Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

OceanofPDF.com

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CHALLENGE #5
It’s time to visualize! Again, the average person thinks 2,000–3,000
thoughts per hour. Rather than focusing on bullshit you cannot change,
imagine visualizing the things you can. Choose any obstacle in your way, or
set a new goal, and visualize overcoming or achieving it. Before I engage in
any challenging activity, I start by painting a picture of what my success
looks and feels like. I’ll think about it every day and that feeling propels me
forward when I’m training, competing, or taking on any task I choose.
But visualization isn’t simply about daydreaming of some trophy ceremony
—real or metaphorical. You must also visualize the challenges that are
likely to arise and determine how you will attack those problems when they
do. That way you can be as prepared as possible on the journey. When I
show up for a foot race now, I drive the entire course first, visualizing
success but also potential challenges, which helps me control my thought
process. You can’t prepare for everything but if you engage in strategic
visualization ahead of time, you’ll be as prepared as you possibly can be.
That also means being prepared to answer the simple questions. Why are
you doing this? What is driving you toward this achievement? Where does
the darkness you’re using as fuel come from? What has calloused your
mind? You’ll need to have those answers at your fingertips when you hit a
wall of pain and doubt. To push through, you’ll need to channel your
darkness, feed off it, and lean on your calloused mind.
Remember, visualization will never compensate for work undone. You
cannot visualize lies. All the strategies I employ to answer the simple
questions and win the mind game are only effective because I put in work.
It’s a lot more than mind over matter. It takes relentless self-discipline to
schedule suffering into your day, every day, but if you do, you’ll find that at
the other end of that suffering is a whole other life just waiting for you.

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This challenge doesn’t have to be physical, and victory doesn’t always
mean you came in first place. It can mean you’ve finally overcome a
lifelong fear or any other obstacle that made you surrender in the past.
Whatever it is, tell the world your story about how you created your
#armoredmind and where it’s taken you.
OceanofPDF.com

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C H A P T E R S I X
6. 
IT’S NOT ABOUT A TROPHY
E
VERYTHING
ABOUT
THE
RACE
WAS
GOING
BETTER
THAN
I 
COULD
HAVE
HOPED
.
There were enough clouds in the sky to blunt the heat of the sun, my
rhythm was as steady as the mellow tide that sloshed against the hulls of
sailboats docked in the nearby San Diego Marina, and though my legs felt
heavy, that was to be expected considering my “tapering“ plan the night
before. Besides, they seemed to be loosening up as I rounded a bend to
complete my ninth lap—my ninth mile—just an hour and change into a
twenty-four-hour race.
That’s when I saw John Metz, race director of the San Diego One Day,
eyeballing me at the start-finish line. He was holding up his white board to
inform each competitor of their time and position in the overall field. I was
in fifth place, which evidently confused him. I offered a crisp nod to
reassure him that I knew what I was doing, that I was right where I was
supposed to be.
He saw through that shit.
Metz was a veteran. Always polite and soft-spoken. It didn’t look like there
was much that could faze him, but he was also a seasoned ultra-marathoner
with three fifty-mile races in his saddlebag. He’d either reached or topped a
hundred miles, seven times, and he’d achieved his personal best of 144
miles in twenty-four hours when he was fifty years old! Which is why it
meant something to me that he looked concerned.
I checked my watch, synced to a heart rate monitor I wore around my chest.
My pulse straddled my magic number line: 145. A few days earlier I’d run

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into my old BUD/S instructor, SBG, at Naval Special Warfare Command.
Most SEALs do rotations as instructors between deployments, and SBG and
I worked together. When I told him about the San Diego One Day he
insisted I wear a heart rate monitor to pace myself. SBG was a big geek
when it came to performance and recovery, and I watched as he scratched
out a few formulas, then turned to me and said, “Keep your pulse steady
between 140 and 145 and you’ll be golden.” The next day he handed me a
heart rate monitor as a race day gift.
If you set out to mark a course that could crack open a Navy SEAL like a
walnut, chew him up, and spit him the fuck out, San Diego’s Hospitality
Point would not make the cut. We’re talking about terrain so vanilla it’s
downright serene. Tourists descend year-round for views of San Diego’s
stunning marina, which spills into Mission Bay. The road is almost entirely
smooth asphalt and perfectly flat, save a brief seven-foot incline with the
pitch of a standard suburban driveway. There are manicured lawns, palm
trees, and shade trees. Hospitality Point is so inviting that disabled and
convalescing folks head there with their walkers for an afternoon’s rehab
stroll, all the time. But the day after John Metz chalked his easy, one-mile
course, it became the scene of my total destruction.
I should have known that a breakdown was coming. By the time I started
running at 10 a.m. on November 12, 2005, I hadn’t run more than a mile in
six months, but I looked like I was fit because I’d never stopped hitting the
gym. While I was stationed in Iraq, on my second deployment with SEAL
Team Five earlier that year, I’d gotten back into serious power lifting, and
my only dose of cardio was twenty minutes on the elliptical once a week.
The point is, my cardiovascular fitness was an absolute joke, and still I
thought it was a brilliant idea to try and run a hundred miles in twenty-four
hours.
Okay, it was always a fucked-up idea, but I considered it doable because a
hundred miles in twenty-four hours demands a pace of just under fifteen
minutes a mile. If it came to it, I figured I could walk that fast. Only, I
didn’t walk. When that horn sounded at the start of the race, I took off hot
and zoomed to the front of the pack. Exactly the right move if your race-day
goal is to blow the fuck up.

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Also, I didn’t exactly come in well-rested. The night before the race, I
passed by the SEAL Team Five gym on my way off base after work, and
peeked in like I always did, just to see who was getting after it. SBG was
inside warming up, and called out.
“Goggins,” he said, “let’s jack some fucking steel!” I laughed. He stared me
down. “You know, Goggins,” he said, stepping closer, “when the Vikings
were getting ready to raid a fucking village, and they were camped out in
the fucking woods in their goddam tents made out of fucking deer hides and
shit, sitting around a campfire, do you think they said, Hey, let’s have some