📚 A&B #162

50+ Awesome short books, Free Alex Hormozi's audiobooks, David Goggins, and more.

October 08, 2023

🙏 Support:

This week's newsletter was made possible by Andrew Yeung.

If you’re into business, investing, or tech, you’ll enjoy Andrew’s newsletter.

He shares tips on how to get a job and succeed in tech (he worked at Google & Meta) and throws awesome networking events every month (I’ve been to several and all of them have been a ton of fun).

👋 Hey everyone,

I’ve been on an Alex Horomzi content binge lately and wanted to share a few awesome resources with you:

📚 Book Summary:

This week's book is “Never Finished” by David Goggins.

This book is a sequel to Goggins’s first book “Can’t Hurt Me” and it’s just as good. I highly recommend you go order and read both of his books asap. These are two of the most motivating books I’ve ever read.

Here are 3 lessons from the book:

📖

1) To Become A New You, Get A New Crew

In his book, Goggins writes about how when he was training to become a Navy SEAL many family members, friends, and coworkers tried to pull back his ambition.

That’s because when Goggins was 300 pounds and working as a cockroach exterminator, they felt good about themselves and their lives.

And he wasn’t alone. When Goggins worked as a SEAL recruiter, he noticed friends and family members would try to get new recruits to change their minds about becoming a SEAL even though it was a goal they wanted more than anything in the world.

“Not every person who has been in your life a long time is looking out for your best interests. Some of them are threatened by your growth because of how it impacts them,” writes Goggins.

I noticed something similar when I first started my content creator journey.

I remember posting on social media about the launch of my book account on social media and a ‘friend’ of mine commenting that it was a stupid idea.

Whenever you try to make a major change in your life or pursue a difficult goal, people will try to stop you because your success will make them feel inferior.

“You might have clear goals and be working on yourself every day, but if you have the wrong folks around you, there’s a good chance they could be sucking the life right out of you and making sure that you go nowhere,” writes Goggins.

So choose the people you surround yourself and spend time with wisely. They will have a massive impact on who you become and what you achieve.

📖

2) Get Back On The Log

As cliche as it might sound, a secret to success you’ll learn from Goggins is that if you fall down seven times, get back up eight times.

After running a 100-mile race and a 240-mile race, Goggins felt like he was back at his prime. However, he had a pesky knee injury that wouldn’t go away so he decided to have a minor surgery to fix it (or so his surgeon said).

After the surgery, Goggins’s knee was at a 10/10 pain level for several weeks so he knew something was wrong.

He went back to the surgeon and only then did the surgeon mention that he had drilled two holes into Goggins’s femur to supposedly leak out bone marrow and create a clot that would provide padding for his knee.

None of this was mentioned to Goggins prior to the surgery or even after it was completed. In a matter of weeks, Goggins went from running 200+ mile races to barely being able to walk.

The surgeon assured Goggins that it would get much better after a few weeks. So Goggins decided to wait a full 90 days to give his body time to rest and recover.

Unfortunately, when those days were up, nothing had changed. He started to hear his inner voice tell him that it was time to retire and that his running career was over.

But he decided to try to find one last miracle solution before giving up. Goggins and his wife spend the next few days reading medical journals, hospital websites, and health websites to try to find a solution.

On the fourth day, he stumbled upon an article featuring the work of a world-class surgeon in New York City.

Goggins flew to meet with the doctor but the doctor said Goggins’s knee was too far gone and there was only one option, a high risk that would require sawing into his tibia and screwing in a metal plate.

Goggins agreed to the surgery, it went well, and started rehabbing his knee to once again get back to being a savage.

A few months later, he completed a 444-mile bike ride (yes four hundred and forty-four miles), all because he decided to get back up when life knocked him down.

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3) Turn Injury Time Into Improvement Time

In the lesson above I fast-forwarded over the several months of rehab and physical therapy Goggins had to do to get his knee back into good shape.

However, that doesn’t mean Goggins was sitting at home all day on the couch watching Netflix. No, since he couldn’t do his regular workouts, he decided to use that time to enroll in an advanced EMT course (Emergency Medical Technician).

He studied every day and ended up going over 4,000 questions. Whenever he got one wrong, he cracked up the textbook to understand why.

His studying paid off, he graduated as valedictorian from his class.

A similar situation happened to me.

When I separated my shoulder while mountain biking, I couldn’t play basketball or workout. So I decided to use my free time to learn how to build a website and that’s when I launched Alex & Books (full story here).

So if you find yourself injured, look for ways to use that extra time to your advantage.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) To become a new you, find a new crew:

  • If you want to get in shape, join a workout class.

  • If you want to start running, join a running club.

  • For whatever goal you’re trying to accomplish, find people on the same mission and surround yourself with them.

2) Get back up:

  • If you have a pesky injury or ache that’s preventing you from doing an activity you love, consider getting professional help from a doctor or physical therapist.

3) If you’re recovering from an injury, use your free time to improve in other areas of life:

  • Watch YouTube videos about how to start a side hustle.

  • Listen to podcasts about how to take your business to the next level.

  • Enroll in an online course or spend more time studying for your exams.

📖 Reading Lesson:

Most books are too long, filled with fluff, or take forever to get to the main lesson.

That’s why I prefer reading short books. They are less intimidating to start, get to the point faster, and are easier to carry around.

💎 Weekly Gem:

I’m not a huge football fan, but I still loved this podcast. Why?

Anyone in the top 0.0001% of their field is worth studying and learning from. Tom Brady is one of the greatest athletes of all time, he played 23 years in the NFL and won the Super Bowl 7 times!

My biggest takeaway from this podcast: Tom Brady wasn’t lucky or talented, he had to work his ass off in high school, college, and the NFL.

Watch this podcast if you want to learn what it takes to achieve greatness.

Thank you for your support, I'll see you next Sunday!

Read on,

Alex W.

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