David Goggins, former Navy SEAL and internationally renowned endurance athlete, certainly has a world of expertise when it comes to strength and perseverance. He’s been well acquainted with pain and adversity—from poverty and abuse in childhood to racism—and both success and failure. Life is not easy, Goggins knows and stresses, but your decisions and your mindset can go a long way towards improving your happiness. So, if you’re looking for a large dose of inspiration or need a little push to get over a proverbial hump, there's no better place to start than with these 30 quotes from Goggins’s bestselling audiobook, Can’t Hurt Me.
"You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft that you will die without ever realizing your true potential."
"It's a lot more than mind over matter. It takes relentless self-discipline to schedule suffering into your day, every day."
"Denial is the ultimate comfort zone."
"The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself."
"Pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance and beautiful silence."
"Don't stop when you're tired. Stop when you're done."
"Everyone fails sometimes and life isn’t supposed to be fair, much less bend to your every whim."
"You must recognize what you are about to do, highlight what you do not like about it, and spend time visualizing each and every obstacle you can."
"The ticket to victory often comes down to bringing your very best when you feel your worst."
"Most wars are won or lost in our own heads."
"It may be satisfactory, but that's another word for mediocrity."
"Are you an experienced scuba diver? Great, shed your gear, take a deep breath and become a one-hundred-foot free diver. Are you a badass triathlete? Cool, learn how to rock climb. Are you enjoying a wildly successful career? Wonderful, learn a new language or skill. Get a second degree. Always be willing to embrace ignorance and become the dumb fuck in the classroom again, because that is the only way to expand your body of knowledge and body of work. It’s the only way to expand your mind."
"We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse."
"Breaking the shackles and stretching beyond our own perceived limits takes hard fucking work—oftentimes physical work—and when you put yourself on the line, self doubt and pain will greet you with a stinging combination that will buckle your knees."
"Always be ready to adjust, recalibrate, and stay after it to become better, somehow."
"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."
"Most of us sweep our failures and evil secrets under the rug, but when we run into problems, that rug gets lifted up, and our darkness re-emerges, floods our soul, and influences the decisions which determine our character."
"My happiness is my reflection on the suffering during my journey and knowing that I never quit nor was I guided by anybody on this earth."
"A lot of us surround ourselves with people who speak to our desire for comfort. People who would rather treat the pain of our wounds and prevent further injury than help us callous over them and try again. We need to surround ourselves with people who will tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear, but at the same time not make us feel we’re up against the impossible."
"My mother was my biggest fan. Whenever I failed in life she was always asking me when and where I would go after it again. She never said, Well, maybe it isn’t meant to be."
"The Buddha famously said that life is suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but I know what he meant and so do you. To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss. That’s just nature."
"We can’t control all the variables in our lives. It’s about what we do with opportunities revoked or presented to us that determine how a story ends."
"In every failure there is something to be gained, even if it’s only practice for the next test you’ll have to take. Because that next test is coming. That’s a guarantee."
"I knew that the confidence I’d managed to develop didn’t come from a perfect family or God-given talent. It came from personal accountability which brought me self-respect, and self-respect will always light a way forward."
"There is no more time to waste. Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert. That’s why it’s okay to be cruel to yourself as long as you realize you’re doing it to become better."
"Be more than motivated, be more than driven, become literally obsessed to the point where people think you're fucking nuts."
"It takes great strength to be vulnerable enough to put your ass on the line, in public, and work toward a dream that feels like it’s slipping away."
"Human beings change through study, habit, and stories... when you’re driven, whatever is in front of you, whether it’s racism, sexism, injuries, divorce, depression, obesity, tragedy, or poverty, becomes fuel for your metamorphosis."
"We all need small sparks, small accomplishments in our lives to fuel the big ones. Think of your small accomplishments as kindling. When you want a bonfire, you don’t start by lighting a big log. You collect some witch’s hair—a small pile of hay or some dry, dead grass. You light that, and then add small sticks and bigger sticks before you feed your tree stump into the blaze. Because it’s the small sparks, which start small fires, that eventually build enough heat to burn the whole fucking forest down."
"The hero is you."
