Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within

by David Goggins

I’m haunted by my future goals, not my past failures. I’m haunted by what I may still become. I’m haunted by my own continued thirst for evolution.

Roger that. It ain’t your fucking fault that you were dealt a bad hand, but…it is your responsibility. How long will you allow your past to hold you back before you finally take control of your future?

That night, on my drive home to Indiana, I accepted the hard truth that hoping and wishing are like gambling on long shots, and if 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.

Reality can be a motherfucker when all of your excuses are stripped away and you are exposed for exactly who and what you have become, but the truth can also be liberating. That night, I accepted the truth about myself. I finally swallowed reality, and now that I had, my future was undetermined. Anything was possible as long as I adopted a new mindset. I needed to become someone who refused to give in, who simply finds a way no matter what. I needed to become bulletproof, a living example of resilience.

I realized that only I have the power to determine my future, and I had a choice to make. I could continue living in the Haven of Low Expectations, where it was comfortable and safe to believe that my life was not my fault or my responsibility and that my dreams were just that—fantasies that would never be because time and opportunity were not and would never be on my side. Or I could leave all that behind for a world of possibility, much more pain, unfathomably hard work, and zero guarantees of success. I could choose resilience.

All our dreams and visions come with expiration dates etched in invisible ink. Windows of opportunity can and do close, so it is imperative that we do not waste time on bullshit. None of us have any clue what’s coming for us or when our time might run out, which is why I do my best to ignore anything that is counterproductive. I’m not suggesting we act like robots, but we need to understand that forward motion gives our lives momentum. We need to remember that sometimes chaos will descend and a clear highway can be wiped out by a flash flood in the blink of an eye.

Denial is self-protecting, but it’s also self-limiting. Accepting your full truth, including all your faults, imperfections, and missteps, allows you to evolve, expand your possibilities, seek redemption, and explore your true potential. And until you unpack your baggage, it will be impossible to know what your potential really is. The whole truth can’t haunt you if it serves you.

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.

I gave myself one rule before joining social media: if I can’t live it, I won’t speak it.

Everything must be utilized. Especially the energy in volatile, potentially damaging emotions like fear and hate. You have to learn how to handle them—how to mine them—and once you master that craft, any negative emotion or event that bubbles up in your brain or gets lobbed your way, like a grenade, can be used as fuel to make you better. But to get there, you must literally listen to yourself.

One day a couple of years ago, not long after ramping up my training from ten miles of running per day to twenty or more, I felt drained and sore, too tired to run, and kept telling myself that I needed a day off. As I relaxed on the couch, I tuned into my self-talk. Then, I grabbed my recorder and whined into the microphone. I wanted to hear how it sounded out loud. I was real with myself. I cataloged my recent runs and nagging injuries and described how I thought a day off might help me. I made a solid case for a much-needed rest day, but when I played it back, the jury of one was unconvinced. Because my inner bitch was suddenly the emperor with no clothes. Buck naked in the light of day, he was impossible to ignore and even harder to stomach. I was off the couch and out on the road in a matter of seconds.

Because then you can repurpose it. You can use it to remind yourself that changes must be made. Listening might inspire you to commit to your life in a deeper way, to be your best at work, at school, or in the gym. It can challenge you to rewrite the narrative so that when you bed down, you won’t feel like you wasted another valuable day.

I’m the person who turns their every negative word into my positive progress. I take what they serve me, roll it up in that wrapping paper I saved way back when, and shove it right up their fucking asses in the form of another work-out, another long run, and another year of leveling the fuck up. Honestly, I should thank them. They make me stronger and more determined to achieve my goals. Which only makes them hate me even more.

And it didn’t take long to realize that, like life itself, difficult workouts and long study sessions tended to spotlight all my weak points. My desire to continue to eat like shit, my natural impulse to cut corners in almost everything I did, my general lack of drive, and my flagging attention during those marathon ASVAB study sessions revealed my willingness to settle for mediocrity.

each physical workout became a test of my mental fortitude.

sessions became experiments conducted to see how long my mind would hold out when I continued to apply more and more pressure.

I cultivated an alter-ego—a savage who refused to quit under almost any circumstance. Someone capable of overcoming any and all obstacles.

If you don’t feel like you’re good enough, if your life lacks meaning and time feels like it’s slipping through your fingers, there is only one option. Recreate yourself in your own Mental Lab. Somewhere you can be alone with your thoughts and wrestle with the substance of what and who you want to be in your one short life on earth. If it feels right, create an alter ego to access some of that dark matter in your own mind. That’s what I did. In my mind, David Goggins wasn’t the savage motherfucker who accomplished all the hard shit. It was Goggins who did that.

My daily goal was to wake up before anyone else. Sometimes, that meant 0500, sometimes 0400, and occasionally, I woke up at 0300 because I needed the first footprints in the fucking sand or on the trail to be my own.

I say it all the time: you are either getting better, or you’re getting worse. You’re not staying the same.

I needed to land in Leadville knowing that I put the proper training in.

“Dude, why are you even out here on a day like this?” I shrugged and shook my head. “Because you’re not.” I didn’t think much of my flippant comment at first. But as I ran ahead, I savored it. I’d picked the worst day of the summer for my longest run of the week. Why? Because nobody else would even consider doing something like that, and that gave me a chance to prove myself to be uncommon amongst the uncommon once again.

Everything in life comes down to how we handle those crucial seconds. When psychological, physical, or emotional pressure redlines, your adrenal glands go haywire, and you are no longer in control. What separates a true savage from everybody else is the ability to regain control of their mind in that split second, despite the fact that all is still fucked!

When you are trying to lose weight or quit drinking or using drugs, your moment of weakness can be counted in seconds, and you’ll need to be ready to win those seconds.

Moments of doubt are unavoidable when we take on any strenuous task. I’ve used the One-Second Decision to regain my composure and win hundreds of small battles during ultra races, on the pull-up bar, and in stressful work situations. And the first step is to mentally take a knee.

Tell yourself, I’m good here. I’m great there. This sucks, but it will be over in twenty minutes. Maybe it’s twenty miles or twenty days or twenty weeks, but it doesn’t matter. Every experience on earth is finite. It will end someday, and that makes it doable, but the outcome hinges on those crucial seconds you must win!

There are consequences to this shit. Quitting on a dream stays with you. It can color how you see yourself and the decisions you make going forward.

If you can withstand the suffering, take a knee, and make a conscious One-Second Decision in a critical juncture, you will learn perseverance and gain strength by winning the moment. You will know what it takes and how it feels to overcome all that loud doubt, and that will stay with you too. It will become a powerful skill you can use again and again to find success, no matter what scenario you’re in or where life takes you.

It happens, but make sure that it is a conscious decision you’re making, not a reaction. Never quit when your pain and insecurity are at their peak. If you must retreat, quit when it’s easy, not when it’s hard. Control your thought process and get through the most difficult test first. That way, if you do bow out, you’ll know it wasn’t a reaction based on panic. Instead, you’ve made a conscious decision based on reason and had time to devise your plan B.

“Remember,” I said, “many dreams die while suffering, bro.”

It’s all well and good to have success and reach a certain level, but I really don’t give a fuck what you did yesterday. Maybe you finished Ultraman or graduated from Harvard. I do not care. 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.

When the distance is unknown, it is even more critical that you stay locked in so the unknown factor doesn’t steal your focus. The end will come when it comes, and anticipation will only distract you from completing the task in front of you to the best of your ability. Remember, the struggle is the whole journey. That’s why you’re out there. It’s why you signed up for this race, or that class, or took the damn job. There is great beauty when you are involved in something that is so hard most people want it to end.

When you’re climbing a mountain or involved in any other difficult task, the only way to free yourself from the struggle is to finish it. So why bitch about it when it gets hard? Why hope it will end soon when you know it will end eventually? When you complain and your mind starts groping for the eject button, you are not bringing your best self to the task, which means you are actually prolonging the pain.

Maybe they are fat or disabled, feel ugly, or are failing and overwhelmed at school or work, and it consumes them. Their obsession with their own imperfections and faults suffocates self-respect and submarines progress, and from the time they get out of bed until they are able to crawl back in that night, the only thing on their agenda is avoiding exposure and surviving another day in hell. When that’s how you feel about yourself, it’s impossible to see possibilities or seize opportunities.

All of us were almost through a barbaric rite of passage, but after it was all over, how many would use it as an opportunity to ask deeper questions of their body and mind and demand more of themselves?

As I headed out to run one last leg, I no longer wondered if I’d finish. The question now became, where would that finish line lead me?

When I first got into endurance events, I loved the breakdown phase because the suffering made me feel alive and reminded me that I’d gone all-out. This time, I didn’t relish it in the same way, but I knew that breakdown was a byproduct of an all-out effort and that if I explored the crevices of my mind, I would find valuable lessons, which tend to spill out with any unraveling.

When a half-assed job doesn’t bother you, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are. And until you start feeling a sense of pride and self-respect in the work you do, no matter how small or overlooked those jobs might be, you will continue to half-ass your life.

This is where you make up the difference in potential. By learning to maximize what you do have, you will not only level the playing field but also surpass those born with more natural ability and advantages than you. Let your hours become days, then weeks, then years of effort. Allow discipline to seep into your cells until work becomes a reflex as automatic as breathing. With discipline as your medium, your life will become a work of art.

That’s how it works when you’re trying to change. The call to remain complacent will only grow louder until you silence it with a pattern of behavior that leaves no doubt about your mission. Lucky for me, I knew the stakes were too high to fall into that trap, so high that I didn’t have time to wake up slowly. I needed to knock out my chores before school so I could hit the books after I got home.

It was during those days of struggle and striving, when I didn’t know if I would actually graduate or be accepted by the Air Force, that I first realized I am at my best when I am a disciple of discipline. The further I got away from it, and from Sgt. Jack, the worse I became. While I still didn’t like waking up early or most of the chores I had to do, those were the very things that turned me into someone I could be proud of.

Pity is a soothing balm that turns toxic. At first, when your family and friends commiserate with you and validate the reasons you have for grumbling about your circumstances, it lands like sympathy. But the more comfort pity brings you, the more external validation you’ll crave and the less independent you will become. Which will make it that much more difficult for you to gain any traction in life. That’s the vicious cycle of pity. It saps self-esteem and inner strength, which makes it harder to succeed, and with each subsequent failure, you will be more tempted to pity yourself.

Every minute you spend feeling sorry for yourself is another minute not getting better, another morning you miss at the gym, another evening wasted without studying. Another day burned when you didn’t make any progress toward your dreams, ambitions, and deepest desires. The ones you’ve had in your head and heart your entire life.

We cannot get time back, so we must be minute hoarders. The earlier I get up, the more I do. The less time I stay in pity-party-feel-sorry-for-myself land, the stronger I become and the more daylight I see between me and everyone else. When you separate yourself from the pack by cultivating the values and priorities that lead to greatness, mountains of adversity and hardship become speed bumps, and that makes it easier to adapt to the road ahead and build the new life or sense of self you crave.

It’s funny how our goals are only as elastic as our sense of self, of who we are and what we think we can accomplish. If all you’ve ever done is run three miles at a clip, then a ten-mile run can feel as far as the moon. Your mind will compile reasons why that distance is beyond you, and you may believe them. If ten becomes the new normal, then a half or full marathon may be the next step. After a marathon comes ultra. Each time you level up, your mind will step in like an overbearing chaperone and try to shut down the party. That very dynamic was playing out in my own mind on the long drive.

You have to train your mind as if you are already there. If you get tired while swimming laps in the shallow end, don’t give yourself the option of standing up in the middle of the lane. Your only resting point should be the gunnel at the other end of the pool. That way, when you get to the ten-foot end, you know from experience that you can make the distance. But back then, I was merely a survivor. I wasn’t a warrior capable of thriving in discomfort, so I chose to bury my dread and logged my pool hours in the shallows with no end in sight.

Moab on my mind.

Cultivating a willingness to succeed despite any and all circumstances is the most important variable of the reengagement equation. Your willingness to succeed builds self-esteem. It broadens your concept of your own capability, yet it is the first thing we lose touch with when things go bad. After that, giving up often feels like the sanest option, and maybe it is, but know that quitting chips away at your self-worth and always requires some level of mental rehab. Even if what forces you to quit is an injury or something else beyond your control, you will still have to bounce back from the experience mentally. A successful mission seldom requires any emotional maintenance.

Anywhere I lack, I will improve because I exist and I am willing.

Whether it is a seven-mile run or a 240-mile run, we all know what it’s like to bargain with ourselves to avoid having to do the very thing we said we would. We say we’re overworked, overwhelmed, or just over it entirely. I never give in to that because I know there are a lot of people out there who do not have that choice to make. They cannot run at all and wish like hell they could.