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David GogginsCan't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Impossible Task”
Goggins was discharged from the Air Force after 4 years of service. By the time Goggins was 23, he worked as a pest controller for diners. During this period, he gained 125 pounds and became morbidly obese. Goggins explains that he was at a low point in his life: “Numb to my life, miserable in my marriage, and I’d accepted that reality. I was a would-be warrior turned cockroach sniper on the graveyard shift” (61).
He writes that he was doing well in Air Force training until “water confidence,” which required intensive skill training in the water. Goggins was frightened of water and found the tasks very mentally and physically challenging. During the weeks of his water confidence training, Goggins discovered that he had a “sickle cell trait,” which, he writes, “was believed at the time to increase the risk of sudden, exercise-related death due to cardiac arrest” (66). He was removed from his training for the medical issue. Goggins recalled that he pretended to be very upset about the issue, but on the inside, he was glad that he no longer had to face his fear of water and failure. He performed another role in the Air Force, but he did not feel proud of himself.
Goggins spent his free time in the gym gaining muscle but also at the dinner table consuming mass quantities of calories. He gained weight to hide from the world. “I grew a burly mustache and was intimidating to everyone who saw me,” Goggins writes, “but inside I knew I was a pussy, and that’s a haunting feeling” (67-68).
The narrative returns to the time he worked as an exterminator at Indianapolis restaurants. He was depressed. One day, however, seemingly like any other, he took charge of his life. He saw a television documentary about prospective Navy SEALs going through “Hell Week,” the most difficult and demanding part of SEAL training. Goggins experienced jealousy as he watched the suffering and stamina of the men fighting through Hell Week.
Determined as ever, Goggins reached out to many Navy recruitment officers, all of whom were not interested in him. He was too obese to consider for recruitment. Eventually, Goggins met Steven Schaljo, a recruitment official who took him seriously. Still, Goggins had to lose over 100 pounds in three months to qualify for the program. Goggins would have to fulfill an “impossible task” in a very short time frame. He would have to work out constantly (to lose weight) and study ferociously to pass a strenuous exam, one much more difficult than the exam he took to gain admittance into the Air Force.
Goggins writes, “I knew right then that if I didn’t make a stand and start walking the path of most resistance, I would end up in this mental hell forever” (76). Goggins quit his job, headed home, and immediately went running, only to be overcome with pain after a few hundred yards. He felt like a failure. Obese and without mental fortitude, he comforted himself. He watched his favorite scene from Rocky, the acclaimed boxing movie about a poverty-stricken underdog who never gives up. Goggins used this to reflect on his own life. He tried running again, and this time he made it a mile despite the pain. He writes, “That’s when I first realized that not all physical and mental limitations are real, and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon” (78). Goggins realized he would have to choose to suffer constantly for months if he was going to achieve his goal.
He describes a very strenuous workout routine, severely limited diet, and long hours of studying. He dropped everything and worked around the clock. In the first two weeks, he lost 25 pounds. Soon thereafter, he made it to 250lbs. Despite these successes, his marriage was falling apart, and his wife told him that neither she nor his stepdaughter would go with him to San Diego (where he would have to relocate for SEAL training). Goggins was depressed, anxious, and hungry. To fend off his depression he told himself, “My task may turn out to be impossible but at least I was back on a motherfucking mission” (79), and that statement renewed his sense of purpose.
After taking the written exam determining whether he would qualify, Goggins impatiently asked an administrator if he had succeeded. He had, and Goggins describes this as the happiest moment of his life up to that point. He “celebrates” by doubling down on his work ethic and exercising constantly. He seems to have felt himself transforming into a new person. He had undertaken and achieved an impossible task. He writes, “I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could, from a past that no longer defined me, toward a future undetermined. All I knew was that there would be pain and there would be purpose” (84). Goggins separated from his wife who will not relocate to San Diego.
The third challenge which closes Chapter 3, is meant as a step toward mental toughness. For this challenge, the reader is to write down all the things that make him/her uncomfortable or scared and then do one of those things repetitively. In short, the challenge and advice is to do things that make you uncomfortable until your weaknesses become strengths.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Taking Souls”
Goggins next describes BUD/S training for the Navy SEALs, an extremely intensive six-month, three-phase crash course in physical training, dive training, and land warfare. Specifically, Goggins recounts “Hell Week,” the third week of BUD/S and the most brutal week of physical training he can imagine.
He had an instructor at BUD/S he labels “Psycho Pete,” who seemed to viscerally enjoy the torment he inflicted on recruits. Navy SEAL standards are extraordinarily high, and Psycho Pete and his colleagues were inventive in creating physically debilitating work to weed out the unfit prospects. As Goggins notes, the field of candidates started at roughly 120 and dropped to less than a third of that by the end of training. Hell Week was a major determining factor in this attrition, but, according to Goggins, 40 candidates quit before Hell Week even started. The purpose of Hell Week is to push the recruits so far beyond their physical limits that only their mental fortitude will save them. Meanwhile, Psycho Pete viciously taunted the recruits, trying to break them down and make them quit.
As Hell Week commenced the recruits ran into the surf and were checked for hypothermia. They were made to literally wave goodbye to the sun because their training did not stop at the end of the day. They must battle all night long too. Goggins writes:
When you’re that cold and stressed, the mind cannot comprehend the next 120-plus hours. Five and a half days without sleep cannot be broken up into small pieces. There is no way to systematically attack it, which is why every single person who has ever tried to become a SEAL has asked himself one simple question during their first dose of surf torture: ‘Why am I here?’ (91).
Goggins went through Hell Week twice. During his first attempt, he contracted pneumonia and was medically forced to stop. They started him on Day 1 of BUD/S with the next class. Everyone in BUD/S training is part of a small boat crew, a group of men who works together to carry their boat. Goggins’s boat crew (Boat Crew 2) included Chris Kyle, a future military hero and co-author of American Sniper, as well as “Freak” Brown, whom Goggins describes as a white version of himself. There are six people per crew and Goggins immediately made himself the leader of his group. He makes it clear that he has a love for, and deep camaraderie with, the other members of his boat crew, with whom he shared some of the most brutal and torturous moments of his life.
Early in Hell Week, he convinced another candidate that they need to steal the schedule of upcoming tortures from the instructors. They did this successfully. For Goggins, knowing what happens next was a victory insofar as it helped ready himself through mental preparation. Because of the unbearable pain, the bullying of Psycho Pete, and the need for mental fuel, Goggins decided to treat the instructors with hostile contempt, an adversary that needed to be conquered. He writes that “it was time to flip the game and own real estate in their heads” (98-99). At this point, Goggins developed the concept of “taking souls,” a form of mental warfare in which one soars so far above the bully (or any perceived opponent) that it astounds and mystifies them, leaving the opponent aghast and mentally powerless. An example of “Taking Souls” comes on the hardest day of Hell Week during which Boat Crew 2 starts chanting, “YOU CAN’T HURT BOAT CREW 2!” and achieves an unprecedented burst of energy and fortitude (99).
After another brutal exercise, the recruits were “gifted” an hour of sleep on cots without mattresses. Goggins was denied even this respite because Psycho Pete had taken him for an enemy. Goggins had additional solo surf torture, in which he was forced to endure extremely cold, crashing ocean waves. This experience ended with Goggins victorious and Psycho Pete feeling confused. Then another instructor, whom Goggins lovingly refers to as SBG (Silverback Gorilla), asked him to do an impossible swim towards oncoming boats in a storm. Despite the unprecedented danger this put him in, Goggins achieved it and was rescued by his boat crew. Goggins and his crew all survived Hell Week and celebrated together.
Challenge 4 asks the reader simply to take the soul of whatever adversary they may have in life through sheer, dominating excellence. This challenge is no more complicated than to straightforwardly pursue one’s goal with a ruthless work ethic.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Armored Mind”
Still in BUD/S training, Goggins saw a doctor about his pneumonia and injured knee. He was permitted to continue training, but he was unable to bend his right knee at all. This made future assignments extremely difficult to perform, especially water-based exercises, which Goggins already took to be one of his weak points. For a uniquely difficult knot-tying water exercise, Psycho Pete requested to oversee Goggins; his bullying was in full force. Goggins underwent intense mental and physical stress as he endured Psycho Pete’s challenges. His knee was in excruciating pain, and he could not breathe. Despite this, Goggins found renewed energy in response to Psycho Pete’s taunts, and he completed the training exercise feeling “strangely relaxed” (112). According to Goggins, he had just won another important mental victory and achieved where he had failed in his pararescue training.
Psycho Pete and SBG demanded an extremely intense workout later that day and Goggins, despite his pain, reached new levels of speed and endurance. Somehow, he writes, the pain in his knee had evaporated and he had a new summit of physical and mental stamina. Goggins discusses using a “calloused mind” to engage the sympathetic nervous system to trigger the secretion from the adrenal glands.
Goggins then learned from the doctor that he had a fractured kneecap. Because of this, despite all he had been through, Goggins had to return home. He couldn’t complete BUD/S training and was demoralized. He took a train from California back to Indiana and spent the summer rehabilitating his knee and exploring other options, like firefighting or enlisting with the Marines. He still wanted to be a SEAL, however. He writes, “There is no shame in getting knocked out. The shame comes when you throw in the motherfucking towel, and if I was born to suffer, then I may as well take my medicine” (118).
Shortly after deciding this, Goggins’s girlfriend informed him that she was unexpectedly pregnant. Goggins sobbed with his mother because of his insecurities: he had failed to get through BUD/S, had massive credit card debt, and had no car or permanent home; he didn’t know how he would now support a family.
Goggins finally realized that he was his own worst enemy, and he resolved to get at the source of his insecurities and fears. He writes, Even after I’d reached a point where I no longer cared about what others thought of me, I still had trouble accepting me” (120). He resolved to no longer reject his past or lie about his father. He would henceforth be brutally honest with himself.
Goggins returned to BUD/S for the third time, the final time he would be allowed to try. Goggins tells the story of Shawn Dobbs, an extremely athletic, highly competitive, and emotionally insecure recruit. Dobbs performed very well in the first weeks of BUD/S but was broken in Hell Week. He could not finish it, Goggins claims, because he had a broken mental foundation. Dobbs was not competing against himself but against others, and that is a fundamental mistake.
Returning to his own story, Goggins explains that he was in a different mindset than in his previous attempt. He writes, “I didn’t focus on my classmates or my instructors. I went full caveman. I was willing to die to make it through that motherfucker” (125). His mental transformation had gone from taking souls to complete internal focus. This Hell Week was particularly brutal because it rained incessantly, and the candidates were no longer served warm meals. One recruit, John Skop, died near the end of the week. This ended Hell Week for all the recruits.
By this point, Goggins has two broken shins. His pregnant girlfriend has moved with him to California, but they could only afford the worst of apartments. He knew that if he didn’t complete BUD/S this time, his dream would be dead, and he would not have much prospect of supporting his family. Things seemed grim. Somehow, Goggins made it through the first two phases of BUD/S training with fractured shins. He dealt with the most excruciating pain he says he ever experienced, and many of the swimming exercises were nearly intolerable. By the time he reached the third phase, four months into training, his shins were healed, and he was confident that he would finally complete BUD/S and become a Navy SEAL. Goggins graduated with Class 235. Goggins’s mother flew in for the graduation ceremony, and she shed tears of pride. Goggins describes feeling strangely sad on this day.
Challenge 5 requires strategic visualization. This includes visualizing success in your endeavors but also potential or likely challenges and methods of overcoming those challenges. This is a valuable form of mental preparation, according to Goggins, but it is certainly not meant as a replacement for intensive, disciplined action.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
These chapters chart Goggins’s growth in mental toughness and warrior mentality. At the beginning of Chapter 3, Goggins laments his obesity. He notes that he looks and acts intimidating but feels like a coward. He becomes more interested and willing to become what he appears to be. When he witnesses the Navy SEAL documentary, he describes jealousy at watching men suffer in pursuit of their goals. Goggins writes, “The longer I watched the more certain I became that there were answers buried in all that suffering. Answers that I needed” (73). Throughout the book, suffering is thematized as a necessity for self-transformation. Goggins does not describe himself as a masochist. He suffers not for pleasure but because he thinks the answer to his feeling of emptiness lies in the self-transformation offered by suffering.
The answer also seems to entail having a sense of purpose. In BUD/S training, when he is in the middle of excruciating pain, he endlessly asks himself, why am I here? At this point, Goggins realizes the psychological heart of Hell Week. Recruits come to question their resolve and are filled with self-doubt. This doubt is a gateway to quitting. He notes that BUD/S training is “voluntary torture,” and that such a thing “makes no sense to the rational mind” (91). He needs, then, something other than rationality to justify or understand why he is doing what he’s doing. First-hand experience of suffering in resolute determination to achieve a difficult goal has value for Goggins regardless of whether the rational mind can comprehend why.
He also discusses the value of claiming ownership of an experience, which is another way he emerges from the victim mentality of his adolescence. He writes, “I went into Hell Week knowing I put myself there, that I wanted to be there, and that I had all the tools I needed to win this fucked-up game, which gave me the passion to persevere and claim ownership of the experience” (94). Through this self-conscious understanding, Goggins was able to take charge of his situation, avoid victimhood, and use it to achieve self-mastery.
The concept of “taking souls” takes over much of Chapter 4. For Goggins, this adversarial stance is a way of going on the offensive. Generally, though, Goggins wants his audience to know that “taking souls” is a mind game one plays with oneself and is not an excuse to mistreat or bully other people. Hell Week is an exceptional circumstance, and even then, there is no frontal assault. The goal of “taking souls” is to master oneself through the method of creating and overcoming an adversary. If one knows that this adversary is a creation of the mind, then one knows that one is truly battling oneself. In this light “taking souls” is another method for the advancement of ownership and empowerment.
Goggins encourages his reader to know themselves, their weaknesses, and why they are pursuing the goals they are. All of this will give them a leg up in life and any game of mental wrestling. He tells the reader to remember that all suffering is finite. When possible, he says, “smile at pain” (101). These quotidian recommendations are powerful when buttressed by Goggins’s personal stories. Goggins writes that most people never even attempt to control their thoughts and doubts. Showing how to start gaining this self-mastery is the purpose of these chapters. His story is meant to express the slow but steady step-by-step movement toward this mastery. In doing so, he hopes to achieve the dual goal of writing a memoir and providing a self-help guide.
