Can't Hurt Me

Childhood trauma became the foundation for everything Goggins would later become

David Goggins was born in New York in 1975 into a childhood most children couldn't survive. His father, Trunnas, was a self-made businessman who owned a roller disco rink and made sure his family served as his workforce. From age six, Goggins and his mother worked there almost every night of the week until midnight, with his job being to manage the skating shoes while his mother cooked meals on a hot plate in the rink office. They slept in that office afterward, the thumping music from the dance floor making real sleep impossible. He'd fall asleep in school, unable to concentrate.

Worse was the violence. Goggins witnessed his father beat his mother with a belt whenever she disobeyed him. Once, when he got a bad ear infection, she dared to take him to the hospital. When she came back, Trunnas beat her senseless. When young David tried to protect her, the belt came down on him too, leaving bruises and angry red welts he had to hide. The fear and chaos became his daily normal.

When he was eight, his mother finally got a credit card and, with help from a sympathetic neighbor, planned their escape. They drove to Brazil, Indiana, and for the first time, Goggins knew what freedom felt like. His older brother stayed behind, which meant he'd see him rarely after that. The relief was bittersweet, but it was real.

Poverty and untreated trauma turned his childhood into a fight against his own body

Escape from his father didn't mean escape from hardship. In Indiana, they were dirt poor. His father gave them a pittance, and they lived in public housing on $7 a month in rent and a $123 monthly welfare check. His mother worked part-time and stretched everything as far as it would go.

The psychological damage from years of abuse started showing up in his body. By third grade, Goggins had developed a nervous stutter. His hair started falling out. Patches of his skin lost pigment and turned different colors. As an adult, he'd understand this was toxic stress: when children endure severe abuse, their brain chemistry changes permanently, locking them into a constant state of fight or flight. His body was permanently on high alert for danger.

This toxic stress had a devastating side effect: it destroyed his ability to remember things. Even gifted children with this condition can't hold onto what they've learned. Some of his teachers labeled him stupid. He was already the only Black kid in his class, and now he was being yelled at and ridiculed every day. Facing the prospect of being kicked out entirely and placed in special needs, he did the only thing he could think of to survive. He cheated on his homework and standardized tests. His oblivious teachers let him stay in school, but his actual education collapsed. Heading into his teenage years, nobody knew that he could barely read.

Fear paralyzed him when he finally caught a glimpse of what he wanted

As a teenager, Goggins still struggled with school and reading, but something shifted when he locked onto the idea of joining the United States Air Force. He buckled down, learned to read well enough to get by, and was accepted into Air Force training. His dream was specific: to become an Air Force para-rescue, a soldier who parachutes into war zones to rescue injured pilots. That required swimming to a competition level, something his poor mother had never been able to afford lessons for. He didn't see a pool until he was twelve years old.

When military training started, the swimming challenge hit him hard. He was paralyzed with fear facing increasingly tough water drills. The weight of this one impossible obstacle broke something in him. When a routine medical test flagged a predisposition to sickle cell anemia, he took the excuse and walked away from the military on medical grounds. Even as he was leaving, he knew he should have stayed and fought through it, but fear got the better of him.

By 1999, at 24 years old, he was working a night shift as a pest exterminator and using food to numb the bitter reality: he was uneducated, unskilled, and heading toward a dead-end future. After discharge from the Air Force, he'd ballooned from 255 pounds to almost 300. Every night after his shift ended, he'd stop for a chocolate milkshake and a box of donuts as breakfast number one. Then he'd drive to his mother's house for his usual morning meal: eight cinnamon rolls, six eggs, ten bacon rashers, and copious amounts of sugary cereal. Food was the only thing that quieted the shame.

A documentary about Navy SEALs lit a fire that changed the trajectory of his life

One morning, after another massive binge, Goggins saw something on television that transfixed him: a documentary about Navy SEALs in training. SEALs are the most elite fighting force in the world, and their training is the toughest on the planet. Only the best make it through. Watching recruits struggle through mud, sweat, and tears, he was electrified by their mental toughness, their determination to fight through suffering, their peak physical conditioning. He wanted to join them more than he'd ever wanted anything.

He spent the next weeks calling Navy recruitment offices across the country, pleading for a chance. There was a program open to former military recruits who wanted to become active again by joining the Navy, and he could use it to access SEAL training. There were two massive problems though. First, the program was shutting down in three months. Second, he was 297 pounds and the maximum weight allowed was 191. He had less than three months to lose over 100 pounds.

He got to work. For the next three months, he woke at 4:30 a.m. every day and hit an exercise bike for two hours. Then he'd drive to the nearest pool for a two-hour swim. After that came the gym for intense circuit training and at least five sets of 200 reps for all the major muscle groups. Then the bike again for a few more hours. After dinner, he'd pedal for two more punishing hours. Within two weeks, he'd lost 25 pounds. Within a month, he added four-mile runs to the routine. When the deadline came, he was fighting fit.

He joined the program and endured five and a half days with minimal sleep, completing tough exercise drills while soaked with water and covered in sand. He gritted his teeth, graduated from training, and eventually achieved his dream of joining the Navy SEALs.

Ultra-marathon running became his new frontier when he needed something harder than SEAL training

After a few years as a SEAL, Goggins found himself hungry for new challenges. What would push him the way SEAL training once had? In 2005, he found the answer: extreme long-distance running, or ultra-running. He started to raise money for the families of fellow Navy SEALs who had been killed in Afghanistan. He wanted to combine charity with a quest to complete the toughest foot race on Earth.

He chose Badwater 135, a 135-mile race that starts below sea level in Death Valley and climbs to 8,374 feet. It runs in July when Death Valley is often the hottest place on the planet. Top competitors finish in under 48 hours. Before he could compete, the race organizers required him to qualify by competing in another 100-mile race: the San Diego One Day. Strikingly, he completed this first race with virtually no special training. The only cardio he'd been doing in the year leading up was 20 minutes a week on a cross trainer. Although he suffered terribly along the route, experiencing loss of bladder and bowel control from pure exhaustion, he finished in just 19 hours and even ran an extra mile to make sure he'd really completed it.

For Badwater 135, he trained hard. He studied the terrain carefully and trained in the kind of extreme heat where the race would be run. When race day came, all his preparation paid off. He completed Badwater 135 in just 30 hours, coming in fifth place.

The morning routine was where he won the day and where everyone else lost theirs

Goggins became known as someone who had conquered the impossible, and people constantly asked him how they could succeed like he had. His first piece of advice came down to one thing: work ethic. Our society has become addicted to quick fixes, but Goggins believed that if you wanted to master yourself and use your true potential, there was no quick fix, only hard work. You could have tons of talent and passion, but without a work ethic to match, you're a bird without wings. You'll never fly.

Goggins' willingness to work hard was the crucial factor in every accomplishment. Whether in the gym or as a SEAL, everything else in his life came second. Working hard was the biggest priority. When he told people about the value of hard work, they typically said they didn't have time to put in the long hours needed. They had to focus on family or their desk jobs. Goggins didn't accept that excuse. In his opinion, all these doubters needed to do was win the morning. He'd achieved so much because he got up early to do it.

A typical day for Goggins started at 4 a.m. He'd get up immediately and go for a 6 to 10 mile run. By heading out so early, he'd be back by 5:15 a.m., ready to shower and have breakfast. Then he'd bike 25 miles to work, arriving at his desk by 7:30 a.m. During his lunch break, he'd find time for a gym session or another 6-mile run on a nearby beach. After work, he'd cycle home again. By the time he walked through the front door at 7 p.m., he'd cycled 50 miles, run at least 10 more, and worked a 9 to 5 desk job. All of that was possible because he'd won the morning. If you want a similar level of success, you need to be an early bird too. If David Goggins can do it, you can too.