Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within

by David Goggins

“I’m back, motherfuckers,” I yelled, picking up my pace. “You thought you had me! You thought you had me down! Only for a second. I’m back!”

If something surprises you in anything you are trying to accomplish these days, with so much free knowledge at our fingertips, it is because you didn’t prepare well enough, and there is no excuse for that.

Small minds and weak people kill big dreams.

You might have clear goals and be working on yourself every day, but if you have the wrong folks around you, there’s a good chance they could be sucking the life right out of you and making sure that you go nowhere.

In military speak, the foxhole is a fighting position. In life, it’s your inner circle. These are the people you surround yourself with. They know your history and are aware of your future goals and past limitations. But because it’s a fighting position, a foxhole can just as easily become your grave. Therefore, it is crucial that you be careful about who you invite in. Whether you are at war, competing in a game, or striving in life, you never want someone in your foxhole who lacks faith or will try to steer you away from your full potential by giving you permission to pack it in or wave the white flag when shit looks bleak.

You want the husband or wife who, when you snooze that alarm on a freezing mid-winter morning before dawn, shakes you the fuck awake so you don’t miss your training run. When you’re dieting and whine about being bored of eating the same bland foods every day, they remind you of all the progress you have made, of all the hard work you have put in, and happily eat the same bland foods alongside you. When you say you’re tired from all the late-night studying, they stay up late with you to help you study.

Old friends are great and shared history is to be respected, but not every person who has been in your life a long time is looking out for your best interests. Some of them are threatened by your growth because of how it impacts them. Some are looking for a friend to keep them company in their half-ass lives.

Everywhere I turned, I found family members, friends, and coworkers resistant to my evolution because they loved the Ecolab-spraying, chocolate-shake-slurping fat ass. At three hundred pounds, I made them feel much better about themselves, which is another way of saying, they were holding me back.

Who you hang around and speak to on the daily matters. That’s why it is not a successful formula for people in drug and alcohol recovery to continue to hang out with the people they used to party with if they want to stay sober. When you evolve, your inner circle must evolve with you.

Don’t ever tell me you want to run a marathon because I will sign you up for a race, monitor your daily training, and run that shit with you. If you tell me you want to be a doctor, I’ll be the motherfucker who enrolls you in med school while you’re sleeping, and you’ll wake up to a class first thing in the morning. Most people can’t handle that level of intensity. But that’s the kind of backing I want. The type that comes with an expectation of effort and demands hours, weeks, and even years of hard work.

Unfortunate situations never last, but I knew that a bad attitude always lingers and can turn any setback into a tailspin.

The only thing more infectious than a good attitude is a bad one. The more you dwell on the negative, the weaker you feel, and that weakness infects those around you. However, the reverse is also true. I knew that if I could control my attitude and redirect my attention, I’d gain control of the entire situation.

Which means it’s up to you to cultivate your own strategy and have the discipline to practice it. Mine is simple. No matter what life serves me, I say, “Roger that.” Most people think “Roger that,” simply means, “Order received.” However, in the military, some people infuse ROGER with a bit more intention and define it as, “Received, order given, expect results.”

But it’s important that your goal isn’t too readily attainable. I like to set audacious goals during dark times. Too often, motherfuckers are convinced that they are challenging themselves by aiming to accomplish something they’ve done countless times before.

“Why the fuck are you running a half-marathon?” I asked. “You’re already training, so why not a full marathon?” He tripped over his tongue trying to come up with a satisfying answer, but I already knew why. He was training for something he knew he could do. I’m not picking on him. That’s how most of the world operates. Very few individuals step outside the box and attempt to stretch their limits. They rule out the spectacular by default. They put a hard cap on their own performance way before game day.

When you have a shitty day, it’s tempting to call it an early night and try to forget about it, but if you go to bed in the red, chances are you’ll wake up that way, and all too often, that type of negativity snowballs. When your entire day is fucked up, make sure that you achieve something positive before lights out. You’ll probably have to stay up a bit later to read, study, get a workout in, or clean the house. Whatever it takes to go to bed in the black, get it done. That’s how you stay net positive on the day to day, and when that becomes automatic, it will be so much easier to see any emotional tripwires coming, which will help you strategize around them.

I am a student of life. I carry around a notebook. I keep logs. I study all the upswings and down currents of my days as if the final exam is tomorrow. Because we all have an exam tomorrow. Whether we realize it or not, every interaction, each task is a reflection of your mindset, values, and future prospects. It’s an opportunity to be the person you’ve always wanted to be.

We can’t rely on others to get us to where we need to be. We need more personal ownership and self-leadership.

I’m always looking for more fuel because I do not mesh with this modern age, which has a way of sucking the life force out of me.

He understood that his rank only meant something if he sought out a different certification: an invisible badge that says, “I am the example. Follow me, motherfuckers, and I will show you that there is more to this life than so-called authority and stripes or candy on a uniform. I’ll show you what true ambition looks like beyond all the external structure in a place of limitless mental growth.”

He made me uncomfortable because he exposed my lack of dedication to giving my best effort each and every day. Being around people like that forces you to try harder and be better, and while that is a good thing, when you are inherently lazy, what you really want are some days off. The Captain Connollys of the world don’t give you that option. When they are in your foxhole, there are no days off.

The fact that he was able to do that told me it couldn’t possibly have been a one-time thing. It had to be the result of countless lonely hours in the gym, on the trails, and in the books. Most of his work was hidden, but it is within that unseen work that self-leaders are made. I suspect the reason he was capable of exceeding any and all standards consistently was because he was dedicated at a level most people cannot fathom in order to stay ready for any and all opportunities.

That’s what a self-leader does, no matter how busy their lives are. Not because they are obsessed with being the best, but because they are striving to become their best.

In order to sustain that amount of energy output, self-leaders return again and again to the organizing ideals of their lives. They live for something bigger than themselves, and because of that, their lives swell and glow with an energy that others can feel. It can also start a chain reaction that challenges and awakens people to the untapped power coiled within themselves. The power that they are wasting with each passing day.

I wanted off the bell curve. I wanted to make my own opportunities and eat alone at my own table. I wanted to become an outlier.

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.

Who will you become and what do you want to stand for? Are you ready to be the standard? If you are willing, share your oath to self.

Over the next several weeks, I became extremely lonely. All my physical therapy, study sessions, and bike rides were solo missions. It was monotonous and draining, and the worst part was knowing it would be exactly the same tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Most mornings, it was difficult to find the energy to persist, but I did, and every time I mounted that bicycle, I felt a rush of victory that I only get when I overcome my own desire to dial it back or give up completely. It’s short lived, but the more you do it, the more powerful the feeling.

The pain wasn’t going anywhere. It came down to how much I was willing to endure. I thought about that when a few miles down the road, in the darkness of night, my North Star pushed aside two clouds, and Goggins rose from the ashes for the first time in almost a year.

The point is to run four miles every four hours for forty-eight hours for a grand total of forty-eight miles.

But every statistician will warn you that whenever you deal in probabilities, there will be outliers. Always!

Most people live their whole lives without ever contemplating what it means to be great. To them, greatness looks like Steph Curry, Rafael Nadal, Toni Morrison, Georgia O’Keeffe, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, or Amelia Earhart. They put all the greats on a pedestal but think of themselves as mere mortals. And that’s exactly why greatness eludes them. They turn it into some untouchable plane, impossible for almost anybody to reach, and it never even crosses their mind to aim for it.

Identity is a trap that will keep you in blinders if you let it. Sometimes, identity is what we are saddled with by society. Other times, it’s a category we claim. It can be empowering to associate yourself with a particular culture, group, job, or lifestyle, but it can also be limiting. If you stick with your own too closely, you will be susceptible to groupthink, and you may never learn who you really are or what you can accomplish.

Those of us who are struggling with our self-worth, like I was as a child, often build identities around the very things that haunt us the most. Not because we want to, but because subconsciously, we are convinced that is how everyone else sees us. You cannot allow what someone else may or may not think about you or the issues you’re dealing with to stop your progress.

No matter how troubled or hopeless or sheltered your environment is, it is your job, your obligation, your duty, and your responsibility to yourself to find the blue-to-black line—that glimmer—buried in your soul and seek greatness. Nobody can show you that glimmer. You must do the work to discover it on your own.

While it’s human nature to try and talk yourself out of doing the hard or inconvenient thing, we know that it’s non-negotiable.

It was freezing, and I was sore as hell, but my bruises and that nasty weather didn’t give a fuck about me, and rest assured, that feeling was mutual.

Sounding off in military cadences serves a few purposes. It helps you breathe, releases a shot of adrenaline, and builds up morale. To the uninformed, it may look and sound like unnecessary ra-ra-ra, but if you’re part of an exhausted, physically and mentally taxed team, that kind of camaraderie turns something monotonous and brutal into an empowering rite of passage. You aren’t even doing push-ups anymore. You are becoming one with the team, merging with a common energy force, and that helps everyone stay on course to get through each day, each module of training. We all grew to love those push-ups!

“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 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. Yes, it was freezing. Yes, I struggled mightily, but I did not sulk. I kept my head up and got to work.