Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within

by David Goggins

Their internal dialogue becomes that much more toxic, as this population of weak, entitled victims of life itself multiplies.

All over the world, hundreds of millions of people choose to live that way. But there is another way of thinking and another way of being.

It’s about constant effort, learning, and adaptation, which demands unwavering discipline and belief.

This is boot camp for your brain.

I was a quitter, a liar, fat and lazy, and I was deeply depressed.

It ain’t your 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?

I hadn’t become an evil sociopath, but like him, I never took responsibility for my own shortcomings or my failures.

Unless I took responsibility for my demons, the ones he put on me, I had no shot at becoming anything other than a perpetual loser or another miserable hustler like him.

Then there are those seedlings that look for the light on their own.

Tragedy hunts us all, and any event that causes suffering will linger longer than it should if you let it.

Understand, the clock is always ticking, and at some point, your golden hour will expire unless you take action.

I’m not suggesting we act like robots, but we need to understand that forward motion gives our lives momentum.

For survivors of trauma, denial is a tantalizing numbing agent.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that the guy who grew up with nothing but green lights couldn’t relate to a life stifled by red lights, potholes, and stop signs, but he was the industry expert and didn’t see my story as accessible.

Nothing is permanent. Life is the ultimate competitor.

I’ve always been a man of action and service, and I know I would not be able to inspire people by simply talking about the things I did in my past.

Most people don’t even want to think about their darkest moments, much less talk about it.

Believe me, there’s gold in them there hills.

But there’s not nearly as much fuel in atta’ boys and accolades as there is in hate.

Just know that the heat you feel is free energy waiting to be burned.

Honestly, I should thank them. They make me stronger and more determined to achieve my goals. Which only makes them hate me even more.

Goggins was powered by the dark side of my soul that refused to be denied, and he had one goal: to become the hardest person to ever live!

I signed up for 100-mile runs like they were forty-five-minute spin or HIIT classes.

They bring their trainers, and every move they make is about rediscovering their primal nature and that hunger that made them hard and turned them into champions.

When you are a full-time savage, it’s a lifestyle.

Mental toughness and resilience fade if they aren’t used consistently.

To me, it’s about achieving mental and physical greatness.

But praise—whether it comes from your supervisors, your family, or anyone else—has a downside. It can soothe the inner savage and keep you from feeling the need to grind.

The world needs doctors, lawyers, and teachers, but we also need savages to prove that we are all capable of so much more.

I was done showing weakness. I was finished with fear. I would stay in that water as long as it took!

Everything in life comes down to how we handle those crucial seconds.

Life, like Hell Week, is built on seconds that you must win, repeatedly.

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.

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!

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

See, I don’t have any respect for people who live this luxe life 24/7.

Agreed. As Teddy Roosevelt said, we must live the strenuous life!

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’d never tapered before any of my events back in the day, which meant I never once showed up to the start line with loose, rested legs.

A prepared mind craves the worst conditions because it knows that pressure brings out its best and exposes almost everyone else.

People who’ve spent time on high country trails know the heartbreak of a false summit.

In life, there are plenty of false summits.

There is great beauty when you are involved in something that is so hard most people want it to end.

The hard chargers keep their heads down and hammer away. They have trained their minds to stay hard in those hard moments.

We all have that ferocity—that dog—inside us.

There are no days off, and there is no downtime when you are obsessed with being great. That is what it takes to be the best ever at what you do.

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.

Anger will snap you out of the spell you’re in until you are no longer willing to remain confined in your mental prison.

Sgt. Jack was squared away, and he got there with a self-reliance on detail and discipline.

For all the racists I met in Brazil, nobody called me “nigger” more than sweet grandma Morna, which only heightened the feeling that I was their personal slave.

Our generation is training kids to become full-fledged members of Entitlement Nation, which ultimately makes them easy prey for the lions among us.