If you’ve spent much time poking around trying to learn about toughness online, you’ve heard of David Goggins. In his words, couch potato turned Navy SEAL. Goggins has made his name on social media for these motivational videos.
Most often these include him yelling at the camera, running, and talking about carrying boats.
The boats thing is a nod to his training as a SEAL, carrying boats was a regular part of it. And I guess his thought process is, if I’m not going to, who’s going to carry the boats?
We’ll talk more about Goggins later, but if you can handle more than a bit of profanity, watch some of his videos.
Growing up I was told that I liked to chase sunsets.
For me that was obvious, sunsets are great, why wouldn’t I chase them?
But there’s always going to be another sunset. The chase for the sunset is never complete.
In a lot of ways this became a metaphor for more things in my life.
I chased recognition, acceptance, praise, attention. All these things I chased thinking they would complete me, but in reality, they were just more sunsets. More things that would eventually give way to another.
The issue with chasing sunsets, and the Goggins mentality of carrying boats, is that you’ll never be satisfied.
When you’re carrying boats, you can’t do that forever. One day you will fail. One day the boat will be too heavy.
For me, I found this cycle of searching for meaning in the things I chased, or the boats I carried, would do nothing but give me a short break from the search of whatever I was looking for.
The attention would fade, be it for an athletic accomplishment or being good at my job.
The acceptance would fade, I thought to be cool playing football, I had to be a jerk. I didn’t know that at the time, but in hindsight, I changed who I was because I was doing what I thought would get me to be accepted.
Recognition will go away, someone’s always going to be better.
Actually, all these things left me feeling worse. I really just wanted to find those qualities in myself. The acceptance, mainly.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t cracked the code. I don’t know if I ever will.
But I know that I can’t keep chasing sunsets, and I definitely can’t keep carrying boats.
If I’m being honest, my latest endeavor is a life of simplicity. Tomorrow’s writing is going to be called “I want a flip phone.” It’s going to be good, you should come back and read that one.
Hopefully you’ll keep reading after this next statement, but I love country music. There’s an artist I enjoy named Zach Bryan.
He released a song recently called Burn, Burn, Burn. It’s good, you should listen to it.
But my favorite line is as follows,
I’m a simple man, I don’t need much. Just my simple songs, and some human touch.
It really resonated with me.
I grew up religious, more than usual. These days I’m not sure where I stand, but since I’ve decided my new goal was a life of simplicity, one verse from the Bible has stuck out.
Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands
I never understood that one, growing up. I read it more than once. But these days it’s starting to make sense.
Most of my search for meaning, stems from living a complicated life.
One focused on people, or status, or wealth.
I told someone today my dream is down the road to open up a book store, and coach high school sports.
That’s my dream job, one day.
In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying sunsets but not chasing them. Hopefully I will avoid carrying boats, but I might do it on occasion.
I’ve been adding a question to the end of these, to hopefully make you think.
When you wake up, what’s the first thought on your mind? Why?
I also write every week about my Path to Resilience. Check it out.
Enjoy the sunset.