He began setting goals each morning and honestly evaluating his progress every night. He would say to himself, “You’re fat, you’re lazy, and you’re a liar.” This sounds harsh to our ears, but it was the exact truth Goggins needed to hear. He knew he wasn’t living up anywhere near his potential or his own expectations. He was a liar because he habitually told himself he would go for a run, workout, or study, then find excuses not to do them. Having faced that truth, he decided to change it. The Accountability Mirror forced him to follow through on the things he told himself he wanted. Facing himself in the mirror each night motivated him to push through whatever difficulties might keep him from his goals. It became easier to just do the work, than to face himself and realize his excuses were the only things holding him back. As he met more of his goals, his mind became more resilient. This was the beginning of a remarkable transformation. He writes that his senior year of high school was focused on exclusively on playing basketball, studying, and working out; building skills he knew he’d need to make it into the military special forces.
“In the military we always say we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
Military training is one of the most rigorous and visible examples of preparing individuals to respond to difficult situations with accuracy and consistency. Special forces warriors spend weeks on end training under the worst conditions imaginable, so when they deploy on an actual mission they can do their jobs well. They can’t be flustered out in the field by weather or setbacks, and their decisions must be near-automatic, which demands many repetitions under those grueling circumstances.
The principle behind this extreme training applies, in less dramatic fashion, to our lives. Training at a high level each day is the only way to be mentally prepared for the obstacles of life. In a similar vein, Atomic Habits author James Clear writes, “We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.” For us, the training is our daily habits, the actions we fall back on as a foundation. Running regularly trains your physical body to expect and endure stress. We read every day in preparation for thinking deeply every single day. Writing every morning prepares your mind to articulate your thinking. Daily preparations are the groundwork for the “Suddenly’s,” those Eureka moments of clarity and breakthrough. Build a solid foundation and you choose the direction you want to progress in.
“The sole reason I work out like I do isn’t to prepare for and win ultra races. I don’t have an athletic motive at all. It’s to prepare my mind for life itself. Life will always be the most grueling endurance sport, and when you train hard, get uncomfortable, and callous your mind, you will become a more versatile competitor, trained to find a way forward no matter what.”
Putting in tough physical work translates into a resilient mental outlook. There is something about a daily habit of physical endurance, pain, and pushing boundaries which causes a mental shift. Instead of “I could never,” you start to ask yourself, “What if I gave it a try?”. Instead of avoiding difficult work, you find yourself seeking out challenges and ways to better yourself. You begin to realize you are capable of taxing mental and physical efforts. This translates into your work, your relationships, and creating your own space in society. The fear of failure melts away when you realize failure is a temporary piece of feedback. When you choose to do difficult things daily, your limits – real or imagined – begin to crumble. Over time, you become unstoppable because you’ve developed the ability to persevere.
“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.”
The stories you tell yourself dictate your actions. Defeat and failure begin in the mind way before they show up in the body, and dealing with fear or doubt is a skill life demands of us all. Do you beat yourself up over a failure, or do you acknowledge the shortcoming, and focus on improving and make another attempt? It’s not about denying reality, or “thinking positively,” or making excuses. The objective is to continue making progress, not wallow in self-pity. Recall Goggins’ example with the Accountability Mirror; be honest about your goals and the effort you’re putting toward them. If you fail an attempt, regroup and try again. Pay attention to how you talk to yourself about those attempts. This is the difference Goggins is talking about. Denying your own shortcomings only holds you back. Being a jerk to yourself doesn’t accomplish anything either. Being honest about your effort, though, will leave you without excuses. It’s only through those honest conversations with yourself that you can make real strides.
“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.”
Goggins visualizes his victories. At the most elite level, athletes like Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King and Michael Phelps, all visualize their movements and run through their performances before competition. They go over where the tricky or more difficult parts are, so they’re prepared for the increased effort required. They know where they want to push forward and where they can let up and recover. They visualize the moment of triumph. Every step of Goggins journey, he pictures in his mind exactly what he wants to accomplish. As he’s made it from point to point, that vision has developed and been refined. Having a vivid image of where you’re going and what you want to accomplish is the first step of the process.
David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me presents a challenge to better yourself by getting comfortable with discomfort. Working through physical challenges yield mental and physical rewards. By checking your progress honestly every day, sharpening your mind against doubt and discomfort, and visualizing your successes in life, you develop a resilient and capable mind and body. As Goggins summarizes, “The reason I embrace my own obsessions and demand and desire more of myself is because 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, physically and mentally; in endurance races but also in life as a whole.”
Photo by Andrew Slifkin on Unsplash
