PNTV: Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins (#416)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book. One of my favorites, Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins. Can't Hurt Me Subtitle Master your mind and defy the odds. The book cover itself is phenomenal. You can't see it from this perspective, but behind the current David Goggins, who is the most radiant exemplar of awesome, you see the 297 pound version of him who got laughed at when he went to the Navy SEAL recruiting facilities. They said, are you kidding me? No, not gonna happen. You gotta lose just a little bit of weight. But he hit it. Became one of the most renowned Navy SEALs on the planet these days. Former Army Ranger as well. Kind of did all the different trainings. Super inspiring guy. If you don't mind more than the occasional F bomb, I think you'll love the book as much as I did. Check him out if you haven't already. On Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all the other places the cool kids hang out, he's got these short video clips that just fire you up, get you going. This book, again is one of my favorites. And it's funny because shortly after I read this, I received some of the highest praise of my life. I'm sitting there training. We used to live in Southern California and we had the spartan training facility in our backyard. You know, different climbing walls, etc. Climbing rope, etc. I had a pretty good accident. Thankfully, I didn't fall from the rope. I fell from the little wall traverse, right? And it was just one of those like perfect falls. I'm up and I just fell perfectly and just banged my wrist in such a manner that it just completely shattered whatever, this general region. So my hand was just like this, right? And I had just come back from the trail and all I had on was my shorts and my heart rate monitor. Walked into the kitchen. My wife is like, what? And my son takes one look at my dangling hand and screams. Runs into the room, slams the door, and then we go to the emergency room. And I'm grateful this whole time that I didn't fall from the rope. It is what it is. I'm not feeling the pain. It just is what it is. So I cruise in to the hospital. I check myself in while Alexandra parks. All I'm wearing again, the shorts, not even wearing any socks. Just got the heart rate monitor still on. Yeah, I fell. And after we did what we needed to get done. The nurse apparently said that I walked in like I was David. David uses a lot of F bombs. Goggins. I thought that was the funniest thing ever, so I'll take that as high praise. David Goggins, one of the hardest guys on the planet. Super tough. If we can emulate him a little bit, that'd be great. So Philosopher's Note 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3. Check out the 600 plus at Optimize Me. Get your free two week trial, a bunch of other things, optimum living classes, etc. If you and we have a ton of philosopher's notes on Navy Seals. We're actually going to do three more in a row. Four Navy Seals in a row with these PNTVs fired up next we're going to hit I think Staring down the Wolf by Mark Devine Jocko Willinks Discipline Equals Freedom and then Fearless Eric Blem all about Adam Brown Some of the best books on Navy SEAL wisdom out there Can't Hurt Me. David Goggins this book tells about his horrific childhood. Just suffered extreme abuse, pulled himself through there, experienced the ups and downs of all good heroes journeys. But he kicks off the book why kick off the note with a passage that's in the first part of the book that I want to share with you here? This is David Goggins. He tells us Heraclitus, a philosopher born in the Persian Empire back in the 5th century BC had it right when he wrote about men on the battlefield. Out of every hundred men he wrote, 10 shouldn't even be there. 80 are just targets. 9 are the real fighters and we are lucky to have them for they make the battle. Ah, but the one one is a warrior. Goggins proceeds to say he dedicated his life to being that warrior. Which is our first big idea being that one warrior who tips the battle in his or her favor. We need to be that warrior. We need to step up and be the hero of our own lives and give the world all we've got. Which reminds me of the first Philosopher's Note TV we did since my break. Abraham Maslow, the great humanistic psychologist, talked about self actualizing individuals in the 50s and 60s. If you sat in one of his classes, he might have said to you as a college student, which of you believes you're going to achieve greatness? Which of you believes you will be the one warrior? Which of you believes you will achieve greatness? In his class? Apparently we just stare at him blankly and then he would say if not you, then who? So if not you, then who? And we just talked about Pilar Gerasimo's healthy deviant. She says out of 100 people in the US today, or one of them is healthy, is truly flourishing. Well, guess what? We need you to be that one, such that we can make those numbers a little bigger as we give the world all we've got. And again, our whole mission with Optimize is very simple. Let's change the world one person at a time together, starting with you and me today. And it's wisdom like this from Goggins that just lights a fire under us, to go out and live with a sense of urgency and intensity. And that again, he, Mark Divine, Jocko willink. These beautiful individuals channel. And again, it's not just them. We'll talk about this in different contexts, but whether you're a warrior or a monk, look at. Look at Thich Nhat Hanh, look at the Dalai Lama. They show up with their own intense, grounded spiritual energy. It's just coming through. Goggins and Jocko and these other guys in their own Personas. William McRaven, same thing. So, yeah, I'll leave it at that. The next big idea Jocko does. I'm sorry, Goggins and Jocko are, like, separated at birth. These two guys just share the same equal intensity. But Goggins tells us that when he was 297 pounds, he needed to look into what he called the accountability mirror. Actually, he did it earlier in his life and multiple times in his life, but the accountability mirror. And he's pretty funny. I'll actually let him say it. He says, if you look in the mirror and you see a fat person, don't tell yourself that you need to lose a couple of pounds. Tell the truth. Your expletive fat. It's okay. Just say you're fat. If you're fat, the dirty mirror that you see every day is going to tell you the truth every time. So why are you still lying to yourself? So you can feel better for a few minutes and stay the expletive the same. If you're fat, you need to change the fact that you're fat, because it's very expletive unhealthy. I know because I've been there. That's the kind of medicine you get from David Goggins. Now, again, this is really, really powerful to think about. Looking in the mirror. No shame. We don't need to be shaming ourselves from looking in the mirror, but we also don't need to ignore Reality. And it's interesting because as I was preparing for this and I wrote down accountability in my notes, I recalled that as I read the thousand intake forms near, we had over 1,000 people go through optimized coach class one, right? And we asked them, hey, you tell us what we can do to serve you most profoundly. And I read every single intake form, and nearly every person completed one. We had 1100 people. So I read nearly 1000 of these little intake forms. Help me do this or do this or do that. But the number one thing that everybody asked for from us, and again, our program is all about going from theory to practice to mastery. They said, hold me accountable. Hold me accountable to my higher standards. So again, we aspire to do that. But ultimately, you are the only one who can hold yourself accountable. See the truth. Don't go negative thinking and don't go positive thinking. Have neutral, targeted thinking. Decide what you want and what you need to get there. And then one of the ways we hold our coaches accountable is to become a certified optimized coach. You need to be at your optimal weight. You need to have what science says is the number one predictor of your health. And morbidity, which is your waist to height circumference needs to be less than 0.5 or progressing toward that in order to be a certified optimized coach. A lot of people push back on that hard. We said, okay, well, then the program may not be for you. We're cool with where you're at, and if this is a big challenge, then let's go hit it. But we can do it, and we can do it together. And then you, when you conquer this challenge, will be a radiant exemplar for the world, just like Goggins is. We'll talk about his process in a moment. Little by little, get a little better, then you get a little better, then you get a little better, then you're a lot better. That's the accountability mirror. And when you use the truth, which is from. This is from a chapter called Truth Hurts. Okay? It hurts. As Epictetus said, when you hear a philosopher give a talk. Not a sophist. Sophist was the motivational speaker of back in the day. They just wanted to make you feel good. He says when you hear a philosopher talk, you don't stand and cheer. You wince. Like, really? Did he just ask me to do that? Didn't make you feel good. They make you feel like, as Seneca says, you just had surgery performed and you're sitting there in a hospital talking to your buddies. Wow, that was rough. That hurt a little bit. That's the point. Truth hurts. We need to be honest with ourselves. Here's another funny thing. It takes what it takes. This is where Trevor Moad tells us about neutral thinking. Not negative, not positive, neutral. We extend that to targeted thinking. Check that out. He says that after years on ESPN for the first time, he went back to his college where he played basketball. And his college coach was a friendly jerk. Although he used a different word for jerk. We'll go with jerk here. His college basketball coach was a friendly jerk and he sat down and he said to him, trevor, no one's ever going to take you seriously unless you lose 25 pounds. Dude, what are you doing? Come on, get it together. Ha. Truth hurts, but we got to be honest with ourselves. Start with the mirror you're looking into. Have the self compassion and then have enough love and strength for yourself to go do the work that needs to get done to be the best version of yourself in service to your family, your community, your world, et cetera. So thank you, David Goggins. Worst to best. This is another great idea echoed by all the great teachers. William McRaven, who again, four star admiral. One of his ten ideas he shared in make youe Bed that we talked about in that PNTV episode was when you're at your worst, feeling your worst, be your best. This is the Navy seal, you know, dogma. When you are feeling your worst, that's when you need to give your best. As McRaven says, when you're neck deep in mud, sing. So Goggins talks about the importance of having a system that you execute. We talk about it in terms of a protocol, and I've said countless times, I'm going to keep on repeating myself. The worse you feel, the more committed you are. To what? To your protocol, to what you do when you're on. Which begs the question, what do you do when you're on? Goggins has another idea. He calls it a cookie jar. Imagine a cookie jar when he was a kid. One of his prized things. Again, he grew up in a really abusive family household. His father was extraordinarily, ruthlessly abusive. But you remember when he was a kid, his mom would have a cookie jar. Put his hand in there, he'd feel great. He created his own cookie jar of memories of him at his best. He says, look, life's always going to be kicking you around. You need to constantly remind yourself of who you are at your best. He calls it a cookie jar. We Call it a hero bar. You got to have a hero bar. You got to have a box of them stocked up. Who are you? At your absolute best. And know that those hero bars, one of the key ingredients in them, blood, sweat, tears. They're salty. As we talked about. I don't know if we talked about it in Abraham Maslow's future visions. We do in the note and some plus ones where whenever Abraham Maslow would feel stress, he'd get nauseous, he'd get insomnia, and his wife would say, something good must be cooking. He'd be coming up with a new theory. It was tough. Something good must be cooking. We talk about cooking hero bars with Abraham Maslow. You can get Goggins in that kitchen. Who are you at your best? What have you done that you're really proud of? Get clear on that and nibble on those hero bars. Be your worst. I'm sorry. Be your best when you're feeling your worst. And again, the worse you feel, the more committed you are. That's not. When you. Most people, when they have an off day, they start spiraling into vicious behavior. You need to do the opposite. When you feel terrible, that's when you double down on your electronics management. You get a good night of sleep, you train hard, yet you're recovering equally diligently. You're focusing on your work. You're giving time to your family. You buckle up and you go harder. The more life kicks you around. That's how you become antifragile, as we like to say. And then the truth becomes jet fuel for you and your process. Well, there we go. The process. Our fourth idea here again. David Goggins was £297 at one point. He was an exterminator working the night shift in fast food restaurants. You don't want to hear the stories he shares there to go get rid of all the cockroaches and other stuff that seemed to occupy those fine dining establishments. He said there. He's like, what have I done with my life? £297. I'm sitting here as an exterminator on the night shift. He's again, one of those saw the Navy SEAL thing video, realized, I'm going to be a Navy seal. He went out and literally the officers at the recruiting facilities laughed at him. Are you kidding me? Look at yourself. No. And then he worked the process. 297 pounds. He could only run a quarter of a mile. Fast forward eight years and the guy could run. This is insane. 205 miles at a time. He's an ultra endurance athlete, as you probably know, if you know Goggins, 205 miles in one stretch, 39 hours straight, continuous, not stopping. And he says you've got to work the process. Did he get there overnight? Of course he didn't get there overnight. He showed up and his whole thing, or one of his big things. We're getting crazy on this board. Again, here's you, here's your current comfort zone. And his whole thing is go past it. You don't need to go nuts. Don't try to go here, go here. 5 to 10%. When you get to 100 pushups, if that's what you can do, or 10 pushups, do 5 to 10% more, do one more. Then when you get to the next limit, do another one. 5 to 10%. 5 to 10%. 5 to 10% aggregated and compounded becomes a very, very big number over an extended period of time. Will you masinter becomes a very, very big number. And then I reference in the book, in the note, rather Steven Kotler's Rise of Superman. He says the exact same thing. He says 4%. That's what the greatest performers do. They push themselves just a little past their current comfort zone. How's that feel? Uncomfortable. All about Marie Forleo's growth zone. Perfect, that's where you want to play. Perfect, that's where you want to play. And then pretty soon they both say the impossible becomes what you do next. It's what you have for breakfast. 205 miles, 39 hours straight. Got there by the process. And then finally bursting and burning. Another thing that David Goggins is known for is he's done 4030 pull ups in in 17 hours. At the time, that was the Guinness World Record. Now he failed twice in pursuit of that record. One time he failed live TV on the Today show. Just failed. Injured himself. He failed. Felt pretty bad. Needed to eat some cookies from his cookie jar, right highlight reel style. Then he committed, I'm doing this. He decoupled it from his calendar. He said, I am going to achieve this goal. I don't care how long it takes me, another two months, two years, 20 years, whatever. I'm achieving this. Boom. Got rid of all excuses and then went and hammered it. And he said that process of becoming your best self is like a seed bursting from within itself to become a plant or a flower or a tree or whatever he says, is that a fun process? Does it feel good to burst from the inside out? No. But fun isn't the point of life. This is the whole point of Ward. Who am I thinking of? Our stoic book, the UT Austin Dean. I'm forgetting his name right now. Forgive me. The practicing stoic. He says, what do you want? Do you want the good life? Ward Farnsworth? Do you want the good mood or do you want the good life? Do you want hedonic pleasure or do you want eudaimonic joy? Deep, deep joy. Not in the moment. When you binge watch Netflix or you do whatever it is you do to feel good in the moment. Good mood style. But you're willing to do the hard work that doesn't feel good in the moment because that's how you're going to burst through the seed that is your potential and become that, what you're destined to be again. Hedonic Eudaimonic. Good mood, good life. And then the byproduct of living a good life is you feel really good. Sustainably, consistently. Your highs are higher and your lows are higher because you work your protocol and you feel good more and more consistently. Then the final idea I shared in the note was Viktor Frankl. So we got the seed bursting. Then we have a candle burning. Viktor Frankl once said, that which is to give light must endure the burning. We must endure the burning through of all of the vicious vices that we have, vicious behavior, the vices we have to become that best version of ourselves. Work the process. Go from when you're feeling your worst to being your best. Emotional stamina style. Look into the mirror. We all have stuff that we need to work on. We call them kryptonites. Fantastic. Go check out the episode on the PNTV on atomic habits. Go figure out how you can create habits that lead you to a better version of yourself so you can become that one warrior that we need. If not you, then who? As Hillel says, if not now, then when. There you go. Hoo ya. David Goggins, thanks for being a radiant exemplar. What's the number one idea you got out of our chat today? How do you move from theory to practice to mastery? On it. A little bit more. Get on that. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Tomorrow we're going to have three more intense discussions with some of my favorite Navy SEALs. Let's go.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

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