Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within

by David Goggins

The battle hasn’t stopped. Gunfire is still lighting up the night, and you don’t have any time to waste. In that one second, you must take ...

It helps to prepare with productive self-talk before you drop into that sufferfest on your schedule. Remind yourself that nobody is great at every single aspect of any job, at least not right away, and no runner skates through a hard race unchallenged. No matter how bleak it looks or feels, you must stay rooted to your baseline.

If you’re in med school, your baseline is to graduate and become a doctor. In Coronado, my baseline was becoming a Navy SEAL.

It helps to remind yourself of what you’re good at and where you excel so when you have to engage in something that is hard for you, it doesn’t become overwhelming. 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.

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.

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.

I speed-hiked by pressing my hands on my knees for leverage, while the vast majority of the other runners around me used trekking poles. I was an old-school ultra guy. To me, those poles looked like crutches.

We have to learn to stop looking for a sign that the hard time will end. When the distance is unknown, it is even more critical that you stay locked in so the unknown factor doesn’t steal your focus.

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.

Not that I knew that at the time. I didn’t wear a fitness watch. I wore a ten-dollar special from Walmart that I bought the day before because I didn’t want knowledge of my pace clouding my mindset. I was focused on one thing: the task at hand.

It is truly amazing what the mind can do when you fail to rebuild yourself consciously. My dad was a gangster and a crook. Her previous fiancé had been murdered in his own garage, and for an encore, she would marry a convicted murderer less than a week after his release from prison.

To put it into plain text: when your self-worth goes away and you don’t deal with or accept your demons, they will continue to own you, and you will become a bottom feeder.

This was nothing new for me. Ever since my first ultra, the San Diego One Day, the aftermath of every 100-mile race I’d completed included a tidal wave of pain and suffering, along with a humiliating loss of control of my most basic bodily functions. Kish knew that, but she had never experienced it firsthand, and I was nervous she wouldn’t be able to handle it.

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.

Sgt. Jack was a hard-ass teacher, but kids need hard-ass teachers sometimes. I know that might hurt your ears because things are different now. We are warned of the lasting effects of stress on children, and to compensate, parents strategize about how to make their children’s lives comfortable and easy. But is the real world always comfortable? Is it easy? Life is not G-rated. We must prepare kids for the world as it is.

Our generation is training kids to become full-fledged members of Entitlement Nation, which ultimately makes them easy prey for the lions among us. Our ever-softening society doesn’t just affect children. Adults fall into the same trap. Even those of us who have achieved great things. Every single one of us is just another frog in the soon-to-be-boiling water that is our soft-ass culture.

I am proof that rebirth is possible through discipline, which is the only thing capable of altering your DNA. It is the skeleton key that can get you past all the gatekeepers and into each and every room you wish to enter.

It’s so easy to be great nowadays because so many people are focused on efficiency: getting the most for themselves with the least amount of time and effort. Let all of them leave the gym early, skip school, take sick days. Commit to becoming the motherfucker with a never-ending task list.

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.

Our phones and social media have turned too many of us inside out with envy and greed as we get inundated with other people’s success, their new cars and houses, big contracts, resort vacations, and romantic getaways. We see how much fun everyone else is having and feel like the world is passing us by, so we bitch about it and then wonder why we are not where we want to be.

When you become disciplined, you don’t have time for that bullshit. Your insecurities become alarm bells reminding you that doing your chores or homework to the utmost of your ability and putting in extra time on the job or in the gym are requirements for a life well-lived.

That became my new pattern. Wake up earlier than I had to, do my max set of push-ups, and then get cracking.

At home, Sgt. Jack’s task lists evolved into my Accountability Mirror, which helped me build the habits necessary to graduate on time, pass the ASVAB, and enlist in the Air Force.

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.

Humility is the antidote to self-pity. It keeps you rooted in reality and your emotions in check. I’m not suggesting you should be satisfied with an entry-level job. I’m never satisfied, but you must appreciate what you have while staying hungry enough to learn everything you can.

It’s important to learn every aspect of any business before you move up. You can’t rise if you’re weighed down by bitterness and entitlement. Humility hardens your spine and encourages you to stand tall, secure in yourself no matter what anyone else thinks. And that has tremendous value.

Once you make it in this world, you have to freefall back to the bottom in some way to keep learning and growing.

When something continually looms in the back of your mind like a taunting, that’s an alarm. It’s a signal that you need to evaluate and address that issue, or it may become a life-long fear, looming larger each day until it morphs into an obstacle you may never overcome. There is nothing wrong with being afraid or hesitant. We all have our reasons for remaining in the shallow end, but we must make our shallow end a training ground.

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.

Remember, if you stay where you’ve always been, you will never learn if you have what it takes to venture into the deep water.

For starters, I had to stay locked in mentally. A lot of people fall down when they get smacked, and when they hit the ground, they lose all momentum. Not just physically but mentally because they are humiliated, and when you are humiliated, it is impossible to make any sort of progress. We must learn how to absorb life’s haymakers without getting knocked down.

When the pressure is high, you develop blinders that limit perspective. That’s great for certain situations that demand a hyper focus, but when you’re engaged in something that demands your maximum endurance, it’s better to broaden your perspective and your awareness to absorb more of the experience, which enables maximum growth both during the event and in the days and weeks to follow.

I told him everything, and as I listened to myself spill my sad story, I couldn’t help thinking about all the bitch-ass whiners I’d come across over the years who gave every excuse in the world as to why they couldn’t finish whatever it was they’d started. The vast majority of them were simply looking for a way out that allowed them to keep their heads up—like me when I quit Pararescue.

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.

There are a lot of people who stay down way too long. They may have been sick as hell but are on the mend, yet when asked how they are feeling, they act like they are no better. In fact, they play it up for pity points. I am not one of those motherfuckers. The second I feel I can get after it, I am going to get the fuck after it. Bottom line: I was struggling with the fact that I was feeling well enough to compete and was in a condo instead of on the trail.

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.

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.

Most people don’t have a selection process for their foxhole. They invite all the old cronies and close relatives in by default. As if growing up with someone is the top qualification for foxhole membership. 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.

In order to populate your foxhole with the right people, you must first know who you are as an individual. That means shaking off old belief systems—creaky concepts of the world and your place in it—that no longer serve you and the habits and lifestyle that you’ve outgrown. Any ideas or interests that were impressed upon you by others, whether they be your family, peers, or culture, must ...

Once you find out who the fuck you are, the world will start delivering you care packages filled with opportunities that will fuel your quest.

When there is no one around you who believes in or understands your quest, you must turn your foxhole into a one-man fighting position. That’s okay. It is always better to fight alone until you can find people strong enough to fight the good fight with you.

Loneliness can be difficult and depleting, but I’d much rather you stay lonely than crawl out of your foxhole and trek back through known territory into the arms of the very people who loved the old you and were never comfortable with your transformation.

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.

Whenever something sets me back, I always set a goal, something tangible to shoot for, that keeps me task-oriented and prevents me from being consumed by the sorrow of whatever is going on.

Recently, someone asked how to best prepare for a half-marathon. “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.