During Hell Week

The one luxury we had during Hell Week was chow. We ate like kings.

We’re talking omelets, roast chicken and potatoes, steak, hot soup, pasta with meat sauce, all kinds of fruit, brownies, soda, coffee, and a lot more.

The catch is we had to run the mile there and back, with that 200-pound boat on our heads. I always left chow hall with a peanut butter sandwich tucked in my wet and sandy pocket to scarf on the beach when the instructors weren’t looking. One day after lunch, Psycho decided to give us a bit more than a mile. It became obvious at the quarter mile marker, when he picked up his pace, that he wasn’t taking us directly back to the Grinder.

“You boys better keep the fuck up!” he yelled, as one boat crew fell back. I checked my guys.

“We are staying on this motherfucker! Fuck him!”

“Roger that,” said Freak Brown. True to his word, he’d been with me on the front of that boat—the two heaviest points—since Sunday night, and he was only getting stronger.

Psycho stretched us out on the soft sand for more than four miles. He tried like hell to lose us, too, but we were his shadow. He switched up the cadence. One minute he was sprinting, then he was crouching down, wide-legged, grabbing his nuts and doing elephant walks, then he loped at a jogger’s pace before breaking into another wind sprint down the beach. By then the closest boat was a quarter mile behind, but we were clipping his damn heels. We mimicked his every step and refused to let our bully gain any satisfaction at our expense. He may have smoked everybody else but he did not smoke Boat Crew Two!

Hell Week is the devil’s opera, and it builds like a crescendo, peaking in torment on Wednesday and staying right there until they call it on Friday afternoon. By Wednesday we were all broke dick, chafed to holy Hell. Our whole body was one big raspberry, oozing puss and blood. Mentally we were zombies. The instructors had us doing simple boat raises and we were all dragging. Even my crew could barely lift that boat. Meanwhile, Psycho and SBG and the other instructors kept close watch, looking for weaknesses as always.

I had a real hate for the instructors. They were my enemy and I was tired of them trying to burrow into my brain. I glanced at Brown, and for the first time all week he looked shaky. The whole crew did. Shit, I felt miserable too. My knee was the size of a grapefruit and every step I took torched my nerves, which is why I was searching for something to fuel me. I locked in on Psycho Pete. I was sick of that motherfucker. The instructors looked composed and comfortable. We were desperate, and they had what we needed: energy! It was time to flip the game and own real estate in their heads.

When they clocked out that night and drove home after a pussy-ass eight hour shift while we were still going hard, I wanted them thinking about Boat Crew Two. I wanted to haunt them when they slipped into bed with their wives. I wanted to occupy so much space in their minds that they couldn’t even get it up. To me that would be as powerful as putting a knife in their dick. So I deployed a process that I now call “Taking Souls.”

I turned to Brown. “You know why I call you Freak?” I asked. He looked over as we lowered the boat, then lifted it up overhead like creaky robots on

reserve battery power. “Because you are one of the baddest men I’ve ever seen in my damn life!” He cracked a smile. “And you know what I say to these motherfuckers right here?” I tipped my elbow at the nine instructors gathered on the beach, drinking coffee and talking bullshit. “I say, they can go fuck themselves!” Bill nodded and narrowed his eyes on our tormentors, while I turned to the rest of the crew. “Now let’s throw this shit up high and show them who we are!”

“Fucking beautiful,” Bill said. “Let’s do it!”

Within seconds my whole team had life. We didn’t just lift the boat overhead and set it down hard, we threw it up, caught it overhead, tapped the sand with it and threw it up high again. The results were immediate and undeniable. Our pain and exhaustion faded. Each rep made us stronger and faster, and each time we threw the boat up we all chanted.

“YOU CAN’T HURT BOAT CREW TWO!”

That was our fuck you to the instructors, and we had their full attention as we soared on a second wind. On the toughest day of the hardest week in the world’s toughest training, Boat Crew Two was moving at lightning speed and making a mockery of Hell Week. The look on the instructors’ faces told a story. Their mouths hung open like they were witnessing something nobody had ever seen before. Some averted their eyes, almost embarrassed.

Only SBG looked satisfied.

* * *

Since that night in Hell Week, I’ve deployed the Taking Souls concept countless times. Taking Souls is a ticket to finding your own reserve power and riding a second wind. It’s the tool you can call upon to win any competition or overcome every life obstacle. You can utilize it to win a chess match, or conquer an adversary in a game of office politics. It can help you rock a job interview or excel at school. And yes, it can be used to conquer all manner of physical challenges, but remember, this is a game you are playing within yourself. Unless you’re engaged in physical competition, I’m not suggesting that you try to dominate someone or crush their spirit. In fact, they never even need to know you’re playing this game. This is a tactic for

you to be your best when duty calls. It’s a mind game you’re playing on yourself.

Taking someone’s soul means you’ve gained a tactical advantage. Life is all about looking for tactical advantages, which is why we stole the Hell Week schedule, why we nipped Psycho’s heels on that run, and why I made a show of myself in the surf, humming the Platoon theme song. Each of those incidents was an act of defiance that empowered us.

But defiance isn’t always the best way to take someone’s soul. It all depends upon your terrain. During BUD/S, the instructors didn’t mind if you looked for advantages like that. They respected it as long as you were also kicking ass. You must do your own homework. Know the terrain you’re operating in, when and where you can push boundaries, and when you should fall in line.

Next, take inventory of your mind and body on the eve of battle. List out your insecurities and weakness, as well as your opponent’s. For instance, if you’re getting bullied, and you know where you fall short or feel insecure, you can stay ahead of any insults or barbs a bully may throw your way. You can laugh at yourself along with them, which disempowers them. If you take what they do or say less personally, they no longer hold any cards. Feelings are just feelings. On the other hand, people who are secure with themselves don’t bully other people. They look out for other people, so if you’re getting bullied you know that you’re dealing with someone who has problem areas you can exploit or soothe. Sometimes the best way to defeat a bully is to actually help them. If you can think two or three moves ahead, you will commandeer their thought process, and if you do that, you’ve taken their damn soul without them even realizing it.

Our SEAL instructors were our bullies, and they didn’t realize the games I was playing during that week to keep Boat Crew Two sharp. And they didn’t have to. I imagined that they were obsessed with our exploits during Hell Week, but I don’t know that for sure. It was a ploy I used to maintain my mental edge and help our crew prevail.

In the same way, if you are up against a competitor for a promotion, and you know where you fall short, you can shape up your game ahead of your interview or evaluation. In that scenario, laughing at your weaknesses won’t

solve the problem. You must master them. In the meantime, if you are aware of your competitor’s vulnerabilities you can spin those to your advantage, but all of that takes research. Again, know the terrain, know yourself, and you’d better know your adversary in detail.

Once you’re in the heat of battle, it comes down to staying power. If it’s a difficult physical challenge you will probably have to defeat your own demons before you can take your opponent’s soul. That means rehearsing answers to the simple question that is sure to rise up like a thought bubble:

“Why am I here?” If you know that moment is coming and have your answer ready, you will be equipped to make the split second-decision to ignore your weakened mind and keep moving. Know why you’re in the fight to stay in the fight!

And never forget that all emotional and physical anguish is finite! It all ends eventually. Smile at pain and watch it fade for at least a second or two. If you can do that, you can string those seconds together and last longer than your opponent thinks you can, and that may be enough to catch a second wind. There is no scientific consensus on second wind. Some scientists think it’s the result of endorphins flooding your nervous system, others think it’s a burst of oxygen that can help break down lactic acid, as well as the glycogen and triglycerides muscles need to perform. Some say its purely psychological. All I know is that by going hard when we felt defeated we were able to ride a second wind through the worst night in Hell Week. And once you have that second wind behind you it’s easy to break your opponent down and snatch a soul. The hard part is getting to that point, because the ticket to victory often comes down to bringing your very best when you feel your worst.

* * *

After rocking boat presses, the whole class was gifted an hour of sleep in a big green army tent they’d set up on the beach and outfitted with military cots. Those motherfuckers had no mattresses, but may as well have been a cotton topped cloud of luxury because once we were horizontal we all went limp.

Oh, but Psycho wasn’t done with me. He let me sleep for a solitary minute, then woke me up and led me back onto the beach for some one-on-one time.

He saw an opportunity to get in my head, at last, and I was disoriented as I staggered toward the water all alone, but the cold woke me the fuck up. I decided to savor my extra hour of private surf torture. When the water was chest high I began humming Adagio in Strings once more. Louder this time.

Loud enough for that motherfucker to hear me over the crash of the surf.

That song gave me life!

I’d come to SEAL training to see if I was hard enough to belong and found an inner beast within that I never knew existed. A beast that I would tap into from then on whenever life went wrong. By the time I emerged from that ocean, I considered myself unbreakable.

If only.

Hell Week takes its toll on everybody, and later that night, with forty-eight hours to go, I went to med check to get a Toradol shot in my knee to bring the swelling down. By the time I was back on the beach, the boat crews were out at sea in the midst of a paddling drill. The surf was pounding, the wind swirling. Psycho looked over at SBG. “What the fuck are we gonna do with him?”

For the first time, he was hesitant, and tired of trying to beat me down. I was good to go, ready for any challenge, but Psycho was over it. He was ready to give my ass a spa vacation. That’s when I knew I’d outlasted him; that I had his soul. SBG had other ideas. He handed me a life jacket and attached a chem light to the back of my hat.

“Follow me,” he said as he charged up the beach. I caught up and we ran north for a good mile. By then we could barely see the boats and their bobbing lights through the mist and over the waves. “All right, Goggins.

Now go swim out and find your fucking boat!”

He’d landed a hollow point on my deepest insecurity, pierced my confidence, and I was stunned silent. I gave him a look that said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I was a decent swimmer by then, and surf torture didn’t scare me because we weren’t that far from shore, but an open water,

hypothermic swim a thousand yards off shore in a storm, to a boat that had no fucking idea I was heading their way? That sounded like a death sentence, and I hadn’t prepared for anything like it. But sometimes the unexpected descends like chaos, and without warning even the bravest among us must be ready to take on risks and tasks that seem beyond our capabilities.

For me, in that moment, it came down to how I wanted to be remembered. I could have refused the order, and I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble because I had no swim buddy (in SEAL training you always have to be with a swim buddy), and it was obvious that he was asking me to do something that was extremely unsafe. But I also knew that my objective coming into SEAL

training was more than making it through to the other side with a Trident.

For me it was the opportunity to go up against the best of the best and distance myself from the pack. So even though I couldn’t see the boats out past the thrashing waves there was no time to dwell on fear. There was no choice to make at all.

“What are you waiting on Goggins? Get your fucking ass out there, and do not fuck this up!”

“Roger that!” I shouted and sprinted into the surf. Trouble was, strapped with a buoyancy vest, nursing a wounded knee, wearing boots, I couldn’t swim for shit and it was almost impossible to duck dive through the waves. I had to flail over the white wash, and with my mind managing so many variables, the ocean seemed colder than ever. I swallowed water by the gallon. It was as if the sea was prying open my jaws and flooding my system, and with each gulp, my fear magnified.

I had no idea that back on land, SBG was preparing for a worst-case scenario rescue. I didn’t know he’d never put another man in that position before. I didn’t realize that he saw something special in me and like any strong leader wanted to see how far I could take it, as he watched my light bob on the surface, nervous as hell. He told me all of that during a recent conversation.

At the time I was just trying to survive.

I finally made it through the surf and swam another half-mile off-shore only to realize I had six boats bearing down on my head, teeter tottering in and

out of view thanks to a four-foot wind swell. They didn’t know I was there!

My light was faint, and in the trench I couldn’t see a damn thing. I kept waiting for one of them to come barreling down from the peak of a swell and mow me the fuck down. All I could do was bark into the darkness like a hoarse sea lion.

“Boat Crew Two! Boat Crew Two!”

It was a minor miracle that my guys heard me. They wheeled our boat around, and Freak Brown grabbed me with his big ass hooks and hauled me in like a prized catch. I lay back in the middle of the boat, my eyes closed, and jackhammered for the first time all week. I was so cold I couldn’t hide it.

“Damn, Goggins,” Brown said, “you must be insane! You okay?” I nodded once and got a hold of myself. I was the leader of that crew and couldn’t allow myself to show weakness. I tensed every muscle in my body, and my shiver slowed to a stop in real time.

“That’s how you lead from the motherfucking front,” I said, coughing up saltwater like a wounded bird. I couldn’t keep a straight face for long.

Neither could my crew. They knew damn well that crazy-ass swim wasn’t my idea.

As the clock ran down on Hell Week, we were in the demo pit, just off Coronado’s famous Silver Strand. The pit was filled with cold mud and topped off with icy water. There was a rope bridge—two separate lines, one for the feet and one for the hands—stretching across it from end to end. One by one, each man had to navigate their way across while the instructors shook the shit out of it, trying to make us fall. To maintain that kind of balance takes tremendous core strength, and we were all cooked and at our wits end. Plus, my knee was still fucked. In fact, it had gotten worse and required a pain shot every twelve hours. But when my name was called, I climbed onto that rope, and when the instructors went to work, I flexed my core and held on with all I had left.

Nine months earlier, I had topped out at 297 pounds and couldn’t even run a quarter mile. Back then, when I was dreaming of a different life, I remember

thinking that just getting through Hell Week would be the biggest honor of my life so far. Even if I never graduated from BUD/S, surviving Hell Week alone would have meant something. But I didn’t just survive. I was about to finish Hell Week at the top of my class, and for the first time, I knew I was a bad motherfucker.

Once, I was so focused on failing, I was afraid to even try. Now I would take on any challenge. All my life, I was terrified of water, and especially cold water, but standing there in the final hour, I wished the ocean, wind, and mud were even colder! I was completely transformed physically, which was a big part of my success in BUD/S, but what saw me through Hell Week was my mind, and I was just starting to tap into its power.

That’s what I was thinking about as the instructors did their best to throw me off that rope bridge like a mechanical bull. I hung tough and got as far as anyone else in Class 231 before nature won out and I was sent spinning into the freezing mud. I wiped it from my eyes and mouth and laughed like mad as Freak Brown helped me up. Not long after that, SBG stepped to the edge of the pit.

“Hell Week secure!” He shouted to the thirty guys still left, quivering in the shallows. All of us chafed and bleeding, bloated and stiff. “You guys did an amazing job!”

Some guys screamed with joy. Others collapsed to their knees with tears in their eyes and thanked God. I stared into the heavens too, pulled Freak Brown in for a hug, and high-fived my team. Every other boat crew had lost men, but not Boat Crew Two! We lost no men and won every single race!

We continued to celebrate as we boarded a bus to the Grinder. Once we arrived, there was a large pizza for each guy along with a sixty-four-ounce bottle of Gatorade and the coveted brown t-shirt. That pizza tasted like motherfucking manna from heaven, but the shirts meant something more significant. When you first arrive at BUD/S you wear white t-shirts every day. Once you survive Hell Week, you get to swap them out for brown shirts.

It was a symbol that we’d advanced to a higher level, and after a lifetime of mostly failure, I definitely felt like I was someplace new.

I tried to enjoy the moment like everyone else, but my knee hadn’t felt right in two days and I decided to leave and see the medics. On my way off the Grinder, I looked to my right and saw nearly a hundred helmets lined up.

They belonged to the men who’d rung the bell, and they stretched past the statue, all the way to the quarterdeck. I read some of the names—guys who I liked. I knew how they felt because I was there when my Pararescue class graduated without me. That memory had dominated me for years, but after 130 hours of Hell, it no longer defined me.

Every man was required to see the medics that evening, but our bodies were so swollen they had a hard time discerning injuries from general soreness.

All I knew was my right knee was thrice fucked and I needed crutches to get around. Freak Brown left med check bruised and battered. Kenny came out clean and barely limped, but he was plenty sore. Thankfully, our next evolution was walk week. We had seven days to eat, drink, and heal up before shit got real once again. It wasn’t much, but enough time for most of the insane motherfuckers that managed to remain in Class 231 to get well.

Me, on the other hand? My swollen knee hadn’t gotten any better by the time they snatched my crutches away. But there was no time for boo-hoo-ing. First Phase fun wasn’t over yet. After walk week came knot tying, which may not sound like much but was way worse than I expected because that particular drill took place at the bottom of the pool, where those same instructors would do their best to drown my one-legged ass.

It was as if the Devil had been watching the whole show, waited out intermission, and now his favorite part was coming right up. The night before BUD/S kicked back up in intensity I could hear his words ringing in my stressed-out brain as I tossed and turned all night long.

They say you like suffering, Goggins. That you think you’re a bad motherfucker. Enjoy your extended stay in Hell!

CHALLENGE #4

Choose any competitive situation that you’re in right now. Who is your opponent? Is it your teacher or coach, your boss, an unruly client? No matter how they’re treating you there is one way to not only earn their respect, but turn the tables. Excellence.

That may mean acing an exam, or crafting an ideal proposal, or smashing a sales goal. Whatever it is, I want you to work harder on that project or in that class than you ever have before. Do everything exactly as they ask, and whatever standard they set as an ideal outcome, you should be aiming to surpass that.

If your coach doesn’t give you time in the games, dominate practice. Check the best guy on your squad and show the fuck out. That means putting time in off the field. Watching film so you can study your opponent’s tendencies, memorizing plays, and training in the gym. You need to make that coach pay attention.

If it’s your teacher, then start doing work of high quality. Spend extra time on your assignments. Write papers for her that she didn’t even assign!

Come early to class. Ask questions. Pay attention. Show her who you are and want to be.

If it’s a boss, work around the clock. Get to work before them. Leave after they go home. Make sure they see that shit, and when it’s time to deliver, surpass their maximum expectations.

Whoever you’re dealing with, your goal is to make them watch you achieve what they could never have done themselves. You want them thinking how amazing you are. Take their negativity and use it to dominate their task with everything you’ve got. Take their motherfucking soul! Afterward, post about it on social and add the hashtag #canthurtme #takingsouls.

C H A P T E R F I V E