Maybe you've heard of David Goggins (that's him in the picture). If not, buckle up. Goggins is now a best-selling author, ultramarathoner, and was at the time of him completing the schools, the only person ever to have graduated BUDS (Navy SEAL training), Army Ranger school, and the Air Force special operations training program (no one had ever gotten through all three). He is as indomitable spirit as you will ever come across, and hearing him speak is a journey in and of itself. His book "Can't Hurt Me" is definitely worth the read, and gave me a ton of anecdotes to come back to. Many of his principles have completely changed my life, as his whole motto is simply to keep going, no matter how hard things may be.
In 2013, Goggins decided he hadn't experienced enough pain in life, so he decided to shoot for something bigger (which, if you study his life up until 2013, makes you question how on Earth someone could possibly want more after everything he'd voluntarily put himself through). He decided to see if he could break the world record for pull ups in a 24-hour period (which he ended up achieving, logging 3,202 total). When he was recapping the event (an event which he actually attempted twice, the first time he ONLY got somewhere around 2,000 before his body developed rhabdomyolysis, which is basically complete muscle failure which can be fatal), there was a line that struck a frightened chord inside of me:
"I wasn't in that gym to get happy or do what I wanted to be doing. I was in there to turn myself inside out to blast through every barrier inside of myself."
Sadistic, perhaps. But the principle is interesting. Very few people can ever say they've willingly taken themselves to the darkest abysses inside of themselves to see how far they can really go. Our mental barriers stop us long before we ever even scratch the surface of what we're really capable of. Goggins likes to use the "40% rule" when describing the human psyche. He says that when people generally think they're spent, when they have nothing left, and can absolutely do no more than what they've done, they've only used 40% of what they're actually capable of.
For medical and legal purposes, I do not recommend you try to do 3,000 pull-ups in 24 hours. But I do recommend you lean into darkness, into fear, and into the uncomfortable. Whether it be physically, emotionally, or spiritually, it's worth exploring your depths, and how far they can really go. My guess is, you'll never be the same.
"A Single Seed" is my attempt to get out one idea every day that I've learned or accumulated over the years, with the hope that it may stick in someone else's memory bank as well. The idea may be related to fitness, business, life, or philosophy, but I think you'll find that many can change domains if you wish them to. With each seed planted, a new life awaits.
