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Key insights from
Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy
the Odds
By
David Goggins
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What you’ll learn
If you are like most people, you sell yourself short. It’s
safer that way, but according to former Navy SEAL and sought-after public
speaker David Goggins, you are tapping into less than half your potential.
Goggins is ready to make you a warrior capable of pushing through
self-limiting beliefs. He argues that as long as you hide inside your
resignation, you will never find out what you are made of. More than a
motivational kick in the pants, Goggins seeks to provide tools for
reframing limiting beliefs so readers can take complete ownership of their
lives.
Read on for key insights from Can't Hurt Me.
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1. To get out of
the bottom of the barrel, start by detailing the painful moments you’ve
experienced or are experiencing.
As far as the neighbors were concerned, the Goggins were a
model family. Despite being black, they lived in a beautiful house in an
all-white Buffalo, New York, suburb. Luxury vehicles filled the driveway,
and as far as the neighbors were concerned, the Gogginses were upstanding
citizens and poster children for the American Dream. But behind the
plastered smiles lay some hellish family secrets.
Most kids come home after school, do their homework, have dinner, and go to
bed, but life was different for the Goggins boys. They drove with their
parents to the skating rink their father owned. Above the rink was the
hottest club in town, patronized by Buffalo Bills players, well known musicians,
and other famous (and infamous) personalities. OJ Simpson stopped by from
time to time. The club was also a Goggins family business, which
meant the boys worked all night—renting out skates, working the concession
booth, and ringing up customers. If they failed to pull their weight, there
was hell to pay later. The father surveyed his domain from the DJ booth
with hawkish vigilance.
Goggins’ mom was young and naïve when she married his
father, a man far more preoccupied with money and power than family. His
children did not make a dime for all their work. Neither did mom—she didn’t
even have a bank account or credit cards. The mom and the brothers knew
that any misstep meant a beating, and dad knew how to inflict not just
physical pain but psychological terror, too. As is often the case with kids
surviving domestic abuse, Goggins intuited something was wrong, but was
afraid of what would happen to him if he told a teacher or neighbor that
his bruises came from a rage-drunk father and not from playing.
The boys would return home at 6 in the morning after a
fitful sleep on the couch directly below the club. They would toss and turn
as the ceiling above them rattled and pulsed to the music. It wasn’t just
Goggins and his brother who got beaten. Their mom was often brutalized
before their eyes. Unfortunately, the police were no help—this was the
1980s, well before #metoo movements or pleas to “believe all women” had hit
the mainstream.
Mother and sons eventually escaped with a concerned
neighbor’s guidance, but between an early childhood dodging the devil and a
trying adolescence, Goggins had a mountain or two to climb before he could
consider himself capable of accomplishing anything significant.
What kind of hand did life deal you when you were young?
What were the heartaches, the deprivations, the limitations? Were you
abused or bullied? Abandoned or lonely? Write your story down. Don’t flinch
and pass over the hard parts. You will be able to see the contours of your
pain better. Only by confronting it will you flip it into something new
that will work for you rather than against you. If growth still sounds fun
and exciting to you, you haven’t really started digging into the pain and
flipping it yet. This exercise takes work and it will be painful, but you
will also never regret it.
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2. You can’t
change your current position in life without becoming brutally honest about
where your current position is.
Goggins had a moment of epiphany late in high school. He had
been cut from the basketball team, even though basketball was one of the
few skills he had a shred of confidence in. He was reading on a fourth
grade level and failing most of his classes. He had cheated his way through
grade school, and it was beginning to dawn on him that the joke was on him.
As he stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he began telling
himself the ugly, unvarnished truth about himself: that he was a joke, an
aimless, wanna-be-thug with no goals and no future. He had been through a
lot, sure, but he wasn’t entitled to anything and no one was going to save
him. It was up to him.
From this face-to-face self-confrontation emerged a practice
he would continue for years: the Accountability Mirror. He would give
himself a blunt, no-nonsense pep talk as he shaved, and then write down his
goals on Post-It notes. Goggins began with simple tasks like making his
bed, cutting the grass, washing all the dishes, and pulling up his pants,
but he had to start somewhere.
Are you honest with yourself? Really, truly honest? Most
people are not. Plenty of fat people look in the mirror and desperately try
to convince themselves they’re actually not fat. If you’re fat, look at
yourself in the mirror and tell yourself the truth.
Own your weaknesses instead of caressing them or convincing
yourself they’re not that bad. The ego tries to be your savior, but the ego
is your killer. It keeps you from being yourself or being better. The main
goal of the Accountability Mirror is to level with yourself and own your
issues and insecurities. No sugarcoating. This is a constructive way to
thicken up your skin. Life won’t change unless you have skin thick enough
to hear hard things. Your negativity is your own yearning to change. It’s
honest. Listen to it.
Reinventing yourself is possible whether you’re a high
school punk or verging on retirement. Whether it’s an athletic goal, a
lifestyle change, or a new career you’re after, honesty about where you are
changes everything. It helps you locate yourself. If you’re lost on the
road, you can’t reroute until your GPS knows where you are. Be forthcoming
even if your internal GPS locates you in a place you are not proud of. From
there, write out on Post-It notes the steps needed to accomplish your goal.
If you are trying to take your weight down from 250 to 150, start with a
goal of 248. Write it down. Once you’ve reached 248, remove that Post-It
and create a new Post-It with a new goal post: 245. Don’t remove that note
until you’ve dropped those next three pounds. No one said this was easy,
but it does work.
Instead of ignoring the person in the mirror you don’t like,
stare that person down and accept the truth. Only then can you leverage
that truth for change.
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3. You can’t steel
your mind while staying in your comfort zone.
Younger Goggins folded in the face of obstacles. Sometimes
he was even relieved when they popped up because it meant he had an excuse
to soothe a bruised ego. He let go of one of his precious few
dreams—becoming an Air Force Pararescueman— because the training seemed too
difficult. When the Air Force doctor ran blood tests and discovered Goggins
had the Sickle Cell Anemia trait (not the condition, mind you), Goggins had
the option of leaving. He took it. He hid behind an ambiguous medical
pronouncement when people asked him what happened, but he knew the truth:
that he had been a quitter.
He refused to make the same mistake again years later when
the stakes were much higher: His marriage was on the verge of collapse, he
was working a dead-end job fumigating restaurants by night, and he was
overeating and powerlifting by day. He was now almost 300 pounds, a hefty
blend of muscle and flab. Goggins was in there somewhere, hiding, but he
knew he couldn’t keep living like this. A Navy SEAL documenting the most
grueling physical training in the world inspired him to try enlisting, but
it was a long shot. He would have to drop 100 pounds in 3 months and pass
the military equivalent of the SAT, a test he was not prepared for at all.
He would have to alter radically his diet, exercise, study, and do little
else. Still, he sensed that the solution to his anguish and disintegrating
existence lay in the kind of suffering he saw in the Navy SEAL documentary.
During his first run, his lungs were on fire after a quarter
of a mile. By the end of those three months of swimming, biking, and
lifting most of everyday, he was swimming 50 meters and then walking across
the pool with a brick in each hand—all on a single breath. Then he’d run
for miles in the ice and snow. His comfort with discomfort was growing.
Grab your journal and jot down all the things you hate to do
or that stress you out, focusing specifically on those things that would
actually benefit you. Find one item on that list, and do it. Repeatedly.
Live there in that zone of discomfort. Your life will not change instantly,
but you will become the kind of person who keeps a level head even in the
face of discomfort.
It doesn’t have to be earth shattering; it just has to make
you uncomfortable. The task could be making your bed every morning, getting
up early, or running a mile every day. These are the foundations of your
strength training. These wins are the ones you build on. They will seem
small someday even if they don’t seem small right now. Most motivational
claptrap tells people to find their strengths, but here it is best to find
a few weaknesses to be turned into strengths. These reversals instill
forward momentum and initiate a flow of constructive internal dialogue that
affirms—rather than subverts—your capability in uncomfortable settings.
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4. Excellence is
the best way to turn the tables on bullies and competitors.
No one becomes a Navy SEAL without enduring one of the most
physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing tryouts on the planet. Basic
Underwater Demolition/SEAL training (BUD/S) lasts six months, and the most
gritty, toilsome part of it all is the aptly labeled Hell Week: a nonstop
130-hour test of physical endurance and mental fortitude. Most never make
it through, and the officers running the aspiring SEALs through their paces
are eager to break them down and weed them out.
One of the officers looking for weaklings seemed to take a
vicious joy in breaking the new recruits. He reminded Goggins of the many
bullies he’d known growing up, and Goggins refused to grant him any mental
real estate. There was one decisive moment at the end of Hell Week when
Goggins and his boat crew were physically beleaguered and the steady
barrage of snide remarks was starting to get the better of them. Goggins
rallied the troops, breathed fresh life into them, and leveraged the
frustration so that they could hoist their boat overhead and run the
distance. They even started a taunting chant in unison as they plowed
forward. The pain and frustration was utterly transformed, and the boat was
not as heavy as the men remembered.
The instructor’s expression changed from sadistic glee to
shock and a smile that faintly glimmered with newfound respect for Boat
Crew Two. Goggins had taken his superior’s soul. He’d chosen to pursue
excellence where it was least expected.
Taking someone’s soul is a mind game you play with yourself.
It’s an act of defiance that leverages energy from enemies and competitors
to gain a tactical edge, but it’s for you. Emotionally and mentally
crushing another person can’t be your goal.
With bullies, the best way to beat them can be to help them.
They only oppress people because they are deeply insecure themselves, which
means they have emotional problem areas that are in your power to irritate
or to assuage. If you do your homework and find those places, you can take
their soul without them even knowing you’ve totally taken control of the
situation. You will rob them of any further sick gratification at your
expense and could even turn an enemy into an ally.
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5. Don’t take
refuge in past accomplishments—use them to fuel future ones.
No matter how bad things got for Goggins and his mother
growing up, the cookie jar above the fridge remained well stocked with one
kind of confectionary delight or another. Goggins still remembers the
excited anticipation of reaching into the jar and wondering what he would
pull out, and the bliss of munching on a sweet treat or two. It was a
moment for gratitude and a modicum of joy amidst the steady stream of pain
and uncertainty that characterized his childhood.
Each of us has a proverbial Cookie Jar, filled with our
achievements, skills crafted, and challenges overcome. These are your
treasures. Stick your fist in and grab an accomplishment or two and let the
gratitude wash over you. Take hold of whatever you go back to to remind
yourself of who you are and that you have what it takes.
To clarify, this is not a waltz through your personal hall
of fame for its own sake. No one likes the guy who keeps telling the same
tired tales about how fit, strong, and talented he was when he was younger.
You are not a one-hit wonder. In the moments when you doubt yourself, use
the victories, big or small, to propel you into new ventures. You could
even collect them in a literal jar.
For Goggins, those cookies were passing the exam needed for
entrance into the military reserves, getting his reading level up from 4th
grade to 12th grade when he was in high school, getting through Hell Week
and Navy SEAL training with distinction, and running 101 miles nonstop
without any training for long distance running. Even the resultant kidney
failure and a trip to the ER was a feather in his cap. These are the
moments in his Cookie Jar.
Self-doubt, pain, and boredom are part of the game of
growth. It’s normal for those thoughts to flood your mind, and you need to
be equipped to deal with them. Having a Cookie Jar helps you regain control
of your train of thought before doubts derail it. If you don’t have any
major boasts in your Cookie Jar to fuel future success, start with little
wins. They will build you up for the bigger wins to come.
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Endnotes
These insights are
just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Can't
Hurt Me here. And since we get a commission on
every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free.
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