...THE DEFINITIVE BOOK REVIEW OF "CAN'T HURT ME"

I was rather disingenuous with my review of “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins.  For me to have stepped away from the subjective opinion and try to consider the book with an objective mind is NOT why I read the book!  Shoot, I have no idea why I was concerned with how anyone else saw the book… after all, isn’t that what giving an opinion of something is all about? That said, I have decided to try this again!

The Joe Rogan podcast is pretty popular these days.  In fact, he has a big money deal with Spotify for exclusive rights to the property.  He has come so far from the lame, one-in- a-million comedian track he was on.  He has grown to where very intriguing guests come on to talk about whatever is one his or the guest’s mind, especially with regard to the news of the day.  Like any show, the perspectives vary from person to person, and I am unable to pigeon-hole the show, though I do feel that it has strong hints of “white maleness” to it.  It was that particular note that made me stay away from “...Hurt Me” as I did.  In my mind, I pictured underachieving frat boys getting all gung-ho about this Navy guy who did all this cocky, “Rambo” kind of stuff.  And while that part of it was true, what allowed the book to speak to me was his upbringing in Brazil, Indiana.

David’s home life as a child was complicated, but not atypically.  He was brought up amid the experiences of what I considered “normal” for a brother, even though it was in a small town.  While he did not go into the family dynamics, I saw a similarity between David’s experience and two cousin’s of mine.

Trunnis, named after his father, was David’s older brother.  Their father was a hustler of sorts.  He ran a skating rink and did other extra-legal activities that were not explored in the book.  That “side hustle” stuff and the relationships within the family seemed to mirror that of my cousin’s, as well as the marriage that my Aunt had with my Uncle.  This also included the eldest cousin being named for his father as well!

How Goggins’ described that part of his life, though only a sliver, was enough for me to extrapolate enough meaning to what drove him to find his “why to life”, as I could almost literally plug in family to understand his experiences and infer more intimate details from them. That is what connected me to the book in a personal way that other books of the “you can do it”(using my Rob Schneider from “The Waterboy” voice).  It was being able to connect with the author’s upbringing that made me want to see what it was about.  While he did not get into the sibling aspect any deeper than just the fact that he had a brother (who chose to stay with their father), I did feel a connection to him and why he chose to find himself in the military.

The family was “hood rich” in the original sense of the word.  It was not wealth, but procurement of “things” that gave the illusion of wealth, of respectability, that made his father’s hustle seem valid.  Again, not much detail from the book, but I know how that works.  I saw it with my own two eyes.  It is because of that, and what it took for him to emerge from where he was as a young adult, that made the connection to his story “real” for me.

I do think that he could have spoken to a different, if not broader, audience with his book.  Maybe the research skewed in such a way that he was incentivized to write a certain kind of book, I don’t know.  Still, I would have hoped to find a direct link between his discovery of what he wanted and expected of himself and what that realization was like.  Perhaps that is where my biases about self-help books causes my interest to run aground.  He did not talk much about what he thought of himself and what he was looking forward to being in life before it hit him to join the Navy.  This is critical, because he went in as prior service.

Again, here I have another direct parallel.  My younger sister was prior service.  She started in the Air Force and would retire in the Army.  What went on in Goggin’s career as an Airman that disincentivized him from making a career out of that?  I think back to my younger self, and had I would have returned to the Army had my medical records allowed me to do so.  I knew that my sister did not think that she could advance in the Air Force… maybe that was a thing for Goggins too, that lack of movement in the ranks.  While I could only wonder, it would have been nice to   hear about it.

Most of his accomplishments speak for themselves.  Air Force Pararescue, Army Ranger, and of course, Navy Seal.  And if you have “Navy Seal” on your resume, being a tough MF is practically a given.  The depth and detail of his ultramarathon career did have more to it, and again, I have a personal insight which also will provide a significant difference between the both of us, one which might explain the “overarching why” to our different outcomes.

Though I have only one marathon to my credit, I have spent years training as a boxer and as a soldier.  Outside of one episode of muscle failure in the service, I have NEVER experienced any of the physical or mental “fail” that Goggins endured, even as I pushed myself to extremes, many of them unexpected and spur of the moment.  To wit:

Back in the angsty days of yore, my ex-wife would get frustrated with me and either not pick me up/put me out of her car, and these episodes would happen in “frequent enough” intervals, as I was always apt to push her buttons.  One notable winter, this happened at the Southland Mall, in Taylor, Michigan.

Whatever was said between us has long since been forgotten (this is something that I did not remember immediately following the event, so no worries!)but the long, cold, January walk has been seared into my DNA.  Since this was not long after my military service, armed with enough repeatable “Jody Calls” to move a battalion, I “left foot, right foot” north on Telegraph Road all the way to 7 Mile and Telegraph.  I have no idea of the time, I know that I stumbled into my Mom’s house, giggling with the euphoria that comes from spending hours moving in below freezing temperature with 2-3” inches of snow and ice on the ground.  The feeling of accomplishment kept me warm throughout my journey, and it has been an event (along with an early 80’s ice storm) that comes to mind when I have to be “tough”.

In his book, David Goggins speaks about “callusing your mind” as one of the most important qualities to have on your road to accomplishment.  His notion of “callusing” shares DNA with both the concept of friction and resistance, as I believe all three are strategies that explain the gap between my own phrase, “theory and practice”.  When the author talks about running hundreds of miles with his toenails falling off, when all the shock to his body makes the seeming-insane ascent that he has to run next-to-impossible to consider, these are when the concept that is represent by words like “friction” and “callusing” come to bear.  They pull the mind into accepting the task at hand as a proposition, and the mind then sets about ways to find a solution, convincing the brain to the execution of said solution.

The idea of “callusing the mind” is not unfamiliar to me.  My favorite trainer often used the phrase, “the body is a slave to the mind”.  Had my ego been more centered at that time, then… At any rate, I have only found evidence that would confirm his words, and cause me to reflect on what I was exposed to academically, wondering why more information is not given to students quite as succinct or as profoundly.

Finally, the notion that you have to “callus the mind” to overcome both “friction” and “resistance” is quantum in nature. While you may achieve your goal by whatever means, it comes with a price, and that price has been known for all of time.  Of COURSE, life is quantum… once you make a decision to act, all of the other possibilities collapse and you begin to crest a wave to another choice, erasing all of the “once possible” behind you and leaving you with “all the mistakes that are waiting to be made” ahead of you.

That is what I find missing from the book.  There is no reconsideration for his choices, no sense of loss or of regret.  David Goggins has lived a life of necessary conditions, and it was his relentlessness to living a measured life, that led to his accomplishing all that he has to reach the person he is.

Now THIS is the kind of review I had wanted to write!  I guess I will have to discover my process as a writer, because whatever I was doing before was not as satisfying as the do-over!  My Pressfield books (“Do The Work”, “Going Pro”) are here and when I figure out which one is first, that will be coming up next!