This is not about changing your life instantly, it’s about moving the needle bit by bit and making those changes sustainable. That means digging down to the micro level and doing something that sucks every day. Even if it’s as simple as making your bed, doing the dishes, ironing your clothes, or getting up before dawn and running two miles each day.
Hell Week was a mind game. The instructors used our suffering to pick and peel away our layers, not to find the fittest athletes. To find the strongest minds. That’s something the quitters didn’t understand until it was too late.
Because when you’re driven, whatever is in front of you, whether it’s racism, sexism, injuries, divorce, depression, obesity, tragedy, or poverty, becomes fuel for your metamorphosis.
We all have areas in our lives we either ignore or can improve upon. Find yours.
Know why you’re in the fight to stay in the fight!
Don’t kill them with kindness, Torture them with success.
When a half-assed job doesn’t bother you, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are. And until you start feeling a sense of pride and self-respect in the work you do, no matter how small or overlooked those jobs might be, you will continue to half-ass your life.
No matter what you or I achieve, in sports, business, or life, we can’t be satisfied. Life is too dynamic a game. We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse.
Incremental progress is still progress, I said to myself. One step is all that is required to take the next one.
Adagio in Strings.
Remember, visualization will never compensate for work undone. You cannot visualize lies.
Or I could leave all that behind for a world of possibility, much more pain, unfathomably hard work, and zero guarantees of success. I could choose resilience.
All my fears came from that deep-seated uneasiness I carried with being David Goggins because of what I’d gone through. Even after I’d reached a point where I no longer cared about what others thought of me, I still had trouble accepting me.
We have to learn to stop looking for a sign that the hard time will end.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Faith Over Fear”? For me it was Hate Over Fear.
Most people who attempt to recover from an acute injury see their physical therapist a few times a week for an hour at most, yet they make that therapist their leader and convince themselves that it is the therapist’s job to fix them. We can’t rely on others to get us to where we need to be.
Whatever it takes for you to believe that you’re better than good enough to achieve your dreams is what you must do. And remember, your greatness is not tied to any outcome. It is found in the valiance of the attempt.
For years I’ve lived like a monk. I don’t see or spend time with a lot of people. My circle is very tight. I post on social media once or twice a week and I never check anybody else’s feeds because I don’t follow anyone. That’s just me.
Don’t stop when you are tired. Stop when you are done.
We didn’t care about muscle fatigue or breakdown because after a certain point we were training our minds, not our bodies.