Highlights From "Can't Hurt Me" by David Googins

Great book to read. One can find more details here: https://davidgoggins.com/book/

These are few of many quotes/statements I liked from the book:

Page 85-85

• 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
• This is not about changing your life instantly, it’s about moving the needle bit by bit and making those changes sustainable

Page 183-183

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

Page 191-191

• The main objective here is to slowly start to remove the governor from your brain. First, a quick reminder of how this process works. In 1999, when I weighed 297 pounds, my first run was a quarter mile. Fast forward to 2007, I ran 205 miles in thirty-nine hours, nonstop. I didn’t get there overnight, and I don’t expect you to either. Your job is to push past your normal stopping point. Whether you are running on a treadmill or doing a set of push-ups, get to the point where you are so tired and in pain that your mind is begging you to stop. Then push just 5 to 10 percent further. If the most push-ups you have ever done is one hundred in a workout, do 105 or 110. If you normally run thirty miles each week, run 10 percent more next week

Page 210-210

• Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.
• if you’re a terrific runner with a knee injury that will prevent you from running for twelve weeks, that is a great time to get into yoga, increasing your flexibility and your overall strength, which will make you a better and less injury-prone athlete. If you’re a guitar player with a broken hand, sit down at the keys and use your one good hand to become a more versatile musician. The point is not to allow a setback to shatter our focus, or our detours to dictate our mindset. Always be ready to adjust, recalibrate, and stay after it to become better, somehow.
• The sole reason I work out like I do isn’t to prepare for and win ultra races. I don’t have an athletic motive at all. It’s to prepare my mind for life itself. Life will always be the most grueling endurance sport, and when you train hard, get uncomfortable, and callous your mind, you will become a more versatile competitor, trained to find a way forward no matter what. Because there will be times when the shit life throws at you isn’t minor at all. Sometimes life hits you dead in the heart

Page 220-220

• Too many of us have become multitaskers, and that’s created a nation of half-asses
• a three-week challenge. During week one, go about your normal schedule, but take notes. When do you work? Are you working nonstop or checking your phone (the Moment app will tell you)? How long are your meal breaks? When do you exercise, watch TV, or chat to friends? How long is your commute? Are you driving? I want you to get super detailed and document it all with timestamps. This will be your baseline, and you’ll find plenty of fat to trim. Most people waste four to five hours on a given day, and if you can learn to identify and utilize it, you’ll be on your way toward increased productivity. In week two, build an optimal schedule. Lock everything into place in fifteen- to thirty-minute blocks. Some tasks will take multiple blocks or entire days. Fine. When you work, only work on one thing at a time, think about the task in front of you and pursue it relentlessly. When it comes time for the next task on your schedule, place that first one aside, and apply the same focus.
• Make sure your meal breaks are adequate but not open-ended, and schedule in exercise and rest too. But when it’s time to rest, actually rest. No checking email or bullshitting on social media. If you are going to work hard you must also rest your brain. Make notes with timestamps in week two. You may still find some residual dead space. By week three, you should have a working schedule that maximizes your effort without sacrificing sleep
• It’s time to compartmentalize your day.

Page 248-248

• A lot of people think that once they reach a certain level of status, respect, or success, that they’ve made it in life. I’m here to tell you that you always have to find more. Greatness is not something that if you meet it once it stays with you forever. That thing evaporates like a flash of oil in a hot pan.
• Torch the complacency you feel gathering around you, your coworkers, and teammates in that rare air. Continue to put obstacles in front of yourself, because that’s where you’ll find the friction that will help you grow even stronger. Before you know it, you will stand alone.

Page 260-260

• When an activity or exercise that you’ve always relied on gets taken away from you, like running was for me, it’s easy to get stuck in a mental rut and stop doing any exercise at all, but I didn’t have a quitter’s mentality. I gravitated toward the pull-up bar and replicated the workouts I used to do with Sledge. It was an exercise that allowed me to push myself and didn’t make me dizzy because I could take a break between sets

Page 274-274

• Luck is a capricious b**ch. It won’t always go your way, so you can’t get trapped in this idea that just because you’ve imagined a possibility for yourself that you somehow deserve it. Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Take aim on what you are willing to earn! I never blamed anyone for my failures, and I didn’t hang my head in Nashville. I stayed humble and sidestepped my entitled mind because I knew damn well I hadn’t earned my record. The scoreboard does not lie, and I didn’t delude myself otherwise. Believe it or not, most people prefer delusion. They blame others or bad luck or chaotic circumstance. I didn’t, which was positive

Page 275-275

• Roger Bannister. When Bannister was trying to break the four-minute mile in the 1950s, experts told him it couldn’t be done, but that didn’t stop him. He failed again and again, but he persevered, and when he ran his historic mile in 3:59.4 on May 6, 1954, he didn’t just break a record, he broke open the floodgates simply by proving it possible. Six weeks later, his record was eclipsed, and by now over 1,000 runners have done what was once thought to be beyond human capability

Page 291-294

• If an injury cropped up, he treated himself with a stretching regimen.
• The problem with most of the guys, he said, was our overuse of muscles without the appropriate balance of flexibility

• with just twenty minutes of stretching every day.

• I came up with a routine, starting at my neck and shoulders before moving into the hips, psoas, glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves. Stretching became my new obsession. I bought a massage ball to tenderize my psoas. I propped a board up against a closed door at a seventy-degree angle and used it to stretch out my calf. I’d been suffering for the better part of two years, and after several months of continual stretching, I noticed the bump at the base of my skull had started to shrink, along with the knots around my hip flexors, and my overall health and energy level improved. I wasn’t anywhere close to flexible yet, and I wasn’t completely back to myself, but I was off all but my thyroid medication, and the more I stretched the more my condition improved. I kept at it for at least six hours a day for weeks. Then months and years. I’m still doing it.  

Page 297-297

• But it’s not the external voice that will break you down. It’s what you tell yourself that matters. The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself. You wake up with them, you walk around with them, you go to bed with them, and eventually you act on them. Whether they be good or bad. We are all our own worst haters and doubters because self doubt is a natural reaction to any bold attempt to change your life for the better. You can’t stop it from blooming in your brain, but you can neutralize it, and all the other external chatter by asking, What if?

Page 304-304

• Joe Hippensteel, thanks for showing me the proper ways to stretch. It’s truly changed my life!