David Goggins, The Toughest Man Alive
Anyone who is familiar with David Goggins will agree with me that he is the toughest man alive. He is the only person to have completed Navy SEAL training, Army Ranger School, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training. To become a Navy SEAL, he went through 3 different hell weeks over an 18-month span. He’s run 100 miles in under 24 hours, 238 miles in under 3 days, and holds the Guinness World Record for pull-ups - 4,030 in under 24 hours. The man is a physical specimen who has repeatedly pushed his body to and through heights that are unfathomable for the rest of us.
His mental toughness is even more impressive and what has enabled him to accomplish what he has physically. He has developed what he calls a “calloused mind” where he uses all the trauma he’s experienced in his life as a means to become mentally unbreakable. I don’t use the word trauma lightly here; he is very open about his childhood and what he went through growing up. His father was an abusive alcoholic who beat him, his mother, and his brother on a daily basis. It ended up getting so bad that the three of them fled their home in Buffalo and moved to the small town of Brazil, Indiana. His suffering didn’t stop then, he saw a classmate get run over by a bus (that he was on) and a year later his Stepdad was murdered. All this happened before the age of 14.
When he moved on to High School, he was plagued by his many learning disabilities, reading at a 4th-grade level. He was one of only a handful of Black students at the school and was subjected to incessant racism and bullying. He was disinterested in school, had no support system or positive role models, and nearly flunked out. In response to the news that he was going to fail, he began his first of many transformations.
His mom could only afford an hour of tutoring a week so his progress was very slow. During one of the sessions, his tutor jokingly told him that he would need to review things 1,000 times to retain any of what he was studying. He took that joke as a challenge and developed an inhuman work ethic and began to use his deficiencies as fuel. This work ethic enabled him to graduate high school and be accepted into the Air Force Pararescue program. It was the creation of his alter ego, Goggins, who was willing to endure anything to achieve his goal.
It’s not a fairy tale ending from there, he was medically discharged from the Air Force and began to succumb to his demons and excuses again. He spiraled out of control finding himself weighing 297 pounds and working the night shift for a pest control company at the age of 24.
One morning, after getting done with his pest control shift, he turned the tv on to a documentary on Navy SEAL training, known in the military world as BUD/S. He was entranced by the documentary; what the training entailed and what the individuals who completed the training were able to endure. He decided that day he was going to become a Navy SEAL – losing 106 pounds in under 3 months to do so. Yes, you read that right – the man worked out so maniacally for 3 months that he got down to 191 pounds to be accepted into SEAL training.
It may seem like I’ve told his entire story but I assure you these are just a few of the highlights from the first 2-3 chapters.
I was first exposed to David Goggins and his story in 2019 when I heard him on the Ed Mylett Show. I listened to the episode on a drive from LA to Santa Barbara, cruising along the Pacific Ocean where his SEAL training took place. The first thing I noticed about him was that he has no filter. That’s not entirely true, he does have a filter, it just adds as many expletives as possible to every sentence he speaks. I liked his no-bs style and was inspired by his story but as soon as I got to my hotel room in SB and looked out at the ocean, I forgot all about it.
About six months later I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who asked if I had heard of David Goggins and, more importantly, if I had read his book. When I told him I hadn’t he implored me to buy it and move it to the top of my reading list.
This conversation took place in May of 2020, two months into the COVID19 pandemic in the United States. Like many people, I had begun to slip into some bad habits during this time – I was sleeping in, not working out, slacking off at work, playing video games during the day, and completely ignoring my side business. I was making a lot of excuses and the state of the world was making it easy for me to do so. I couldn’t work out because the gyms were closed, I couldn’t do my job well because no one was buying software, I couldn’t work on my side business because the world shut down – the list went on and on.
What makes the book so powerful is that he goes into excruciating detail about his life and the challenges he’s faced, like the childhood trauma I mentioned earlier. He goes step by step through the process he used to overcome those challenges and provides detailed accounts of his results. Each chapter ends with a challenge, ten in total, ranging from creating self-accountability to stepping outside of your comfort zone.
The very first chapter and challenge were the most impactful for me, taking inventory of your excuses. Seeing this challenge after reading the heartbreaking story of his childhood that was filled with so many horrific experiences woke me up from my excuse cycle. It gave me the perspective of what true hardship and suffering looked like and how great I had it in my current situation.
I began to implement his challenges into my life; acknowledging my weaknesses, visualizing and writing down my goals, and getting to work. I have stumbled many times since starting this process in June 2020 but I’ve seen tangible growth as well. His process led me to do 20,000 push-ups over a 4-month span, hold a 10-minute plank on New Year’s Eve, and decide to move to Denver to launch my business.
I wanted to use this platform to honor David Goggins for what he’s done to help me and countless others. He is a man I respect greatly and encourage anyone who’s looking to improve their life to buy his book and put his method into action.
As David would say, Stay hard!