Can't Hurt Me: More Left in the Tank

David Goggins's book Can't Hurt Me is a self-help book where he tells his personal journey from being overweight and brought up in a criminal family to becoming a Navy SEAL and ultramarathon runner. In each chapter, Goggins teaches the reader something, using stories from his life to illustrate those points.

Usually, with self-help books, I complain that they don't respect the reader's time and that they could have been a blog post instead. The actual practical knowledge in Can't Hurt Me probably would be the size of a longer blog post. But the book reads like a biography, and the impact is much stronger because of the journey the author takes you through, explaining and detailing everything he has gone through.

I especially liked the 40% rule that David Goggins explained: whenever you're doing something and think you're doing your very best, you're actually only utilizing 40% of your maximum capacity. There's more left in the tank that you could use. For Goggins, this was often about running, but also about his time in the army and special forces. He did ultramarathons and always pushed himself further, believing that he had more left in the tank.

But it could also apply to other activities, like studying or working longer. For instance, if you're studying, you could have a goal to study longer, maybe pushing yourself beyond eight hours to ten hours, because you have more left in the tank than you think. Or maybe you've hurt yourself and cannot do physical activity for a while. Then you could instead spend more time studying or working on something else.

The same applies to working out at the gym. You do your set with X number of repetitions, and you think you've pushed yourself to the max. But when you think back afterwards, did you really do your very best? Could you have pushed yourself harder during your whole gym session? I guess the answer is probably that you could have tried harder than you did. Maybe you spent a bit too much time on your phone, or you didn't put in all the effort that you could.

Another thing I really liked was his mindset of not making an activity as easy as possible. I think it's common for everybody, when starting a new activity, to do a lot of research. What's the best equipment to buy? What's the best shoe? How can you optimize it and make it as easy as possible?

For instance, if you start going to the gym, it's easy to fall into a rabbit hole of questions such as:

• What kind of protein powder should you buy?
• When should you take your protein powder?
• Exactly how many grams of protein should you have per day?
• How many minutes should there be between sets?
• Exactly how many sets should you do, and in what order?

There are so many things to read about, podcasts and books that discuss all of these topics, and videos with a ton of different advice. Instead of just going out, pushing hard, and doing your best at the gym, it's easy to end up researching forever, trying to make everything as easy and efficient as possible before you even start. But maybe it's supposed to be hard.

David Goggins had more of the opposite mindset. He didn't enjoy running, so he wanted to run because he disliked it. He intentionally wanted to do something difficult to train his mind, build his endurance, and be able to push through even when things were hard. That's something I found inspirational, about his primary goal to train is mental endurance.

His experiences in the Navy SEALs also show how much he suffered through, even when it was difficult, hard, and painful. He even ran with two broken legs during one episode of his life. He also says that one of the reasons he doesn't listen to music while running is that when it really matters in life and things get difficult, you don't have any music to make it easier. He wants it to be hard so that he's prepared for when life gets difficult.

On one hand, of course, you can be smart when training or learning something new. But at the same time, it's easy to fall into that rabbit hole of trying to optimize everything instead of just doing the activity. I thought his mindset of intentionally doing something difficult was inspiring.

I also found his mindset about challenges inspiring, especially asking yourself, "What if I can do it?" For instance: What if I'm able to run a marathon? You don't know what you're capable of, and his mindset is about finding out what his limits are and pushing himself as much as possible.

This ties back to the 40% rule. There is often more left in the tank if you push yourself a bit harder. Instead of being scared that you might not be able to do something, turn the question around and ask yourself, "What if I can do it?"

He also shared different mental techniques that he used when things got difficult. One of them was his mental cookie jar. When running became very difficult, he would think back to other challenges he had pushed through and overcome, or achievements he was proud of. Thinking about those achievements helped him push through, knowing that if he had already done X and Y in the past, then of course he could do Z now.

All in all, I think the book was very inspiring, and these are the things I will remember and take with me.