Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within

by David Goggins

The coronavirus exposed society’s lack of stability. It showed us that national unity is fragile and that the social structures and habits we’ve relied on can be vaporized at any moment. In the spring of 2020, life had become real, and suddenly, everybody was home and a lot of us were feeling exposed.

We all have one thing in common. We are here, stuck in the game of life, often subject to the whims of forces beyond our control, but we never train for it. We dedicate ourselves to external goals, whether they are rooted in fitness or school or work, as if they are isolated events, somehow disconnected from the totality of our lives.

When everything we do is an opportunity to get better at the game of life itself. My life and my commitment to do what needs to be done even when I don’t want to prepared me for the pandemic, but only because I’ve come to see everything I’ve done and been through as training.

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 fut...

Sympathy has no power. Humor, on the other hand, picks everyone up. It is a huge morale booster. Laughing at yourself and the absurdity of life and your own goofy choices gets the endorphins flowing and the adrenaline pumping.

I’m afraid a lot, but I’ve learned to flip fear by facing whatever it is I’m scared of head-on. When I first started to face my fears, I was tentative as fuck. That’s normal, and the emotions and discomfort I felt were proof of how potent this process can be.

Just as stem cells produce a growth factor that stimulates cellular communication, muscle growth, and wound healing in the body, fear is a seedpod packed with growth factor for the mind.

When you deliberately and consistently confront your fear of heights or particular people, places, and situations that unsettle you, those seeds germinate, and your confidence grows exponentially.

Until that moment, I’d considered 2007 to be my athletic peak. I was thirty-three years old back then and chewed up 100-mile races like Kit Kats, but I was not yet the mental beast I’d become at forty-five years old. My 2007 self was a hard-core savage in his athletic prime. That motherfucker would run through cinder block walls, but he was less flexible and aware, less strategic. I’m not sure my younger self would have even considered running 240 miles five days after having his knee drained.

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. We all must mentally recharge from time to time. Some people like to golf. Others enjoy watching football on Sundays. I go out in the backwoods and crush myself for several days at a time.

I was on the verge of running five hundred miles of ultra races in less than six weeks. That is a monumental output, and the reason I pulled it off is because I am focused on being my best at all times. When you live that way, there is no time to donate to small-town racists or anyone else whose perspective is defined by their narrow minds.

Those who have not learned to self-lead show up to their lives like I did Air Assault School. They don’t prepare or have a plan of attack. They wait, get shotgunned into something—a school, a job, a physical test—then wing the motherfucker.

Think about how much information is out there on the internet. Any place you want to build your skills, from boot camp to Harvard Business School, from EMT certification to an engineering degree, is described online in granular detail. You can study the prerequisites and start on the coursework before you are even admitted.

You can prepare as if you are already there so when the time comes and you do land that opportunity, you are ready to smash it. That’s what a self-leader does, no matter how busy their lives are. Not because they are obsessed with bein...

it was not just possible to dig deeper but mandatory if you are striving to be your best self. When I eclipsed his time, I realized I was no longer chasing Captain Connolly. From then on, every school, course, race, or record I took on became an arena for my own self-development.

When you live like that, you are usually far beyond the influence of parents, teachers, coaches, or other traditional mentors and their philosophies. In order to stay humble, you’ll need to make sure you are living up to your own code.

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.

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.

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.

Just as words can be redefined, never doubt that we can redefine ourselves. It can feel impossible at times because we live in a world filled with arbitrary boundaries and fixed social lines that are as thick as the walls around a fortress.

Worse, we allow those walls to limit us in too many ways. The brainwashing starts early, and it starts at home. The people we grow up with and the environments we grow up in define who we think we are and what we think life is all about. When you’re young, you can only know what you see, and if all you are ever exposed to are lazy people, content with mediocrity or who convince you of your own worthlessness, greatness will remain a fantasy.

Should we really be surprised that almost everybody has a knack for twisting their story to work against themselves? I hear it all the time. Privileged kids say, “I have too much, so I cannot develop the skills that you have.” The kid that came from nothing will tell me, “I don’t have enough. Therefore, I cannot develop the skills that you have.” No matter where someone is in life, they never fail to confess why they can’t get where they need to go.

There are no prerequisites to becoming great. You could be raised by a pack of wolves. You could be homeless and illiterate at thirty years old and graduate from Harvard at forty.

it all starts with a commitment to looking beyond your known world. Beyond your street, town, state, or nationality. Beyond culture and identity. Only then can true self-exploration begin.

The smooth road to success is of no use to savages like me. That may sound ideal, but it won’t test us. It doesn’t demand belief, so it will never make us great. We all build belief in different ways. I clock countless hours in the gym, where I log thousands of reps and run and ride my bike obscene distances, to cultivate belief.

Despite what you may think, I don’t consider myself an ultra-athlete because those races are not who I am. They are tools. Each one provides me a stockpile of faith so when I get stuck in the maze of life like a broke-down savage, I still believe I am capable of achieving my unreasonable goals,

When I set an unreasonable goal and fall short, I don’t even look at it as failure anymore. It is simply my first, second, third, or tenth attempt.

That is what belief does for you. It takes failure out of the equation completely because you go in knowing the process will be long and arduous, and that is what the fuck we do.

All I can say is that I hope you and everyone else get to feel this one day because to overcome all obstacles and bump up against the outer reaches of your capabilities is the pinnacle.