How David Goggins Keeps Himself Motivated

Imagine what you could do if you could sustain long-term motivation, even if it requires hard work.

There are very few things you can’t accomplish if you do.

Yet few people manage to do it.

We’ll look at one who did and how he did it.

David Goggins had a shift in his mindset that was essential for his staggering turnaround and to complete his superhuman feats.

This shift is not an easy and instant lifehack, but a profound change in how you think about effort and challenge.

Let’s start with where it often goes wrong.

The Perils of Rewards

Most people don’t enjoy working hard — they do it in order to achieve some end goal.

End goals and rewards are terrific.

Yet, working hard for a reward that comes after tends to make the hard work more challenging. It makes the experience more painful to endure — for reasons you’ll understand shortly.

Focusing on the reward also makes you less likely to lean into hard work in the future. You’ll need more of the reward to motivate yourself to do it again.

Let’s look at a slightly soul-crushing but instructive example.