Review: Can’t Hurt Me

Just finished reading Can’t Hurt Me by former SEAL, David Goggins.

This sums up David Goggins’ mentality pretty clearly: He took every failure as fuel for a win. To qualify for SEAL training, he lost 106 pounds in three months. Despite a serious lack of buoyancy and multiple ongoing injuries, he taught himself to swim and became an expert diver/underwater navigator in the SEALs. He suffered a fear of heights. Then he started jumping out of planes. He’s intelligent and accomplished. Or is he more crazy than intelligent?

The Bonafides

Goggins has had an amazing career both in the military and in endurance sports. Anyone who can endure two Hell Weeks in SEAL training and then go back for more is a tough person. When he could have taken a breather, he went to Army Ranger School. He ran marathons and ultramarathons, went through two heart surgeries, faced illness and got back to training ASAP. He broke the world record for pull-ups. He is an unusual person who developed mental powers to perform amazing physical feats.

Can’t Hurt Me, while a compelling and motivational read, is not going to be for everyone. No book is for everyone, of course, and this book is selling like crazy. I have to wonder how many people will rise to Goggins’ uncommon standards. With a few tweaks and refinement, his message might have reached more people.

The Good:

Toughen up, stop making excuses.
Goggins’ tragic childhood is a sad backstory and he’s candid about every struggle. Compelling reading.
Goggins is of the opinion that people generally think they’ve given their all when they’ve actually only expended about 40% of their potential effort.
His life will make you wonder how many great experiences you’ve passed on because it was too much effort to get off the couch.
His mom’s life story isn’t as outwardly dramatic as her son’s, but given where she ended up, she deserves a biography, too.
The challenges at the end of chapters are pretty good and will get readers interacting. Goggins believes we get prepared to deal with life by enduring challenges. His personal challenges generally involved suffering but others are about clear-eyed self-awareness, planning, and accountability. He encourages readers to take the lessons beyond physical training so maybe your challenge will be a new personal best in impressing your boss.

The Negatives

I was a book doctor on a motivational book last year. That audience doesn’t tolerate foul language very well so I cut back on its gratuitous use in the manuscript. Goggins, though a model of self-discipline in most areas of his life, can’t hold back on gratuitous swearing. Can’t Hurt Me is and will continue to be an amazing success. It could have pulled more sales if his editors had considered that many readers would have been repeat buyers if they could buy it as a gift for others. They won’t be able to get past it. Goggins’ writing partner made sure the book was written as the sailor talks. Unfortunately, in print, the constant repetition has a numbing effect. There’s no impact or meaning behind it. The swearing didn’t bother me personally. Characters in my books swear, too, but I mostly write SF, crime fiction and apocalyptic epics.
Similar to the above point, many readers aren’t going to take the misogyny lightly, either. There’s a subtext here that, in order to achieve, others must be pushed down. At Ranger School, he learned leadership skills that rose from empathy and teamwork. To his credit, Goggins admits he soon forgot that leadership lesson as soon as he graduated. I think his best moment was when he chose to finish a marathon with a brother SEAL side by side instead of smoking him. I have no doubt Goggins’ motives are pure and he’d be a better team player now. He wants readers to succeed.
Goggins often fetishizes pushing his physical limits beyond reason. I hope anyone reading his book who is in physical training has a coach with the brains to tell them when to hold back. Goggins does acknowledge the need for rest and recovery but it’s outweighed by the obsession with being tough, acting tough and looking tough in his quest for self-perfection. In the end, it’s to inspire others but for a long time his adventure was a very self-centered journey. After reading case after case of this man torturing himself, you have to ask: Is he tough or is he just a crazed masochist?

mas·och·ist
/ˈmazəkəst,ˈmasəkəst/
noun

a person who derives sexual gratification from their own pain or humiliation.
“the roles of masochist and mistress”
(in general use) a person who enjoys an activity that appears to be painful or tedious.
“what kind of masochist would take part in such an experiment?”
~ Citation from Google

Goggins is abrasive and admits he has a hard time making friends, so much so, it might have hurt his military career. (It might have been racism, too.) I can’t help but think Can’t Hurt Me would have been more effective if he’d worked on his interpersonal skills half as hard as he worked on pull-ups. (Read: Take David Goggins, titrate his personality so he’s diluted maybe 15% and you’ve got inspirational perfection.)
Goggins never seems to take much time to celebrate his many victories in the moment. He only seems to hold on to the happy memories as fuel to get him through the next beat-down. As soon as he breaks the world pull-up record (after three brutal attempts), he can’t wait to get out of there. He’s no quitter but he doesn’t seem to be a lot of fun to be with or have much fun. Last year I listened to Living with a SEAL on audio. The author hired Goggins to train him and toughen him up. Wandering through the world as a civilian, Goggins comes off as a pain in the ass immortal who finds himself in foreign territory among ordinary civilians. It was often quite funny. Living with a SEAL is a good book but I’m struck by one small anecdote. After his training was over, the author invited Goggins to a tropical resort. It might have been a fine vacation but Goggins spent the entire time in his room training on a bicycle! He didn’t even bicycle outside! Dude, stop to smell the roses once in a while!

That last point is key: This book may inspire you to do more but I doubt you want to live a life of pure suffering in order to prepare for life. To be comfortable in hostile environments (i.e. underwater), relax more. Sometimes I wished, for Goggins’ own sake and ours, that he would use that lesson more instead of furiously trying to dominate all the time. It’s an angry life.

What I got from Can’t Hurt Me

I had to have a talk with myself in the Accountability Mirror. I’ve been waiting on a medical test to find out if I’m facing a dire illness. It’s been a stressful couple of months as I make my way through the gauntlet of tests and sleepless nights. I’ve spent a lot of time worrying, eating too much, cocooning and feeling sorry for myself. Can’t Hurt Me has helped me get back on track. I still worry, sure, but I’m getting more done in the meantime.

I’ve been making needless excuses and I’ve been too comfortable doing so.
Trapped in victimhood and entitlement, I’ve been waiting, figuring I’m under stress now so after I get the good news, then I’ll get back to taking care of myself better.
I looked at my schedule and my productivity. Per Goggins’ suggestions, I began to strategize. I typically top out at writing three or four hours a day. I broke that up into two writing sessions, morning and late afternoon. That translated to six hours of writing time each day, a massive boost to my output.
I challenged myself to do 1,000 squats in a single day. It was a pure mental block on my part because, doing 50 or 100 reps at a time throughout the day turned out to be a fairly small challenge. I was intimidated by that big round number but when I actually committed to doing it, I was fine. I still feel it in my quads but the fix is easy: more squats!
Limits are real. They’re also self-imposed and often illusory. We only discover where that line is when we push ourselves to find our personal best. I’m not seduced by macho bullshit. I’ve already gone down that path. It was violent and lonely and I was constantly angry. However, I do see the worth in transcending that facade to get to the underlying value in Can’t Hurt Me: I’ve got to be real about my failures and commit to doing and being better.
Freaked out about the illness I fear, I looked in the accountability mirror and said, “It doesn’t matter what the next test says. That’s next week. Don’t wait. Do better for yourself now.”