1-Page Summary

In Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins describes his transformation from someone who let his circumstances
control him to someone who proactively seeks greatness by tackling new challenges. He thinks everyone
can work to cultivate a drive for self-improvement in order to overcome obstacles and reach their goals.

Goggins provides ten challenges to help people work efficiently toward their goals.

Challenge 1: Face Your Bad Hand

As you grow up, your life circumstances can affect your growth and development. Though it seems
counterintuitive, acknowledging the difficult circumstances you’ve faced can be a good first step toward
overcoming additional challenges—you can draw strength from your past successes.

An Abusive Father and School Struggles

For Goggins, acknowledging and overcoming his school struggles and his abusive father opened new
doors. Before age 8, Goggins lived with his mother, father, and brother in Buffalo, New York. His father
frequently beat all of the family members. Due to working nights at his father’s roller skating rink, 8-
year-old Goggins fell behind in school.

Eventually, his mother sought help from a friend to get herself and her children to safety, escaping to
live in her hometown of Brazil, Indiana. In Brazil, Goggins faced an unsupportive 3rd-grade teacher. He
developed a stutter and began cheating to pass.

Take Action

To begin confronting the obstacles you currently face, take stock of the circumstances that have shaped
your life, past and present:

1. Start a journal. Paper or digital (on your laptop or phone) are both fine.

2. List all of the difficult things you’ve faced or face in life. Ask yourself the following questions to
jog your memory:

 What difficult circumstances did you face growing up? For example, you might have faced abuse
or felt low self-esteem. Or, did you grow up without major challenges and therefore fail to learn
to push outside your comfort zone?

 What kinds of challenges do you face now? For example, maybe a boss is limiting your progress
at work, or you’re sabotaging yourself in some way from moving forward.

Challenge 2: Set Up Your Accountability Mirror

You may struggle to take actionable steps to reach your goals. In this challenge, break your goals into
smaller steps, regularly work toward them, and keep yourself accountable to achieve success.

As a teen, Goggins continued to struggle with racism, school, and a longing to join the Air Force, but he
didn’t want to use his struggles as excuses. So he devised a way to make his goals more manageable:
writing Post-it notes of goals on his mirror to hold himself accountable for reaching them.

Racism
When Goggins lived in Brazil as a young kid, he’d been unaware of racism. This started to change when
he and his mother later moved back to Brazil from Indianapolis and he faced a slew of harassment,
including being threatened at gunpoint on a rural road. He struggled to understand how people could be
so hateful. He also felt the loneliness of being one of the only black people in town.

Goggins didn’t know how to channel these emotions. He started trying to come up with ways to get a
rise out of the racists around him, wearing unusual clothing, trimming his hair in odd ways, and blaring
music from his car.

School Struggles and Air Force Aspirations

Though Goggins was now in high school, he still relied on cheating to pass school and was reading at the
4th-grade level. He wanted to join the Air Force but didn’t realize he’d need to pass an aptitude test. He
was unable to cheat, and he didn’t pass on his first attempt.

Then, at the end of his junior year, Goggins received a letter that he wouldn’t graduate unless his
attendance record and grades improved during his final year. This moment led him to a self-reckoning in
his bathroom mirror. He felt frustrated with who he saw that day—a kid with few prospects who
wouldn’t be able to make it into the Air Force without getting tough with himself and changing his
behavior. He resolved to reach his goal of getting into the Air Force by improving his reading skills and
studying for the test.

Each night, he wrote his goals for the next day down on Post-it notes and placed them on the mirror, his
“accountability mirror.” Then, he’d make sure he worked toward his goals each day. He’d give himself a
tough talk about the steps he needed to take and why. For example, he’d call himself out for being
stupid and tell himself he needed to study to fix that. He found this method more motivating than being
gentle with himself.

Using his accountability mirror to work toward his goals allowed Goggins to pass the Air Force qualifying
exam and graduate from high school.

Take Action

An “accountability mirror” helps you break your goals and dreams into manageable steps and offers a
visible reminder of what you’re working toward. It’s called an accountability mirror because it helps you
hold yourself accountable for taking the steps necessary to achieve your goals.

Using Post-it notes or paper (rather than digital means), follow these steps:

1. Write down all of your insecurities. Own your insecurities and use them as an opportunity to
improve yourself.

2. Write down all of your goals and dreams. Break them into small, specific steps, written on
separate Post-it notes. Stick all your notes on the mirror. Hold yourself to working on them each
day. The insecurities could inspire your goals, but don’t have to be related.

Challenge 3: Get Used to Discomfort

Developing the mental willpower to do things that you dislike or that make you uncomfortable is
another powerful tool to achieve your goals.
Air Force Stint

Goggins entered the Air Force because he wanted to become a pararescueman: a member of the Air
Force troops that rescue downed pilots. But he faced a large obstacle: training to swim and rescue
people in the water. Goggins had never taken swimming lessons and could only do the most basic of
strokes. He worried so much about failing that it nearly became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Part-way through his swimming training, the Army doctors made Goggins pause his training after
discovering that he had the sickle cell gene. At the time, they thought it could be life-threatening. Then,
they reversed the decision: He could complete his training, but because he had missed some, he’d have
to restart the training or transfer to another team.

The choice provided Goggins the reason to quit that he wanted after weeks of feeling like he wasn’t
good enough to be a pararescueman. He was physically strong but didn’t have the mental willpower to
start over and overcome this obstacle.

After his service, he continued to put on muscle but also fat, reaching 300 pounds. He worked a job in
pest control and felt like he had no prospects.

Training to Become a Navy SEAL

One day, Goggins watched a TV program about the Navy SEALs and decided to apply, but he was told to
get his weight down to below 191 pounds. He also needed to pass the same qualifying test he’d taken to
get into the Air Force, but with a better score.

Goggins had 3 months to study and lose 106 pounds. He started exercising heavily, and if he skimped on
any training, he made himself do the complete workout over again. He forced himself to do the work
even when he didn’t want to. When he started doubting himself or feeling depressed, he realized he
needed to redirect that energy into the exercise. He succeeded in losing the weight and passing the
qualifying test.

Take Action

To push yourself toward your goals, learn to do things that make you uncomfortable. They can be
related to your goals, but don't have to be—building your tolerance for discomfort will prevent it from
holding you back.

Here’s how to practice:

1. Using your journal, write down things that make you uncomfortable or that you dislike doing.
Or, consider writing down things you aren’t doing, but should be.

2. Pick one and try doing it. Then, do it regularly.

3. Encourage yourself to do something every day that you don’t like. Once something gets easier,
make it more challenging.

Challenge 4: Best Your Opponent

When working toward your goals, it’s easy to sabotage your success by doubting yourself. For example,
you might feel intimidated by your opponents—anyone who you think doubts your ability to succeed,
and who makes you doubt yourself. This could be a boss, teacher, or coworker.

Instead, work to harness your feelings around that perceived doubt and use them to apply yourself and
prove your opponent wrong.

Hell Week

Goggins needed to survive grueling training to become a SEAL. During Hell Week, the recruits are broken
into teams and subjected to hours of physically demanding tasks.

Goggins realized that he wanted some tools to help him best his opponents—the officers leading them
in the exercises who wanted them to fail. Toward the end of Hell Week, Goggins’s team was exhausted.
Goggins knew that the men on his team needed to harness their remaining energy to keep going and
exceed their superiors’ expectations, earning their respect. He reminded his team about how the
officers wanted to break them down and encouraged them to find the energy to succeed and not give
them the satisfaction. Goggins calls this “taking souls”—acknowledging your opponents and using your
feelings toward them to fuel your best work, take them by surprise, and earn their respect.

Using these strategies, Goggins and his entire team survived Hell Week, with no one going home.

Take Action

Here’s how to use your feelings about your opponent to your advantage:

1. Identify a challenge or competitive situation you face. For example, maybe you’re struggling to
excel at work or get a good grade in math class.

2. Identify the opponent you face in that situation. Maybe you’re struggling at work because your
boss insists on micromanaging your every move, or maybe you feel like your math teacher
doesn’t believe in you.

3. Choose a project or other task you can do to showcase your skills. It could be creating a stellar
proposal for work or getting a perfect score on an exam.

4. Take the negative energy you have toward the obstacle or opponent and channel it to excel in
your project. If you need to improve your skills to succeed, you might need to do things like
studying more or working out outside of practice. Your ultimate goal is to amaze your opponent
and earn their respect by vastly exceeding their expectations.

Challenge 5: Visualize Success

Learning to visualize the obstacles in your way and how achieving your goal will feel helps you keep
going and address obstacles as they arise.

Hitting the Ground Running

After spending some time at home to recover from a knee injury, Goggins developed stress fractures in
his shins and had 6 months to go before completing SEAL training. When he’d start to doubt himself,
he’d give himself talks of encouragement—saying that the only guaranteed way to fail is to quit, and
championing his personal strength for pushing through on broken shins. He also visualized how
accomplished he’d feel when he completed training.

After he graduated training, he felt motivated to continue defying the odds completing the world’s
toughest challenges.

Take Action

Practice visualizing your obstacles and successes with these two steps:

1. Visualize a challenge or obstacle you need to overcome. Think about what it will look like and
feel like when you do.

2. Anticipate difficulty. Think about the obstacles you may face ahead of time and develop a plan
to address them.

Challenge 6: Stock Your Cookie Jar

Another strategy to keep yourself working toward your goals even when you face obstacles is reminding
yourself of your previous accomplishments. Goggins calls this collection of accomplishments your Cookie
Jar.

San Diego One Day

While Goggins worked for the navy, he decided to raise money for the families of fallen soldiers by
participating in ultra racing—running races longer than a marathon. He wanted to compete in the
Badwater 135, a 135-mile race in California from the floor of Death Valley to the pinnacle of Mount
Whitney.

To do so, he needed to compete in other ultramarathons first. He decided to compete in the San Diego
One Day, but he was ill-prepared—in the previous 6 months, he had focused primarily on strength
training and hadn’t run more than a mile at a time. By mile 70, he couldn’t go further.

After getting some assistance from his support team, he realized he could draw on another strategy to
prevent him from quitting—his mental cache of past victories, or Cookie Jar. Thinking about his past
victories and recognizing his toughness gave Goggins strength to finish the race.

Take Action

Here’s how to build your own cookie jar:

1. Use your journal to write down your major life victories. Examples include exceeding a sales
goal, running a half marathon, or convincing the city council to fund homelessness services.

2. Write down all of the obstacles you’ve overcome, too. Examples include managing obsessive
compulsive disorder, stopping smoking, or improving your relationship with your parents.

3. As you work toward your goals, draw on this list to help you when you want to quit.

Challenge 7: Dismantle Your Governor

Cars have an internal regulator, or governor, that limits how fast they can go. Humans are the same way
—our mental governor gives us feedback, telling us if we’re in pain or feeling insecure. Many people
listen too readily and stop doing a task when they’ve applied only 40 percent of their effort, leaving 60
percent on the table. Pushing past the governor means pushing through pain, insecurities, and other
things that make us want to quit before we’ve given our full effort.

The Hurt 100

Goggins learned how to manage his Governor as he competed in additional ultra races to qualify for the
Badwater 135.

Despite Goggins’s physical preparation for a race called the Hurt 100, the course was still extremely
demanding. He encountered three main challenges:

 His Camelbak, a water reservoir he could wear running, broke just 6 miles into the race.

 He wasn’t used to running on trails. Trails have more obstacles than a typical asphalt road,
including rocks, tree roots, and mud.

 He was dealing with pain in his legs.

Goggins realized that he could convince himself to keep going by dividing the remainder of the race into
chunks. He’d say things like, “I just want to get to the top of that hill, then I can quit.” But instead of
wanting to quit, doing that inspired him to keep going.

Finding motivation to persist helped him dismantle his governor. By showing himself that he could keep
going even when he didn’t want to, he adjusted his expectations of how far he could push himself.

He was able to finish the race, and later that same day, submitted his application for Badwater 135. The
director told him he was accepted a few days later.

Badwater 135

Though he was arguably more prepared for this race than any he’d done before, Goggins still faced
difficulty and wanted to quit. He became severely dehydrated about 7.5 hours in. To get through this, he
worked to drink more water than he wanted, getting around his governor. (Shortform note: Sometimes,
the thought of drinking a lot of water can be nauseating to a severely dehydrated person.) Ultimately,
he came in fifth place.

Take Action

To learn to push past your natural stopping point, try these steps:

1. Go as far as you naturally feel you can. For example, maybe you can run for 15 minutes.

2. Once you think you’re at your max, coax yourself to go a bit further. Assess if you actually have
energy to go further and talk to yourself about your specific next steps. For example, if you’ve
already run 15 minutes and desperately want to stop, try to go another 2 minutes.

Challenge 8: Compartmentalize Your Time

People often think they need to have special talents to succeed in life. However, you often won’t be
naturally talented at something. Instead, you need to schedule time every day to practice and hone your
skills.

For example, the number one excuse people have for not exercising is that they don’t have enough
time. But most people waste 4-5 hours a day doing things like watching shows or looking at social
media. Compartmentalizing your time helps you make time for the activities that matter to you.

Becoming a Recruiter

Shortly after completing a long-distance triathlon, a Navy admiral reached out to Goggins. He wanted
Goggins to recruit people of color for operations against the Taliban in northern Africa.

Balancing Recruitment With Life

To recruit more people of color, Goggins traveled to colleges and high schools across the country to
speak. He learned to use himself as a prop to get students interested in his message. He’d run 50 miles
to his speaking engagement and show up sweaty, or spend the first five minutes of his speech doing
push-ups. He recognized that most people wouldn’t be interested in becoming a SEAL, so he worked to
appeal to a broader swath of people, encouraging them to live to their fullest potential.

Goggins learned to compartmentalize his time to have time for work and athletics. For example, when
he wasn’t traveling, he’d fit physical training into his daily schedule by running or biking to work. This
allowed him to exercise and work 50 hours per week.

Take Action

Do this challenge over 3 weeks:

1. In the first week, make detailed notes about how you spend each 15-30 minute chunk of your
day. Note things like how much time you spend on your lunch break, how long your commute is,
and whether you’re working without interruption or trying to multitask. Notice when you spend
time that could be put toward working on your goals instead.

2. For the second week, schedule out your time. Decide what you’re going to do with each fifteen-
to thirty-minute chunk of time in your day. This includes exercise and rest. Some activities will
require multiple chunks of time. Just make sure you’re not trying to squeeze multiple tasks into
the same chunk—focus on one activity at a time. Continue taking notes about how you spend
your time.

3. For the third week, refine your schedule further based on your experience in the first two
weeks. Ideally, you’ve arrived at a schedule that provides the maximum amount of time to do
your important activities.

Challenges 9 and 10: Learn From Failure and Seek Greatness

Sometimes, we’re so scared of failing that we stop ourselves from even trying something. To avoid this,
frame your failure as an opportunity to learn something so it feels less risky. Then, if you fail, you can
evaluate the failure and refine your approach to reach your goal.
Once you’ve met your goal, push yourself to go above and beyond rather than settling to continuously
improve yourself and achieve greatness that distinguishes you from others.

Breaking the Pull-Up Record

Goggins wasn’t content to be known just for his Navy career and ultra races. He realized that he did a lot
of pull-ups as part of his regular training and wondered if he could break the world record for pull-ups in
24 hours.

It took him three tries to break the record. After each attempt, he evaluated what worked well and what
needed improvement. He opted for a more private venue, a sturdier pull-up bar, and other fixes to diet
and equipment to help him reach his goal.

Take Action

Learn to reflect on your failure with these steps:

1. Think of a recent failure.

2. Using a journal–on paper this time, if it isn’t already—ask the following questions to help you
evaluate the failure:

o What did you do well as you prepared for and executed the failure?

o How did you handle the failure?

o How did the failure affect your relationships with others?

o How did it affect your life?

o What could you have done differently?

3. (Optional) As soon as you can, schedule a time to make another attempt at the thing you failed
at. If for some reason you can’t attempt the experience again, just do steps 1-2.

When you eventually reach your goal, it may be tempting to stop there. But many people operate this
way. Instead, to set yourself apart from others, keep seeking new challenges rather than settling.

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Introduction

In Can’t Hurt Me, author David Goggins describes his transformation from someone who let his
circumstances control him to someone who proactively works toward his goals and seeks greatness. He
thinks everyone can work to cultivate a drive for self-improvement in order to overcome obstacles and
reach their goals.

As a young man, Goggins developed strategies to push himself to achieve more. He especially enjoyed
physical challenges, serving in the Army and as a Navy SEAL and competing in ultramarathons and other
athletic events. He always looked for ways to push himself to new heights.

Goggins’s experience has taught him that most people don’t recognize or work toward their true
potential. Working toward new goals can be uncomfortable because we’re trying new things that don’t
come easy at first, like learning a new language or training for a half marathon. Because of this, it’s easy
to make choices that keep you in your comfort zone and on the same mediocre path. He estimates that
most people only achieve 40 percent of their potential.

Instead, you need to actively work toward mastering your mind and cultivating a relentless drive for self-
improvement to achieve your dreams and overcome obstacles, from racism to tragedy. This requires
learning how to move through doubts, pain, and fear that keep you in your comfort zone.

Goggins provides challenges to start working efficiently toward your goals. Here are the challenges, in
brief:

1. Face your bad hand. Draw strength from the bad things that have happened to you.

2. Set up your accountability mirror. Break goals and dreams down into manageable steps and
hold yourself accountable to doing them.

3. Master your mind. Practice doing things that make you uncomfortable.

4. Best your opponent. Thrive in competitive situations.

5. Visualize success. Envision each step you’ll take to achieve your goal, anticipating how you’ll
deal with obstacles and what victory will feel like.

6. Build your cookie jar. Create a mental cache of personal victories to inspire you when you
struggle.

7. Dismantle your governor. Keep going even when your internal voice says you should stop.

8. Compartmentalize your time. Schedule your day to maximize time for working toward goals.

9. Learn from failure. Evaluate and learn from failures.

 10. Seek greatness. Keep finding new goals to work toward and better yourself.

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Challenge 1: Face Your Bad Hand

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Challenge 1: Face Your Bad Hand

As you grow up, your life circumstances can affect your growth and development. Though it seems
counterintuitive, acknowledging the difficult circumstances you’ve faced can be a good first step toward
overcoming additional challenges—you can draw strength from your past successes.

An Abusive Father and School Struggles

For Goggins, acknowledging and overcoming his school struggles and his abusive father opened new
doors. Before age 8, Goggins lived with his mother, father, and brother in Buffalo, New York. His father
forced the family members to work nights at his lucrative roller skating rink, called Skateland. If anything
was out of place, like a missing pair of skates, Goggins’s father beat his son at home with a belt. His
mother and brother faced regular abuse as well.

Eventually, his mother sought help from a friend to get herself and her children to safety. They escaped
to her hometown of Brazil, Indiana, though his brother returned shortly thereafter to live with their
father back in Buffalo. Goggins was 8 years old.

School Struggles

Due to his work at Skateland, Goggins had fallen behind in school. He, his brother, and mother worked
at night, often sleeping on a couch in an office onsite. He was often sleep-deprived during the day.

When they arrived in Brazil, Goggins’s mother enrolled him in the second grade for a second time
because he couldn’t yet read at a second-grade level. He had a wonderful teacher who dedicated extra
time to helping him learn.

But during the third grade, Goggins’s teacher, Ms. D, wasn’t willing to give him the extra instruction and
care he needed to succeed in class. She thought Goggins needed to be placed in a separate school for
special needs students, and the school administration supported her.

It was stressful for Goggins to be thought of as lesser, especially because he was the only black child at
the school. He scaled back his participation in class and developed a stutter. Goggins’s mother fought
the decision to send Goggins to another school, and the school agreed to let him stay if he was enrolled
in group therapy.

But group therapy included children with true illnesses, unlike Goggins, who needed assistance catching
up academically. This further augmented his stress—his stutter worsened, and he started losing patches
of hair and developing white splotches on his skin.
Refusing to continue with group therapy, and facing pressure from his teacher to do better, Goggins
started cheating. It improved his grades and test scores, reassuring Ms. D but stunting his learning.

Poverty

Goggins’s mother took a job at a local department store to support her son. They lived in subsidized
housing, but still struggled to make ends meet.

When Goggins’s mother attempted to get on welfare, she learned she was considered ineligible because
she had a car. She devised a workaround, routing the check through her mother, who lived in town. But
the check was for only $123 each month. Between her job, welfare, and stores of coins she had saved
over the years, they scraped by, but barely, augmenting Goggins’s stress.

Toxic Stress

Goggins learned later in life that toxic stress—the term for prolonged stress faced in childhood—likely
altered his development.

Stress is helpful for survival in the short term, but in the long-term, it can have severe consequences.
High stress levels limit children’s ability to retain information and build language skills, which limits their
learning. When kids are exposed to toxic stress, they can develop health problems later in life, such as
depression, obesity, and heart disease. They’re also more likely to engage in risky behavior, like
smoking. A child raised in an abusive household has a 53 percent likelihood of being arrested before the
age of 18, and is 38 percent more likely to commit a crime as an adult.

In his adult life, Goggins grappled with the effects of toxic stress from his childhood.

Take Action: Face Your Bad Hand

To begin confronting the obstacles you currently face, take stock of the circumstances that have shaped
your life, past and present. In the upcoming chapters, you’ll learn how to use these circumstances as
motivation.

Here are the steps:

1. Start a journal. Paper or digital is fine—for instance, you could take notes on your laptop or
phone.

2. List out all of the difficult things you’ve faced or face in life. Ask yourself the following questions
to jog your memory:

 What difficult circumstances did you face growing up? For example, you might have faced abuse
or felt low self-esteem. Or, did you grow up without major challenges and therefore failed to
learn to push outside your comfort zone?

 What kinds of challenges do you face now? For example, maybe a boss is limiting your progress
at work, or you’re sabotaging yourself in some way from moving forward.

1. (Optional) Share your list. It could be with a friend or on social media using the hashtags
#badhand and #canthurtme.
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Challenge 2: Set Up Your Accountability Mirror

You may struggle to take actionable steps to reach our goals. In this challenge, you’ll learn to break your
goals into smaller steps and regularly work toward them to achieve success.

As a teen, Goggins continued to struggle with trauma, racism, school, and longing to join the Air Force.
After receiving a particularly bad report card, he devised a way to make his goals more manageable:
writing Post-it notes of goals on his mirror to hold himself accountable for reaching them. Goggins called
this his “accountability mirror.”

Trauma

In addition to the trauma Goggins faced at the hands of his father, another tragedy affected him and his
mother in Indiana. His mother was engaged to be married to a man who was a good influence and
provided some stability in their lives. They were scheduled to move into his Indianapolis home, but he
was murdered days before the move.

Goggins and his mother moved to Indianapolis anyway, but his mother coped with her fiance’s death by
busying herself with work. Goggins often skipped school and spent time with other kids, who negatively
influenced his behavior. After his mom caught him skipping school with those students, she decided to
move herself and Goggins back to Brazil.

Racism

When Goggins lived in Brazil as a young kid, he’d been unaware of racism. This started to change when
he and his mother moved back from Indianapolis. Goggins faced a slew of direct and indirect
harassment, from having his life threatened at gunpoint on a rural road to having a noose drawn in his
Spanish workbook. He struggled to understand how people could be so hateful.

Despite having many good friends, most of whom were white, he still felt the loneliness of being one of
the only black people in town. He thinks it’s hard for people to understand the struggle of being the only
person like yourself around, yet many minorities, women, and gay people face this daily.

Fighting Back

Goggins felt a lot of strong emotions from facing racism, but he didn’t know how to channel
them. Seeking comfort, he watched the speeches of Malcolm X, the leader of the Nation of Islam whose
movement called for racial justice for black people in the 1960s. He identified with X’s anger at a society
that elevates white people, but he still couldn’t channel his frustration into anything beyond hate.

He started trying to come up with ways to get a rise out of the racists around him. He wore unusual
clothing, trimmed his hair in odd ways, and blared music from his car.

School Struggles and Air Force Aspirations

Though Goggins was now in high school, he still relied on cheating to pass school and was reading at a
4th-grade level.

One of his only motivations to stay in school was to play on the basketball team, but because he didn’t
attend summer workouts, the coaches didn’t think he was committed to the team. They let him go from
the junior varsity team, even though he was one of the more talented players at the school. With this
loss, Goggins lost any remaining motivation he had to succeed in school.

But he wasn’t completely without purpose. He wanted to join the Air Force thanks to stories his grandpa
shared with him of his time serving. However, he didn’t realize that he’d need to pass an aptitude test to
join. When he found out, he assumed he’d be able to cheat on the test. On his first attempt, he was
seated too far apart from other test-takers to cheat and couldn’t pass. This was the first wake-up call
that he needed to change his behavior.

The second wake-up call came at the end of his junior year, when his mother received a letter informing
her that her son wouldn’t graduate unless his attendance record and grades improved during his final
year. This moment led him to a self-reckoning in his bathroom mirror.

Accountability Mirror

When Goggins looked in the mirror, he felt frustrated with who he saw that day—a kid with few
prospects who wouldn’t be able to make it into the Air Force without getting tough with himself and
changing his behavior. He resolved to get into the Air Force by improving his reading skills and studying
for the test.

To do this, he decided to use the mirror as a device to hold himself accountable and reach his goals.
Each night, he wrote his goals for the next day down on Post-it notes and placed them on the mirror.
Then, he’d make sure he worked toward his goals each day. Often, this involved giving himself a tough
talk about what he needed to do and why. For example, he’d call himself out for being stupid and say he
needed to study to fix that. He found this method more motivating than being gentle with himself.

During his senior year, he focused on studying and being in good physical shape. After he failed the Air
Force entry test a second time, his mom connected him with a tutor. His tutor taught him to use
memorization to learn, and he’d read textbooks and copy them, greatly improving his knowledge of
reading and algebra.

As he grew his skills, Goggins gained confidence and spent less time upset with racists. He felt too
focused and determined to reach his goals to let racists distract him. After 6 months of studying, he took
the Air Force entry test again and passed.

Take Action: Set Up Your Accountability Mirror

Making your own accountability mirror will help you break your goals and dreams into more
manageable steps and offer a visible reminder of what you’re working toward.

Using Post-it notes or paper (rather than digital means), follow these steps:

1. Write down all of your insecurities. Own your insecurities and use them as an opportunity to
improve yourself. For example, if you’re overweight, call yourself out. It may seem mean, but in
 the US, we’re often too nice and avoid telling truths that could motivate us to change. Calling
things as they are and becoming less sensitive makes it easier to work on improving yourself.

2. Write down all of your goals and dreams. Break them into small, specific steps, written on
separate Post-it notes. Stick all your notes on the mirror. Hold yourself to working on them each
day. The insecurities could inspire your goals, but they don’t have to be related. For example, if
you’re trying to lose 15 pounds, make a smaller goal of losing 2 pounds in the first week. When
you’ve achieved each step, write a new Post-it for the next one.

3. (Optional) Post a photo of yourself on social media with your mirror with the hashtags
#accountabilitymirror and #canthurtme.

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Challenge 3: Get Used to Discomfort

Sometimes reaching your goals requires facing uncomfortable or difficult tasks. Learning how to do
things you dislike helps you take steps toward your goals instead of staying in your comfort zone.

Goggins learned to face what made him uncomfortable during his service in the Air Force and the
struggles afterward that motivated him to become a Navy SEAL.

Air Force Stint

Goggins entered the Air Force because he wanted to become a pararescueman: a member of the Air
Force troops that rescue downed pilots. But he faced a large obstacle: training to swim. Many of the
rescue operations would be over water, so he needed to pass a series of water competency tests.

Growing up, Goggins didn’t have swimming lessons, and he could only do the most basic of strokes. He
also had difficulty floating, which made many of the tests, like being able to tread water without moving
your arms, difficult. He spent nights full of fear about the next swimming test he’d have to pass. He
doubted that he deserved to be there, felt rage toward the people in his cohort for having come from
easier circumstances, and worried constantly about failing.

Part-way through his swimming training, the Army doctors discovered that he had the sickle cell gene.
Though he didn’t have sickle cell anemia, doctors at the time thought that having the gene placed him at
risk for sudden heart attacks. They made him pause his training, then reversed the decision. He could
complete his training, but because he had missed some, he’d have to start from the beginning or
transfer to another team.

The choice provided him the reason to quit that he wanted after weeks of feeling he wasn’t good
enough to be a pararescueman. He was physically strong, but he didn’t have the mental willpower to
start over and overcome this obstacle.

Goggins served out the remainder of his term working in the Tactical Air Control Party, or TAC-P. He felt
ashamed that he hadn’t continued with the pararescue, and he told his family he’d been forced to
transfer because of the medical issue. To address his shame, he exercised and built muscle mass. He
weighed 255 pounds when he left.

After Goggins’s service, he continued to put on muscle, but also fat, reaching 300 pounds. He liked being
bulkier in order to look intimidating. It helped him hide the shame he felt for not completing his
pararescue training. Still, he felt like he had no real prospects and worked a job in pest control.

Training to Become a Navy SEAL

One day, Goggins watched a TV program about joining the Navy SEALs, one of the most elite special
forces teams in the US military. He became convinced that he could find purpose for his life by becoming
a SEAL.

He attempted to contact various naval recruiters, but most weren’t interested in recruiting previously-
enlisted people from other parts of the military. One recruiter agreed to meet with him but was
unwilling to enlist him because of his weight.

He found a recruiter willing to give him a chance, but to apply, he needed to get his weight down to
below 191 pounds, the weight limit for a man of his height. He also needed to pass the same qualifying
test he’d taken to get into the Air Force, but with a better score.

Goggins had 3 months to study for the test and lose 106 pounds. He started filling his days with running,
swimming, biking, and weightlifting. At first, he could barely run 400 yards without needing a break.

If he skimped on any of his planned training, he made himself do the complete workout over again. For
example, one day he decided not to do the last pull-up of his set, but he worried that cutting corners like
that could cost him entry. So later that night, he returned to the gym and redid the entire set of 250
pull-ups. In addition to exercising, he adjusted his diet, eating small portions of healthy foods and
ditching his go-to junk foods.

When he started doubting himself—feeling like he was crazy for attempting this—or feeling depressed,
he refused to wallow and worked to redirect that energy into the tasks at hand, like exercising. He
convinced himself that his struggles were evidence of having a new purpose in his life, which motivated
him to stick with his training and studying. He was able to pass the exam and lose 106 pounds to qualify
for entry.

Take Action: Getting Used to Discomfort

To persevere and push yourself toward your goals, you have to learn to do things that make you
uncomfortable. The uncomfortable task can be related to your goals, but it doesn’t have to be—building
your tolerance for discomfort will prevent discomfort from holding you back from your goals.

As with the Accountability Mirror exercise, you’ll learn how to make incremental, achievable changes
that last over time. Here’s how to practice:

1. Using your journal, write down things that make you uncomfortable or that you dislike
doing. Or, consider writing down things you aren’t doing, but should be.

2. Pick one and try doing it. Then, do it regularly. For example, maybe you dislike flossing but want
to make it a habit because it’s good for you.

3. Encourage yourself to do something every day that you don’t like. Once something gets easier,
make it more challenging. For example, if your goal is to run, get to one mile, then keep
increasing the mileage.

4. (Optional) Post a photo of yourself on social media and doing an activity you dislike, and explain
why. Use the hashtags #pathofmostresistance #impossibletask #discomfortzone and
#canthurtme
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Challenge 4: Best Your Opponent

When working toward your goals, it’s easy to sabotage your success by doubting yourself. For example,
you might feel intimidated by your opponents—anyone who you think doubts your ability to succeed
and makes you doubt yourself. This could be a boss, teacher, or coworker.

Instead, work to harness your feelings around that perceived doubt and use them to apply yourself and
prove your opponent wrong. Goggins discusses how he developed this technique to survive Hell Week
of SEAL training.

Hell Week

Goggins needed to survive grueling training to become a SEAL. During one of the training periods, called
Hell Week, the recruits are broken into teams and subjected to hours of physically demanding tasks,
such as running miles in the sand, running holding logs or boats overhead, and standing in the cold
ocean. Two-thirds of recruits drop out of the program during this week.

Goggins contracted pneumonia in both lungs and needed time to recuperate. By the time he’d
recovered enough to resume training, he’d missed enough training that he’d need to start Hell Week
from the beginning.

Before entering Hell Week a second time, Goggins realized that he wanted some tools to help him
succeed. As with other military training, recruits are subjected not only to physically demanding
activities, but also to intense verbal interactions from officers as they try to weed out the mentally
strong from the weak. Goggins perceived these men as his opponents—they were actively trying to
break him and the other men down and make them quit. He wanted to prove that he could survive Hell
Week and impress them in the process.

To do this, he came up with two main strategies:

1. Get the schedule of events. Recruits weren’t typically allowed to see the schedule of events, but
Goggins thought it’d greatly increase their chances of surviving by knowing what came next.

2. Help the team find its second wind. Toward the end of Hell Week, Goggins’s team was
exhausted. The men needed to harness any remaining energy to keep going and exceed their
superiors’ expectations. He reminded his team that the officers wanted to break them down and
encouraged them not to give them the satisfaction. Goggins calls this “taking souls”—
acknowledging your opponents and using your feelings toward them to fuel your best work,
take them by surprise, and earn their respect.
Using these strategies, Goggins and his entire team survived Hell Week, with no one going home.
(Shortform note: To learn more about the strategies SEAL trainees use to survive Hell Week (and how to
apply these lessons in your everyday life), read our summaries of Extreme Ownership and Make Your
Bed.)

Take Action: Best Your Opponent

As Goggins’s story shows, surviving and thriving in a competitive situation is about using negative energy
from an opponent to your advantage. Apply this idea to a situation in your life:

1. Identify a challenge or competitive situation you face. For example, maybe you’re struggling to
excel at work or get a good grade in math class.

2. Identify the opponent you face in that situation. Maybe you’re struggling at work because your
boss insists on micromanaging your every move, or maybe you feel like your math teacher
doesn’t believe in you.

3. Choose a project or other task you can do to showcase your skills. It could be creating a stellar
proposal for work or getting a perfect score on an exam.

4. Take the negative energy you have toward the obstacle or opponent and channel it to excel in
your project. If you need to improve your skills to succeed, you might need to do things like
studying longer hours, or working out more outside of practice. Your ultimate goal is to amaze
your opponent and earn their respect by vastly exceeding their expectations.

5. (Optional) Share your experience on social media with the hashtags #takingsouls #canthurtme

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Challenge 5: Visualize Success

Visualizing the obstacles in your way and how achieving your goal will feel helps you keep going and
address obstacles as they arise.

Goggins discusses taking a break from SEAL training to recover from an injury and how he used this
visualization technique to push through intense physical pain once he returned.

Leaving SEAL Training

In addition to the double pneumonia Goggins developed during his first round of Hell Week, he
developed a severe knee injury. Though he wanted to continue training, the injury—a broken kneecap—
wasn’t healing quickly enough, so he went home to Indianapolis to recover.

Because it was only an injury, he’d be allowed to return, but he’d be required to do Hell Week training
for a third time. And if he survived, he’d need to train for another 6 months to become a SEAL.

While he spent time recovering, he learned that he would be becoming a father with his ex-wife, whom
he had recently divorced. He felt unready and unsure of how to meld his life in Indiana with training to
become a SEAL in California.

Though he considered quitting, he thought it would be a bigger failure to give up SEAL training than to
try one more time and fail.

He decided to continue with training, remarry his wife, and move with her and his stepdaughter to
California while he attempted to complete the training.

Hitting the Ground Running

Goggins survived his third Hell Week, but he developed small fractures in both of his shins. SEAL training
involved running up to 60 miles per week. He’d need a strategy to survive the remainder of the term. He
started taping his shins to be able to do the run with less pain.

When he’d start to doubt himself, he’d give himself talks of encouragement—saying that the only
guaranteed way to fail is to quit, and championing his personal strength for pushing through on broken
legs. He also visualized how accomplished he’d feel when he completed training. He still felt pain
periodically during the day, but speaking to himself like this mobilized the energy he needed to keep
going. He graduated training and felt motivated to continue defying the odds completing the world’s
toughest challenges.

Take Action: Visualize Success

Practice visualizing your obstacles and successes with these three steps:
1. Visualize a challenge or obstacle you need to overcome. Think about what it will look like and feel like
when you do. For example, if you’re preparing to give a presentation and are nervous about answering
questions at the end, visualize yourself answering with confidence.

2. Anticipate difficulty. There will be moments when working toward your goal feels impossible and you
want to quit. You may doubt your abilities, struggle to make time to improve your skills, or
question why you’re working toward this goal. Think about the obstacles you may face ahead of time
and develop a plan to address them.

For example, if you’re struggling to train for a marathon and don’t have a clear answer for why you’re
doing it, it’s too easy to say, “I don’t know” and give up. Instead, develop a clear answer as to why
you’re working toward your goal to remind and motivate yourself to keep going.

3. (Optional) Share your story about how you’ve used this technique to overcome obstacles on social
media with the hashtags #armoredmind and #canthurtme.

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Challenge 6: Stock Your Cookie Jar

We often decide to take on challenges while we’re in our comfort zone, but we’re so comfortable, we
don’t anticipate obstacles that could arise. To deal with this, we need additional strategies to keep
going, even when we face obstacles and want to quit.

Reminding yourself of your previous accomplishments is one way to overcome obstacles. Goggins calls
this collection of accomplishments your Cookie Jar.

There’s science behind this strategy. If you get overwhelmed by obstacles, you may forget why you’re
doing something and start talking to yourself in a negative way that robs you of energy to keep going.
When you feel stressed, your body’s fight or flight system is at work. It’s trying to make a decision about
whether to continue with what you’re doing (fight) or abandon it (flight). Focusing on your
accomplishments instead of doubtful negative self-talk reminds you of what you’re capable of, giving
you the energy to “fight” and keep going.

Goggins developed the cookie jar concept during his experience transitioning from Navy SEAL to
ultramarathon runner.

The Road to Badwater 135

In 2005, Goggins learned of the death of nearly an entire team of special operatives in Afghanistan. He
wanted to raise college funds for the children of the deceased soldiers. As a fundraiser, he decided to try
ultramarathons, running races that are longer than a marathon.

Goggins wanted to compete in the Badwater 135, a famous 135-mile ultramarathon in California from
the floor of Death Valley to the pinnacle of Mount Whitney. But the event director required runners to
have already competed in one 100-mile ultra race or more, and was unwilling to make an exception for
Goggins. He suggested that Goggins compete in the San Diego One Day, a 24-hour, 100-mile race where
each lap around the course is one mile. If he could do it, then he could run in the Badwater 135.

Goggins only had 3 days before the San Diego One Day, so there was little time to prepare. He hadn’t
run more than one mile at a time in 6 months. Though he’d kept in good physical shape through
strength training, his cardio fitness was nonexistent.

San Diego One Day

On the day of the race, Goggins started off at a fast pace, faster than he’d need to run to complete the
race in 24 hours. But by mile 70, he couldn’t go any further.

Goggins’s wife, who was there supporting him, helped him into a lawn chair to rest. He was dealing with
all kinds of bodily complications. Most of his toenails were falling off, and he’d learn later that he had
stress fractures in his feet. He hid the bloody urine and diarrhea running down his legs from his wife so
she wouldn’t pull him from the race.

Unable to see what terrible shape he was in, his wife believed he still had a chance to finish the race and
encouraged him to keep going. But he was walking now, and she told him he needed to pick up the pace
if he was going to make it 100 miles in 24 hours.

Digging Into the Cookie Jar

Despite desperately wanting to quit, Goggins drew upon yet another strategy to keep going—his Cookie
Jar. Growing up, Goggins’s mother always made sure to stock their cookie jar with a variety of cookies.
She’d let him have two at a time, and he learned to savor each cookie. It brought a little brightness to
both of their lives.

He applied this as a metaphor to help himself get through tough times—he drew from a mental cookie
jar of his accomplishments when times were tough. In this way, he used his past victories to motivate
himself to keep going. Goggins’s cookies included studying to bring himself up to the appropriate
reading level, passing the Air Force exam, and losing 106 pounds in three months to be eligible for SEAL
training. This strategy is more than just thinking about the memory—it’s remembering how good it felt
in the moment.

Thinking about his past victories and recognizing his toughness gave Goggins strength to start running
again and finish the race. Though he suffered severe dehydration, he felt elated to be able to finish the
hundred miles.

Take Action: Stock Your Cookie Jar

Just like Goggins, you can come up with your own set of victories to remind yourself of when facing
difficulty. Here’s how:

1. Use your journal to write down your major life victories. Examples include exceeding a sales
goal, running a half marathon, or convincing the city council to fund homelessness services.

2. Write down all of the obstacles you’ve overcome, too. Examples include managing obsessive
compulsive disorder, stopping smoking, or improving your relationship with your parents.

3. As you work toward your goals, draw on this list to help you when you want to stop short of
your goal.

4. (Optional) Share your cookies and how they help you reach new goals through social media with
the hashtags #cookiejar #canthurtme

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Challenge 7: Dismantle Your Governor

Cars have an internal regulator, or governor, that limits how fast they can go. Humans are the same way
—our mental governor gives us feedback, telling us if we’re in pain or feeling insecure. Many people
listen too readily and stop doing a task when they’ve applied only 40 percent of their effort, leaving 60
percent on the table. Pushing past the governor means pushing through pain, insecurities, and other
obstacles that make us want to quit before we’ve given our full effort.

Learning to gently push yourself helps break down your governor while gradually increasing your
activity, helping you avoid injury and/or allowing your mind to get accustomed to the new workload.

Goggins learned how to manage his governor as he competed in additional ultramarathons to qualify for
the Badwater 135.

Finding Another Race

When Goggins finished the San Diego One Day, he called and emailed the director of the Badwater 135
to share his results from the race. He’d run 101 miles in 18 hours and 56 minutes and thought this was
enough to qualify him for Badwater 135.

Instead, Goggins got an email back that the point of a 24-hour ultra race is to run the whole 24 hours,
not just the miles stated. He learned shortly thereafter that to get accepted into the Badwater 135,
runners were expected to submit an application showing their completion of other ultra races. So he
decided to compete in an additional ultra race to be a more competitive applicant.

He selected a Hawaiian race called the Hurt 100. The race consists of five laps on a 20-mile circuit
through the Hawaiian rainforest, including 24,500 feet of elevation change.

The Hurt 100

Goggins had about a month before the Hurt 100 to practice running and strength training. He’d heard
that it’s important to run 100 miles in a week in preparation for 100-mile races.

But it was not going to be easy to fit in training time while still working for the Navy. He started running
to—and occasionally, from—work, at least three times a week. The route measured 16 miles one way.
He gradually built up the number of miles he ran each week. He also woke up early to train with
weights.

Race Day

Despite his physical preparation, the course was extremely demanding. Goggins encountered three
main challenges:
  His Camelbak, a water reservoir he could wear while running, broke just 6 miles into the race.
Though there were hydration stations spaced throughout the course, stopping frequently would
affect his race time.

 He wasn’t used to running on trails. Trails have more obstacles than a typical asphalt road,
including rocks, tree roots, and mud.

 He was dealing with pain in his legs.

Goggins realized that he could convince himself to keep going by dividing the remainder of the race into
chunks. He’d say things like, “I just want to get to the top of that hill, then I can quit.” But instead of
wanting to quit, hitting these mini-goals inspired him to keep going. Finding motivation to persist helped
him dismantle his governor—by showing himself that he could keep going even when he didn’t want to,
he adjusted his expectations of how far he could push himself.

He finished the race, and later that same day, he submitted his application for Badwater 135. The
director told him he was accepted a few days later.

Badwater 135

Goggins now had 6 months to prepare for the Badwater 135. In addition to physical training, he studied
the race. He did things like researching the route, driving it, and watching race videos.

From this experience, he developed strategies for the big day, like having two help crews drive the route
with him and set up a cool-down station for him every 1/3 of a mile. He also visualized how each leg of
the race would feel and how he’d push through.

Race Day

Though he was arguably more prepared for this race than any he’d done before, Goggins still faced
difficulty and wanted to quit. He became severely dehydrated about 7.5 hours in. To get through this, he
worked to drink more water than he wanted, getting around his governor. (Shortform note: Sometimes,
the thought of drinking a lot of water can be nauseating to a severely dehydrated person.) Ultimately,
he came in fifth place.

Take Action: Dismantle Your Governor

To learn to push past your natural stopping point, try these steps:

1. Go as far as you naturally feel you can. For example, maybe you can run comfortably for 15
minutes.

2. Once you think you’re at your max, coax yourself to go a bit further. Assess if you actually have
energy to go further and talk to yourself about your specific next steps. For example, if you’ve
already run 15 minutes and desperately want to stop, try to go another 2 minutes. You can
apply this to mind-heavy tasks, like studying, too.

3. (Optional) Share how you’re using this technique on social media using the hashtags
#40percentrule #dontgetcomfortable and #canthurtme
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Challenge 8: Compartmentalize Your Time

People often think they need to have special talents to succeed in life. However, you often won’t be
naturally talented at something. Instead, you need to schedule time every day to practice and hone your
skills.

For example, the number-one excuse people have for not exercising is that they don’t have enough
time. But most people waste 4-5 hours a day doing things like watching shows or looking at social
media. Doing this challenge will help you make time for working toward your goals.

Goggins’s life got extra busy once he started getting attention for his ultra racing. He learned to
compartmentalize his time to work and train.

Becoming a Recruiter

After his success in Badwater 135, Goggins got recruited into doing a race known as the Ultraman—a
three-day event consisting of a 6.2-mile swim, 261-mile bike ride, and a double marathon. Despite some
difficulties with his bike—he blew out a tire on a downhill—he managed to finish second in the race.

Shortly thereafter, a Navy admiral contacted him. It’s uncommon for the upper leadership in the military
to talk with enlisted people, so Goggins worried he’d be reprimanded for drawing undesired attention to
the Navy by participating in ultras. In fact, the admiral was impressed with Goggins’s achievements and
wanted him to recruit more black people into the Navy SEALS to work on operations against Taliban
forces in northern Africa—they needed SEALS that would blend into the local population.

Goggins was only the 36th black person to become a SEAL in the Navy’s history, and the Navy realized it
needed to do more outreach in communities of color.

Balancing Recruitment With Life

To recruit more people of color, Goggins traveled to colleges and high schools across the country to
speak.

He learned that using himself as a prop was one of the most effective strategies to get students
interested in his message. He’d run 50 miles to his speaking engagement and show up sweaty, or spend
the first five minutes of his speech doing push-ups. He’d practice with the sports teams and invite
students to work out with him before or after school and crew for him on weekends when he competed
in local ultra races. He’d also run between cities he was visiting to garner local news coverage.

He recognized that most people wouldn’t be interested in becoming a SEAL, so he worked to appeal to a
broader swath of people, encouraging them to live to their fullest potential.
During his busiest period as a recruiter, he was on the road for 250 days per year, but he still made time
for physical training and competing in races on top of logging 50 hours at work each week. For part of
2007, he ran an ultra race nearly every weekend.

To achieve this, Goggins developed strategies to squeeze in exercise around his work schedule. For
example, when he wasn’t traveling, he’d wake up early and run for 6-10 miles before work, then bike 25
miles to work, run or hit the gym during his lunch hour, and bike home.

On weekends he didn’t have an ultra event, he’d do a three-hour workout on Saturday, then spend the
rest of the day with his wife. Sundays were his rest day—he did only very light exercise to promote good
circulation.

Take Action: Compartmentalize Your Time

Do this challenge over 3 weeks. Here are the steps:

1. In the first week, make detailed notes about how you spend each 15-30 minute chunk of your
day. Note things like how much time you spend on your lunch break, how long your commute is,
and whether you’re working without interruption or trying to multitask. Notice when you spend
time that could be put toward working on your goals instead.

2. For the second week, schedule out your time. Decide what you’re going to do with each fifteen-
to thirty-minute chunk of time in your day. This includes exercise and rest. Some activities will
require multiple chunks of time. Just make sure you’re not trying to squeeze multiple tasks into
the same chunk—focus on one activity at a time. Continue taking notes about how you spend
your time.

3. For the third week, refine your schedule further based on your experience in the first two
weeks. Ideally, you shouldn’t need to lose sleep but should have arrived at a schedule that
provides the maximum amount of time to do your important activities.

4. (Optional) Share your schedule on social media with the hashtags #talentnotrequired and
#canthurtme.

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Challenge 9 and 10: Learn From Failure and Seek Greatness

Sometimes, we’re so scared of failing that we stop ourselves from even trying something. To combat
this, frame your failure as an opportunity to learn something so it feels less risky. Then, if you fail, you
can evaluate the failure and refine your approach to reach your goal.

Once you’ve met your goal, pushing yourself to go above and beyond rather than settling can help you
continuously improve yourself and achieve greatness that distinguishes you from others.

Goggins’s experience attempting to become an Army Ranger and breaking the Guinness World Record
for pull-ups demonstrate these principles.

More Training Desired

After Goggins’s SEAL training, he got deployed with a platoon to Malaysia where he realized that he held
himself to a higher standard than other SEALS. SEALS are considered elite compared to the rest of the
Navy and compared to society in general, but Goggins felt like he desired to push himself, train harder,
and earn his keep more than even most SEALS wanted to.

In addition to physical training, Goggins spent his free time studying weaponry and war. In his first
evaluation, he got feedback that he should spend some of that time socializing as a way to learn from
the other guys informally and understand the job better. But he was introverted and didn’t want to
spend time partying in off hours.

Most people take a break when they finish a deployment, but Goggins decided to look into training in
the special forces units of other military branches between deployments. He requested to go through
Army Ranger training—he felt he could better himself by gaining additional special operations skills.

Army Ranger Training

Goggins traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia for Army ranger training. The training consisted of six
different phases, including weapons knowledge, navigation, and reconnaissance. For example, one
phase consisted of learning skills in the mountains like patrolling and rappelling.

To prove their skills, trainees had to complete four nighttime field training exercises. One night, a winter
storm blew in, and all anyone had for warmth was a thin poncho and each other.

Goggins figured that the storm represented a perfect simulation of the conditions that would make
soldiers vulnerable to an enemy attack. Instead of huddling with the group, he walked out to hold part
of the perimeter, shouting into the night when he reached it. In doing so, Goggins demonstrated his
interest in pursuing opportunities to lead and stand out from the rest. A few others were inspired and
did the same.

Breaking the Pull-up Record

Goggins wasn’t content to be known just for his Navy career and ultra races. Though he needed to take
a break from ultra races due to dizzy spells, he realized that he did a lot of pull-ups as part of his regular
training and wondered if he could break the world record for number of pull-ups in 24 hours. The record
at the time was 4,020 pull-ups, which was held by Stephen Hyland. While doing pull-ups, he could take
breaks and avoid the dizziness brought on by running.

Goggins reached out to the same organization he raised money for through his ultra running to ask if
they’d accept fundraising from this event. Then, a friend of his booked him a spot to attempt to break
the record on The Today Show.

To train for this appearance, he ramped up his pull-up regimen—400 pull-ups each weekday and 1,500
on weekend days.

First Attempt: The Today Show

When the big day came, Goggins immediately encountered several issues:

 The television studio was filled with bright lights, and interacting with the hosts and people
passing by the studio required him to be more social than he preferred.

 The bar had more give than he was used to. This forced him to use more power with each pull-
up, wearing him out faster than he expected.

 He wasn’t getting enough calories. Though he was sipping a carbohydrate drink all day, he
wasn’t getting any protein. He ended up ordering a cheeseburger, but he still wasn’t able to
avoid severe fatigue.

After doing 2,500 pull-ups, he decided to quit. Though he felt disappointed to have failed in front of a
large audience, he realized he had a chance of succeeding if he tweaked his approach and tried again.

He evaluated what went well and what needed to be improved. For his second attempt, he decided to
use a venue that was more private, eat better so his muscles didn’t get fatigued as readily, use
gymnastic chalk and tape, and get a sturdier pull-up bar.

Second Attempt: CrossFit Gym

Goggins found a CrossFit gym near his mother’s home in Nashville that offered a sturdier bar and the
more private environment he wanted. Gym members could help support him and cheer him on during
the event, but it would be more private than the television studio.

During his second attempt, he encountered yet more difficulties.

 Though the bar was sturdier, it came at a cost: Goggins started developing blisters on his hands
that he couldn’t soothe with taping or ointments. Though he was wearing gloves, the repetitive
movement of the pull-ups cut his palms down to the nerve layer of his skin, making each
movement extremely painful.

 His muscles started spasming and a nurse who was monitoring him said he was suffering from
rhabdomyolysis—when a certain group of muscles is so overworked that they start breaking
down and the kidneys have trouble filtering out the protein. The nurse warned that it could be
deadly, but he decided to proceed with caution.
After about 3,200 pull-ups, the pain was overwhelming and he wasn’t doing pull-ups fast enough to
break the record. He decided to quit. However, he knew he wanted to attempt it again, so he took stock
of what worked and what needed to change. For example:

 He liked doing it in the CrossFit gym, but having gym members in the room was still distracting.
When he attempted it again, he wanted half the people from before.

 The sturdier bar helped him get 700 more pull-ups than his first attempt, though it hurt his
hands in the process. He decided to ask a mattress company to custom design foam pads for his
hands for his next attempt—with approval from Guinness World Records.

Third Attempt: CrossFit Gym

During his third attempt, Goggins was still dealing with hand issues and rhabdomyolysis, as well as a new
challenge: feeling like he was going to fail again.

Instead of turning his doubt inward on himself and hurting his performance further, he focused his
energy toward the current record holder, Stephen Hyland. He pretended that Hyland was an evil genius
that only he could defeat by taking his title, which gave him the energy to push on. He got past the
record of 4,020 pull-ups, completing 4,030.

Take Action: Learn From Failure and Seek Greatness

Learn From Failure

Learn to reflect on your failure with these steps:

1. Think of a recent failure.

2. Using a journal–on paper this time, if it isn’t already—use the following questions to help you
evaluate the failure:

 What did you do well as you prepared for and executed the failure?

 How did you handle the failure?

 How did the failure affect your relationships with others?

 How did it affect your life?

Even if you ultimately failed, it’s unlikely you did everything poorly in the lead-up. This is a chance to
recognize the things you did right.

3. Make a list of things you could have done differently. Try to be as honest with yourself as possible.

4. (Optional) As soon as you can, schedule a time to make another attempt at the thing you failed at. If
for some reason you can’t attempt the experience again, just do steps 1-3.

5. (Optional) Share your experience on social media with the hashtags #empowermentoffailure
#canthurtme.

Seek Greatness
When you eventually reach your goal, it may be tempting to stop there. But many people operate this
way. Instead, to set yourself apart from others, keep seeking new challenges rather than settling.

For example, if you reach your goal of running a half marathon, try another challenge. Maybe you try
running longer distances or try trail running instead. Or, maybe you choose a different kind of physical
challenge altogether, like swimming.

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Epilogue: Finding Peace

By age 38, Goggins had accomplished some impressive physical feats, but he started suffering health
issues. He worked to find a solution, and later, retired from the Navy and pursued a new career.

Feeling Close to Death

Goggins faced many health issues in the pursuit of new challenges—running on broken legs, a knee
injury—yet he always kept pushing himself. Eventually, he couldn’t keep pushing through his pain.

He felt fatigued all the time, no matter what exercise he tried. Doctors ran tests but discovered nothing
except slightly suboptimal thyroid levels, which is common for elite athletes. They prescribed him
medications that hardly improved his condition.

He wondered if he was close to death, having pushed himself past the point of no return. Yet he didn’t
feel regretful; he felt content. All those years, he pushed himself to greatness so that he wouldn’t be
defined by his negative past experiences. For the first time in recent memory, he recognized that his
accomplishments took extreme hard work, which he was proud of, and he didn’t care if he ran again,
lived, or died.

Goggins learned two things from reflecting on reaching his goals:

 He realized he’d always judged himself harshly because he worried he wouldn’t amount to
anything or contribute to the world. And he judged people around him and got angry if they
didn’t work as hard as he did. It damaged some of his relationships and opportunities. Once he
realized this, he stopped judging himself and others.

 He recognized that all of the people that had harmed him—by being racist or doubting him—
shaped him into who he became. This made him feel appreciative and at peace.

The Stretch Remedy

In addition to reflecting on his mental health, Goggins realized he’d been missing out on a crucial aspect
of physical health: stretching. He’d heard a presentation about the importance of balancing strength
training with flexibility, but he’d ignored the advice, thinking flexibility would somehow undermine his
quest for strength. On his deathbed, with no other options, he decided to try it.

He learned that his muscles were so tight that it was limiting his blood flow and his body was shutting
down. He started stretching hours every day, including during work, and his energy and health
improved.

New Career, New Challenges

Goggins retired from the Navy in 2015 and started a new career as a wildlands firefighter. He enjoys the
physical challenge and being part of a team that enjoys it, too. He’s also continuing distance running and
pushing himself to new lengths, though the rage he used to channel for motivation is harder to locate
these days.