Skip to main content

Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins

"That's when I first realized that not all physical and mental limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon."

A worthwhile addition to your shelf of motivational books, with a free bonus: the very act of reading this book will have a psychological effect on you: I found myself getting up even earlier than I normally do during the two weeks I read it, I did more (and harder) workouts, I pushed myself more, I fasted more. I don't know why and I don't care why, it just happened, and it's a bonus gift from the author.

Also, a friendly warning: a subset of readers will be offended by Goggins' language. "Motherfucker" appears so often in Can't Hurt Me that the reader becomes blind to it. Also a confession: I laughed out loud as Goggins mockingly tells himself to "hem his vagina." If this kind of stuff bothers you, this book is not for you.

Readers who can get past this have a gem of a book on their hands that explores the human will, our desire to seek comfort and avoid suffering, and the nature of motivation--including how to find it wherever and whenever you can. Goggins frequently gets fuel from his failures, from being told something's impossible, and especially from being told you can't do this. 

What struck this reader was how Goggins' personal philosophy (which hinges--usually profanely--on phrases like "taking souls," "developing a calloused mind," "remove the governor from your brain" and most importantly his 40% Rule) reaches directly into profound philosophical concepts like managing our will, homeostasis, ego death, and the truths about ourselves we can often find behind suffering. Not to mention the lies we tell ourselves while seeking comfort. Reading Goggins is like reading Epictetus with extra swear words.

Finally, credit to Goggins (and ghostwriter Adam Skolnick) for structuring Can't Hurt Me in an intriguing way. The authors don't run a strict chronological telling of his life story: instead the book ties the narrative together thematically, which requires some temporal jumping around at points. But it takes the reader on a coherent psychological journey towards the mastery of the self. 

Notes: 

1) Group with Breaking Out of Homeostasis by Ludvig Sunström, The Flinch by Julien Smith and How to Be an Imperfectionist by Stephen Guise. 

2) "Don't die a fucking pussy" is a good five word distillation of Spartan/warrior thinking. 

3) Teaches himself (and by extension the reader) to run toward discomfort, not away from it. And also to embrace the path of most resistance, rather than least.

4) Some devil's advocatry: it's interesting to see a guy who wants to be a hero so badly choose his heroics from a set of constructed preferences, a set of pre-chewed or prefab hero roles: SEALs, firefighter, Army rangers, ultra distance running, etc. Why is this? Could it be that Goggins sees things to be heroic if other people see those things to be heroic too? Is that heroic?

5) Grueling physical trials are what uncover the true self, and make us look at the self unflinchingly when our weaknesses are bared for all to see. The bravery of admitting to yourself that you're afraid.

6) A guy who can say "Fuck that shortcut bullshit" in one breath, but who shows up for a "100 miles in 24 hours" race unprepared, who shows up at the Las Vegas Marathon and just decides to run it with no prep, who attempts a complicated and highly technical trail run in Hawaii without bringing gear or sufficient food and nutrition and without even researching the course. So: what is a "shortcut" exactly? Isn't this level of unpreparedness also a type of "that shortcut bullshit"? While this may teach readers about Goggins' (and our own) untapped reserves of potential, I couldn't help thinking about what Goggins' potential really could be if he added on a strategy layer and some preparedness. Later in the book, he ruminates openly about this issue too, as he begins to think more strategically about various endurance contests he enters. This made for a fun "meta" experience for me as a reader.

8) I am astounded by Goggins' ability to handle the psychological aspects of "bonking"--the endurance athlete's term for the psychological and physiological experience of running out of glycogen and electrolytes. When your body bonks it's incredibly hard to not get negative, it's nearly impossible (for me at least) keep control of your psychology. 

9) Even the photos used in the book carry a certain inspiring rhetorical force to them: for just one example, see the photo of Goggins with a physique like a goddamn Adonis running an ultramarathon alongside a tiny Japanese woman who we later learn torches him in the race! It conveys to the reader that it doesn't matter what your body looks like, how big you are, how muscular you are, you can still be "hard."

More Posts

The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Francis Golffing)

Of the three essays of The Genealogy of Morals  I recommend the first two. Skim the third. Collectively, they are extremely useful reading for citizens of the West to see clearly the oligarchic power dynamics under which we live. Show me a modern Western nation-state where there isn't an increasing concentration of power among the elites--and a reduction in freedom for everyone else. You can't find one. Today we live in an increasingly neo-feudal system, where elites control more and more of the wealth, the actions, even the  thoughts  of the masses. Perhaps we should see the rare flowerings of genuine democratic freedom (6th century BC Athens, Republic-era Rome, and possibly pre-1913 USA ) for what they really are: extreme outliers, quickly replaced with tyranny. The first essay inverts the entire debate about morality, as Nietzsche nukes centuries of philosophical ethics by simply saying the powerful simply do what they do , and thus those things are good by defi...
Read more

The Fourth Turning is Here by Neil Howe

If you've read the original  The Fourth Turning , much of this book will be review. However, this book explains the Forth Turning framework more cogently and tightly than the original, so if you  haven't  read the original book, I recommend just reading this and skipping the original. You'll walk away with the same central ideas plus the author's additional new (and slightly-adjusted) conclusions. The most profound takeaway from the overall Fourth Turning paradigm is that it teaches you to remember your place in the grand scheme of things. Sadly, modernity teaches the exact opposite: it persuades us to think we humans are bigger than history, that we can ignore it, be oblivious to it, and yet not repeat it. Worst of all, modernity teaches us to believe we've somehow managed to defeat history with our SOYANCE!!! and tEcHNologY--ironically none of which we can understand, replicate or repair. These "modren" beliefs, as arrogant and wrong as they are, conflic...
Read more

Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard

Tight, concise discussion of what the State really is and what it really does, not what we would like it to be. Thanks to the recent pandemic response, most of us lost once and for all our delusive belief that governments are a force for good, a force for fairness and justice. In this short book, Murray Rothbard shows how the State--no matter how "limited" a government you might set up in the beginning--always, always abrogates its citizens' rights and freedoms. It's just a matter of time. We also come to understand why the State loves war. It loves it. It gives the State far more power. It provides an easy justification to abrogate still more freedoms. And of course those in the State apparatus who profit politically or economically from war never seem to send their own sons to fight it. An all-too-typical example: note how Benjamin Netanyahu's military-age son lives safely and luxuriously in Miami, his security paid for by Israeli taxpayers . The fourth chap...
Read more