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Was I willing to let my sorry present become a fucked-up future? How much longer would I wait, how many more years would I burn, wondering if there was some greater purpose out there waiting for me? I knew right then that if I didn’t make a stand and start walking the path of most resistance, I would end up in this mental hell forever.
It was a life devoid of any drive and passion, but I knew if I continued to surrender to my fear and my feelings of inadequacy, I would be allowing them to dictate my future forever.
That’s when I first realized that not all physical and mental limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon. I also knew that it would take every ounce of courage and toughness I could muster to pull off the impossible.
I needed reps, and I did five or six sets of 100–200 reps each.
What I was trying to achieve is like a D-student applying to Harvard,
I was betting everything I had on myself with no guarantees.
When depression smothers you, it blots out all light and leaves you with nothing to cling onto for hope. All you see is negativity.
I didn’t want to be just one of those forty. I wanted to be the best.
If I failed, my dream would die, and I’d be floating without purpose once again.
For two months I’d dedicated my entire existence to this one moment, and I was damn well gonna enjoy it.
Abandon the opportunity I’d worked so hard for and stay married, or get divorced and go try to become a SEAL.
It was about who I was and who I wanted to be. I was a prisoner in my own mind and this opportunity was my only chance to break free.
there would be purpose.
The first step on the journey toward a calloused mind is stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis.
This is not about changing your life instantly, it’s about moving the needle bit by bit and making those changes sustainable. That means digging down to the micro level and doing something that sucks every day. Even if it’s as simple as making your bed, doing the dishes, ironing your clothes, or getting up before dawn and running two miles each day.
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.
even on miserable days you can fixate on an escape from hell that’s real.
The instructors used our suffering to pick and peel away our layers, not to find the fittest athletes. To find the strongest minds. That’s something the quitters didn’t understand until it was too late.
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. That forgetting happens the second we give control over our emotions and actions to other people, which can easily happen when pain is peaking.
the only way to get past it is to go through it.
people who are secure with themselves don’t bully other people.
Sometimes the best way to defeat a bully is to actually help them.
laughing at your weaknesses won’t solve the problem.
You must master them.
Know why you’re in the fight to stay in the fight!
the ticket to victory often comes down to bringing your very best when you feel your worst.
Once, I was so focused on failing, I was afraid to even try.
after a lifetime of mostly failure, I definitely felt like I was someplace new.
Do everything exactly as they ask, and whatever standard they set as an ideal outcome, you should be aiming to surpass that.
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.
But it’s up to you where that callous lines up. If you choose to see yourself as a victim of circumstance into adulthood, that callous will become resentment that protects you from the unfamiliar. It will make you too cautious and untrusting, and possibly too angry at the world. It will make you fearful of change and hard to reach, but not hard of mind.
My ability to stay open represented a willingness to fight for my own life, which allowed me to withstand hail storms of pain and use it to callous over my victim’s mentality.
Hell Week is designed to show you that a human is capable of much more than you know. It opens your mind to the true possibilities of human potential, and with that comes a change in your mentality.
Similar to using an opponent’s energy to gain an advantage, leaning on your calloused mind in the heat of battle can shift your thinking as well.
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.
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.
Whenever you decide to follow a dream or set a goal, you are just as likely to come up with all the reasons why the likelihood of success is low.
Remembering that you’ve been through difficulties before and have always survived to fight again shifts the conversation in your head. It will allow you to control and manage doubt, and keep you focused on taking each and every step necessary to achieve the task at hand.
The vast majority of us are slaves to our minds.
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.
The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind.
Physical challenges strengthen my mind so I’m ready for whatever life throws at me,
calloused mind can’t heal broken bones.
“I’m afraid. I’m afraid of going through all of that shit again. I’m afraid of day one, week one.”
I was tired of trying to prove myself. Tired of callousing my mind. Mentally, I was worn to the nub.
The cost of quitting would be lifelong purgatory.
If I failed this time, it wouldn’t mean that I was just going back to ground zero, emotionally and financially,
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.
I was my own worst enemy! It wasn’t the world, or God, or the Devil that was out to get me. It was me!
If you’re one of the few who acknowledge that, want to callous those wounds, and strengthen your character, its up to you to go back through your past and make peace with yourself by facing those incidents and all of your negative influences, and accepting them as weak spots in your own character.
