Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within

by David Goggins

The real work is unseen. Your performance matters most when nobody is watching.

I had minimal potential, and by the time I turned twenty-four, I knew I was in danger of wasting my life.

I wanted to be better, I had to start living every day with a sense of urgency. Because that is the only way to turn the odds in your favor.

You cannot be afraid to disappoint people. You have to live the life you want to live. Sometimes, that means being the motherfucker who can put a middle finger up to everyone in the room and be totally comfortable with that.

Respect is earned every day by waking up early, challenging yourself with new dreams or digging up old nightmares, and embracing the suck like you have nothing and have never done a damn thing in your life.

If you want to maximize minimal potential and become great in any field, you must embrace your savage side and become imbalanced, at least for a period of time. You’ll need to funnel every minute of every single day into the pursuit of that degree, that starting spot, that job, that edge. Your mind must never leave the cockpit. Sleep at the library or the office. Hoop long past sundown and fall asleep watching film of your next opponent. There are no days off, and there is no downtime when you are obsessed with being great. That is what it takes to be the baddest motherfucker ever at what you do.

A drive for self-optimization and daily repetition will build your capacity for work and give you confidence that you can take on more. With discipline as your engine, your workload and output will double, then triple.

All the years I knew him, he’d never said, “Good job,” to me. I never once heard him say, “I love you.” But when they announced my name and I marched across that stage in my Dress Blues to officially become an airman like him, we locked eyes, and I watched one solitary tear snake down his cheek. Sgt. Jack was beaming, and it was obvious that he was proud as hell to be my grandfather.

While I never stopped thinking about that ten-day experience, I didn’t have it within me to self-lead just yet. I should have taken the lesson from those ten days and applied it to the next fifty years of my life. I should have imagined Captain Connolly watching me each and every day. Believe me, if you think you’re being watched, you live differently. You’re more detailed and squared away. That’s not how it went for me. It would be another three years of slippage before I exhumed the Connolly files from my personal archives and studied them to become a self-leader.

I live with a Day One, Week One mentality. This mentality is rooted in self-discipline, personal accountability, and humility. While most people stop when they’re tired, I stop when I am done. In a world where mediocrity is often the standard, my life’s mission is to become uncommon amongst the uncommon.

Don’t rely on some other group’s ethos or company’s mission statement to be your guide. Don’t walk around aimlessly trying to find purpose or fit in. Mine your core principles, and come up with your own oath to self. Make sure it is aspirational and that it challenges you to strive and achieve, and live by it every day.

Living by this oath—your oath—you will never need anyone else to lead you. Because no matter what happens, you will never be lost.

Boat Crew Two Goggins would have continued cursing like the sailor he was and forced her to deal with it. And when fear paralyzed her in the middle of an evolution, he may have laughed out loud. However, while my inner savage was alive and well, I was no longer that guy. Back in SEAL training, I loved when people froze up and quit. I felt it elevated me in some way, but that was ego-driven immaturity and poor leadership. These days, I consider it my business to make everyone better, no matter the job or situation. During my interview with the North Peace Smokejumpers, I was asked to describe my best quality. “If you hire me,” I said, “everyone in my class will graduate. That’s my best quality.” It wasn’t an empty promise. It was an oath.

When you drop your head, you are sending a direct message to your brain that you don’t think you have what it takes to get better. That makes it much harder to focus and succeed. When you are working toward a goal that is important to you and things don’t go your way, never let anyone see it bring you down. Don’t give motherfuckers the satisfaction. When your head’s down, you can’t see where the fuck you need to go or what needs to be done. And if you need help, ask for it. Never be ashamed of it.

An instructor ran over, breathless yet reasonably impressed. He offered a few pointers and a hand, and as I got to my feet, I found that I could not stop smiling. It wasn’t that evil Goggins smile either. This one was wide and natural, and well-earned.

Whatever it takes for you to believe that you’re better than good enough to achieve your dreams is what you must do. And remember, your greatness is not tied to any outcome. It is found in the valiance of the attempt.

I never needed to be the hardest motherfucker in the world. That became a goal because I knew it would bring out my best self. Which is what this fucked-up world needs from all of us: to evolve into the very best versions of ourselves. That’s a moving target, and it isn’t a one-time task. It is a lifelong quest for more knowledge, more courage, more humility, and more belief. Because when you summon the strength and discipline to live like that, the only thing limiting your horizons is you.