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Writer's pictureAnderson Petergeorge

Can't Hurt Me - David Goggins


Overview


David Goggin's biography and story around overcoming his childhood struggles through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes.


Notes

  • Callous your Mind by Making Uncomfortable Choices: Chase pain in one domain, and learn to see through it, to be able to conquer pain elsewhere in life.

  • Quote" We all have a voice in our head that is trying to direct us to a place where we can be better. We also have another voice in our head that says "ah, fuck that, let's not do that. So whatever that voice was saying that sucked, that made me very uncomfortable — I started realising that that's the only voice I can listen to. The other voice was a voice of comfort, and I had to stop listening to that voice because it took me on the path of least resistance."

  • All you need to do just one second more than others and that will give me more momentum to accelerate and thrive

    • Goggins lifting the boat and celebrating even after everyone else was tired

  • Remembering what you’ve been through before and how you got passed it can help you get through current tough situations you are going through now

  • The idea of the calloused mind. Just like your hands you can callous your mind and be able to deal with more and handle for more

  • Armored mind - develop a mindset where you are bothered by not accomplishing thing eg. If you don’t do that run the rest of the day you are mad and bothered that you didn’t do that

  • You can’t multi task focus on one thing and try to get it done

  • Look into 40% rule - is a term used to explain that when your mind and body are starting to tire and you feel like giving up, you’re only at 40 percent of what you are truly capable of achieving. The reason why this happens is because your brain instinctively sets up boundaries and barriers to protect you from uncomfortable and harmful situations, whether this is by making you physically exhausted or pushing limiting beliefs to the front of your head.

    • This is scientifically proven, they had athletes go to what they believed was muscle failure in a research experiment only to find the muscles were around 40% fatigued and it was the mind that was creating this further sense of fatigue to protect the body giving us buffer to further push ourselves

  • Audit your schedule to figure out where you are wasting time. Where are you wasting your time (e.g time on social media)

  • Learn to develop habits. People are hiring accountability coaches now to help with this

  • Always focus on your weaknesses. Do you have low flexibility? Go fully into yoga

  • Remember to use people around you to fuel you and not to compete against that.

    • David getting more energy seeing a fellow soldier training on a run vs running solo

  • Live your life assuming God has written your chart on what your full potential and when you go to heaven you need to be faced with this chart. God will ask what did you do with the opportunities I presented to you and those who have not hit their potential are living in their own hell knowing they could have become more if they tried

  • Quote "No matter who you are, life will present you similar opportunities where you can prove to be uncommon. There are people in all walks of life who relish those moments, and when I see them I recognize them immediately because they are usually that motherfucker who’s all by himself. It’s the suit who’s still at the office at midnight while everyone else is at the bar, or the badass who hits the gym directly after coming off a forty eight hour op. She’s the wildland firefighter who instead of hitting her bedroll, sharpens her chainsaw after working a fire for twenty four hours. That mentality is there for all of us. Man, woman, straight, gay, black, white, or purple fucking polkadot. All of us can be the person who flies all day and night only to arrive home to a filthy house, and instead of blaming family or room-mates, cleans it up right then because they refuse to ignore duties undone."

  • It’s about thinking of everybody else before yourself and developing your own code of ethics that sets you apart from others. One of those ethics is the drive to turn every negative into a positive, and then when shit starts flying, being prepared to lead from the front.

  • If you were someone you'd look up to, what would you be doing? What different choices would you make?

  • Quote: "Are you an experienced scuba diver? Great, shed your gear, take a deep breath and become a one hundred foot free diver. Are you a badass triathlete? Cool, learn how to rock climb. Are you enjoying a wildly successful career? Wonderful, learn a new language or skill. Get a second degree. Always be willing to embrace ignorance and become the dumb fuck in the classroom again, because that is the only way to expand your body of knowledge and body of work. It’s the only way to expand your mind."

  • Let's say tomorrow nobody knew who you were or what you had achieved. You show up to work, to the gym or to the playing field and have to convince everyone from scratch. What are you going to do? How will you behave

  • Is it a casual interview for fit? Bring an entire presentation and proposal to walk through with them. Did you work on a business model together during the meeting? Even if it went well, put together a real model and email it to the interview later.

  • What's a way in which you can go to a length nobody saw coming and totally shock them with your raw ability?

  • Think about others to help lead and not think of your own pain

  • The more you think about yourself when you're going through hell, the harder hell is going to be. The second you start thinking about everyone else, you're no longer thinking about yourself. You're not trapped in your own thoughts. You're not trapped in yourself.


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