David Goggins

Can’t Hurt Me is about the last forty per cent

David Goggins says you've used about forty per cent of what you have when your mind says stop. Can't Hurt Me is about keeping going past that point.

180 words
Can’t Hurt Me is about the last forty per cent, on Astera

Goggins grew up with abuse and poverty, then became a Navy SEAL and ran ultramarathons. Each chapter tells part of that story and ends with a challenge for you.

His word for the training is callousing. You do the hard thing at the moment you most want to stop, and each time the urge pulls a little less.

Can't Hurt Me in Goggins's own words

  1. When you think that you are done, you’re only 40% in to what your body’s capable of doing.
  2. The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind.
  3. It takes twenty years to gain twenty years of experience, and the only way to move beyond your 40 percent is to callous your mind, day after day.
  4. That’s just the limits that we put on ourselves.

Before you push harder

Repetition against resistance is how people overtrain. It's also how some people stay in a job that's making them ill, because leaving feels like quitting.

Goggins writes about the gap between where your head stops and where your body does.

How high you set the bar

We pair it with Escalation in the free Astera workspace. You answer four yes or no questions about money and a deadline, fast. Rounds three and four ask for the same money by the same date, and only the reward changes.

Try Escalation

We built Escalation into the free Astera workspace to go with this book. Your answers save as you go.

Try it

The book itself is Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins.

Questions

Is the 40% rule scientific?

It's a rule of thumb from Goggins's own training, and he gives it as his experience rather than a measured figure.

What is the accountability mirror?

Goggins's first challenge. You write your goals and the things you've been avoiding on sticky notes, put them on your bathroom mirror, and read them every day.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes. Between chapters, Goggins talks through each one with his co-writer, Adam Skolnick.

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