Can't Hurt Me
David Goggins, 2018
★ 4.30 from 337.9k ratings on Goodreads
A 297-pound exterminator became a Navy SEAL, then an ultrarunner. Goggins explains how he kept going when his body said stop. A blunt, profane voice drives a restless story of pushing past pain, with defiance and awe running through it.
Feels like defiance, awe and passion. About adventure, ambition and power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want a direct, first-person account of endurance and military-style discipline. Be aware that the language is often crude and the pain-chasing can read as reckless, with little attention to relationships or emotional health.
Why read it
It offers a raw look at how someone keeps moving when his body and mind resist, and asks you to examine your own limits without easy comfort.
A page from the book
The voice telling you to quit gets loudest just before it goes quiet.
At first, when you push beyond your perceived capability your mind won’t shut the fuck up about it. It wants you to stop so it sends you into a spin cycle of panic and doubt, which only amplifies your self-torture. But when you persist past that to the point that pain fully saturates the mind, you become single-pointed. The external world zeroes out. Boundaries dissolve and you feel connected to yourself, and to all things, in the depth of your soul. What readers say
Many readers find the story motivating and admire the grit and resilience, while others are frustrated by the reckless pain-chasing, arrogance, and toxic language; some also worry about neglected relationships and emotional health.
David Goggins.Goggins is the only person to have completed Navy SEAL training, Army Ranger School, and Air Force tactical air controller training.
Books that feel like this
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
Mark Manson, 2016
A potty-mouthed argument that the cure for anxiety isn't caring more but choosing better what to care about — and paying the price of that choice.
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is Can't Hurt Me for me?
- You may like it if you want a direct, first-person account of endurance and military-style discipline. Be aware that the language is often crude and the pain-chasing can read as reckless, with little attention to relationships or emotional health.
- What is Can't Hurt Me like?
- A blunt, profane voice drives a restless story of pushing past pain, with defiance and awe running through it. Feels like defiance, awe and passion. About adventure, ambition and power.
- What should I read after Can't Hurt Me?
- If you liked Can't Hurt Me, try The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson), The Audacity of Hope (Barack Obama) and The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin).
A taste of the feed
The things you're dodging are already charging you rent.
Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck · Mark Manson
The difference between being in the house and being present in it.
I reminded the men in the audience that being a father meant more than fathering a child; that even those of us who were physically present in the home are often emotionally absent; that precisely because many of us didn’t have fathers in the house we have to redouble our efforts to break the cycle; and that if we want to pass on high expectations to our children, we have to have higher expectations for ourselves.
The Audacity of Hope · Barack Obama
The monuments we raise so we never have to look at death.
Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.
The Fire Next Time · James Baldwin
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed