Have you ever had a friend who is very direct, yet unjudgmental?
David Goggins is the to-the-point friend that we all need.
Early in ‘Can’t Hurt Me’, Goggins has reached a breaking point of misery and suffering as an overweight pest-control technician. He looks in his bathroom mirror and tells himself “You’re fat.” (Among other blatant call-outs).
Throughout ‘Can’t Hurt Me’ Goggins refuses to lie to himself, and, therefore, you know he’s not lying to you.
This is what is so magnetizing and great about Can’t Hurt Me. You get the feeling Goggins is doing something revolutionary by the most direct path of all. He’s not being trollingly-judgemental towards vague groups of people in a way that we are used to seeing in blogs and other self-help books. No comments about millennials or boomers or kids in this book. No comments about things we can’t control. He aims his judgement and action entirely at the one thing he can change: himself.
Ken Chlouber has a famous saying surrounding the Leadville 100 “You can do more than you think you can.”
The simplicity and enormity of the quote is also David Goggin’s belief in Can’t Hurt Me - Goggins believes that most of us are only doing 40% of what we are really capable of. You can do more than you think you can, and where our mind thinks we are at 100% capacity, we’re really only at 40% capacity.
In Can’t Hurt Me Goggins goes into the mental pitfalls of being “The Only” as in, the only black person, the only woman, the only gay person. Being The Only means it is super easy to see yourself as a victim or as special, but you can’t let let the mentality set in - you can jump into the 60% and keep going despite being The Only.
In Goggin’s case, not only is he is often The Only, but he comes from a world of pain. Goggin’s early life is punctuated with abuse after abuse from his father. It’s horrific, intentional abuse - something of the past, something he can’t ever change. So he changes himself, and his future. His take is that If he can mentally rise above, we all can.
And yes, wow, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been The Only woman in school or in art, and in my professional life or wherever - I think at some point in life, everyone is The Only of some kind. It’s nice to turn the course of action back towards self, back towards what can be done rather than what can’t be done.
After reading Can’t Hurt Me, I definitely wanted to know more about this person - I wanted to breathe and live in the Goggins mentality as much as I could. Luckily, I’m far from the only one, and there is an expansive Goggins universe of podcasts and Youtube videos out there.
It’s been great to follow David Goggins on Instagram, where he will write surprising at-length blogs on each photo post, and is impressively delivering his messages in video form while doing jumprope or running on a treadmill. I find his feed so different, so compelling. I can barely livestream on Instagram without getting out of breath, so I admire how Goggins can run and jump and also talk at the top of his lungs.
I knew I had found a home on Instagram with David Goggins when he put up a post and said, Hey, sometimes, you might be saying “They don’t like me because I am xyz” but it could also be because you’re just not good enough!
It’s this kind of self-ass-kicking that I gravitate towards, and I think most people who like David Goggins like the same thing about him.
Because ultimately, I know I can’t change thousands of years of sexism or racism or homophobia, I can’t change how people perceive art as an idea, but I can change my mental take on it all. Goggins did it, so, I can change myself and my own life. Which is the paradox and the truth - by changing yourself, you change the world.
Goggins gives us the chance to transcend anything - abuse, being The Only, health conditions - via self-accountability and undeniably excellent. Sometimes you’re fat. Sometimes you’re wrong. Sometimes you have to get back up. This, and the 40% rule is the most hopeful message I can fathom when adversity is high.
I also like how Goggins deals with his haters and naysayers, too, where he says to “step out of hate,” because hate dearly wishes to engage you. Stepping towards hate is letting it get closer to winning.
Every now and then, I’ll get an occasional hater on the internet - they’re usually faceless (no profile photo, bogus username). And I will think to myself “I can’t believe I have done everything I have done and gotten so far in life and art, and now a faceless person with no name is yelling at me, calling me names, telling me I am this or that.”
Whenever I tell my friends about my haters, they almost can’t believe I have haters. Why would I have haters? I’m not controversial. I don’t tell people what to do or how to live their lives. I make space fantasy comics and paintings of cats.
But it’s the same for David Goggins - he doesn’t tell people what to do or how to live their lives - he just does it, he is an action-taker first, a speaker second. He still has haters.
Sometimes people just hate you for existing. In Can’t Hurt Me and in the Goggins world, it’s patently true that haters will find you for having done nothing other than existing beyond where you were statistically expected to exist. Sometimes you exist, and people get mad or jealous, and it is 8000% always about them, not you. That’s why I am in the Goggins court of living heroically in your own ever-expansive lane. I’m cool with looking at myself in the mirror and saying “You’re lazy” when I haven’t done a marathon yet, or finished an art project.
There’s really nothing else to do, except the remaining 60%.
It was no surprise to me when Goggins ended up running the Leadville 100 near the end of Can’t Hurt Me, and that the main thing he had to say about the town was meeting the people there who had traveled far to see him run. He’s touring the country almost constantly, running ultra races and races that didn’t even exist five years ago. In both his life and philosophy, he is on a kind of grand tour of transcending limits. The Goggins universe may not be for everyone, but there’s no reason it can’t be.
Related blogs:
Plein Air Painting in Leadville
Sketchbook Confessional November 2019
Who wrote this?
