Book Byte #51 "Can't Hurt Me" by David Goggins

Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

📣 Curious Quotes from the Author

“Everything in life is a mind game! Whenever we get swept under by life’s dramas, large and small, we are forgetting that no matter how bad the pain gets, no matter how harrowing the torture, all bad things end.”

“If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.”

“The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated. That’s why I loved PT in BUD/S and why I still love it today. Physical challenges strengthen my mind so I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, and it will do the same for you.”

“By the time I graduated, I knew that the confidence I’d managed to develop didn’t come from a perfect family or God-given talent. It came from personal accountability which brought me self respect, and self respect will always light a way forward.”

“You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.”

“Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.”

“It won’t always go your way, so you can’t get trapped in this idea that just because you’ve imagined a possibility for yourself that you somehow deserve it. Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Take aim on what you are willing to earn!”

“In the military we always say we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training,”

“No one is going to come help you. No one's coming to save you.”

“It's a lot more than mind over matter. It takes relentless self discipline to schedule suffering into your day, every day.”

“I thought I’d solved a problem when really I was creating new ones by taking the path of least resistance.”

“We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse.”

“The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.”

“Be more than motivated, be more than driven, become literally obsessed to the point where people think you're f-ing nuts.”

“Denial is the ultimate comfort zone.”

“We live in a world with a lot of insecure, jealous people. Some of them are our best friends. They are blood relatives. Failure terrifies them. So does our success. Because when we transcend what we once thought possible, push our limits, and become more, our light reflects off all the walls they’ve built up around them. Your light enables them to see the contours of their own prison, their own self-limitations. But if they are truly the great people you always believed them to be, their jealousy will evolve, and soon their imagination might hop its fence, and it will be their turn to change for the better.”

“I don't stop when I'm tired. I stop when I'm done”

“The Buddha famously said that life is suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but I know what he meant and so do you. To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss.”

📚 Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea:

David Goggins endured a harsh, traumatic, and destitute background and emerged with the desire to join the army. After overcoming his swimming challenges and reducing a significant amount of weight, he became a superfit Navy SEAL and successful ultramarathon runner. Emulating his achievement is possible; all it takes is an exceptional amount of hard effort and getting up early in the morning.

Go beyond the 40 percent guideline. Goggins developed the 40 Percent Rule because we usually give up and go home after exerting only 40 percent of our potential effort.

Why? Well, there's a portion of our mind that wants to protect us from pain and adversity, so it mislead us into thinking we've given everything we've got when we actually have 60% left in the tank! To master our brains, we must endure discomfort and disregard the voice in our heads so that we can always offer our all.

🛠️Fixing the Tech Industry

Complacency is the villain of all Progress. David talks about how he joined the army and then eventually left and began a dead-end job doing pest control. He lost a lot of himself after leaving the army and consoled himself with food. He quickly grew to over 300 pounds.

One day, after he couldn’t take the depression anymore, he saw a commercial about becoming a Navy seal. It lit a fire under him, and he decided he was going to train to join them, but had to lose 100 lbs in 3 months to be eligible. He went on to accomplish his goal, through sheer force of will.

What we can learn from him is that “mind is always over matter”. If you can get your mind to fixate on something, you can block out most resistance and accomplish whatever you want to accomplish. However, if you fall to complacency, if that’s your default mode, you will cease to grow, and all that hard work can be easily erased as you give in to your bad habits.

🤝Collaborate with others with this Social Media Prompt:

What is one big goal outside your comfort zone that you still want to hit by the end of the year? How can you come up with a plan to achieve it?