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

by David Goggins

I’d wake up at 4 a.m. and get one hundred-mile rides in before work.

produce pain, and pain was my business.

We wanted guys who craved honor and purpose and were open minded enough to face their deepest fears.

I still put in fifty hours a week at work, clocking in every day from about 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. My training hours came in addition to, not instead of, my work commitments.

The lesson: you never know who you’re affecting.

Could they run a hundred miles in one day?

Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort.

There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery.

If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful too...

The number one excuse I hear from people as to why they don’t work out as much as they want to is that they don’t have time.

I was always home for dinner and in bed by 10 p.m.

But what about my friend Mike? He’s a big-time financial advisor in New York City. His job is high pressure and his work day is a hell of a lot longer than eight hours. He has a wife and two kids, and he’s an ultra runner.

And he makes time to get it all in by minimizing the amount of bullshit clogging his schedule. His priorities are clear, and he remains dedicated to his priorities.

Each hour of his week is dedicated to a particular task and when that hour shows up in real time, he focuses 100 percent on that task.

Evaluate your life in its totality! We all waste so much time doing meaningless bullshit. We burn hours on social media and watching television, which by the end of the year would add up to entire days and weeks if you tabulated time like you do your taxes.

You should, because if you knew the truth you’d deactivate your Facebook account STAT, and cut your cable.

I post on social media once or twice a week and I never check anybody else’s feeds because I don’t follow anyone.

I guarantee that if you audited your schedule you’d find time for more work and less bullshit.

How much time do you spend at the dinner table talking about nothing after the meal is done? How many calls and texts do you send for no reason at all? Look at your whole life, list your obligations and tasks. Put a time stamp on them. How many hours are required to shop, eat, and clean? How much sleep do you need? What’s your commute like? Can you make it there under your own power?

Use your smartphone for productivity hacks, not click bait. Turn on your calendar alerts. Have those alarms set.

The whole point of the twenty-four-hour mission is to keep up a championship pace, not for a season or a year, but for your entire life! That requires quality rest and recovery time. Because there is no finish line. There is always more to learn, and you will always have weaknesses to strengthen if you want to become as hard as woodpecker lips. Hard enough to hammer countless miles, and finish that shit strong!

But sometimes, even when you are doing everything right in life, shit storms appear and multiply.

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.

I knew that if I maintained a victim’s mentality I wouldn’t get anything at all out of a fucked-up situation,

Too many of us have become multitaskers, and that’s created a nation of half-asses.

Most people waste four to five hours on a given day, and if you can learn to identify and utilize it, you’ll be on your way toward increased productivity.

But when it’s time to rest, actually rest. No checking email or bullshitting on social media. If you are going to work hard you must also rest your brain.

I wanted to sponge more knowledge,

No matter who you are, life will present you similar opportunities where you can prove to be uncommon.

they refuse to ignore duties undone.

It’s about wanting it like there’s no tomorrow—because there might not be.

It meant being one of the best and helping your men find their best too.

I had my own uncommon standards to live up to.

I didn’t let my desire for comfort rule me.

There’s power in victory that’s transformative, but after our celebration we should dial it down, dream up new training regimens, new goals, and start at zero the very next day.

We can always become more capable and more reliable. Since that’s the case we should never feel that our work is done. There is always more to do.

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.

One thousand pull-ups before breakfast became our new mantra.

I was training us to take torture so we’d remain relaxed in extraordinarily uncomfortable environments.

A lot of people think that once they reach a certain level of status, respect, or success, that they’ve made it in life.

Greatness is not something that if you meet it once it stays with you forever.

Believe me, this is not for everyone because it will demand singular focus and may upset the balance in your life.

Continue to put obstacles in front of yourself, because that’s where you’ll find the friction that will help you grow even stronger.

The number in my head was 4,020 pull-ups. Sounds superhuman, right? Did to me too, until I dissected it and realized if I could knock out six pull-ups on the minute, every minute, for twenty-four hours, I’d shatter it. That’s roughly ten seconds of effort, and fifty seconds of rest, each minute.

shared my story with willing ears,

At the time I was known as an ultra runner, and I didn’t want to be known for just one thing. Who does?

and I remembered all the doubting comments I’d read on social media prior to my attempt. My arms were too long, they said.

Emotionally, I was wasted.

A lot of us surround ourselves with people who speak to our desire for comfort. Who would rather treat the pain of our wounds and prevent further injury than help us callous over them and try again.

We need to surround ourselves with people who will tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear, but at the same time not make us feel we’re up against the impossible.