By Kevin Doan
For students, self-help gurus and productivity nerds seeking change in the coming year, retired Navy SEAL and ultra-endurance athlete David Goggins has your back. “Can’t Hurt Me” (Lioncrest, $19) details Goggins’s journey of choosing the uncomfortable and how we can follow his process to harness our own hidden potential.
Goggins is as tough as readers would expect, but he makes abundantly clear he wasn’t always like that. The book begins with Goggins’s home experience, from his father knocking out his mother at the top of a staircase and dragging her down by her hair to asking him to take off his clothes before a belt is whipped out and the beating begins. It ends with Goggins’s latest triumphs and shortcomings: running ultramarathons in all climates, getting sick from muscle tightness, and insight into how greatness is neither constant nor stagnant.
He acknowledges, however, that this biography isn’t simply a story, but a message for us readers: we’re in danger of living a life so comfortable that we’ll never reach our true potential. But by learning to escape the victim’s mentality and use our suffering as a tool, we can free ourselves from ourselves and become the heroes in our own lives.
Truthfully, the literature isn’t outstanding. Goggins, by his own admission, isn’t a talented writer. He cheated through school and attained a fourth-grade reading level as a junior in high school. The true beauty in this book, however, is that the message is unequivocally his; Goggins’ passion in life, in his interviews is the same passion he wrote his book with. The beauty lies in him owning his mistakes and telling our generation of readers how to avoid his shortcomings and build a better foundation for success.
Coming fresh off of reading the book, I can personally vouch for Goggins’s message. “Talent not required,” a chapter of his book, struck a chord with me. Our world has been subdivided into the smart and stupid, strong and meek. Seeing from his experience that greatness isn’t something we’re born with but rather something that we acquire gave me hope that I might someday achieve this for myself.
