David Goggins overcame a violent, traumatic and impoverished childhood, and emerged with the dream of joining the army. After overcoming his difficulties in swimming and losing huge amounts of weight, he eventually emerged as a superfit Navy SEAL and a successful ultramarathon runner. Emulating his success is possible – it just takes an extraordinary amount of hard work and getting up early in the morning.

Actionable advice:

Go beyond with the 40 percent rule.

Goggins invented the 40 Percent Rule because we typically give up and go home when we have expended only 40 percent of our potential effort. Why? Well, there’s a part of our mind that wants to protect us from suffering and hardship, so it tricks us into believing we’ve already given everything we’ve got when really we still have 60 percent left in the tank! To master our minds, we have to push through the suffering and ignore the voice in our head so we can give our true best every time.