Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION - Posts Tagged "david-goggins"

Pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance and beautiful silence.

Let's be real with each other. We live in the softest age in human history, and anyone with any sense or honesty understands that it is doing us precious little good as a race. Like everyone else, I benefit measurably from this softness: as I sit here, writing this, the temperature in my apartment is comfortable despite the furnace-like heat outside, thanks to the miracle of air conditioning; my laundry is washing itself; my dishes are drying themselves; an oven roasts my food, and the light within ensures that I don't even need to open the door to check to see if it's done. I am exercised, freshly bathed, and my belly is full. When I finish this blog, I will drink a beer, watch half an episode of Da Vinci's Inquest and then climb into my queen-sized bed with The Inimitable Jeeves and read myself to sleep. I have taken tomorrow off from work, but I will nevertheless be paid. I am not a wealthy man, but in many ways I probably live better than the millionaires of a century ago, and have instantaneous access to almost unlimited amounts of information and entertainment. I do not need to work for any it. It is enough to speak a few words into my phone, and presto, it's there, waiting for me.

You would think that this state of affairs, which is at least roughly attainable for the working class and even to some extent for the poor, would lead to a corresponding rise in our sense of psychological and spiritual well-being and perhaps our physical health as well: precisely the opposite has happened. Americans are fatter, lazier, more anxious, more depressed, more suicidal, more homicidal, more antisocial, more angry, more suspicious, more entitled, more cynical, and somehow more ignorant than they have ever been. All this material prosperity and softness has left us incapable of gratitude or the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes with truly earning things. We have run so far from the pain which is a normal part of life that we have fallen into a completely different form of suffering entirely, a suffering of the soul.

Enter David Goggins.

For those unfamiliar with the name, David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL who is legendary for his determination, will-power and ability to edure pain. Now, before you throw up your hands, adopt an English accent, and exclaim, "Och, not another bloody book by a bloody SEAL!" let me assure you that CAN'T HURT ME is most definitely not like all the other SEAL accounts you may have read. The Chris Kyles and Marcus Lattrells and what-not were telling war stories and to some extent, making extended commercials for their own branch of the military. Goggins is not. In fact, when it comes to his deployed-in-a-war-zone days, he doesn't write enough to fill out a paragraph, much less a page. He talks about his military training extensively, but only with the larger focus of the book in mind. Which is as follows.

Goggins grew up in an abusive family. His dad was a physically and emotionally abusive hustler who treated him like a slave. He ended up living with his mom and taking comfort in food -- lots of food, so that he eventually became grossly and immensely fat. As one of the only blacks in an all-white school, he was also subjected to terrible racism. By the time he was in his late teens, early 20s, his life was a kind of morbid joke, with his job being to empty traps left in restaurants which were full of dead insects and rats. He had no self-respect and no future, and his only pleasure was sucking down immense quantities of food and drink, which gave him temporary pleasure but also increased his girth and therefore his isolation and self-loathing.

Goggins eventually came to the conclusion that he must stop seeking out the easy path in life, must "find comfort in being uncomfortable," and constantly seek to challenge himself in every aspect of life. This led him to the SEALs, whose training he had to go through several times due to injuries and illness -- a remarkable feat in itself given the mental and physical brutality of the training, which not infrequently kills its subjects.

Once a SEAL, however, Goggins continued to find ways to become uncomfortable by seeking out the toughest trainings he could sign up for, including the Rangers and the Delta Force, and by entering marathons and later, the masochistic enterprise known as the ultra-marathon. Eventually he competed in even more punishing activities such as trying to become the Guinness Book of World Records holder in the category of chin-ups (which sounds like my idea of hell). But the thing which distinguishes him from everyone else is the fact that he did most of this with some severe congenital defects he didn't even know he had at the time, including a sizeable hole in his heart. This discovery truly blew his mind and got him asking, "What if -- ?" He began to realize that we are largely prisoners of our own perceptions, and are capable of so much more than we think, but we habitually underestimate our potential and settle for what he calls "the 40%." This is different for different people, but it usually involves living a life in which even our "challenges" (working out, dieting, etc.) fall within our comfort zones. Take my hike today after work. I spent an hour trampling through the mud in the deep woods. It's good exercise, but it didn't push my limits in any way whatsoever. If I doubled the hike it would probably have not done this. And if I had doubled the hike and then thrown in a different sort of workout afterwards, lifting weights, say, or some calisthenics, I still would not have pushed my body to 100% of its limits. So basically my workout was at the 40% level -- enough to give me the sense that I earned my before-bed beer, but not enough to make me suffer.

Goggins goal for himself, and his goal for you, is to reach 100%. Not only in your workouts, but in every aspect of life. His language here is characteristic of the man: "You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft that you will die without ever realizing your true potential." The fact reaching one's true potential may not be possible is irrelevant to him. It's the striving, the discomfort, the pain that he seeks, not because it will get him to the goal but because it is the goal. Seeing what one can endure expands what one can achieve. As writers from Marcus Aurelius to Ernst Jünger have noted, "the obstacle is the way." One of the best passages in CAN'T HURT ME is as follows:

"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."

CAN'T HURT ME is important not for its recitation of all the blisters and sweat and torn ligaments Goggins has endured, or for his achievements as a sailor or an athlete, but for the way he approaches the central questions regarding the difficulties we all face in life. Goggins has plenty of reason to play the vicitim, but chose another path, the path of self-ownership. It really is very simple. For example, when he discusses his obesity, he does not blame his father, racism or society: he blames himself. His mantra in every aspect of his life is that we own our own skin and our own decisions and too often, we use our traumas to justify things like laziness, apathy, cowardice, drug abuse, and alcoholism. Overcoming this self-sabotage requires being brutally honest with oneself. "Don't call yourself overweight," he all but shouts at the reader. "Say what you really are -- a fat fuck!" In an age when 700 lb women are called "curvy," this is not a message which is going to please many of the people who hear it, but it is a necessary antidote to the culture of weakness and victimhood in which we live. Goggins, however, is not making a philsophical statement: he is trying to get people to take an honest look at their lives so that they can understand what it is they need to change to fulfill their potential and live their dreams. Carl von Clausewitz called this technique, "The appreciation of the situation." Goggins calls it a self-audit. He audits himself regularly, especially when he fails at something, but also when he is successful, too. He encourages a mind-set of brutal honesty with an emphasis on the brutal. He is very frank that he "gets his strength from a very dark place," and his ethos illustrates that, as does this book. He isn't a shiny, happy person. He isn't interested in fame. He doesn't have many friends. He doesn't seem to own much of anything in the way of material objects. Even when he writes about the SEALs, he offers fairly harsh criticism -- something you won't see much if any of in other books by former members. Some readers may be offput by this very darkness, especially in an era in which whining and entitlement (something he especially despises) are now rampant everywhere. But that is why I consider CAN'T HURT ME to be so important. It comes at a time when many are beginning to suspect that the victim mentality they've been told to sharpen their entire lives is actually an albatross, weighing them down, stranding them in weakness, unhappiness, and failure.

CAN'T HURT ME is a fast and brutal read. It's inspiring, but it's not a feel-good memoir, and one can't help but wonder if Goggins takes any real pleasure out of life as we ordinary folk understand the word. He's sort of the Mace Windu of inspirational writers, a grim-faced warrior monk who is going to poke you in your love-handle and ask if you think that is the best you can do. But should you manage to sweat it off, don't look to him for a pat on the back. Look to him to ask if you couldn't have done it more efficiently...and then to ask you what's next on your list of challenges. And why you aren't working on them yet.