🙅♀️#28: Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins - Book Summary & Key Takeaways
How can we harden our minds? How can we use the terrible things that have happened to us as fuel? What strategies are available to us?
Hello courageous people! 👋 Welcome to Edition 28.
Now I said last week that we were going to do The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, buuut I changed my mind and it will be coming out next week instead!
This week, we are actually reading 📚 Can’t Hurt Me 🖋 by David Goggins.
I thought this would be a great follow up to last week’s newsletter on Atomic Habits, though it has an extremely different vibe. Can’t Hurt Me is harsh, militant and no bullshit—but with everything he’s been through, David has the authority to be able to be that type of voice.
We all need some tough love at times, and this provides exactly that. I’m really excited to share this one with you!
So let’s jump in! All text in italics are quotes taken directly from the book.
🙋♂️ Why does David Goggins have the authority to speak about mastering your mind and defying the odds?
Well … how long have you got? Unfortunately he had an extremely tough upbringing.
His father was violent, beating him, his brother and his mother to within an inch of their lives at different points. A loaded gun was kept under a six year old David’s pillow by his father. When he was going to school one day on the bus, a little boy was run over right underneath the window where David was sitting in what sounded like an extremely gory and brutal scene. David dealt with racism and “otherness” throughout his entire life. He struggled at school.
Eventually, he found himself all grown up working night shifts setting rat traps with his only solace being chocolate milkshakes and donuts. He numbed and ate his way to 300 pounds. (David’s journey with his eating habits and his weight features heavily throughout the book.)
“Darkness was a friend indeed. I worked in the dark, hid my true self from friends and strangers. Nobody would have believed how numb and afraid I was back then because I looked like a beast that no one would dare fuck with, but my mind wasn’t right, and my soul was weighed down by too much trauma and failure. I had every excuse in the world to be a loser, and used them all. My life was crumbling.” - page 86
But through everything he faced, he eventually figured out how to turn it all around:
“… the story you are about to read, the story of my fucked-up life, will illuminate a proven path to self-mastery and empower you to face reality, hold yourself accountable, push past pain, learn to love what you fear, relish failure, live to your fullest potential, and find out who you really are.
Human beings change through study, habit, and stories. Through my story you will learn what the body and mind are capable of when they’re driven to maximum capacity, and how to get there. Because when you’re driven, whatever is in front of you, whether it’s racism, sexism, injuries, divorce, depression, obesity, tragedy, or poverty, becomes fuel for your metamorphosis.” - page 13
(Sidenote: He also then says “It’s time to go to war with yourself.” Now I don’t really looooove the hard arse, military approach but it definitely works for some people - so if that’s you, this could be a phenomenal book to pick up and read in full. And if not, there’s still a lot of wisdom here to learn from while separating the harshness from it!)
🚀 What did David do to change his trajectory and path?
One morning, after a night spent setting rat traps in filthy restaurants he had gone over to his mother’s house for his “usual”. This consisted of a breakfast of eight cinnamon rolls, six eggs, a load of bacon and two bowls of sugary cereal. He says,
“Food was my drug of choice and I always sucked up every last crumb.” - page 86
A tv show came on that featuring Hell Week during Navy SEAL training. Those guys were in pain, sweating, bruised and chafed, doing the most unimaginable physical and mental tasks.
And then David realised something:
“I was jealous of them.” - page 87
🤯 🤯 🤯
Crazy, right?!
That moment changed everything. He decided he wanted to become a Navy SEAL and he was about to be in for the challenge of his life.
🧐 Did everything really change in that one moment?
No.
And yes.
But mostly no.
This is where I feel like we can really run into problems when we read books or watch movies that feature these kinds of moments, because it makes it look like everything changed in that one instance.
We look at these people from the outside and it can look like they never struggled again.
But David evades this risk, as he dedicates the entire rest of the book to stepping us through every single way he engineered, and moulded, and developed his mindset over the many years that followed that moment. It was just the very first small step of the journey.
Most chapters are set out with a particular focus and a challenge for us at the end, and for the rest of this edition we will double down on the most critical of these. (Again, I’m here resisting the urge and temptation to rewrite the entire book for you here!!! 🤪)
🃏 Challenge 1: What’s Your Bad Hand?
If we are going to overcome the difficult things that have happened to us in our lives and reclaim power and control, we have to acknowledge everything that has affected us. We have to face our demons to figure out what is limiting our growth and success.
“My bad cards arrived early and stuck around a while, but everyone gets challenged in life at some point. What is your bad hand? What kind of bullshit are you dealing with? Are you getting beaten? Abused? Bullied? Do you ever feel insecure? Maybe your limiting factor is that you are growing up so supported and comfortable, you never push yourself?” - page 44
David encourages us to write it out. In detail. 😬
“Don’t be bland with this assignment. I showed you every piece of my dirty laundry. If you were hurt or are still in harm’s way, tell the story in full. Give your pain shape. Absorb its power, because you are about to flip that shit.
You will use your story, this list of excuses, these very good reasons why you shouldn’t amount to a damn thing, to fuel your ultimate success. Sounds fun right? Yeah, it won’t be. But don’t worry about that yet. We’ll get there. For now, just take inventory.” - page 44
Now, he doesn’t really flag any caution to be used or advise us to do this exercise with the support of a therapist so I want to throw it in here quickly - when delving into these types of events in our lives make sure you look after yourself and with the right amount of professional support for you and your needs!
🪞 Challenge 2: Accountability Mirror
Most of us look in the mirror every morning and every night, but now we get to use it for something more than just checking our appearance.
It becomes a place for true reflection.
David tells us to make our new goals and habits literally front and centre by putting them on post it notes on our mirrors, and holding ourselves accountable every single day. They can take any and all forms:
“Whether it’s a career goal (quit my job, start a business), a lifestyle goal (lose weight, get more active), or an athletic one (run my first 5K, 10K, or marathon), you need to be truthful with yourself about where you are and the necessary steps it will take to achieve those goals, day by day. Each step, each necessary point of self-improvement, should be written as its own note. That means you have to do some research and break it all down.” - page 73
(One extra note I would put in here after last week’s book Atomic Habits by James Clear is a reminder that “we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the levels of our systems” - and using very achievable, actionable steps in order to make progress.)
💪 Challenge 3 - Path of Most Resistance
After deciding he was going to try to become a Navy SEAL and calling a bunch of recruiters (almost all of them who laughed him out of the room) he finally found one who took him seriously and saw the potential in him. But there was a big catch - he would have to lose 106 pounds in two months.
Yikes.
Following this realisation, David shares with us the first morning he decided to take the path of most resistance, and started changing his life one small step at a time:
“I started my truck, stopped for a chocolate shake—my comfort tea at that time—and drove home. It was still dark when I pulled up. I didn’t care. I stripped off my work clothes, put on some sweats and laced up my running shoes. I hadn’t run in over a year, but I hit the streets ready to go four miles.
I lasted 400 yards. My heart raced. I was so dizzy I had to sit down on the edge of the golf course to catch my breath before making the slow walk back to my house, where my melted shake was waiting to comfort me in yet another failure. I grabbed it, slurped, and slumped into my sofa. My eyes welled with tears.
Who the fuck did I think I was?” - page 91-92
I think most of us can relate to this moment in some way, shape or form. The trick is, how do we keep going afterwards?
“The first step on the journey toward a calloused mind is stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis. Dig out your journal again and write down all the things you don’t like to do or that make you uncomfortable. Especially those things you know are good for you.
Now go do one of them, and do it again.” - page 102
The moral of this chapter really is that there isn’t an easy, comfortable answer to every problem. At a certain point we have to just do the thing we don’t want to do for the sake of achieving the greater goal.
David turned up to run again, and the second time he lasted for a whole mile.
Little did he know that one day, through his continued showing up he would become a world record holding ultra marathon runner.
🧘♀️ Challenge 5 - Armored Mind
“Choose any obstacle in your way, or set a new goal, and visualize overcoming or achieving it. Before I engage in any challenging activity, I start by painting a picture of what my success looks and feels like. I’ll think about it every day and that feeling propels me forward when I’m training, competing, or taking on any task I choose.” - page 162
David succeeded in losing that 106 pounds in an arduous two months. He also succeeded in getting accepted into Navy SEAL training and going through not one, not two, but three Hell Weeks - which is exactly what it sounds like.
By fortifying his mind using these strategies he fought his way through extreme physical challenges, at one point even willing himself to continue whilst having a fractured kneecap. (The book is full of similar painful stories if you are a sucker for punishment and want more!)
Our brains are such incredible weapons if we can learn to use them to our advantage - and visualisation is one of those things we can tap into.
🗓 Challenge 8 - Schedule it in
Similarly to how we took stock of the things that have happened to us in our lives in Challenge 1, comes a similar challenge with number 8.
Goggins asks us to document how we spend our time for a week. And he means everything. From how much time we spend scrolling, to what we get done at work, to meal times, to sleeping, to commuting and everything in between.
Why? Because then we can see as a true baseline what time we really have to work with and where we are losing out.
It is a harsh wakeup call to realise just how many hours we are actually wasting.
After finding the baseline, use the second week to build out an optimal schedule and he says to use Week 3 to execute on it.
(I don’t think James Clear would agree with this timeline of insanity to overhaul your ENTIRE life, but I do think there is a sound suggestion here when taken with more moderation.)
For example, here’s what David did with some of the spare time he found:
But you are free to choose to do whatever you like with yours! 😉
✨ The Other Challenges
In case you were wondering, here are the other challenges outlined:
Challenge 4: Taking Souls - meaning, to outperform and impress anyone who might be in a position of power or standing in your way of progress.
Challenge 6: Cookie Jar - recording your wins and successes to draw on when you need them in future.
Challenge 7: The 40 Percent Rule - much of the time we are only performing at forty percent of our capacity. If we slowly train ourselves to do slightly more, then slightly more again we can really extend our own boundaries and capabilities.
Challenge 9: Uncommon Against Uncommon - surround yourself with other people who are striving for uncommon things.
Challenge 10: Empowerment of Failure - think about a time that you failed, and then record what positive things actually came out of that “failure”.
So there we have it - Can’t Hurt Me - an epic, hardcore, inspirational, practical story for us all with some real world strategies to implement.
It is certainly a different flavour than every other book I have read, and for that alone I think it has a lot of merit as we all need different things in different phases.
I hope you gained something from this, and as always happy to answer any questions and I adore hearing from you if something hit home!
Until next week my friends,
Eleanor ❤️🙏
🧠 Resources & Links
🤝 Human Rights list of Mental Health Support Services
📸 Follow David Goggins on Instagram - 5 million followers
🐥 Follow David Goggins on Twitter - 579k followers
📕 Next week’s book
Coming out next Friday 12th August 2022 is #29 (for real this time 😉):
📚 The Salt Path
🖋 by Raynor Winn
The Salt Path was on the Sunday Times Bestseller list for 85 weeks and has sold over 1 million copies.
“… an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.”