Callous Your Mind

Powerful Ways to Build Mental Toughness

“The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated.”

— David Goggins

Start running into your fear zone today

You will become great if you can get through doing all the crap you hate to do. This idea is one Goggins believes, and I've seen work in my life.

Living through health problems and job losses was difficult, but I have to admit that facing rejection regularly is one of the toughest.

As a creative person, rejection is something you must become acquainted with, almost like it's a family member you tolerate. Submitting articles to publications and hearing it's not fit for them, or putting a piece of art out there no one responds to, or even worse gives negative comments about, is a nightmare.

You can't make the possibility of rejection stop you from sharing your work or who you truly are. I like to call my feeling of uncertainty a "Fear Zone." When I notice my reluctance to submit or put something out in the world I worked hard on, I tell myself to run, not walk, into that fear zone.

When something doesn't go how you planned, or someone tells you no, it feels crappy. Sure, you can feel upset and even get mad and depressed, but you must rise again at some point.

When you've built up the mental muscles to handle your disappointments, do the uncomfortable work, and still walk through fear, you may fail many times, but at some point, you will succeed.

Take a tip from David Goggins and start building those mental calluses today.

Develop a Callused Mind

How did he do it? By developing a callused mind. When Goggins was training to break the pull-up world record, he created so much friction between his hands and the pull-up bar that his palms built thick calluses. These calluses protected his palm by hardening the skin and blunting the pain. The same principle applies to your mind. When you create mental friction by going against your mind's constant need for comfort and thrust yourself into intense physical and intellectual challenges, you gradually callus over your fear of discomfort and increase your pain tolerance.

Start Craving Discomfort

Life is like boxing; it hurts the first time you get punched in the chin. But if you keep putting yourself in the ring, you'll have developed the mental tolerance to absorb a hundred punches from more vigorous opponents. Goggins says after you callused your mind; you learned that you could take a hell of more than one punch. To start Callus in your mind, you need to start craving discomfort. Every day look for opportunities to make yourself uncomfortable. If it starts raining outside, go for a run. If you've had a long day at work, go to the gym and do the most challenging workout you've done all month. If you don't feel like studying, lock yourself in a quiet room, and don't leave that room until you've written ten pages of notes.

By craving discomfort and seeking out painful but rewarding experiences, you're not trying to be self-indulgent; you're simply trying to master your fear of pain. When Goggins was in his early 20s, his fear of pain and pursuit of comfort led him to a dead-end job, spraying cockroaches and rewarding himself with large chocolate shakes in a box of hostess mini donuts after every shift. Soon he weighed 290 pounds and felt too ashamed to look at himself in the mirror. By avoiding pain, his internal pain grew and grew. When Goggins started pursuing pain by taking on challenges that would cause him to suffer, like losing a hundred pounds in three months to qualify for Navy SEAL training, he reduced his internal pain and fear of pain. He put himself back in the driver's seat of his life. When you see painful but rewarding experiences, it's helpful to remember the secret of pain. A secret that most people never realize or forget. The secret of pain is that it grows when you fear the experience of pain. But when you accept pain and move towards it, it shrinks. As psychologists Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels say in their book, The Tools

"Your experience of pain changes relative to how you react to it."

If you flee from it, pain pursues you like a monster in a dream. If you confront the monster, it goes away. If you get in the habit of walking towards pain, you'll gradually callus your mind and blunt your fear of discomfort. But regardless of how much you callus your mind, you're bound to experience moments when pain seems unbearable, and you think you've reached your absolute limit. After weeks of working on a project for 12 hours a day or at Mile 15 of a marathon, you might get this feeling.

Conclusion

So if you want to find David Goggins level grit, start by doing something that sucks every day to Callus over your fear of discomfort. When the pain becomes unbearable and you encounter your first urge to quit, remember the 40% rule and dip into your cookie jar to find the energy you need to push on and push through your mental barriers.

As Goggins says:

If you want to master your mind, you'll have to become addicted to hard work because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools.