The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Greatness is not a destination but a way of being and you are either getting better or getting worse (you are never finished).
2. What carries you through resistance is discipline built by choosing the hard thing every day, treating every challenge as a mental lab for testing how much pressure your mind can take, and winning the one second decision to think rather than react when everything in you wants to quit.
3. Goggins backs this up with his own story - a broken childhood, getting lost and nearly freezing during the Moab 240, smokejumper training in his late forties and open-heart surgery - to show that belief is cultivated through work, failure is just another attempt, and your past sets no ceiling unless you let it.

Overview & Impressions

I found Never Finished to be full of very practical advice on developing grit, infused with Goggins’ own experiences which are genuinely inspiring. It is one of the few non-fiction books I have been able to read for hours at length without putting down. I could only get my hands on the clean edition, but even so it was quite moving and I'd say it shifted the standards I aspire to. I have heard it's a weaker version of Can’t Hurt Me though, so that may be the book more worth reading.

Top Quotes

When you are a full-time savage, it’s a lifestyle. There is no “want to.” There is only “must do.”

If you must retreat, quit when it’s easy, not when it’s hard.

With discipline as your medium, your life will become a work of art.

While most people stop when they’re tired, I stop when I am done.

Your greatness is not tied to any outcome. It is found in the valiance of the attempt.

Summary, Quotes & Notes

Introduction

I believed I could evolve, and that same belief has given me the strength and focus to persevere whenever I’ve been challenged for over two decades.

I

There are a lot of born losers out there. Every day, babies are born into poverty and broken families, like I was.

Going numb was how I took my beatings and maintained some level of self-respect.

When you’re born a loser, your goal is to survive, not thrive.

When you’re living in hell, the only way to find your way out is to confront the Devil himself.

It’s not my fault was my favorite refrain. It explained and justified my lot in life and the dead-end path in front of me.

How long will you allow your past to hold you back before you finally take control of your future?

On the drive back home, I turned the volume way down on the nurturing voice in my head and tuned into reality.

All of us are dealt circumstances in life we don’t have any power to control.

I was always destined to be that one warrior. Content to be the one who sharpens his sword alone.

It’s not always the childhood minefield that screws us up. There is no shortage of psychological and emotional snags in adult life.

We cannot afford to remain afraid of cutting away dead weight to save ourselves.

All our dreams and visions come with expiration dates etched in invisible ink.

It’s time to switch your focus to the things that will slingshot you forward.

II

Accepting your full truth, including all your faults, imperfections, and missteps, allows you to evolve, expand your possibilities, seek redemption, and explore your true potential.

People had always assumed a lot of things about me. Can’t Hurt Me finally allowed me to speak my truth, and I felt vindicated.

Nothing is permanent. Life is the ultimate competitor.

A savage is an individual who defies odds, who has a will that cannot be tamed, and who, when knocked down, will always get back up!

I would not be able to inspire people by simply talking about the things I did in my past. I gave myself one rule before joining social media: if I can’t live it, I won’t speak it.

Never waste a single thing.

I listened to those tapes at night and visualized the white line a thousand times. I became entranced by the simplicity of it, which helped minimize everything else about the race.

Once again, I broke out the tape recorder. I spoke my fears and my trauma - which not that many people knew about - into that microphone and discovered a strange, unexpected alchemy. My fear and trauma were transformed into energy and confidence.

I’ve kept a journal for years, but there are levels to this, and a written archive is the entry level. Audio recordings are more interactive and accessible and have a more profound effect on the mind.

With each subsequent listen, you will claim more and more power and gain enough transformational energy to change your life.

If you find the courage to paint the picture of your worst nightmare in the spoken word, then listen to it until it soaks in and saturates your mind, until you can hear it without any emotional reaction or spillover, it will no longer make you cower or cry.

Our words become actions, and our actions build habits that can coat our minds and bodies with the plaque of ambivalence, hesitancy, and passivity and separate us from our own lives.

Listening might inspire you to commit to your life in a deeper way, to be your best at work, at school, or in the gym. It can challenge you to rewrite the narrative.

Do it again the next morning, but this time, once you get through listening to all your whining about what you don’t want to do, sit up in bed and lay down a second take. Pretend you’re motivating a friend or loved one who is going through challenges. Be respectful of the issues they face, but be positive, forceful, and realistic too. This is a skill that demands repetition, and if you do it regularly, you’ll find that it won’t take long for your self-talk to flip from doubt and dread to optimism and empowerment.

I see hate as just another fuel source.

When I bed down at night, I listen to my haters.

III

If I paid close attention to my impulses, insecurities, and actions, dropped the shame, and remained willing to dissect my self-doubt, anxiety, and fear, I would find the strength and motivation to transform my life.

Difficult workouts and long study sessions tended to spotlight all my weak points.

My root problems were not and never had been physical. They were all mental. In my Lab, each physical workout became a test of my mental fortitude. I stopped caring about how my body looked. You don’t need six-pack abs when your mind is steel-plated. From that point on, each run, every hour on the pull-up bar, and all my late-night study sessions became experiments conducted to see how long my mind would hold out when I continued to apply more and more pressure.

If it feels right, create an alter ego to access some of that dark matter in your own mind.

The reasons to say no to something that we know will require our maximum dedication and promises no guarantee of success will bubble up two at a time until we give up before we even get started.

Sometimes, the biggest decisions in your life - the ones that will set your trajectory for weeks, months, years, or even decades to come - sneak up on you.

While money doesn’t always make you happy, it sure can make you feel satisfied.

Weekend Warriors do hard things when they fit into their busy schedules. They do them to check a box and only when they want to.

When you are a full-time savage, it’s a lifestyle. There is no “want to.” There is only “must do.”

Mental toughness and resilience fade if they aren’t used consistently.

You are either getting better, or you’re getting worse.

The reason I can run at a relatively quick clip for a long time is due to my training volume but also because when I run, I focus on my stride, remain conscious of where and how my feet strike the ground and on my head and shoulder position. I visualize myself running with a tray of full water glasses on my head. I don’t want any sway or bounce at all. I remain still yet relaxed and let my core and legs carry me forward.

To me, it’s about achieving mental and physical greatness.

Many dreams die while suffering.

They can make the One-Second Decision to think instead of react.

Once you step into that shower, you get so warm within a minute that you forget what being cold even felt like, and then, you realize that your warmth just cost you a piece of your soul, if not the whole thing, which can lead to a lifetime of regret.

I was done showing weakness. I was finished with fear. I would stay in that water as long as it took!

It was the snap of the cold water that triggered my fight-or-flight response, which comes with an adrenaline rush that spikes the heart and respiratory rates and puts your insecurities on blast.

Everything in life comes down to how we handle those crucial seconds. When psychological, physical, or emotional pressure redlines, your adrenal glands go haywire, and you are no longer in control. What separates a true savage from everybody else is the ability to regain control of their mind in that split second, despite the fact that all looks lost!

I’m not saying you have to be hyperaware every second of your life, but if you are pursuing something that demands all you’ve got and means the world to you, that is often what it takes.

When you are in the grip of life and in danger of losing control, just think, It’s time to take a knee.

It helps to prepare with productive self-talk before you drop into that sufferfest on your schedule.

It helps to remind yourself of what you’re good at and where you excel so when you have to engage in something that is hard for you, it doesn’t become overwhelming.

Every experience on earth is finite. It will end someday, and that makes it doable, but the outcome hinges on those crucial seconds you must win!

Quitting on a dream stays with you. It can color how you see yourself and the decisions you make going forward.

You will know what it takes and how it feels to overcome all that loud doubt, and that will stay with you too.

It’s not always the wrong move to quit. Even in battle, sometimes we must retreat.

If you must retreat, quit when it’s easy, not when it’s hard.

It’s all well and good to have success and reach a certain level, but I really don’t care what you did yesterday.

There are 86,400 seconds in a day. Losing just one of those seconds can change the outcome of your day and, potentially, your life.

IV

I’m not beating any world-class runner based on speed alone, but if it’s a hot sufferfest, I have a chance.

A prepared mind craves the worst conditions because it knows that pressure brings out its best and exposes almost everyone else.

I’d learned long ago that no matter what type of event or challenge I engage in, the only competition that ever matters is me against me.

People who’ve spent time on high country trails know the heartbreak of a false summit.

Maybe you think you’ve rocked an assignment at work or school, only to have your teacher or supervisor rip it to pieces or tell you to start over again.

Those who tend to crane their necks looking for the crest of the mountain as they beg for their suffering to end are the ones who get smashed the most by any false summit. We have to learn to stop looking for a sign that the hard time will end.

Locked in so the unknown factor doesn’t steal your focus. The end will come when it comes, and anticipation will only distract you from completing the task in front of you to the best of your ability. Remember, the struggle is the whole journey.

We can make any obstacle as big or small as we like. It’s all in the way we frame it.

When you complain and your mind starts groping for the eject button, you are not bringing your best self to the task, which means you are actually prolonging the pain.

They keep their mind in attack mode until there are no more mountains to climb, and when they actually reach the top, they wish it had lasted a little bit longer.

I didn’t wear a fitness watch. I wore a ten-dollar special from Walmart that I bought the day before because I didn’t want knowledge of my pace clouding my mindset.

For many people, the haunting begins the minute they wake up.

It was as if the high-altitude racecourse itself was a sculptor, and I was its marble masterpiece in progress: the image of a savage reborn.

All of us were almost through a barbaric rite of passage, but after it was all over, how many would use it as an opportunity to ask deeper questions of their body and mind and demand more of themselves?

As I headed out to run one last leg, I no longer wondered if I’d finish. The question now became, where would that finish line lead me?

I had taken a snapshot of that smug dude in my mind’s eye, and I wanted to catch him. I used to take snapshots like that all the time.

I wasn’t hungry anymore.

I realized how much I missed the feeling of being obsessed, the buzz I get from draining the tank dry. I’d deprived myself of it for way too long. If you want to maximize minimal potential and become great in any field, you must embrace your savage side and become imbalanced, at least for a period of time. You’ll need to funnel every minute of every single day into the pursuit of that degree, that starting spot, that job, that edge. Your mind must never leave the cockpit. Sleep at the library or the office. Hoop long past sundown and fall asleep watching film of your next opponent. There are no days off, and there is no downtime when you are obsessed with being great. That is what it takes to be the best ever at what you do. Know that your dedication will be misunderstood. Some relationships may break down. The savage is not a socialized beast, and an imbalanced lifestyle often appears selfish from the outside. But the reason I’ve been able to help so many people with my life story is precisely because I embraced being that imbalanced while I pursued the impossible dream of becoming the hardest person ever. That’s a mythical title, but it became my compass bearing, my North Star.

For some victims, their trauma is so devastating that they lose all their self-respect and self-awareness. They are torn down to the studs. Foundational aspects of their character pounded to dust.

In abusive relationships, it’s almost always gradual, which is why it burns so deep. Until one day, you wake up owned by the person who is destroying you.

When you are rebuilding the self, it must be done consciously.

I’m aware that most of the advice I give and stories I tell are built to help you push through impossible situations. However, sometimes what you need is a Hard Stop. If you ever find yourself in an abusive scenario like my mother’s or any sort of battle where you are losing your sense of self and verging on erasure, your best hope is to arrest the slide before you hit rock bottom.

In a toxic situation, you cannot keep moving blindly forward hoping it will end.

It takes self-esteem and self-awareness to seek help and share your brutal story.

I have cracked open anger several times. It has warmed me when I was freezing, it has turned my fear into bravery, and it has given me fight when I had none. And it can do the same for you.

Your anger will be purifying and the human mind loves progress.

V

The aftermath of every 100-mile race I’d completed included a tidal wave of pain and suffering, along with a humiliating loss of control of my most basic bodily functions.

I wasn’t sleeping. I was attempting to savor the uncontrollable shivers, the filth, my own sick stench, and the many flavors of pain.

When I first got into endurance events, I loved the breakdown phase because the suffering made me feel alive and reminded me that I’d gone all-out.

I embrace breakdown and welcome the scarring. There is a lot of information in scar tissue.

Many of us will meet people like Sgt. Jack in our lives, an elder or teacher who refuses to tell us what we want to hear in the way we want to hear it.

When a half-hearted job doesn’t bother you, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are.

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 sell yourself short.

The hood shattered fingers on both of his hands, but he didn’t make a sound. “Bill, lift the hood,” he said, calmly, still in complete control. The blood drained from Bill’s face when he realized what he’d done.

I’d never been around such strength and composure.

I was still struggling to learn, to trust, to feel good about myself, and to find meaning in all the pain, but by seeing how Sgt. Jack handled that situation, I learned that being tough could be my way out.

There’s an old saying in the military, that “if you are stupid, you better be hard.”

If I failed because I didn’t try, did I really fail?

Kids need hard teachers sometimes.

Every single one of us is just another frog in the soon-to-be-boiling water that is our soft culture.

When is the right time to start living instead of merely existing?

I am proof that rebirth is possible through discipline, which is the only thing capable of altering your DNA. It is the skeleton key that can get you past all the gatekeepers and into each and every room you wish to enter.

It’s so easy to be great nowadays because so many people are focused on efficiency: getting the most for themselves with the least amount of time and effort.

Commit to becoming the one person with a never-ending task list.

By learning to maximize what you do have, you will not only level the playing field but also surpass those born with more natural ability and advantages than you. Let your hours become days, then weeks, then years of effort. Allow discipline to seep into your cells until work becomes a reflex as automatic as breathing. With discipline as your medium, your life will become a work of art. Discipline builds mental endurance because when effort is your main priority, you stop looking for everything to be enjoyable.

Your insecurities become alarm bells reminding you that doing your chores or homework to the utmost of your ability and putting in extra time on the job or in the gym are requirements for a life well-lived. A drive for self-optimization and daily repetition will build your capacity for work and give you confidence that you can take on more. With discipline as your engine, your workload and output will double, then triple. What you won’t see, at least not at first, is the fact that your own personal evolution has begun to bear fruit. You won’t see it because you’ll be too busy taking action.

The call to remain complacent will only grow louder until you silence it with a pattern of behavior that leaves no doubt about your mission.

I didn’t know anything about the science of endorphins and how they trigger an energized and positive feeling in the body and brain after a workout.

That became my new pattern. Wake up earlier than I had to, do my max set of push-ups, and then get cracking.

Whenever I had a purpose or a task in front of me, I didn’t consider it done until I’d completed it to the best of my ability.

When it came time to lose one hundred pounds to become a SEAL, I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to tap back into being a disciple of discipline, but I didn’t need a task list. Writing it down would have only cut into my workout time, and I didn’t have a single minute to spare.

My post-Leadville breakdown was physically challenging yet mentally exhilarating because it allowed me to bask in the power of my mind.

It will always be up to you to find the lesson in every challenging situation and use it to become stronger, wiser, and better. No matter what comes down on your head, you must find a glimmer of light, remain positive, and never treat yourself as a victim.

All the years I knew him, he’d never said, “Good job,” to me. I never once heard him say, “I love you.” But when they announced my name and I marched across that stage in my Dress Blues to officially become an airman like him, we locked eyes, and I watched one solitary tear snake down his cheek. Sgt. Jack was beaming, and it was obvious that he was proud as hell to be my grandfather.

Your problems and your past aren’t on anybody else’s agenda.

Pity is a soothing balm that turns toxic.

Every minute you spend feeling sorry for yourself is another minute not getting better, another morning you miss at the gym, another evening wasted without studying. Another day burned when you didn’t make any progress toward your dreams, ambitions, and deepest desires.

The only thing that ever matters is the present moment.

We cannot get time back, so we must be minute hoarders.

Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Get strategic. Attack the problem.

You’ve got to find the lesson in every menial task or low-wage job. That requires humility.

Humility is the antidote to self-pity. It keeps you rooted in reality and your emotions in check.

The way I see it, Master Sergeant William Crawford had figured it out. The Medal of Honor didn’t change him. He rose to prominence by staying humble and risking his own life to save others and retired into the service of others. It was never about him, and that gave him strength.

The higher I climb in my life, the more I realize how much I need to mop that floor. Because that’s where all the knowledge is. There is no grit at the top, no tests of resolve in steak dinners, five-star hotels, or spa treatments.

I call this “trained humility.”

VI

It’s funny how our goals are only as elastic as our sense of self, of who we are and what we think we can accomplish.

When something continually looms in the back of your mind like a taunting, that’s an alarm. It’s a signal that you need to evaluate and address that issue, or it may become a life-long fear, looming larger each day until it morphs into an obstacle you may never overcome.

You need to evaluate what you are feeling. Not every emotion deserves to be ratified.

I knew that there were no tricks around fear. The only way to neutralize it was to commit to doing the thing that freaked me out and then proceed to outsmart my fear through knowledge and preparation.

When I toe the line, I get real quiet. Almost like I’m filing into a funeral.

I never get emotional or over-excited at the beginning of something hard.

There are three crucial requirements to maintaining a high level of SA. The first is astute perception. You need to see the environment clearly.

It also requires a 360-degree comprehension of the current situation.

Finally, there is projection. Based on your perception and comprehension, what will your future status be? You can’t make decisions based solely on the present.

I should have spot-checked my pacer’s phone and made 100 percent sure the app was operational before we left the aid station. Not because I didn’t trust him, but because it was four in the morning and neither of us had slept.

As soon as I picked up my pacers, I left everything up to them, and whenever I go into a non-thinking mode, I always fail.

There is never a time in your life where you should give in to that autopilot mentality.

You never want to rely on someone else to lead you in your race.

Too many leaders deflect blame and point fingers instead of calling themselves out, but when they do that, nothing gets fixed in the short or long term. I immediately recognized that I allowed the worst-case scenario to happen, and that enabled me to move forward and deal with the ramifications that much faster.

Figuring out where, when, and how things went wrong is important, but all evaluations must wait until the race is over.

At the last aid station, Kish had them in a baggie ready to go, but I was running really well, and even though I knew I’d be cutting it close, I was confident I would make it to my meds in time given my steady pace. These are the exact mistakes you make when you assume smooth sailing.

A lot of people in the military, especially those of us in Special Operations, get diagnosed with hypothyroidism because our adrenals are constantly attacked during training and combat.

Once the adrenals shut down, the body attempts to get what it needs by tapping the thyroid.

The best life lessons don’t appear when things go well.

You must take advantage of any opportunity to strengthen your resolve because when life hits you in the mouth, you will need that resolve.

The rewards I seek are internal, and if you have that mindset, you will find opportunities for growth everywhere.

Pressure comes with high expectations, which is great because it can bring out your best, but there are times when it can be more helpful to offload pressure.

When the pressure is high, you develop blinders that limit perspective.

Remember, the goal is always to complete the mission - whatever it may be - with no regrets and a clear head, so you can use it to progress in life. Cultivating a willingness to succeed despite any and all circumstances is the most important variable of the reengagement equation.

Know that quitting chips away at your self-worth and always requires some level of mental rehab.

In order to execute on your willingness to succeed, you will need to be able to perform without purpose.

What if there never was any such thing as your good friend purpose? What if it doesn’t matter what you do with your time here? What if it’s all arbitrary and life doesn’t care if you want to be happy? What then? All I know is this: I am David Goggins. I exist; therefore, I complete what I start. I take pride in my effort and in my performance in all phases of life. Just because I am here! If I’m lost, I will find myself. As long as I’m on planet Earth, I will not half-ass it. Anywhere I lack, I will improve because I exist and I am willing. This is the mentality we should all strive for when we’re stuck.

When you’re all jacked up and looking for more, the only tone you should allow inside your head is the tone of a warrior.

Pain and discomfort were to be expected.

Whether it is a seven-mile run or a 240-mile run, we all know what it’s like to bargain with ourselves to avoid having to do the very thing we said we would. We say we’re overworked, overwhelmed, or just over it entirely. I never give in to that because I know there are a lot of people out there who do not have that choice to make. They cannot run at all and wish more than anything that they could.

I reminded myself why I wanted to be there. It was for that one second of glory - the biggest high of all time that strikes and fades like a bolt of lightning, but only if you manage to figure out a way to swim through all the pain, overcome every last obstacle, and cross the finish line.

The protocol was this: take a few steps, double over, and lean heavily on my poles until I could get the few deep breaths necessary to power me forward for another three to five steps, repeat. I couldn’t breathe at all while I was moving.

This was no longer a race. This had become war.

I’m often mistaken for a masochist.

I push a lot harder than most, but I don’t do it to injure myself or impress others, and I sure don’t want to die.

There are a lot of people who stay down way too long.

In fact, they play it up for pity points.

I suspected I was capable, which meant I had to try to finish the job.

I let the music soak in and found my determination.

You never want to be the principal reason for a failed mission.

Missions may fail for dozens of reasons, which is fine. Make sure it was something beyond your control - an act of God or Mother Nature - that prevented you from achieving your goal. Then, draw up your ultimate blueprint, and try again.

I didn’t raise my arms or pump my fists, and nobody seemed to notice one man finish what he started, but I felt a deep sense of satisfaction. There was no fanfare, but there was glory, and it was all inside.

From the outside looking in, my Moab 240 was a disaster. I got lost, nearly froze my tail off, and had multiple medical meltdowns. I went off course twice. It was messy, but I consider it one of my top five performances ever because I never should have completed that distance in the time allowed. But I did.

Small minds and weak people kill big dreams.

If you have the wrong folks around you, there’s a good chance they could be sucking the life right out of you and making sure that you go nowhere.

I didn’t choose them for their running ability; they all understood me. They appreciated my mindset, knew how far I was willing to go, and were ready to do whatever it took to get me there.

In military speak, the foxhole is a fighting position. In life, it’s your inner circle. These are the people you surround yourself with. They know your history and are aware of your future goals and past limitations.

It is crucial that you be careful about who you invite in.

You want the husband or wife who, when you snooze that alarm on a freezing mid-winter morning before dawn, shakes you awake so you don’t miss your training run.

Most people don’t have a selection process for their foxhole.

Old friends are great and shared history is to be respected, but not every person who has been in your life a long time is looking out for your best interests.

In order to populate your foxhole with the right people, you must first know who you are as an individual. That means shaking off old belief systems - creaky concepts of the world and your place in it - that no longer serve you and the habits and lifestyle that you’ve outgrown.

For most people, this is a slow, organic process that can take years, if it happens at all, but if you bring intentionality to it, individuation can be accelerated. Once you find out who you are, the world will start delivering you care packages filled with opportunities that will fuel your quest.

I didn’t burn with a desire to wrestle or lift heavy on stage. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be David Goggins anymore. I wanted to be the hardest person ever to live.

When you change, not everyone in your life will be on board. You will get some serious resistance, and it will be a pain.

When you are striving to be you - especially when it involves pushing your limits of pain and suffering or sacrificing life and limb - you do not need to deal with trying to make everybody happy at the same time.

Not all friends and loved ones react that way when you change and become committed to perpetual growth.

When you evolve, your inner circle must evolve with you. Otherwise, you may subconsciously halt your own growth to avoid outpacing and losing contact with the people who mean a lot to you but may not be able to hang with you. When there is no one around you who believes in or understands your quest, you must turn your foxhole into a one-man fighting position. That’s okay. It is always better to fight alone until you can find people strong enough to fight the good fight with you.

This may require an adjustment period, and that is understandable.

Don’t ever tell me you want to run a marathon because I will sign you up for a race, monitor your daily training, and run with you.

Most people can’t handle that level of intensity. But that’s the kind of backing I want. The type that comes with an expectation of effort and demands hours, weeks, and even years of hard work.

VII

Unfortunate situations never last, but I knew that a bad attitude always lingers and can turn any setback into a tailspin.

The more you dwell on the negative, the weaker you feel, and that weakness infects those around you. However, the reverse is also true.

You will get smacked in the face.

In some situations, thinking is the enemy.

It’s important that your goal isn’t too readily attainable.

Too often, people are convinced that they are challenging themselves by aiming to accomplish something they’ve done countless times before.

Very few individuals step outside the box and attempt to stretch their limits.

Whatever happens to us in life, we must aim to keep things net positive.

When your entire day is messed up, make sure that you achieve something positive before lights out.

The coronavirus exposed society’s lack of stability.

I am a student of life. I carry around a notebook. I keep logs.

Whether we realize it or not, every interaction, each task is a reflection of your mindset, values, and future prospects. It’s an opportunity to be the person you’ve always wanted to be.

My whole existence revolved around training, visualization, and recovery.

I was open to any exercise with a high suck factor that I could maintain for long periods of time while sparing my knees. My sleep was the best it had ever been. And with every workout and each passing day, the dog got hungrier and hungrier.

Sympathy has no power. Humor, on the other hand, picks everyone up.

Laughing at yourself and the absurdity of life and your own goofy choices gets the endorphins flowing and the adrenaline pumping.

I’m afraid a lot, but I’ve learned to flip fear by facing whatever it is I’m scared of head-on.

Fear is a seedpod packed with growth factor for the mind. When you deliberately and consistently confront your fear of heights or particular people, places, and situations that unsettle you, those seeds germinate, and your confidence grows exponentially.

You may even be inspired to try to master it.

When you hide from whatever it is that freaks you out, that growth factor works against you.

By that point, I’d covered 220 miles, and he’d run eighty, and we still clocked sub-eight- and then sub-seven-minute miles, and attitudes were everywhere.

“I’ve never seen this before,” he said. “You’re a freak. You can lift heavy and run like this? Your ankle and knee are all messed up, you’re two hundred miles into this race, and you drop me?”

We all must mentally recharge from time to time. Some people like to golf. Others enjoy watching football on Sundays. I go out in the backwoods and crush myself for several days at a time.

That is a monumental output, and the reason I pulled it off is because I am focused on being my best at all times.

It is the uncommon story, the uncommon leader, that inspires others to seek more of themselves, work harder, and rise to the occasion.

The first step in becoming one of these unsung heroes is learning how to become a self-leader.

It does something to you when you are running close to what you perceive as your limit (back then, I still topped out at 40 percent) and there is someone else out there who makes the difficult look effortless.

I wanted to find a flaw in him because it would make me feel better about myself.

He made me uncomfortable because he exposed my lack of dedication to giving my best effort each and every day. Being around people like that forces you to try harder and be better, and while that is a good thing, when you are inherently lazy, what you really want are some days off.

Most of his work was hidden, but it is within that unseen work that self-leaders are made.

Think about how much information is out there on the internet.

You can study the prerequisites and start on the coursework before you are even admitted. You can prepare as if you are already there so when the time comes and you do land that opportunity, you are ready to smash it. That’s what a self-leader does, no matter how busy their lives are.

They live for something bigger than themselves, and because of that, their lives swell and glow with an energy that others can feel.

Setting an example through action rather than words will always be the most potent form of leadership, and it’s available to all of us.

Believe me, if you think you’re being watched, you live differently. You’re more detailed and squared away.

Every school, course, race, or record I took on became an arena for my own self-development. When you live like that, you are usually far beyond the influence of parents, teachers, coaches, or other traditional mentors and their philosophies.

No matter how powerful the organizational ideals, even well-meaning people who love what they do - especially those with seniority - will lack the mental endurance to live the creed on the day to day.

So, I took my own oath to self: I live with a Day One, Week One mentality. This mentality is rooted in self-discipline, personal accountability, and humility. While most people stop when they’re tired, I stop when I am done. In a world where mediocrity is often the standard, my life’s mission is to become uncommon amongst the uncommon.

Principles give us a foundation - solid ground we can trust and build on as we continue to redefine what’s possible in our own lives.

“I’m not crazy. I’m just not you.” Don’t rely on some other group’s ethos or company’s mission statement to be your guide.

Mine your core principles, and come up with your own oath to self. Make sure it is aspirational and that it challenges you to strive and achieve, and live by it every day.

It will ground you.

Who will you become and what do you want to stand for? Are you ready to be the standard?

VIII

Ever since I decided to not be fat anymore, my whole life has been wrapped around my physical being. While mindset has always been number one for me, I achieved my mindset through physical training and monumental physical challenges that provided an immediate return on investment. That is not the only way to become mentally tough, but it does happen faster when you run thousands of miles, swim long distances in cold water, or do thousands of pull-ups. When you invest that volume of pain and suffering in yourself, it will produce mental toughness.

When your entire being is rooted in a particular way of life and it gets taken from you, what is the proper play call?

A lot of people can live with a lot of mediocrity. Not only can they live with it, they are actually content in it.

Conditions and circumstances are perpetually in flux like the winds and the tide, which is why my mind is never fixed.

Age, health, and the responsibilities we carry can be limiting. That doesn’t mean we should give in to those limitations or use them as excuses to let ourselves or our dreams go, but we can acknowledge them, as long as we are committed to finding out what we can still do given those limits.

When most people undergo major surgery, they relax into the recovery time the doctor lays out.

Every day, thousands of people wake up to a life defined by newfound limitations that are difficult to accept.

No matter the variables, your new 100 percent is out there waiting for you to find it.

No matter what you are dealing with, your goal should be to maximize the resources and capabilities you do have.

Although running is what I’m known for, I’m actually a better cyclist.

Over the next several weeks, I became extremely lonely. All my physical therapy, study sessions, and bike rides were solo missions. It was monotonous and draining, and the worst part was knowing it would be exactly the same tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

I’m an introvert, and being the center of attention is not natural for me.

Most people live their whole lives without ever contemplating what it means to be great.

Greatness eludes them. They turn it into some untouchable plane, impossible for almost anybody to reach, and it never even crosses their mind to aim for it.

I will always aim for greatness because I know that we are all mere mortals and greatness is possible for anyone and everyone if they are willing to seek it out in their own soul.

Greatness is a state of letting go of all your faults and imperfections, scavenging every last bit of strength and energy, and putting it to use to excel at whatever you set your mind to.

Most of us will never see it because to get there requires a willingness to extend yourself to the limit without any guarantee of success.

The vast majority of parents don’t know what greatness looks like, so they are ill-equipped and afraid to encourage big dreams. They want their children to have security and don’t want them to experience failure. That’s how limited horizons get passed down from generation to generation.

Almost everybody has a knack for twisting their story to work against themselves?

Privileged kids say, “I have too much, so I cannot develop the skills that you have.”

No matter where someone is in life, they never fail to confess why they can’t get where they need to go. The.

It can be empowering to associate yourself with a particular culture, group, job, or lifestyle, but it can also be limiting.

You cannot allow what someone else may or may not think about you or the issues you’re dealing with to stop your progress.

Nobody can show you that glimmer. You must do the work to discover it on your own. There are no prerequisites to becoming great.

After that comes the real work. Fighting those demons every morning and all day long is maddening.

They want you to quit before you get to pliability, where the sacrifice, hard work, and isolation that felt so heavy for so long become your haven. Where after struggling to visualize greatness for years, it is effortless. That’s when momentum will gather like an updraft and send you airborne and spiraling toward the outer limits of your known world. It’s time to level-up and seek out that blue-to-black line. The line that separates good from great. It is within each one of us.

IX

The harder it rained or snowed, the longer I’d run because I knew that nobody would ever do something that miserable if they didn’t have to.

Willing warriors seek out our own missions and pay any and all tolls required.

Sounding off in military cadences serves a few purposes. It helps you breathe, releases a shot of adrenaline, and builds up morale.

When you drop your head, you are sending a direct message to your brain that you don’t think you have what it takes to get better.

That mentality to always be looking for the next mission was a product of experience, but not only military experience.

Having to back up and formulate a new plan without any assurances it will ever pan out will tune your SA up and develop your problem-solving skills and your endurance.

I clock countless hours in the gym, where I log thousands of reps and run and ride my bike obscene distances, to cultivate belief.

I don’t mean to suggest that you must run one hundred or two hundred miles to believe you have what it takes to get where you want to go. That’s what I had to do based on the depth of the darkness I came from and the scale of my ambitions.

Whatever it takes for you to believe that you’re better than good enough to achieve your dreams is what you must do.

Your greatness is not tied to any outcome. It is found in the valiance of the attempt.

Nothing in my life has ever happened for me on the first try. It took me three cracks to get through Navy SEAL training.

When I set an unreasonable goal and fall short, I don’t even look at it as failure anymore. It is simply my first, second, third, or tenth attempt. That is what belief does for you. It takes failure out of the equation completely because you go in knowing the process will be long and arduous, and that is what we do.

To overcome all obstacles and bump up against the outer reaches of your capabilities is the pinnacle.

The only way to get there is to continually seek greatness and always be willing to try one more time.