Powerful Ways to Build Mental Toughness

David Goggins is the symbol of grit; he went through three hell weeks to become a Navy SEAL, but he also became an ultra-runner and finished a hundred and thirty-five-mile race at Death Valley in the middle of summer. He pushed his body to run 135 miles for 32 hours, and he routinely did a thousand push-ups before breakfast on route to breaking the pull-up world record by doing four thousand and thirty pull-ups in 17 hours. He accomplished all these achievements without realizing he had a hole in his heart that reduced aerobic capacity.?

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.

40 Percent Rule & The Cookie Jar

The 40 percent rule states that when your mind first tells you you're done, you're only 40 percent done. If you look deep within yourself, you'll find that you haven't even tapped into half of what you're capable of. A Professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town, Timothy Noakes, studied athletes in his physiology lab and found that when athletes claimed they had nothing left to give, they reached the point of complete physical exhaustion. Muscle tests revealed that their muscles could do significantly more work. It turned out that the urge to quit wasn't due to muscle failure. It was due to an overprotective brain telling the body to stop.

Noakes says?

"Fatigue should no longer be considered a physical event but rather a sensation or a motion."?

So the next time you feel completely exhausted, and your brain convinces you to quit, remember that the first sign of exhaustion is usually false. Know that you have a large energy reserve that you haven't tapped into yet. Dig deep, find your 60% reserve and tap into it 5% at a time. When you're doing push-ups, and your brain starts complaining, remember the 40% rule and squeeze out one more set, then another.

When Goggins started ultrarunning, he began with a 24-hour race around a one-mile track with zero training. Goggans also weighed 260 pounds which is massive for any long-distance runner. When Goggins reached the 70-mile mark, his kidneys started failing. He had broken all the small bones in his feet, and he lost every one of his toenails. The pain was unbearable at that moment. He had to dig deep to finish the race, so he reached into his mental cookie jar and pulled out a cookie from his past.

He recalled studying three times as hard to overcome a learning disability and graduate from high school.

He recalled the time he had to drop a hundred pounds in three months to qualify for Navy SEAL training.

And he recalled the time he got through hell week on two broken legs.

He says these weren't mere flashbacks; I wasn't just floating through my memory files; I tapped into the emotional state I felt during those victories and in doing so. I accessed my sympathetic nervous system. My adrenaline took over, the pain started to fade just enough, and my pace picked up. I began swinging my arms and lengthening my stride. I moved through the pain and ran a hundred and one miles.

How to taste Success

We all have a mental cookie jar stocked with cookies that will fuel us during periods of intense pain. Each cookie represents a time in our life when we faced intense struggle, overcame the odds, and tasted success. Maybe it was overcoming a speech impediment, getting through college, or dropping a bad habit like smoking. Now a cookie doesn't need to be significant. If you turned off your phone this morning to study for an exam for 30 minutes, that's a cookie. Suppose you did the dishes even though you didn't feel like it. As Goggins made his way around the one-mile track, every step was a cookie in each lap was a slightly bigger cookie filled with chocolate chunks that fueled him to the hundred-mile mark.

Goggin says, remembering that you'd been through difficulties before, and I've always survived to fight again shifts the conversation in your head. It allows you to control and manage doubt and focus on taking every step necessary to achieve the task at hand.

When the pain hits and tries to stop you short of your goal, dunk your fist in, pull out a cookie and let it fuel you.

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.