Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within

by David Goggins

Because our sad stories enable us to grade ourselves on a forgiving curve. They give us latitude and justification to stay lazy, weak-minded motherfuckers, and the longer it takes for us to process that pain, the harder it is to reclaim our lives.

You cannot be afraid to disappoint people.

Mental toughness and resilience fade if they aren’t used consistently. I say it all the time: you are either getting better, or you’re getting worse.

seemed to matter. I had dealt with worse training, less sleep, and more travel in the military than I faced now. When I trained for Badwater the first

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.

The irony is you build those walls to protect yourself. You think they will make you hard and less vulnerable, but they isolate you in solitary confinement with your darkest thoughts and ugliest memories. You convince yourself that somehow you deserve to be there due to the bad life decisions you made. You believe that you are not worthy of more, or something better, and that the damage can’t be undone. You are filled with endless shame. When you look in the mirror, you don’t see yourself for who you are.

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 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.

You never want to rely on someone else to lead you in your race.

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.