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

by David Goggins

From the time you take your first breath, you become eligible to die.

Sister Katherine is the reason why I’ll never trust a smile or judge a scowl. My dad smiled a hell of a lot and didn’t give two shits about me, but grouchy Sister Katherine cared about us, cared about me. She wanted us to be our very best. I know this because she proved it by spending extra time with me,

“It’s on you,” I said. “Yeah, I know shit is fucked up. I know what you’ve been through. I was there, bitch! Merry fucking Christmas. Nobody is coming to save your ass! Not your mommy, not Wilmoth. Nobody! It’s up to you!”

Within seconds there was a skittering across the back of my neck. I brushed it off, and craned my neck to see a storm of roaches raining down to the kitchen floor from an open panel in the ceiling. I’d hit the motherlode of cockroaches and the worst infestation I ever saw on the job for Ecolab. They kept coming. Roaches landed on my shoulders and my head. The floor was writhing with them.

IMMA VOMIT

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.

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

The sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight reflex. It’s bubbling just below the surface, and when you are lost, stressed out, or struggling, like I was when I was a down and out kid, that’s the part of your mind that’s driving the bus. We’ve all tasted this feeling before. 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.

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. If you push yourself through each split and use that energy to maintain a strong pace, you have a great chance of recording a faster time.

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.

Physical challenges strengthen my mind so I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, and it will do the same for you.

Then again, like the Taoists say, those that know don’t speak, and those who speak, well, they don’t know jack shit.

“You should slow down, David,” he said, “Pace yourself a bit more.” I shrugged. “I got this.” It’s true that I felt okay in that moment, but my bravado was also a defense mechanism.

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.

My work ethic is the single most important factor in all of my accomplishments. Everything else is secondary, and when it comes to hard work,

But sometimes, even when you are doing everything right in life, shit storms appear and multiply. Chaos can and will descend without warning, and when (not if) that happens, there won’t be anything you can do to stop it.

Most wars are won or lost in our own heads,

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.

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.

My passion still burns, but to be honest, it takes a bit longer to channel my rage. It’s not camped out on my home screen anymore,