There’s something about the line, ‘I don’t stop when I’m tired. I stop when I’m done,’ that feels badass when you’re struggling on your last set of heavy deadlifts. It’s a David Goggins quote that speaks to the Y chromosome in me. And he has dozens of these sayings, each like a shot of adrenaline urging me to plough through obstacles and hustle till the job is complete.
But the real Goggins is much more than the caricature I’ve created by cherry-picking a few of his quotes. Because he’s not just saying, ‘Try hard and be your best self!’ Nope. When he says, ‘If you’re willing to suffer …. (you) can do anything,’ he’s talking about things like running an ultra-marathon till you break all the small bones of your feet and your kidneys fail. (Yes, he actually did this.) And when he says, ‘It’s so easy to be great nowadays because everyone else is weak,’ he isn’t saying, ‘Value strength!’ He’s saying, ‘Hate weakness!’
Now, all this makes sense in Goggins’ world. He was a neglected child, forced to work for a living, sleep on couches at night, and survive the beatings of an abusive father. And later he was a Navy SEAL who couldn’t afford to fail or his team would die. In that world, and with that background, his no-nonsense, ‘stop whining’ attitude makes perfect sense. But this changes when you step out of his world. Because we can’t always resolve things into a binary ‘black/white,’ ‘strong/weak,’ ‘success/failure.’ There’s nuance to life, and often, accepting and sitting with vulnerability and helplessness will bring us love, compassion, healing, and growth. If there is a warrior, there also has to be a healer and a poet.
I think the world needs people like David Goggins. There are things about life that are unforgiving, unfair, and sometimes even evil — and it’s the Goggins mindset that seems best equipped to battle these forces. But I also think that the world needs people who aren’t like Goggins. I’m definitely a part of this second group, but hey, that won’t stop me from giving Goggins a metaphorical nod the next time a quote of his pops up in my workout playlist. 🙂