Unrelenting Voice

Editor’s Note: There is language in this post some might find offensive. We wanted to quote David Goggins exactly as he wrote it.

This post is special to me personally because David Goggins is one of the handful of authors that has truly changed my life and helped sharpen my mind. It might read more as a tribute because I have read/listened to his book Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds three times since 2018. I first heard him on an interview with Joe Rogan then quickly ordered his book. I wouldn’t say we are exactly the same but we come from the same foundational principles that governs our lives: discipline, determination and a high personal standard we cannot outrun no matter how hard we try. This book is not a motivational book, it is more of a field manual from a survivor and practitioner of its’ teachings.

David Goggins survived a traumatizing childhood in Williamsville, New York right outside of Buffalo, New York. His father, Trunnis Goggins was a businessman that offered his family a middle class existence at the cost of abuse and fear. David, his mother Jackie and brother Trunnis Jr. lived on Paradise Street but it was a living hell for years. As David Goggins says in interviews, “My dad beat the shit out of me.” If you read the book you will turn the pages in horror as you discover what they went through. Eventually his mother and him escaped to Indiana while Trunnis Jr. opted to stay and help his dad run the family business.

While in his adolescence, Goggins an African-American experienced racism in the rural town of Brazil, Indiana, developed a speech impediment, struggled in school causing him to resort to cheating which only further set him back in his learning development, suffered the loss of his mother’s fiancé by murder. They scraped by on welfare and limited child support from Trunnis. He was a borderline delinquent and his mother doing her best working multiple jobs was largely absent in his formative years. Goggins rebelled and embraced Snoop Dogg and Malcom X which meant more tension for him personally in the small Indiana town.

The turning point for Goggins was an interest in the Armed Forces specifically the Air Force Pararescue. He joined the Civil Air Patrol, civilian auxiliary of the Air Force. He attended a week long Pararescue Jump Orientation Course and heard the famous Scott Gearen. Gearen had not only survived a 13,000 foot jump in which his parachute did not deploy but defied the diagnosis of doctors by recovering fully to continue serving for Pararescue. This was a defining interaction for Goggins because it served as the catalyst to send him on the path that was define his life and set the foundation of his mindset in a lot of ways.

Trials still plagued him, he was cut from the basketball team and his educational background made the ASVAB (Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery Test) extremely challenging to pass. He at first tried to cheat but the tests were different and scored a 20 out of 99 on his first attempt in early high school. He was kicked out of his house for a while and had hit his rock bottom. Goggins returned home and after a shower looking at himself in the mirror, he came to this realization, ” ‘Look at you,’ I said. ‘Why do you think the Air Force wants your punk ass? You stand for nothing. You are an embarrassment. Nobody is coming to save your ass! Not your mommy, not Wilmoth (his dead almost step-father). Nobody! It’s up to you!” He shaved his head, set goals and took ownership at his rock bottom. Goggins started what he calls “The Accountability Mirror” which means being brutally honest with yourself at all times. Goggins writes this about the practice of holding yourself accountable, “There is no more time to waste. Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert. That’s why it’s okay to be cruel to yourself as long as your realize you’re doing it to become better. We all need thicker skin to improve in life.”

After failing in the pool portion of Pararescue training at the age of nineteen and being discharged from the Air Force after four years of service in the Tactical Air Control Party, Goggins cited his fear of swimming and the pool training exercises haunted him. Goggins blew up from 175 pounds to 300 pounds and in his mid-twenties was working as an exterminator for Ecolab on the graveyard shift. Food was the drug of choice for him, he writes, “I wanted to be big because being big hid David Goggins. I was able to tuck this 175-pound person into those 21-inch biceps and that flabby belly. I grew a burly mustache and was intimidating to everyone who saw me, but inside I knew I was a pussy, and that’s a haunting feeling.” All of that changed with another turning point in his life. Goggins sat at home alone on his couch and watched Training Class 224 go through Hell Week on tv one late night. He writes about that experience, “I was everything all the haters back home said I would be: uneducated, with no real world skills, zero discipline, and a dead-end future. Mediocrity would have been a major promotion. I was at the bottom of the barrel of life, pooling in the dregs, but, for the first time in way too long, I was awake.”

After nearly begging recruiters all around the country, Goggins lost over 100 pounds within a short period of time and studied relentlessly for the ASVAB, he surmounted the first of many obstacles to be admitted into BUD/S Class 231. He made it through Hell Week but prior to completing BUD/S a broken knee cap sidelined him. A lot of people would have quit but Goggins had his mind on the goal of becoming a Navy seal and was readmitted to Class 235. An interesting side note, Goggins rubbed shoulders with Chris Kyle (who wrote American Sniper) and Morgan Luttrell (brother of Marcus Luttrell who wrote Lone Survivor). He writes of Class 235, “When I first locked in on the SEALs, I was looking for an arena that would either destroy me completely or make me unbreakable. BUD/S provided that. It showed me what the human mind is capable of, and how to harness it to take more pain than I’D ever felt before, so I could learn to achieve things I never even knew were possible. Like running on broken legs (oh yeah David Goggins BUD/S with broken legs). After graduation it would be up to me to continue to hunt impossible tasks because thought it was an accomplishment to become just the thirty-sixth African American BUD/S graduate in Navy SEAL history, my quest to deft the odds had only just begun!”

The second half of the memoir is in a lot of ways even more stunning and impressive than the first half. He took on the San Diego 100 (100 mile 24 hour race) with next to no training to qualify for the Badwater 135 Ultra Marathon to raise money for families of the fallen soldiers. Also ran the Las Vegas Marathon and qualified for Boston with no training. He wasn’t done with the military either, he went through Army Ranger school and DELTA Force training school all around the same time. As if special forces and ultra-marathons weren’t enough he also shattered the world pull up record in 2013 by doing 4,030 pull-ups in less than 24 hours. Goggins also overcame a heart problem that required surgery and even that didn’t deter him from discovering new challenges which is now, fighting wildfires in the mountains. Here is a list of his decorated career and if you follow him on Instagram you’ll know he isn’t near done with his running challenges either. He finishes the book off in true Goggins fashion, “Whatever failures and accomplishments pile up in the years to come, and there will be plenty of both I’m sure, I know I’ll continue to give it my all and set goals that seem impossible to most. And when those motherfuckers say so, I’ll look them dead in the eye and respond with one simple question. What if?”

In conclusion, David Goggins stands before us as a testimony to the human will. That story begins and ends with us, our mind and our drive. We all have a story that lies deep within us past pain, suffering and rejection. A lot of us stop at the pain but if we can channel that energy into a daily commitment there is so much we can accomplish. For Goggins it was crawling out of trauma, insecurity and doubt. He is certainly in the top five people I would like to meet and simply say “thank you.” His voice became my voice as I overcame the 1,000 mile challenge (run 1,000 miles in one year) in 2018, run my first marathon and 50K in the same year, start training a martial art, take on ‘impossible’ tasks at work and in my personal life. One word of warning if you undertake this mindset: few will understand it and many will try to deter you to live a comfortable, unremarkable lifestyle that they themselves have settled for. There will be times your friends, family and significant other do not understand this path. In the introduction of the book he quotes the philosopher Heraclitus who wrote about men in battle, “Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior.” Our society has stifled the drive to become great but the very first page of the book, Goggins dedicates this memoir to, “The unrelenting voice in my head that will never allow me to stop.”

Written by Michael McPhail