10 Challenges that Will Make You Mentally Invincible
A book that ranked particularly high on my reading list this year was “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins.
It’s a motivational book where David Goggins tells his life story and how he managed to develop his full potential from a traumatized childhood to become a Navy Seal, Army Ranger, and well-known ultra runner.
He attributes his success to his calloused mind and shares 10 challenges to increase mental resilience.
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| Photo by Thomas Yohei on Unsplash |
Challenge 1: Know your limiting factors
What is holding you back from growing and succeeding right now?
Take out your journal and write down everything in detail. Don’t hold back. Use your story and this list of reasons why you think you can’t succeed to motivate yourself.
For some people, this might involve posting a picture and a few lines about themselves on social media.
Challenge 2: The accountability mirror
This one is about goal-setting, but in a direct and unfiltered manner. According to David Goggins, the statements should be strongly worded - e.g. ”I’m not smart” or ”I’m fat”.
Write your goals / your current state on post-its and stick them on a mirror (→ the accountability mirror). Then look at the statements and yourself in the mirror.
By doing so you link the statements to yourself. But you want to be better. You want to improve.
It’s about kicking yourself in the butt, looking ahead and improving.
Challenge 3: Calloused mind
A calloused mind is a resilient one. You can develop a ”calloused mind” by consciously moving out of your comfort zone.
You should write down (e.g. in a diary) the things you don’t like to do or feel uncomfortable doing. Then take small steps to start doing these things anyway.
Do something that sucks every day. - David Goggins
This will help you develop mental strength.
Challenge 4: Taking souls
This is a method you can use to get a second wind when you are challenged and feel close to your personal limits.
In such situations, oftentimes, you have an opponent (teacher, competitor, boss, client, …).
You have to find out who your opponent is and then work harder than ever on the current challenge (work task, sales pitch, …) - harder than your opponent would think ever possible.
“Make them watch you achieve what they could never have done themselves.” - David Goggins
To visualize your opponent asking themselves how you could do that can be a great source of strength and motivation.
I recently tried it out when I went for a run. At the brink of exhaustion, I thought of a current situation at work and visualized how I’d triumph in a run vs. my opponent. It helped. I got a new personal 1-mile record.
Challenge 5: Visualize
Instead of focusing on bullshit that you can’t change, imagine things that you really can change.
For the challenge, you should choose an obstacle that stands in your way or set yourself a goal and imagine overcoming/achieving it.
To do this, answer the following questions with images of yourself achieving your goal:
- What is the obstacle you want to overcome or the goal you want to achieve?
- Why did you choose it?
- Describe how you imagine overcoming it.
- Do it!
Challenge 6: Mental cookie jar
One strategy that David Goggins used during one of his first 24-hour runs was the ”mental cookie jar”.
For him, this cookie jar is a collection of all the goals he has achieved so far and all the obstacles he has overcome. You can use this cookie jar at a time of great effort/challenge: you take out an experience and draw strength from it.
Collect all your ”cookies” and write them down. They can be images of your past successes. The important thing: the challenge behind your success.
At a moment when you need to draw strength, you can reach into the cookie jar and pull out experiences that you have already mastered well. This often makes the current task look much easier: I did this tremendously hard task in the past, so I’ll succeed in my current challenge as well!
Challenge 7: Plan your time
Planning your time is crucial. This is even more true if you are training/preparing for something. A method David suggests comes very close to the concept of the “ideal week”. This is a method where you plan out what your optimal week would look like.
It is a method I have used for a couple of months to make the most out of my time (cf. this article)
Challenge 8: Become an uncommon among the uncommon
David Goggins understands this to mean that you should keep going (getting better, faster, higher, further) even if you have already achieved a ”good” status.
If you think you’ve made it and stop getting better, you’re actually getting weaker.
If you reach a plateau, your motivation may suffer. Everyday life gets in the way and your abilities even deteriorate.
This statement made me think about the continuous improvement process, or Kaizen as the Japanese call it.
Challenge 9: Empowerment of Failure
David Goggins recommends that you write down all your mistakes and failures immediately (as close to the incident as possible) after you encounter them. He learned the usefulness of this approach in his military career: it is like writing down a mission report.
If you do, however, it is important to emphasize the positive things in the failures as well.
Challenge 10: What if?
“What if” - you should ask yourself this question when you reach a limit.
What if this boundary doesn’t exist?
Has the limit arisen because you believe it exists or because others tell you so?
As the book shows, we believe we have reached our limit after we’ve just consumed 40 % of our potential. So there is much more potential in us than we believe ourselves!
Conclusion
Are you ready for David’s Challenges?
I applied some of them to my life. It helped me to get the motivation to start running again and signed up for a half-marathon this year.
But it goes beyond motivation, I’ve found myself thinking about techniques like “taking souls” or on my personal cookie jar when I am facing challenges in my (work) life.
Thank you for reading until the end! I hope you’ve enjoyed my article and learned something.
For this article, I’ve used the book Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins as the main resource.