David Goggins's Advice Isn't For You - Or For 99.99% People

David Goggins advice isn’t for you, or for most people.

Likely the reason why you’ve heard of him is because of his extreme physical prowess. After retiring as a Navy SEAL, he became an extreme endurance athlete. You can find a list of his accolades from a simple Google search. Notice your eyes glaze over as read read and hear about the sheer audacity of his accomplishments. Moreover, people love the way he talks. Direct. Brash. He doesn’t talk so much as he jabs with words. Uses a lot of fucks. He’s fuckin’ extreme, after all.

Gotta fuckin’ let people know.

And as much as some of his incredible accomplishments and thoughts on discipline are admirable, most of it is not for most people. Because:

a) Most of what he does would physically break most people. It’s not sustainable, and it’s more akin to self-punishment rather than self-discipline.

b) His mental self-discipline/motivation tactics seem to be fueled by self-hate more than self-construction.

I am not saying these don’t work for David. He’s a Navy veteran, has had a rough life and been through a lot of tough times. Nobody is perfect. What I am saying is that the extreme nature of his “improve yourself” model isn’t a viable, sustainable roadmap for most people. For most it’s unhealthy and could lead to more problems, both physical and mental.

One must be careful about the type of advice one takes, and from whom.

I believe one of the reasons why David Goggins is so popular is that we love extremism. We can’t get enough to it. Locked into our phones and TV we love seeing funny and/or extreme things. Goggins fits into this narrative because he is the epitome of extreme. Nobody wants to see a personal trainer talking about the best way to maintain good health is to workout consistently 3X/week, eat mostly whole foods, fix your sleep hygiene (three basic things that fix A LOT of our physical health issues, and most of the information you can find free on the internet). Or reading a book on discipline without the grunt and glitter (Atomic Habits by James Clear is a great one), or a book on mental health, or suggesting heading to a therapist. For the hungry masses, that is all humdrum, boring advice. They wanna see a Goggins-type mega-human, wowing them with 200-mile super-marathons, and spitting shit-talk down their earholes, taking it in and trying to kill their inner bitch.

There’s a spectrum. David’s extreme advice works for David and it works for the people like him. But most people would do well with consistent, well-focused discipline.

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