David Goggins is one hell of a character. He has achieved so many feats with discipline, consistency and mental toughness.
He went from a fat and depressed guy to a record-breaking ultra-marathon runner, Navy SEAL, and much more.
This is the summary of the masterpiece Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins which explores how he transformed his life.
Can’t Hurt Me: Book Summary
- You’re in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.
- You’re not a victim. Your life is 100% in your hands. Ditch the victim mentality. Own your life and every part of your life.
- Repeat things you want to do and things you want to accomplish. Repeating will create a callous around your mind.
- The mission of life is to have a better and greater impact on the world.
- There are many things that you know are true, but are false actually. Just because you believe something doesn’t mean it is true.
- People are addicted to comfort roaming around the streets like dead-eyed zombies. They are not aware of their potential.
- The comfort kills you again and again and again till you no longer are able to stand up.
Self-limiting beliefs
We all make habitual and self-limiting choices. It’s easy to make the same comfortable choices that are killing you. We have wired our brains that way. No motivational video or quick self-help fix will help you uplift your life.
Some people will want to set in limit on you by showing science and previous achievements. But remember:
There’s something to be said for living it instead of studying it.
It requires a lot of heart, will, and an armored mind to do things people call impossible. You have to walk on the path of self-mastery. Hold yourself accountable, push past pain, learn to love what you fear, live to your fullest potential, and find out who you really are.
If you are driven towards your goal, anything in front of you will become fuel for metamorphosis. If not, you will use it as an excuse.
When you take the path of least resistance, you create another problem instead of solving it.
Practice 1: Acknowledge the abuses, bullies, and insecurities and write it down in your journal and share it publicly. It might be hard but it will empower you to overcome
Be real with yourself
It’s possible to transcend anything that doesn’t kill you.
Now is the time to be real with yourself. Don’t try to sugarcoat. Hold yourself accountable. No one is coming to save you. Not your father, mother, brother, or anyone else. You are only up to you.
The only way you can change is by being raw and real with yourself. If you don’t know anything and haven’t taken life seriously, tell yourself so. Tell yourself that you need to get your ass to work because you’re falling behind in life.
Tell truth to yourself. Even if it hurts. Is it better to feel better for some time and stay the same or to feel bad for some time and change?
Tell yourself the truth! That you’ve wasted enough time, and that you have other dreams that will take courage to realize, so you don’t die a fucking pussy.
We avoid what we need to hear most. But not anymore.
There’s nothing in the world that’s stopping you from excelling in life. You are stopping yourself.
It’s okay to be cruel to yourself as long as you realize you’re doing it to become better.
Being soft is not gonna work. You need to have thick skin if you want to improve your life.
Find your own table and eat alone. Crave discomfort everywhere you go.
Face uncomfortable experiences and those will make you tough. And being tough and resilient will help you meet your goals.
If you live with a purpose, it will change everything.
Don’t be motivated, be driven
If you want to grow, you will have to push yourself to the edge of mortality. You have to accept the possibility that you might die because you will not quit this time.
In your training, you have a choice to choose between the physical suffering of the moment or the mental anguish of wondering if that last rep or minute or mile would end up costing an opportunity of a lifetime.
Its not about who you were, Its about who you want to be.
If you want a calloused mind, you have to step out of your comfort zone on a regular basis. You have to do things that you don’t like to do, things that make you uncomfortable, things that are good for you but scare you.
You don’t want to move your life instantly, you move it bit by bit by making the changes sustainable.
No matter how strong you are physically, if you are not mentally tough, you are not even close.
Doing things even in small ways that make you uncomfortable will make you stronger. It’s not about suffering, it’s about finding out whether you have what it takes to get something. Life is a mind game.
It’s not about what you want to do right now. It’s how you want to be remembered when you’re gone.
Hardships, failures, and disappointments make you stronger. Negative experiences help yo callous the mind.
When you are in pain, you can choose two options flight or fight. If you can manage those moments of pain by remembering what you have gone through to reach here, you will be in a better position to choose fight over flight. You can either choose to be in the pilot’s seat or in the backseat.
Physical challenges help you callous your mind. To create a bulletproof mindset, you will have to go through the source of all your fears and insecurities.
ACTION: Imagine visualizing things that you can do instead of focusing on bullshit that you can’t change
Visualization is powerful. It prepares you for the journey. Strategic visualization makes you as prepared as you possibly can be. Research is one part of the preparation, visualization is another. You must recognize what you are about to do, highlight what you do not like about it, and spend time visualizing each and every obstacle you can.
The cookie jar experiment
Every big victory starts with a small one. There are times when you overcome the odds and taste success. Small victories are your cookies to savor. You use your past successes to fuel new and bigger ones.
Pick up your journal and write down your achievement list, and all the obstacles that you have overcome. Set ambitious goals and let your past successes fuel your ambitions.
Whenever pain hits, the brain tries to convince you to stop, pull out your cookie jar and let it fuel you.
The cookie jar is your shortcut to taking control of your own thought process.
Digging into the cookie jar is not easy though. It requires focus and determination. When you are in pain, your brain will not want to go there. It wants to stop you so it can stop the pain.
War with Yourself
It’s extremely difficult to maintain discipline when you are suffering. But know that staying in the fight is always the hardest and the most rewarding.
If you want to defy the trends of the soft society, you’ll have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a new identity. It takes a lot of power to push yourself when you are all alone.
Our minds are the most powerful weapons. We have stopped using them. Even when we think, we have used 100% of our abilities, most of us have given only 40% of our potential. We still have 60% more to give. Get to the point where you are so tired and in pain that your mind is begging you to stop. Then push just 5-10% further.
Our culture is accustomed to quick fixes, life hacks, and efficiency. Everyone wants maximum results with minimum effort. But this will not lead to self-mastery or a calloused mind. If you want to master the mind, you have to become addicted to hard work.
Passion and obsession are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.
Settling for less is satisfactory but it is another word for mediocrity.
I don’t have time
I don’t have time is a bullshit excuse. What you need are priorities. Blocking your day into windows of time will let you know how much flexibility you have.
Analyze your schedule. Kill bad habits, burn bullshits and see what remains.
Use smartphone for productivity hacks, not clickbait. Turn on your calendar alerts. Have the alarms set? Compartmentalize your day.
Don’t multi-task. Build an optimal schedule. Utilize your time. Make sure your breaks are open-ended.
Make a list of things that you can fix. Be brutally honest and write them out. Study them. Put them out on the calendar and attempt as soon as possible.
Don’t allow setbacks to shatter your focus. Always be ready to adjust, recalibrate, and stay after it to become better, somehow.
You won’t get anywhere with the victim’s mentality. It just fucks up the situation even worse.
Friends & family
People who care about us don’t want us to get hurt. They want us to be safe, comfortable, and happy. All around us are people who would rather treat the pain of our wounds and prevent a further injury than help us callous over them and try again. Instead, we need people around us who will tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear.
Life is Suffering
To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss. The Buddha said that life is suffering. You know that. But most of us are programmed to seek comfort to numb out all suffering and pain.
We try to avoid things we hate. We involve in tasks that make us soft. We live a life defined by limits.
The external voices don’t break you. It’s what you tell yourself, that will break you or make you.
