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

by David Goggins

So I sought out pain, fell in love with suffering, and eventually transformed myself from the weakest piece of shit on the planet into the hardest man God ever created, or so I tell myself.

From the time you take your first breath, you become eligible to die. You also become eligible to find your greatness and become the One Warrior. But it is up to you to equip yourself for the battle ahead. Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability.

when you are born into a cyclone of terror and pain, you know it doesn’t have to be that way, and that truth nags at you like a splinter in your jacked up mind.

You stifle your emotions, but your trauma off-gasses in unconscious ways.

everyone’s opinion of me mattered to me, and that’s a shallow way to live.

it’s possible to transcend anything that doesn’t kill you,

I had to own it in the raw because the only way we can change is to be real with ourselves.

If you look in the mirror and you see a fat person, don’t tell yourself that you need to lose a couple of pounds. Tell the truth. You’re fucking fat! It’s okay. Just say you’re fat if you’re fat.

For the first time, being liked and acting cool were a waste of my time, and instead of eating with all the popular kids, I found my own table and ate alone.

I was valuing everyone’s opinion without considering the minds that generated them.

By the time I graduated, I knew that the confidence I’d managed to develop didn’t come from a perfect family or God-given talent. It came from personal accountability which brought me self-respect, and self-respect will always light a way forward.

When you transcend a place in time that has challenged you to the core, it can feel like you’ve won a war. Don’t fall for that mirage. Your past, your deepest fears, have a way of going dormant before springing back to life at double strength. You must remain vigilant.

Nobody would have believed how numb and afraid I was back then because I looked like a beast that no one would dare fuck with, but my mind wasn’t right, and my soul was weighed down by too much trauma and failure.

if I continued to surrender to my fear and my feelings of inadequacy, I would be allowing them to dictate my future forever.

“You cut corners and you are not gonna fucking make it,” I said, out loud, as I drove back to the gym. “There are no shortcuts for you, Goggins!”

“Sir, my dick’s getting stiff just thinking about these gaping vaginas weeping and quitting like whiny little bitches this week,”

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.

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 mentality.

I did this! I kept going when I should have quit five hours ago. I am the reason I still have a chance.

We settle as individuals, and we teach our children to settle for less than their best, and all of that ripples out, merges, and multiplies within our communities and society as a whole.

I loved waking up at 5 a.m. and starting work with three hours of cardio already in the bank while most of my teammates hadn’t even finished their coffee. It gave me a mental edge, a better sense of self-awareness, and a ton of self-confidence, which made me a better SEAL instructor. That’s what getting up at the ass crack of dawn and putting out will do for you. It makes you better in all facets of your life.

hope is addictive.

We know life can be hard, and yet we feel sorry for ourselves when it isn’t fair.

It takes a lot of will to push yourself when you are all alone.

Almost 21 years strong, but I’ve learned the importance of independently mastering my own emotions because of it. When the time comes—and it will, I’ll enter a meaningful relationship knowing exactly where I stand, what I have to give, and how I can curate the most cohesive and loving connection possible for my partner and I. That’s not something everyone gets to say for themselves.

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.

Torch the complacency you feel gathering around you, your coworkers, and teammates in that rare air. Continue to put obstacles in front of yourself, because that’s where you’ll find the friction that will help you grow even stronger. Before you know it, you will stand alone.

Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose.

It takes great strength to be vulnerable enough to put your ass on the line, in public, and work toward a dream that feels like it’s slipping away.

pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind.

when you persist past that to the point that pain fully saturates the mind, you become single-pointed. The external world zeroes out. Boundaries dissolve and you feel connected to yourself, and to all things, in the depth of your soul.

The limits we create and accept become the lens through which they see us. Through which they love and appreciate us.

What if is an exquisite fuck-you to anyone who has ever doubted your greatness or stood in your way.

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.

our light reflects off all the walls they’ve built up around them. Your light enables them to see the contours of their own prison, their own self-limitations.

But if they are truly the great people you always believed them to be, their jealousy will evolve, and soon their imagination might hop its fence, and it w...