Unshackling Your Mind and Living to Your Fullest Potential
Retired Navy Seal David Goggins teaches us how we can master our minds in his book “Can’t Hurt Me”
We all struggle in life. It’s inevitable, a shared human experience. Struggle can be big, like battling depression for years, or it can be minor, such as wrestling with a math problem for an hour. But either way, we all struggle.
Retired Navy Seal David Goggins’ life was a living hell. He faced every struggle imaginable, but against all odds, he made it into the Navy Seals and dramatically turned his life around. His book Can’t Hurt Me shows how we can take all of our struggles, pain, and suffering and use them to live to our fullest potential. His story is sad, angry, and painful, but is a treasure chest of inspiration, advice, and cold-hard truths that needs a listen.
The book is presented in the chronological order of David’s life. In each chapter, he presents a story, gives some advice, and then presents a challenge for you to act on. Let’s start with his story. His story is probably the most powerful, moving experience I’ve ever heard. He has gone through so many things, whether it involuntary or voluntary, that you would think: “Dude, give yourself a break man, you’ve earned it.” But no, he keeps going, teaching countless lessons and offering a cornucopia of advice.
Surprisingly, the story is actually portrayed very well, despite Goggins not being an experienced writer. Every scene is so detailed, you can feel his emotions and pain. For example, there is one scene in the beginning where he details a brutal beatdown from his abusive father. His details are so vivid and descriptive, the response was visceral when I read it; I couldn’t help but cringe and say “Gosh.”
The challenges he gives at the end of each chapter are cool too. They can be breaking out your journal and reflecting on different experiences from your life to fuel you for the future, or they can be something like putting post-it notes on your mirror to be honest with yourself. That’s probably my favorite challenge, the accountability mirror is what he calls it. For this challenge, he encourages you to put post-it notes up on your mirror with all of your goals, dreams, and insecurities written on them. We only improve when we are brutally honest with ourselves.
In closing, Can’t Hurt Me is a truly inspirational story with numerous life lessons. With all of the mental strategies he gives to strengthen our mind, I firmly believe that this will benefit me a lot in the future for my running career, and just life in general. I believe that this book contains a message everyone should hear to turn around their lives and live into their fullest potential.
