I loved this book. If there’s any self-help book that speaks to me, this is it.
Goggins comes from a truly horrible background. His father was extremely abusive to both David, his brother, and his mother. Just a really bad situation for a little kid to be in. Calling it a really bad situation undersells the story, the only to partly understand is to stop reading this, and go buy the book!…what are you waiting for?
From his terrible upbringing, he eventually runs away with his mom. From there he’s kind of just going through the motions of life, albeit a terrible life living in a $7 a month apartment with his mom.
But the story isn’t about Goggins past. His past is just prelude to how he woke up to find himself a 300lb loser. He was uneducated, could barely read, he was in a broken marriage, working as an exterminator living in debt and earning basically nothing.
How familiar is that story? Kid from horrible background, ends up in horrible situation. Not exactly a book there…
Goggins story is about a man who decided he wanted to be proud of himself. He didn’t want to be the story of a broken kid from a broken home who grew up to be a loser. He decided to accept that he was a loser, he had a terrible background, that’s apart of him, but he didn’t have to stay that way. He wanted to see how far this broken kid could get through shear hard work and determination.
A lot people will read this book and think it focuses on athletic achievements. And it’s easy to see why considering a lot of Goggins’ achievements are athletic feats, but that is missing the point. It’s not about that. It’s about how confronting yourself and your weaknesses head on, and then working hard to improve yourself, can take you very far. A 300lb illiterate loser broke the world pull up record, became a Navy Seal and graduated Army Ranger School, has won multiple ultra-marathons and completed multiple 100-mile races. No matter how much space in this post I dedicate to showcasing Goggins achievements, I would have to leave stuff out, it’s a very extensive list of accomplishments.
But it’s a book of failure. He fails multiple times at everything. He gets so much done by just starting a task by taking super simple but hard steps, and then getting smarter about it as he goes along. For example, for the world pull up record, he just started doing a ton of pull ups every day. That might sound funny to say, but let’s be real that’s the most important part of the training. When he failed at his first record attempt, he learned that the bar he was using was totally working against him, the environment distracted him, his nutrition was far from ideal, he had no idea what he was doing, and he publicly failed. Round two he improved, but he still made several mistakes until round three when he finally figured it all out. Too many of us spend a ton of time planning and preparing, and never actually doing the work. I know I can be guilty of it.
It’s not that planning and preparing aren’t important they are, Goggins has a knack for learning plenty of things the hard way, like the importance of stretching if you want to run ultra-marathons for your whole life. But let’s be real, it’s the running that is important in your ultra-marathon training. That’s the work and you have to do the work.
In business I think we can all be guilty of it. We can spend so much time working on our message, our calendars, reading articles, doing all sorts of stuff…but are you doing the work? Are we building something your customers find better than their other options and happily and profitably paying you for. If you do that, everything else will either fall in line or be easy to fix. If they aren’t happily paying you a profitable price, take a hard look at your business and fix it. Do the work.
Goggins message would fit will inside Angela Duckworths book Grit. Charlie Munger says it all the time “Hard work, honesty, if you keep at it, will get you almost anything” -Munger.
Keep plugging away at your problems and you will improve them. You might not be able to be the next LeBron James, but you can get way further than you ever thought you could go if you just keep at it.
Everyone should read Can’t Hurt Me. The mindset makes perfect sense to me, and I really think it’s a good form of therapy and life advice for everybody. You don’t have to prioritize things the same way David Goggins does, it’s not about running or joining the Navy. Goggins’ became a man he’s proud of, and what could be a better use of one’s life than that?