If You Feel LOST, LAZY, And UNMOTIVATED In Life, WATCH THIS! | David Goggins

You got to be the hardest [ __ ] on the planet. Is it true? I don't give a [ __ ] At that time, Right. it got me to the finish line of that [ __ ] race. I believed it. I believe it today. I believed it enough to where my body said, "He's not going to stop." What power have you found in the darkness? First of before I answer that question, I want to say everybody listening to this, um I'm the happiest man on the planet Earth. So, people may take this and as so many people do, we live in a very weakened society. So, when they hear a throwback guy like me from back in the ancient days of of Garanimals, they often think this guy is just whatever. So, if you think that I'm some unhappy guy, you're wrong. Having lived the life I've lived and seeing the other side, not being afraid to attack what was in front of me, has made me happy. Say that again. And in fact, let me make sure I understood it. Getting to the point where you're not afraid to face the thing on the other side of the door that wants to attack you has made you happy. Right. It's really powerful. I hope people heard that. Right. That made me very happy. So, basically, I just don't walk around with a dadgum smile on my face all the livelong time. So, you know, Merry Christmas. But, um but basically, what the dark side is is we all have a cookie jar and we all have a jar of [ __ ] That's its official name? It's a jar of [ __ ] man, where [ __ ] just is just ain't going right. And in Hell Week, what they do in Hell Week, cuz this is where I really went to the dark side. What they do in Hell Week is they design Hell Week to find your flaws. And they do a really good job of that. It's 130 hours of continuous training. You make it 2 hours of sleep, and they beat the [ __ ] out of you and find everything wrong with your mentality. And then they start Hell Week. And that's the beauty of it. And for me, I'm not some you know, naturally god-given guy, you know, I I don't have a great bit of talent in anything. So, what got me through horrible times was the dark side. Was I created My name is David Goggins. I created Goggins. Goggins is the guy that can take anything you put in front of him. You want to break my [ __ ] legs? So be it. I have a way of going to a place like I did in that race where all the pain and suffering that they put on top of me in Hell Week, I will reverse that pain and suffering and I will take your soul. So, every instructor that put me through buds, my job, what drove me, was I wanted you to go home that night after you beat the living [ __ ] out of me and I smiled in your face, I wanted you to feel worse than I did and you were going home to a nice warm bed with your wife or your kids and a nice meal and I was still out there in the grit suffering for another 100 hours. I wanted you to think about me knowing that I'm comfortable being very unfuckingcomfortable. And I want you to think about when you went through [ __ ] Hell Week, how uncomfortable you were and how bad you wanted to quit knowing I'm not thinking that [ __ ] way. So, the dark side is something that I've designed. It's an evil place I can go that very few things can hurt me. I use the hurt you're trying to put on me, I flip it upside down and use it. You trying to use it for kryptonite? No. It's power pellets for me. I'm I'm using it for strength. I just flip negative into positive. That's all it is. I heard you doing an interview one time and the person was trying to like see the sort of empowerment, the the beauty in that and you were like, "No, no, no. It's darkness." Mhm. And one of the reasons that I'm so I'm utterly fascinated with comic books and one of the reasons that I'm so intrigued by Batman is he literally uses the darkness, the sickness that he has over what happened to him and his family to propel him forward for decades to to keep driving and it's Most people are broken by the bad things that happened to them, but every now and then there's a Goggins. There's somebody who understands how to use that power to understands how as a human being it [ __ ] drives you. Revenge is powerful. Like to be able to tap into that in a way that's controlled. That's right. But to be able to bring it in, to use it, to feel the energy. There is an intoxication to rage and I don't think people are honest about it when they talk about it. There's a [ __ ] intoxication to that and if you can tap into it and leverage it, not get lost to it, which is why I know you always caveat it by saying, "Look, I'm a [ __ ] happy guy. Like that's not what we're talking about right now." Right. But I'm a happy guy. Right. So you can't get overtaken by it, but it's there and it is so [ __ ] powerful. It's real. That's why when I when you said before this whole thing started, you said I can be me. The second you said I can cuss and be me and cussing, people always say, "Can you cuss all the [ __ ] time? Why?" Well, I hate to say it, the best way for me to get how I feel across, I can't sit here and say, "You know what? Yeah, I went through Hell Week and man, it was it was really hard." No, that [ __ ] takes your damn soul, rips it inside out and then they say, "Now we're going to [ __ ] start." It it it allows me to express Right. where I was at at a point of my life. Mhm. If I don't give you all of me, why the hell am I here? Why How will you learn from me? People will take so much offense to me. You will never learn from people if we always tap dance around the truth. Oh god, I love that. We tap dance around the truth by finding the right words so I don't hurt you cuz you have thin skin. No. Tighten up, people. It's okay. Trust me, it's okay. You might be called [ __ ] one day. It's okay. You might be called some Jewish word or some [ __ ] or gay word. It's okay. Let them call you that. What are you going to do now? They don't own your life. How are you going to control that now? How are you going to flip it upside down to say, "Roger that. Now I'm going to harness this [ __ ] and you'll read about me years from now." How? That's the question. How are you going to do that? Thicken your skin. Become more of a human being. Don't be afraid of the reflection in the mirror cuz that's all you can be afraid of. Once you overcome the reflection in the mirror, you've done it. I love that, man. You once said that if you were growing up in this generation that you would have a field day because you would take their souls. What did you mean by that? The The younger generation quits. Not everybody. So I got to I got to put that. People get their butt hurt. So not everybody. Most of this generation quits the second they get talked to. "You did this wrong. You did this wrong." Or or they get yelled at. It's so easy to say you know what I mean to to be great nowadays cuz everybody else is Most people are weak. This This is a softened generation. So if you have any mental toughness, any any ability, if you have any fraction of self-discipline, the ability to not want to do it but still do it. People have a a hard thing understand I hate to run. And what makes me so crazy it doesn't need more is people go why do you run if you hate it? What are you talking about? I don't want to take showers and eat either. I hate that, too. The whole That's a life, man. That It wasn't until I changed that mentality that I became somebody. I hated going to school, so guess what? I was dumb as [ __ ] That's what 1 + 1 is 2. But if you can get through to doing things that you hate to do on the other side is greatness. That's what people understand. By me running, I am callousing my mind. I'm not training for a race. I'm training for life. I'm training for the time when I get that 2:00 in the morning call that my mom is dead or something happens tragic in life I don't fall apart. I'm training my mind and my body, my spirit, so it's all one, so I can handle what life is going to throw at me because the life I've lived it throws a whole bunch at you. And if you're not physically and mentally prepared for that you're just going to crumble and you're good for nobody. Talk to me about what it takes to be on one side of a door in Iraq or anywhere knowing on the other side of the door people who are not afraid of you. They're ready for you to come in and you still have and they have guns and you still have to breach that door. That's That's a great question. It it That's a very scary situation when you are on one side of the door and your mind is racing because on the other side of that door it could be no one. It could be four guys with four AK-47s. That that door you're about to open could be booby-trapped. So once you open it, boom, your legs are gone. So there's a thousand things you think about when you're the first guy, second guy, third guy getting ready to go in a room and flood it. And that's why I talk about the warrior mentality. And that's why so many people are lost when I start talking. You have the right. You're lucky that you don't have to think like warriors think. You're very privileged. I chose this world to be a warrior. And I would And I would choose it again if I came back to this world. But the mentality of a warrior is very different than normal mentality. You must be that person on that door o- getting ready to open it thinking to yourself if I die so be it. The only way you can go in that door is knowing there's a great chance you're going to die. Like being a SEAL, you train with live ammo. You jump out of airplane. Every Every Every Everything you do you could die. So, to be a warrior, why people don't understand me, I'm glad you don't understand me. Merry Christmas. Good on you. Because being a warrior takes a whole different mindset. A whole different mindset to know that there's a great chance I may not be in the military like I was in for 21 years. I'm lucky. I'm very lucky that I'm alive, able to talk to you, able to still run. But when you sign up on that dotted line to be a se- like a SEAL, your mentality changes. I may not live. You got to accept that. And that's the mentality you have. And that's what makes you a warrior. If you're scared to die, you're a bad warrior. And so, what do you use to push through? Is that Is that a Goggins moment? Is that finding the darkness, I'm going through hell, I'll become the devil if I have to? Like what What is that moment? What are you pulling up inside? I'm pulling up a lot of the the dark side of me. But I'm also looking at the guys to my left and to my right realizing that um, we're here together, man. And I have to, uh, I have to be strong for them. And they got to be strong for me. A lot of people, either you like me or you don't, even in the SEAL Teams. But when you get to that door, or you get on that mission, or you get in that op, all that shit's out the door, man. You know, you you do it honestly. I mean, people say all the time in these movies and [ __ ] you you really out there fighting for that guy beside you. And you can't be a coward. Cuz, you know what? This is how I look at everything I do now in life, and this sums it up. I hated jumping out of airplanes. I hated shooting guns. I hated the job as a Navy SEAL. But I did it because I wanted to change myself. Everything I do, I'm not really comfortable doing. But if you choose to go that route, to go be a Navy SEAL, you might as well go be the hardest [ __ ] in the world. Cuz if you're choosing to do something, you have two routes. You can go there and be a little a little weak person, and get through barely, and that's your reputation. Or you can go through the hardest guy you can possibly be, and that's your reputation. So, my whole thing is, if you're going to choose to open that [ __ ] door in Iraq or Afghanistan, open the [ __ ] and go in hard. Because they're going to remember you by slowly opening it and peeking in. So, if you're going to open it, and you made your mind to open it, don't crack it open. Open the [ __ ] door and go in. That's with life. If you're choosing to do If you're choosing to do something, attack it. Because they're going to remember you as not attacking it. So, I want to be remembered. You can hate me, but there's one thing you can't say about me. I didn't attack it. So, that's the mentality you have. If you're going to do something, you might as well attack it, cuz you can do it anyway. Right. Do Do use that in civilian life? Like, do you still employ the I'm going to attack it, I'm going to take their souls? Like, how does that play out in a non um combat zone? It still works for me in in life as far as attacking things. Because uh no matter what I want to you know no matter what avenue I choose, I want to be the very best. Mhm. And the very best may not be I'm number one. The very best is did I leave everything inside of me out there? So, attacking is not like oh, I want to win this or win that or be the best. The best is I'm I'm I'm running against myself in everything I do. And and that's and that's what I attack. I attack myself. I'm always questioning myself. I'm always holding myself accountable. Talk to me about the accountability mirror. So, the accountability mirror is something that I kind of came up with in high school. Like I said, I started shaving my head when I was 16. Mhm. And I got caught up in trying to impress so many people because no one liked me. So, I developed so many different identities. Let me sag my pants. You know, let me Okay, let me pull my pants up. Let me Let me talk this way or act this way or be this way or whatever the hell it may be. God, dog, there was so many different things I did to try to fit in with so many different groups that when you look in the mirror, that's the one person you can't lie to. So, every morning I would shave my head thinking God, I'll reflect back on some of the lies I may have told somebody or some of the ways I acted I didn't feel comfortable doing. And I did it to impress other normal people. The keyword there is normal, everyday people. I was trying to make other people like me. How pathetic is that? So, I Th- This mirror would always tell me my Like Like um my reflection would say, "God, you are a pathetic man. How does that feel everyday to be this way?" So, I would just start having myself accountable. How did How did I attack today? How did I attack yesterday? And if I didn't do something I was proud of, I'd write down a sticky note. And I would fix it. So then, my senior year in high school, it was a totally different David Goggins. Can you give me an example of something that you wrote down and fixed? All right, there was a lunch table that I you know, I wanted to sit at the cool guy lunch table, man. I wanted to you know, even though everybody else called me [ __ ] all the time, I wanted to to try to act like somebody I wasn't so I could fit in. And I sold my soul to the devil. You know, trying to act like, no, I'm I'm David [ __ ] Goggins. That's who I am. And so, I wrote down on a piece of paper, [ __ ] the table. Sit by your [ __ ] self. And that's what I did. And guess what happened? My table became a table people started sitting at. Cuz a whole bunch of people in that lunch room felt exactly like I did. I I I laundry list of things that I just I I I I write down and then fix. So, I'd write down and fix it. Were there things that you looked to for um role models, people that you were like taking ideas from? Like, why pull your pants up? If that's the popular style, like, what was giving Either you were the single most insightful person I've ever met, which by the way is entirely possible having listened to enough of your material, or like you had a treasure trove of people that gave you great ideas. Even if they were like fictional or movie or you know, athletes or whatever, but It was funny, man. One One movie I watched all the time was Rocky. Great choice. Rocky one. And I related to Rocky a lot because of uh kind of you know, one of the smart guys, just tried real hard. And the one scene that I related a lot of my life to, still to this day, was Rocky one, round 14. And this is where I got taking souls from. If you look at round 14 of Rocky 1, Apollo is beating the [ __ ] out of Rocky. Rocky falls down in his corner. Mickey's saying, "Stay down. Stay down." Rocky didn't hear a [ __ ] soul. Apollo, after he knocked him down, turns around, hands in the air, like, "I finally knocked down this animal." Right. Apollo doesn't know it, but Rocky's getting up. Apollo turns around the second Rocky gets up. And Apollo looks at Rocky, and he Apollo looks at him with a look of like Rocky just took his soul. He Apollo shakes his head, and Rocky has his gloves and he motions towards Apollo, "Come on, [ __ ] I'm still here." And this song comes on that I played. So, when I brought the the Guinness Book of World Records, it took me 17 hours to do 4,030 pull-ups. I listened to one song for 17 hours. 2 minutes and 17 seconds. Da da da da da da da da da. I listened to that song for 17 hours. Wow. Nonstop. On on repeat. So, the image in my mind of a man was not one that had earrings, sag his pants. I I I had this image in my head. And I was going to fulfill that. And I I didn't do any trends. I stopped trending. I stopped being this guy who whatever was new, [ __ ] it. That's not what I believe in. I'm doing this. This is what I want to be. This is what I'm going to be. So. It's incredible. Um how do you experience beauty and joy in your life? What situations do you put yourself in? What makes you laugh? What What's the fun stuff for you? It's funny you that. Um I I just retired from the military in November 2015. And I was going and going and going and going. And I never really I was I a happy guy, but I'm never in the moment of like sitting back and I want to travel here to have fun or do this or that. I've never been that person. But the first time I really got a chance to experience true happiness and true peace was I was Like so what I did to myself to become who I am today, it takes a great toll on your body. So, I believe God gave me time to rest. And he took me out of commission. Not even the mind of Goggins or could get me back up. So, I had about a good 6-7 months where I was out. And when I was out, I had time to reflect on all I had accomplished. And that was the first time in my life where I sat back and said, "Wow." Cuz only I I may be telling you some of the story. I know the exact truth of how brutal my life was and how I shouldn't be on this show today. And how the mind and how beautiful it is. So, what brings me joy and happiness is knowing how beautiful the mind is. And I'm one of the few people that didn't read about it, didn't it experience it through some some drug. I got to experience the beauty of true [ __ ] willpower. True [ __ ] you, I'm going to fail, I'm going to [ __ ] fail, I'm going to [ __ ] fail, I'm going to [ __ ] fail. And I will succeed. Just me talking about that gives me a feeling I know what I did. And I don't need to travel somewhere or to have this or have that. I have it all here in my mind. The beauty is remembering this young, dumb, what people called [ __ ] is now where I'm at today. And that is when you finally get to that point for me, it's everlasting peace. I don't need I I could die right now on this show and I'll be a happy man. So, that's that's my happiness is is is my reflection on the suffering of my journey knowing I never quit, nor was I guided by anybody on this earth. I was guided by something much more powerful and I listened. And I chose the path of most resistance. Talent not required. I love that. You said that you live the life of a monk. Mhm. What does What does that mean? What does that look like? Why do you do that? Um so, I stretch out every day for at least 2 hours. I don't drink. I don't go out. My regimen is I wake up, have oatmeal, run, come back, hit the weights. Um I'm a big sports guy. I don't leave the house if at all but do stuff like this. And I stretch out at night time. I find people that I trust, which is a very small group of people, people who are honest and true to me. People who would die for me and I'll die for them, which is a [ __ ] small Sure. And everybody else, man, you know, do you. And I stay true to myself. And I let you do you. I don't judge people. I don't criticize you. You want to be a douchebag and be an ass and not love this country. Do you ever want to do? I don't care, man. I fought for this country for you to do you. And I am all about you doing you cuz I'm going to [ __ ] do me. And I'm going to do me until I'm [ __ ] dead. And I believe I I earned the right. A lot of people haven't earned the right. Just cuz you live in this country don't mean you earned the right. You got to You got to live a little bit. Live. And then have something to say or shut the [ __ ] up, you know? So, if you had It's maybe impossible to answer, but if you had um that same kid from earlier who wants to take that first step, you want him to go experience some life, what one specific thing would you tell him to go do? I'd first ask the kid, "Who are you?" At the core of your soul. And if he can can't answer that question, our conversation's over. Cuz I can't say [ __ ] to him. Right. If you don't know who you are If you don't know who you are, I can't tell you who you are. There's a concept in your book that it permeates the whole book and I think really is one of the most important things for people to understand in their own life, certainly to understand you, and it's the notion of detesting mediocrity. Mhm. Talk to me about that. How do you How did you instill it in your life? How can other people instill it in theirs? It's one of the biggest things in the world. A lot of us mediocrity's everywhere right now. And we're all trying to find an easy way out, and we're judging ourselves. Let's say there's 10 people in this room and we're all mediocre. But I'm the best of the mediocre people. I now think I'm great. I'm great. We surround ourselves around people that make us feel great. They tell us what we want to hear. The second we put ourselves amongst the uncommon people we don't like that feeling. That challenge and feel that of that person who's waking up at 3:30 in the morning saying, "Hey, put your [ __ ] on. We're going for a run." We don't like that challenge. We like that person who says, "Hey, you know what, man? I don't feel good today, man." And they say, "Oh, it's okay, brother. We'll take a day off, man. We'll get a pizza and [ __ ] Watch the game." We like that. We We love that feeling. Why? Cuz you understand, man, we're good, bro. We don't want that [ __ ] like this, "Hey, man. No, bro. Get your [ __ ] [ __ ] on, man. Stop being a punk." We don't want that in our lives. We don't want that person who's constantly challenging our weaknesses. We want that person who's constantly, you know, making us feel nice and good and secure in ours. That's the mediocrity of life. We want to be the best amongst the average people. People wonder, "How do you stay hungry all the time?" Because after I accomplish something, I don't sit back like a lot of guys who graduate buds, graduate this, graduate that. They get comfortable. They wonder, "Why I'm getting weak, man? I don't know. I lost my edge." What's going on? Cuz once you hit the top of the [ __ ] mountain, guess what happened? You're I'm good. I'm good. So, you wonder why you're falling down now. Because once you reach the top of the mountain, you got to build a [ __ ] another one. That's mediocrity. There's a lot of people in mediocrity who have a nice resume. But they're one-timers, man. They hit They hit a one-time deal. They busted it open, got a lot of money, but they're good. You're mediocre now, man. What are you [ __ ] doing today, tomorrow, the next [ __ ] day? That's why I'm listening to theorists. I don't listen to all that [ __ ] I don't listen to a [ __ ] who's like this, man. What's wrong, man? I'm [ __ ] tired, dude. Why are you tired? Cuz tomorrow I get to do the [ __ ] [ __ ] again, man. Whatever this [ __ ] is that made me [ __ ] nauseous and sick to my stomach, it made me hurt. There's no ending. And that's the person I listen to. That's the person who's gained knowledge. You gain knowledge through suffering. And on the other end of the suffering is a world that very few very few have ever seen. It's a beautiful world. Cuz that's where you find yourself. You don't find yourself in over here. You find yourself on the other end. Like like the 100-mile race I was on, I ran it for 24 hours. I found myself on the other end of that [ __ ] race. That 19 hours, I found wow. There's a whole 'nother [ __ ] world out here that I've never even the world's in your mind. And that's what all that mediocrity is about. Mediocrity is contagious. Talk to me about not getting civilized. Not getting civilized is about having a savage mentality. Civilized is something where people um it's a it's it's it's a comfortable world. A lot of us say, you know, like for instance, I see these athletes right now who retire, you know, I'm 38, you know, I'm 39, I did 20 years at the top of my game, and I'm chilling out now. You see them a year later and how they look. What the hell just happened to you, dude? What the hell? You were one of the greatest athletes of all time. Kids looked up to you. Women, men of all ages looked up to you. And they hit the pinnacle where it's time to retire and their mind says, I'm civilized. The worst thing that could ever happen to any human being is they become civilized. Is that total accountability like even when you retire, there's a [ __ ] looking at me and judging me right now, man? I'm I was the baddest person to ever live. Doesn't go away, man. You got to wake up even though you retired, you never retired. You're setting the example every single day of your life. And being civilized feels so good, but I'm sorry, man. Once you get to the top, you may retire, but you ain't never coming back home, man, cuz now you're judged. People see you falling off. You want to be that guy who knows, I may be retired from the sport or forever I did, but I'll be damned if you ever see me looking like [ __ ] feeling like [ __ ] not arriving. People I've arrived. I've arrived mentality. You're always setting the example. Civilization feels so good. These comfortable feelings are what people want. They want retirement. They want that. They need that. They It's a It's a yearning feeling. I want it, too. People love putting a label on me about, "My God, man, you're just wired different." I'm not [ __ ] wired different, dude. I'm thinking right now, after I got past my stuttering thing, now I'm on a roll, I'm good now. You know what I'm thinking about right now? I got [ __ ] wake up tomorrow and do the same [ __ ] again. I got to leave this [ __ ] interview and go stretch out for 2 and 1/2 hours. I hate that [ __ ] But guess what it does, though? I'm constantly callousing over my victim's mentality that I once had growing up. Every day you have to do this [ __ ] Cuz why? When you stop doing it, you don't just maintain it. If you stop shooting the gun, you're not going to be a great shot if you pick a gun up a year from now. The only way to keep from getting rusty is to constantly oil that [ __ ] machine. The machine is this. You got to keep challenging it every day. The way that I think about that is very, very similar. And I've got to imagine this is one of the things that makes you one of the most misunderstood humans on the planet is to me, driving that hard, being that hungry, pushing long after everybody stops has nothing to do with anybody but myself. And what I my drug of choice is how I feel about myself when I'm by myself. Like, nobody knows how hard I work. And nobody's ever going to know. Not even my wife is up enough to see how much I really work. Right. But it doesn't matter. Because the way that it makes me feel, like in this moment right now, where I get to say, "Ah, the world doesn't know. I could be lying." But I would know. And the way that I feel right now, because I know how true it is, that nobody's outworking me. Mhm. That to me is the juice. And when people understand that what you're fighting to build, the reason that I'm wearing a shirt that says what would Goggins do, the reason that I chant Goggins, like the crowd before we started rolling the cameras chanting Goggins. The reason that's so resonant is because they want to do something for themselves. They want to feel some kind of way about themselves. Mhm. Now that you've become like this big-ass speaker, Mhm. what do people come up to you and ask you the most? How do I do it? How I'm able to do what I do on a daily basis. You know, how do I fight the demons? Cuz they hear me speak and I'm very raw and real. How do you fight my insecurities? All these things. And uh I they're every day. They're there every day. Like you said, I'm in the search for a feeling. I'm not in the search for a trophy. I'm not in search for love. I'm not in search for more followers on Instagram or social media. When I started this journey years ago and I realized that I'm going to be somebody and I'm searching for a feeling. A feeling of true victory for myself and only myself. The second I shut out the whole world and realized that one thing, that I am in this world alone. I'm fighting in this race by myself. Yeah, I'm all about people. I'm all about team. I'm all about that [ __ ] But I'm really all about right now and in my life, just like you said, no one knows the real truth about me. How hard I really go. I don't care if anybody knows. I want anybody to know. I'm an introvert. I live an introverted life. And I love that about me. It that right there is my fuel. Is I know that there's really no one out there grinding like me. And if they are, so be it. If I know about you, I'll make sure that I'm my game. That's what the mentality is all about. My whole thing is a mentality thing. Like I told you in the last time I was on the show, I viewed myself as the weakest person on the planet Earth. My goal in life was to in my mind believe I'm the hardest man alive. And that's why the whole thing is can't hurt me. That's what it's about. It's about whatever you think you are, you have to make that dream a reality. But that's where the hard part is. Is making that dream reality. That's where the hard work comes in. That's where people don't know how do you keep grinding every day. You have to make those insecurities, those fears, like when I was 300 lb, I didn't have any drive. I'm going to go be a Navy SEAL. What kind of stupid [ __ ] is that 300 lb? There wasn't like a drive to go be a Navy SEAL. I was an insecure, lying kid, afraid. I had to look in my insecurities and in my fear and find drive in that. We all looking for passion. Passion's all around you. You have a whole a whole [ __ ] stack of it all around you. It's your insecurities, all that [ __ ] You got to dive deep into that [ __ ] All It's all in there. All the energy and fuel you need is right in yourself. It's all there. You got a lot of stuff to do to overcome. And you know, that's where I found it. I found it right there in my own insecurities. I found drive in my own insecurities. And that's that's the most powerful thing in the world. When you can find drive in your own doubt, fear, insecurities, you become very unstoppable. You may have just changed me at a deep and fundamental level. I've never thought about it like that. So, the number one question I get asked is how do I find my passion to which the answer is um very rudimentary and maybe ultimately not as true and powerful as what you just said. Which is there's another thing I need to tie this to that you talk about in the book, which is people have lost touch with their bodies. Mhm. And you always tell people if you want to change, go do something physically [ __ ] demanding. Like go find yourself in the suffering and in the pain of doing something with your body. Yes. It is utterly fascinating to me and it's just hitting me now. I'd never heard you say that before, so I I I'll reserve final judgment for round three when we come back together, but the thought of you feel lost, you feel insecure, you don't have a passion, you don't know what to do, you're reaching out to somebody, you need that help, you know you could do more, be more, and the answer is you In the last interview we did, you called it the bag of [ __ ] if I remember right. That's the bag. in to the bag of [ __ ] and start changing those one by one. That may be the most extraordinary piece of advice I've ever heard. In fact, I will say the way it's hitting me right now, that's the single most extraordinary piece of advice for self-transformation I've ever heard. It's the truth. Who is sitting here right now today? This is the real me, obviously. But um I'm going to go kind of I'm I'm a very philosophical person. And I'm going to go there with you real quick. I believe in a higher power. Don't know the name, don't know where it's coming from, don't know things like that. But I believe that this power and visualize it real quick. Let's say it's a man up there, a woman, whatever. And they have a chart. And when you're born they say David Goggins born February 17th, 1975 at 6:00 a.m. They write the chart down cuz they can see everything. They know exactly what you're supposed to [ __ ] supposed to be. They know what you're supposed to be. You die, you go to so-called heaven. You arrive at heaven, I'm 300 lb. I retired as an Ecolab guy, which is okay. It's just a job, whatever. I go up there and God looks at me and he shows me my chart. And my chart on there says you were supposed to be a Navy SEAL. You're supposed to be 185 lb. You're supposed to be one of the smartest people on the planet. This this all this You see this. And now you're in heaven, you made it to heaven, but you're like, "God damn, I was supposed to live that life? I was supposed to live that life?" And then you find out that the reason why cuz we all think that if we pray on it, if we do this, if we do that, whatever, if we don't work, we just whatever it's going to magically happen for us. No. I believe that when I'm all said and done with, my whole job is to outwork the chart. Whatever the [ __ ] chart says about me, the all-knowing power up there, I want to get up there and say, "Him look at me and say, 'I know everything. I didn't [ __ ] see this. I want to feel that. I want to get to the other end of this [ __ ] world and however I'm being judged, whoever's judging me to look at me and say, 'I did not [ __ ] know I I had you at 185, had you at this, but all this other [ __ ] I was writing as you were living it.'" I want to I want to find more. All I can. And in that [ __ ] sack of [ __ ] you have to dive in that to find more. Because if you're not willing to go in there and face yourself, you're not going to find anything. You're going to live right here on surface, man, right here on surface. So if there There an ending to this world and there is somewhere to go, and there's a judgement. You're going to get there, and you might see a chart. And that chart may tell you who the [ __ ] you should have been. And now you get the rest of your life to think about that. Man, I could have lived a much better life if I just would have just suffered a little bit more. If I just would have went in that [ __ ] and realized I had so much more, but fear and the 40% and living here versus living here, being afraid, stopped me. So, that's I I'm a big guy in visualizing. I'm a I'm a big guy in making a world it may not exist. To me, it does. And I'm I'm overpowering myself every day. And you got to find tools to do that. That's the tool that I use. So, that's what it's all about. God damn. You said in the book that the only thing to fear is the man staring back at you in the mirror. I thought that was insanely powerful and seems tied to this. Is there something else to that, or is is that what you're talking about? That's all I'm talking about. Like, your your biggest enemy, your biggest the most important conversation you will ever have in your [ __ ] life is the one you have with yourself. You wake up with it. You walk around with it. You go to bed with it. Eventually, you're going to act on it. Whether you good or bad. You have to That's why the whole thing about this book I have is about you. It is about you. It's strictly about you finding who you are. So many people die, live 100 years, never [ __ ] know who they are. Never know who they are. You have to look in that mirror and know this there's so much more in here, man. Cuz I could literally right now be a 300-lb guy spraying for cockroaches still to this day if I did not look in that mirror and say there there has to be more to this. This can't be it. And then willing to go into it, dive deep into it, and give all I have to find it. So, that's what it's that's what all that's about. In all that you've done and all that you've been through, help me understand when you were given the you did not have a happy childhood. I think that would be very fair to say. When you were given the VFW award recently and you were listening to people that had impacted you and you got to your mom, you couldn't even speak. Yeah. Uh It almost chokes me up now. Um so, I get the VFW award for the for the um Americanism award for military service and giving back. I'm as human as human can be. That's why what you see is what you get. Um at that moment when I was giving my speech and I thanked my uncle for being there and I got to my mom, it wasn't just about her. It was I I I I know what she went through. I know what I went through. And we got knocked down so much. I had a moment in front of all these great American heroes where I had a chance It was like so fast it went through me like like lightning of I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I'm getting the award like this. That that kid who was in the fetal position the majority of his life. And so so much the fact that my body and my hip flexors are tight to this day that even though I was standing erect, my mind was in the fetal position. And when I looked out amongst all those people, it was a sense of pride that I can't even I can't even explain. It's the moments of three hell weeks. It's the moments of in that room by myself studying for hours and hours and hours trying to catch up with all the kids who are above me. It's just those moments. Like the real, raw moments of life that was like, boom, hit me and they were gone, but I was like, I did that. Overcame that [ __ ] you know? It was like, it's this power behind all that [ __ ] And that's the feeling I was looking for in my life. I found it. It wasn't money, wasn't fame, wasn't awards. It It was that feeling I have right now. The feeling of I'm about to break down, but it's not of like, oh my god, I'm upset. It's like, I worked myself so hard that I turned a person this [ __ ] up into this [ __ ] right here. Not off of reading a [ __ ] book off a theorist. Off of going to work on myself and saying, I don't know how to do this, but I know that to get over there to that [ __ ] side, I got to grind myself into a [ __ ] fine powder. And I did it. I did it off of sheer will. And very few people will know how that feels. Hello, my friend. You know that I believe success requires you to see failure as the ultimate learning tool. Success requires you to be disciplined and gritty and to never ever quit on your dreams. I say all of that because one thing is certain, the road to achieving your goal is not smooth or linear. I wish it was, but it's not. It's going to be bumpy, sometimes scary. Some days you'll take two steps forward and slide 10 steps back. And that's why success also requires you to know how to pull yourself out of a rut and get unstuck fast. Life is short. You can't be messing around with your goals. You've got to make progress every single day. So, I've pulled a class from Impact Theory University called How to Get Unstuck, which you can watch for free with the link on your screen or by clicking below. When you join me for that free preview of that workshop from Impact Theory University, I'm going to teach you my strategy for how to understand exactly where you need to be going, how to identify the obstacle that's blocking you, and the best way to make the most progress towards that goal and keep your momentum. All right, click that link and let's get to work. All right, I'll see you on the inside. The things you've done are absolutely incredible, but what I find fascinating is if you just read your litany of things that you've accomplished, you do just assume, "Oh, you must be really gifted." You're shredded, you're in great shape, but when you see the before picture, it's pretty startling. Right. So, what was that moment like looking in the mirror the day you decide, "Okay, wait, enough is enough." Well, it was pretty crazy for me. It It It took a while to get to that point where enough was enough. Um but it happened to I I I came home one night from work spraying for cockroaches. And um long story short, I turned on the the um Discovery Channel. I saw some guys going through Navy SEAL training. And they were going through Hell Week and they were getting their ass just beat, you know, in out of the water, guys ringing the bell. Um they were suffering. And I was weighing like 297 lb. And I had to make a change in my life. You know, I I at all-time low. And I wasn't going anywhere and I was exactly what everybody said I was going to be, which was nothing. So, I had to make a change. What was it about seeing suffering? That's This really interesting and I actually get it, but I want to hear you explain it. Why suffering was the thing that triggered that thought? Well, for me growing up, I came from a horrible background. I got called [ __ ] every day of my life growing up. Um lived in a small town. The clan headquarters at that time was about um 20 minutes from where I lived. That's right. The uh one of the high-ups in the KKK son sat behind me in two classes. So, he called me [ __ ] all the time. I got my first car, they spray painted [ __ ] we're going to kill you on it. So, I was just a insecure, scared kid. And the only way I could find myself was through putting myself through the worst thing possible. How'd you have the insight though? Like that's so counterintuitive. Like most people that's precisely what they're trying to get away from. So, what was it in you at that moment? You're overweight, you've been bullied essentially your entire life up to that point. What makes you go, all right [ __ ] like that? That's what I've got to do. Well, no one was helping me out. So, my mom my dad made my mom kind of irregular. So, she worked three jobs, went to college full-time. So, she was never around. One time this this person drew a picture of me and you know, said, we're going to kill you [ __ ] on my Spanish notebook. And I took it to my principal and my principal said, they spell [ __ ] n-i-g-e-r. That was the best advice he can give me. So, long story short, what I realized was no one was here to help me. And the feeling I had every morning, I started shaving my head when I was 16 years old. And the feeling I had every morning when I looked in the mirror was horrible. And I didn't want to feel like that anymore. And how I felt was a a kid going nowhere, a kid that was scared. And most kids will accept that and look for help. But the best thing that happened to me, no one helped me. No one felt sorry for me. No one looked at me and said like this day and age, they'll they'll take you in and they'll tell everybody stop picking on this person. Back then, they didn't care. The KKK marched in our 4th of July parades. They had to stay a hundred yards back, but they marched in it. Wow. That's how this town was and my mom cared about me, but my dad took our soul. And she did you know, did the best she could. I had to figure out I wasn't going to be a punk kid all my life. So the only way I could turn it around was to suffer. I had to build calluses in my brain the same way I built calluses on my hand. So I broke the Guinness Book of World Records for pull-ups a long time ago, but I failed at it twice. And I did 67,000 pull-ups in trying to break this record. So to do 4,030 pull-ups, I had to do 67,000 for training for that. Wow. And so what I realized is for me to become the man I wanted to become, I saw myself as the weakest person God ever created. But I never blamed God for anything he did to me. So I wanted to change that to be the hardest man ever created. Am I that? I don't know, but you had to have a goal. Right. And my goal when I was sitting there not going to school, being bullied, being having no self-esteem, my goal was the only person that could turn this person around is me. The only way I could turn it around is put myself through the worst things possible a human being can ever endure. And that'd be the only way that I can build this brain to handle anything that comes in front of it. Callusing my mind Right. through pain and suffering. That's so powerful. It's such an amazing insight. So obviously listening to some of the stuff that you're talking about and one thing that you say often is, you know, it's it's hard to stay hard or get hard when you're living in, you know, like you even said at one point in a big mansion in Beverly Hills, right? So, I was sitting there thinking, you're absolutely right. But, what I find so interesting is how we as a species run from pain, we run from suffering, and one of the reasons I've talked about this before, but one of the reasons my wife and I don't have kids is I firmly believe that you need something that is brutal, is difficult, is hardship, it knocks you off center, it makes you feel bad, because in the process of rebuilding and clawing back from that, climbing up, then you can become something. But, you unless you've been tested, unless you've gone through the wringer, you've got no hope. So, how do you take somebody that you love and force them through that? And I think that what you've done is maybe the ultimate expression of that, which is how do you put yourself through it? Right? You don't have to do any of that. So, in the end, like what would your advice be to that 16-year-old kid who's staring in the mirror, does not like what he sees, but is still running from adversity? Well, my biggest advice to him is that, first of all, he won't like what I say to him. Because I'm going to say the exact opposite of what the world, today's world, is saying. So, we read a bunch of books nowadays. As as humans, we we want to find out how to be someone else. What we don't do is we don't go inside. So, literally turn yourself inside out. Read the book that says like like we're writing a book every day of our lives, but we never read that book. So, what I would challenge this young man or or young woman to do is you have to look inside of yourself to see what you really want. What what are you passionate about? We use these words and these little phrases of only the strong survive and all this other crap. They're all just [ __ ] words. I get so tired of hearing people just talking. Like right now, someone may think, "Goggins is just talking." You don't know me. So when I speak, I speak from passion. I speak from experience. I I I speak from suffering. I would to tell this young man and woman that the only way I believe, and this is this my experience in life, the only way you're ever going to get to the other side of this journey is you have got to suffer to grow. To grow, you must suffer. And some people will get it and some people won't. But they have to see what their journey is to start their journey. Several people live to be 100 years old and they have great lives and they have great kids. The kids go to college and all sorts of stuff. But somewhere in their life, there was a point where they had a decision to make. They can go left or right on this path. Left was the easy route. Right was the hard route. A lot of people take the easy route. And they had a good life that way, but the better life was going to the right side. And you may have 20 years of pain and suffering to get past it, but a lot of us die never truly starting our journey. And I would tell this young person, you got to start your journey. It may suck, but it will it will come out the other side where you're coasting. So It's really I want to go back to what you're saying about that we write our own book, writing it every day, but we actually don't take the time to read it. So what do you as you were saying that here's what I see and tell me if this is where you were going that basically you're you're writing down these things that are sort of becoming your identity about being weak, about avoiding suffering, about being soft essentially. I mean all like all the things sort of by default they're in that camp. And as you were saying that I was imagining you sort of taking that pen and beginning to write your own story and writing things that you knew looking back on that you would be proud of. Right. Like going through the military and doing the hardest training, some of the ultra endurance stuff that you've done which is broken feet. I mean it's like so crazy. In fact, it one is that what you meant By writing that story? So, what I meant by that is like everyday we're seeing who we are as people. When I was growing up, I I lied for people to accept me because I didn't accept myself. So, I would make up stories so you so then you would accept me into your world. I would everything I did was for someone else to like me. It wasn't till I started reading my own book about how pathetic I was as a human being. I could blame my dad, I could blame kids at school, I could blame having health issues, ADD, my mom not being around. Great mom, but she was doing her thing. Right. I could blame a lot of people. And that's the book I was reading. And I put it off on everybody else. It wasn't till I said, "You know what? For me to fix this, I got to read what the hell what the [ __ ] is wrong with David Goggins. Not not blame anybody. Read my book and say, "Okay, I'm afraid of my shadow. How can I overcome that?" Go in the military, get your ass kicked, do things you hate to do, be uncomfortable every [ __ ] day of your life. Roger that. I'm not the smartest kid in the world. Okay. It says somebody saying, "Oh no, you're smart." No, no, don't say that to yourself. I said to myself, "No, I'm a dumb motherfucker." Okay, Roger that. How you get smarter? Educate yourself. So, the things that we run from, we running from the truth. We're running from the truth, man. So, the only way I became successful was going towards the truth as painful and as brutal as it is, it changed me. It it allowed me to become in my own right who I am today. One of the most powerful things I think anybody can do, and this so I used to struggle with self-esteem, and my thing was I focused on being smart, and I just wasn't that smart. And I focused on being right, and I was wrong a lot. And so, it created this weird thing in my life where I would constantly try to put myself around people who were less and less intelligent so that I could feel good about myself. And the bad news is it's actually a really good strategy for that. Right. Being around people that were less intelligent than me really did make me feel good. Like I felt good about myself. But I literally referred to myself at the time as the king of remedial jobs because that those were the only jobs that I could really shine at. Right. And it wasn't until I realized I can actually change what I build my self-esteem around and I can start building my self-esteem around instead of being right or being smart, being a learner and being willing to admit when I'm wrong. And so the thing that I began to build my self-esteem around was being willing and able to stare at my inadequacies. Right. Right? What you said, like I fully understand like how this um this interview is going to be and you warned me ahead of time this interview is going to be bifurcating. People are going to love it and some people are going to hate it. And but dude, I so believe in the notion of looking at yourself and if you are pathetic, owning it, right? And saying cuz my thing is you can change it, right? Which you have proven in no uncertain terms. That's it. But if you don't admit it, you're never going to be on the path to changing it. Exactly. Walk us through because this is one of those crazy stories I don't I can't imagine how you pulled this off. Your first ultra-marathon, which you got into like really fast. And one why you did it cuz I think that's incredible. It So this the first ultra-marathon wasn't smart at all. At all. Um just So basically what happened was I was at military freefall school with Morgan Luttrell. Marcus Luttrell, if you guys don't know, was the lone survivor, the guy he um was in a bad op op went bad. He was the only Navy SEAL that lived. Long story short, you got to get the book, read Lone Survivor, great story. Morgan is Marcus Luttrell's twin brother. Mhm. And I was there with Marcus. So what happened was myself and Morgan were in freefall school at the same exact time Marcus was in the worst incident in SEAL history. So I knew that Marcus might be dead. He wasn't dead. Everybody else was dead. So, I actually brought more, you know, I actually told Morgan, "Hey, man, your brother was in a bad incident. I don't know if he's alive. I don't know what's going on." Long story short, Marcus is alive and I go on to want to raise money for families. All these guys died, they all had kids. I want to raise money for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. It's a foundation where 100% tuition goes to these kids to go to college, you know, full tuition, whatever. So, I found this great foundation. I'm going to raise money for it. So, I said, "You know what? I have to Google something that's that's evil, something very hard." I knew nothing about ultramarathons. I hadn't even run a marathon. I knew nothing about this world. So, I Googled the, you know, the top 10 hardest races in the world. And what comes up is a Badwater 135. So, 135-mile race through Death Valley in the summertime. I thought it was a stage race. I thought it was a race where you run like 20 miles, set up camp, you know, barbecue outside, and then go run some more the next day. So, I called the race director up at the race. I said, "Hey, Chris." His name was Chris Kostman. "I want to do your race." So, we had a long conversation, you know, I was I was much heavier then. And I hadn't put running shoes on over a year. How heavy are you at this point? I'm around between 240 to 270. Whoa. I'm in there. I'm in that range cuz I've my my weight has varied a lot through the SEAL Teams and out of SEAL Teams. So, I was a heavy guy. But the long and short of it all was I hadn't put running shoes on in over a year. I was a big-time powerlifter. I lifted weights heavy, that's what I did. I just got back home from Iraq, went straight to free fall school, and then this happened. So, I called Chris Kostman up on a Wednesday. He says, "Look, man, the only way you can qualify for my race is to run 100 miles at one time in 24 hours or less." There happened to be a race that Saturday. So, 4 days later. And he said, "If you qualify by running 100 miles or less in 24 hours, I will consider you my race." I'm going to cut to the chase. I signed up for this race. It was called the San Diego One Day, where you run around a 1-mile track for 24 hours to see how many miles you can get. My goal was 100 miles. So, um I got to mile 70, and I cleared 70 miles in like 12 13 hours, pretty quickly. But, I was done. My feet were broken. I was stress fractured shin splints. Muscles were tearing. I was in bad shape. I was eating Ritz crackers and drinking Milo Plex. That's all I had. No water. Didn't know what the hell I was doing out there. Had on some tube socks. It was just ridiculous. It was It was a clown show. So, I sat down at mile 70, and at this time I was married, and I I I look at my wife, and I was like, um "I'm I'm messed up bad." So, I literally start to turn white. And when a black guy turns white, you're pretty [ __ ] up. So, here I am. I'm all [ __ ] up in this chair. I'm at mile 70. They got 30 [ __ ] miles to go. I'm jacked up. I got to go to the bathroom, and the and the bathroom is like 20 ft from me. It's a porta-potty. I can't get out of the [ __ ] chair. So, I'm peeing blood down my leg. Whoa. Pooping up my [ __ ] back. And I got 30 miles to go. And I'm I can't stand up cuz my my blood pressure's all messed up. I've been in three hell weeks, Ranger School, overcome so many obstacles in my life. This last 30 miles of this race is when I realized a human being is not so human anymore. We have the ability to go in such a space, if you're willing to suffer, and I mean suffer, your brain and your body once connected together can do anything. And this 30 miles was the life-changing moment. I was out of it. I was in the worst pain in my entire life. I was to me on the brink of death. And I was able to chunk this 30 damn miles into small pieces. I was so driven. I'm not I'm not going to say motivated cuz motivation's crap. Motivation comes and goes. When you're driven, whatever's in front of you will get destroyed. So, I sat in this chair and I was so driven to succeed in this race. And it And at this time, everyone goes, "Were you thinking about the guys that died?" And I'm not going to lie to you. I wasn't. This became a personal thing. This became me against this race, me against the kids that called me [ __ ] me against me. It just became something that I took so so violently personal. And I broke this thing down into small pieces. I said, "Okay, I got to get nutrition. I got to be able to stand up before I can get off this curb and get off this chair and be able to go 30 miles." So, I went through all these small steps and I was able to stand up. And then from standing up, I was literally walking around with my wife at the time and she goes, "You're not going to make the time." She goes, "You're I mean you're you're walking like 30 something minute miles." I got to mile 81. And the second she said that I'm not going to make the time, I ran the last 19 miles non-stop. And I can show you right now when we get done with this. As a matter of fact, I'm going to show you right now. This was years ago. And I had to put compression tape on my ankle. And I had So, this was years ago. I had literally the size of half dollars. I had to get compression tape. And I taped up my ankles and I taped up my feet. And that's how I got through that race. Was it like a hematoma? I mean, what do we What was happening? what happened was I like my shins hurt so bad from having stress fractures that the only way I can continue on was I taped it so I wasn't doing the flexor motion that that activates your your shins. So, I taped my ankles and my shins up and I got that from because in my third Hell Week they wouldn't let me go back through you know, train anymore. Right. So, I literally went through all of BUDS, my last SEAL training, with stress fractures, shin splints. And how I did it was I would tape my ankles all the way up to my calf every morning. So, for the first hour the pain was excruciating. But, what would happen is my feet would go numb. And I did that every single day for 6 months. Whoa. how I got through my third Hell Week cuz I was so broken from the first two that the commander said, "Hey, the CO said this is your last time we're sending you through." So, that's how I got the idea to do that. So, with the right And And people may listen to this and say this guy is sadistic, he's crazy, he's No, if you know how I came up you realize I was just a scared kid that found drive and passion to be something much better than what he thought he was. That's all it is. God, I'm going to ask the question. I I don't know if you have a good answer for this. I don't know if there is a good answer for this. But, even I want to know how do you find and cultivate that drive? Like, there is a kid right now watching this, man, and they feel like you felt, they feel lost, alone, broken, stupid, lazy, like they're never going to amount to anything. And what you're talking about is the closest thing to a [ __ ] superpower that this kid has ever heard. And right now he is on the edge of his seat. How does he How does he like force himself to take that first step? I'm very fortunate that I grew up at a time when there was no phones and there was no social media. And I suggest yes, I'm on social media on a very limited basis because I have a story to tell and it's a great platform. Use it as a platform, don't use it as your life. My biggest advice to give everybody in the world is like I say, we live in an external world. Everything is is you got to see it, touch it, it's it's it's external. If you can for the rest of your life live inside of yourself. Stop listening to people who are calling you fat, gay, transsexual, [ __ ] everything that is makes no sense. All these insecure people putting their insecurities on you, you got to flush it out. You got to just be whoever the hell God or whoever the hell you believe in. If you believe in nothing but yourself, I don't care what it is. You got to take everything and throw it away. You have to believe in one thing and that is yourself. And and I'm not saying don't believe in God or what you believe in, but right now for you to find greatness in yourself, you're not going to find it by looking in a book or by even hearing me. I may give you the spark, but you've got to go inside yourself to find it. And that means you got to be quiet. Shut the [ __ ] up, go in a room, stop talking, search your soul, search your mind, search your abilities and you'll find it. But if you're not looking for it, you won't find it. So you got to go start your journey and the journey starts with you finding why the hell am I here on this planet Earth? Why am I here? If you don't know that, you will live the rest of your life searching, always asking the question why. So, on that last 19 miles, Mhm. feet are broken, ankles are taped, shin splints, stress fractures, what are the words that are going through your mind? Are you in the cookie jar? I'm I'm deep in the cookie jar. And the cookie jar is something that I've made up of all the failures of my life. All the things that I was I failed and I went back. I failed and I went back and I finally succeeded. All the things that kicked my ass. I put them all in the cookie jar cuz at times of hell even the hardest men in times of suffering, what we do is we forget how hard we really are. Cuz that's what suffering is. Suffering is a test. It's all it is. Suffering is a true test of life. And so that cookie jar travels in my brain. So whenever I get put in a situation where I have poopy pants, the woe is me mentality of oh my god life sucks. I take a second. I take the one-second decision. I step out of my life for one second, go in the cookie jar, pull up, oh [ __ ] you went you went three Hell Weeks and finished two. One of those Hell Weeks a guy died in cuz it was so bad. Oh, you are a [ __ ] badass. You are. I put it back in the cookie jar and I remember who the [ __ ] I really am. I'm not the kid that got that was called names. I'm not the scared kid. This is who I am. It's a reminder of who you truly are at the core of yourself. But what I was saying to myself the whole time on that track and it and this is what I say to myself. Self-talk and visualization are the two keys to my success. I believed for that last 19 miles I was indestructible. Cuz I took myself in that chair crapping up my back, peeing blood in my leg, shin splints, stress fractures. I used all that for motivation versus negativity. I used it for motivation. I I I said to myself, who on this [ __ ] earth would still be going right now? You are. You got to be the hardest [ __ ] on the planet. Is it true? I don't give a [ __ ] At that time, Right. it got me to the finish line of that [ __ ] race. I believed it. I believe it today. I believed it enough to where my body said, "He's not going to stop." And that's I took all the negative things, "I need to go to the hospital, this and that." And I used this all, "Who the hell could even get out of that chair? You did." "Who the hell would even think about taping stretch fractures up?" You did. All those things I used for motivation. All right, my friend. I have a big announcement. My incredible and talented wife Lisa is about to launch her new book Radical Confidence. In it, she has managed to perfectly capture the process of how to go from feeling lost and insecure to taking control of your life and doing amazing things despite feeling fear, sometimes a lot of fear. Now, let me tell you, nobody knows Lisa better than me, but when I read Radical Confidence for the first time and heard her describe what it was like for her to go from having these big, exciting dreams as a kid as an adult scheduling her life around the TV shows that she wanted to watch, or how lonely and isolated she felt instead of pursuing her dreams, it was brutal for me. I would never say though that it was worth it for her to go through all of that just so that she could write something down that allows others to avoid it, but I will say that at least she was able to capture the strategies that she used to break out of that rut, find her voice, and begin doing incredible things despite her insecurities and fears that she wasn't going to be good enough to achieve great things. So, while it hurts me to know the dark place that Lisa went through, I really am excited for people who are going through something similar right now to read this book. Radical Confidence is an instruction manual for how to become the hero of your own life even when you're scared to death. Look, I know better than just about anybody how easy it is to get off track in life or to just not have yet found your calling. And it's even easier for people to feel so insecure and unprepared that they don't even want to pursue the things that they want. But what Lisa shows people in Radical Confidence is that the radical part is that you can accomplish extraordinary things even when you feel fear. That's what Radical Confidence is. Being afraid and unsure and having a tool kit that allows you to still make massive progress. Pre-order your copy today because if you act now, you can claim the bonuses that Lisa has created for you at radicalconfidence.com. They're only available if you pre-order, so act now. Then, once you've done that, we'll get back to today's episode. All right, guys. Read the book and get ready to be the hero of your own life. Peace out. I'm really I mean, as evidenced by the shirt that I'm wearing, I really am that guy that like put your picture up and it was just became this reminder of of what we can all do if we're willing to push past that pain and all of that. All right. But speaking of pain, I want to know why is the book called Can't Hurt Me? There's some I guess some inside [ __ ] yous to people in there, but it's a overall message to people that we're all you know, a lot of us are going through a hard time in life. Some people have been bullied. Some people are distressed out. Some people are insecure. Some people are fat and overweight. And the world puts a lot of this [ __ ] in your mind. Mhm. It's not just you. Yeah, you help it. And my whole thing is about I had to develop a mindset. A mindset that was indestructible. I had to armor plate my mind. And it's about what you're saying to yourself, but it also comes with work. So, whenever I was getting beat down physically, mentally, spiritually, whatever I was going through, just saying, you know, I would put, you know, you can't hurt me. Can't hurt me just became a message I You know, I would say to myself. And that's just kind of where it comes from. What I find so interesting is your concept of the governor. That basically I have the chills. That an expert is somebody who's going to tell you what your limits are rather than the person that's out there practicing getting you beyond the limit. So, what is the governor and how do we strip it out of our lives? I believe that most human beings are only living at about 40% of their capability. So, the mind has a governor, like a car. If you're driving a car and the car has a governor on it, the car may say 130 miles an hour, but the governor's set for 91. Once that governor sets in, you get to 91, that car starts doing this. The car wants to go. The car wants to go, but that [ __ ] factory said, "Uh-uh. We're not going to pass 91." We have a factory, a nice governor in our brain, and it's a survival mechanism. It protects us from pain and suffering. The second we feel that [ __ ] our mind says, "Oh, no, this isn't fun. We should back off. We should sit down, find something more comfortable." And there's something about the mind. The mind has the tactical advantage over you at all times. At all times of your life, the mind has a tactical advantage over you. Why is that? It knows what you're afraid of. It knows your insecurities. It knows your deep dark lies. And it starts to push you away from that [ __ ] It pushes you in a direction that is comfortable. The mind controls everything. So, what I realized was that when I was growing up and I was 300 lb and I got all fat and I got all insecure, I realized that my mind kept taking me in this direction when things got got uncomfortable for me, when I was facing my insecurities, when I was facing my fears, my mind said, "Oh, no, we have the tactical advantage. We need to get you, separate you from this feeling. This feeling over Your life is all about feelings. We want the happy feeling. We don't want that feeling of this sucks. Why am I here? And you don't have any So so you can't answer those questions, so you leave. I started realizing that if in that moment you can answer those [ __ ] up questions, and you are now in charge of your brain versus your brain ruling you, that's where all that stuff comes from. So So So the 40% rule is all of that. You get to 40%, your brain says, "We're done. Let's roll, man. This is starting to get painful. This is uncomfortable." So you sit down. You have to figure out ways, and everybody's different. That's how the book kind of talks about, like we all have these things about, you know, five steps to this and and four steps to this. It's It's a lot more than that. That's all [ __ ] It's It's a practice that you have to It's a habit. So if you know that at 40% I'm still, you know, I'm feeling pain. At 40% I'm feeling pain. That's where the 40% rule kicks in. Now it starts. Okay, I'm I'm I'm feeling pain. My mind's saying all this [ __ ] to me. It's saying get out of here. Run. Flee. The fight or flight kicks in. Okay, we're done. We're not good enough. It starts telling you all these things. You start to believe it. Cuz the mind controls all. This is the time where you have to gain control back of your mind. You say, "Okay, let me see if I can go 45%." And once you start giving yourself more and more hope, and start realizing, "Okay, the mind starts to be, 'Okay, what are you doing? We're supposed to be going right, and you're going left.'" You start then controlling your mind. Start finding more in you in yourself. And then it goes from 40% to a lot further than that. But that's the start of it, though. Get to Get to the spot where your mind is saying stop. Wherever that is, you got to get there first, and then that's when that [ __ ] starts to work for you. You got to control yourself in that moment. Dude, we're going to try to thread a really powerful needle right now. So your response to all of that has been so incredible. So, all right, mind has a governor, it starts to kick in when you hit pain, you're looking for areas of comfort. Most people then live their entire lives there. They never try to get out of it, but you had such a fascinating response. Uh you said two things which I think need to be explored. One is that you created this alter ego, Goggins. Mhm. Which I think is insanely powerful and it reminds me of Eminem talked about the same thing with creating Slim Shady, was it was the way he once he had the persona he could face his fears and he could get up. Um and then the other thing was you said you need to shut the [ __ ] up and listen. But talking about just to yourself, like not to try to get a distraction, not social media, not TV, nothing. Like go in a room by yourself and really listen. How do those two things, the the creation of the alter ego and that listening to the the sort of dark, hateful things that you're probably saying to yourself, how do those work together? So, a lot of people can live with themselves. That's the first thing. A lot of people can live with themselves, look in the mirror and say, "I'm okay with being afraid." I'm okay with going on this easy highway over here. The easy highway has all these [ __ ] signs and [ __ ] directions how to get somewhere. And you have to first be uncomfortable with how you feel about yourself. With that voice that a lot of us like to run away from. We all have it. We all have that voice that say, "Hey man, you know, you're you're kind of wimping out right now. You're kind of being a little punk right now." But a lot of us say, "Okay, that's okay." It's okay to tell these little white lies to ourselves. So, we first have to face the real you. The real me is David Goggins. The real me is a guy looking at you right now saying, "I don't want to [ __ ] be on this show right now because I used to stutter as a kid. And I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid that here in a second, I'm going to start [ __ ] stammering and stuttering and the whole world is going to know that I have all these issues." But that's when I see right now, "Okay, Goggins, you got to go on this [ __ ] show." That's Goggins. Goggins is saying, "Okay, David Goggins, you're a punk. Life made you this way. We can't live like this. We can't live in fear. We can't live in judgment. We can't be afraid of what the [ __ ] people right now looking at me saying about me. We cannot be afraid of that." That's Goggins. Goggins saying, "Fuck all of you who don't like me, who don't want to" and that person then comes in. But you have to be David Goggins and say, "Man, I'm afraid of this. I'm [ __ ] up here. Life made me this way here. I stutter. I I have these issues with with with reading and writing and and I'm I'm I'm fat and I'm insecure." You have to face that in that dark room. And that dark room is who you are. But in that dark room is where you have to create another human being that walks out of that dark room to face who you are. That's the only way you're going to get over all those things. You have to create someone else. Not like you have two different personalities. It is you. But you have to find strength in that visualization of almost me cracking out Goggins. Like almost like that Superman cape. Like like like I'm coming out a different person, a person that doesn't give a [ __ ] about anything, who doesn't care about being judged, who knows I'm weak, who knows I'm afraid, who says, "Whatever you think about me, take it. Whatever. I'm here." That's Goggins. In the dark room, you face yourself, you realize you want to be better, you realize you don't want to be this weak insecure person in the world who has all these problems that we all have. We all have. Social media is a great platform to tell you who we want to be. Not who we are. So, that's where that dark room is. I didn't know if you were going to be able to surprise me today because I I know you so well from sitting across from you, from researching you as much as I have, but I just really got emotional as you were going through that because it's so tempting to make you extraordinary as a way to not have to live up to your standard. Like even now, and I don't do it on purpose because I know better than that and I want to be extraordinary myself. But even I, like I find myself getting caught up in that and hearing you just now talk about still being nervous that you're going to start stammering. Like if if people really hear that you're the way that you are now not because you pretend like you don't have those things, but because you face them so fully and that you're able to like look at that, be accountable, and and talk so raw to yourself. Like dude, that's when like again I have the [ __ ] chills because when you think about what you're what any of us are going to be able to achieve in our lives, it's because we finally get willing to look in the mirror and say you're dumb, you're fat. And I know right now people are freaking out when they hear me say that. But talk to me about raw talk. Talk to me about how you started talking to yourself in the mirror because if they get this David, like this is the transformational moment. So in my book I talk about a lot. Um It's my junior year in high school. And I fell back a lot. I fell back in this [ __ ] hole of life. The second you think that you've overcome it, you've climbed Everest you're on that last hold and life will say not today, [ __ ] It'll push you down. And my junior year in high school I uh missed a whole bunch of school. Was lying to my mom, had like a 1.something GPA. I was just jacked up. I mean it was it's I was in one one of the worst spots in my life. And my mom was going through a lot of [ __ ] too. And she didn't have time to sit back and baby me. And it was me against me. My pants were down to my knees. I was just I was not Whatever was going on, I was in a bad shape. So I went to the bathroom and I had this weird haircut cuz I wanted attention. I was an attention getter. I went to an all white school pretty much. Um some of the kids liked me, a lot of them didn't like me, whatever. Didn't it [ __ ] matter. I was looking for something, so I would dress differently, crazy haircuts, and I went to the mirror and the reflection in it revealed a lot of bad things. A lot of things that I was hiding behind the saggy pants. And I'm looking at myself in the mirror and going like, "God dog, dude, you got to you are something else, man. Like you have created a character." I want to be the cool guy table. And whatever I could do to to to get attention, I did. It wasn't me. It wasn't who I was inside, but I was scared for anybody to know who I was inside. So, in that accountability mirror, I call it, I got real with myself. And I said, "You have a a third grade reading level, which is hard to admit when you're a junior in high school that you copied on every single thing you did because a fear they're going to put me in a special school. We all know what special means. I'm going to have a a title on myself the rest of my life." And being cool, you don't want a title on yourself. So, I started cheating. I was dumb. And people say, "Oh, you know, he had a learning disability." I don't have a learning disability, but I realized I was lazy. So, um I called myself out there. I called myself out every which way possible. I didn't call myself out, I was just honest. I was honest. Look at yourself, man. Look at yourself. And it was that day and a couple of days after that, I just got real with myself. And every day I came home, I called the accountability mirror, "What am I going to do today to change what I see in this mirror?" What am I going to do today? And a lot of it was I stopped sitting with the cool guys. I actually tucked my shirt in and went to school looking like, "Hey, man, this is how I'm going to look. If you don't like it, so be it." I had to really wear this this this layer of skin. I had to develop a really callous skin on me that to take whatever you're going to call me, you're going to call me. Whatever I'm going to be, you know, I wasn't a geek. But whoever I am, you're going to see me. You're going to see me for who I am cuz I need to change who I'm not. And that accountability mirror just became raw. If I became fat over the years cuz I fell back in the hole, I called myself fat. Cuz I was fat. And people don't want to do that. They want to say, "Oh, don't call yourself fat. Don't call yourself dumb." If you're not real and raw with who the [ __ ] you are, nothing's going to change. In this nice new world that we live in, we want to hear, "You're just a little big." No, man, you might be fat. And it's okay to hear that from yourself and from everybody else. So that's where it started at. And it's raw. It It gets ugly sometimes with me in that mirror. But I'm also proud of myself to be able to tell myself that and then fix what's in that mirror. That That's what hits me and that's what I really want people to hear is that you can say those things A because they're true and B because you can fix them. Right. And your whole life has been about addressing those things. Mhm. So walk us through how in the book Mhm. do you help people start addressing it? Because that's what I think is so powerful about your book. So the first thing about it is once you realize it and you have to realize it, you got to call yourself out. Addressing it is very small. It's It doesn't go from like one morning, I'm this way, next morning I wake up and presto, the you know, five steps to greatness. No. It ain't that, brother. You read my book, this is hard work. It's every day like like right now. I had to be honest with you, man. I'm even shaking right now being on this show. I'm a big time introvert. How you address it is you face it. You face it every day. You face it every single day of your life where you say, "Okay, like if you're fat, you need to lose weight." It's patience. It's patience in this fact of accepting who you are right now. I'm fat. I don't like myself. Accepting the fact if you lose 3 or 4 lb, that's a huge accomplishment. You have to live in your own [ __ ] world. You cannot judge yourself. That's why social media all these things are horrible. You can't judge yourself off of the so-called competition that we have made up in our mind. The things that how people look, how people act, how smart someone is. This is a race that you run completely alone. And you're all by yourself. I had tons of sticky notes all over my mirror. It wasn't like, "Be better than John." or "Be as fast as whoever." Okay, David, yesterday you did this. Today, our next goal for the week is this. So, I had a year goal, weekly goals, daily goals, hourly goals. And the big goals, I lied a lot growing up. I wanted to be accepted. One goal was, "Let's go one day without lying." Let's go one day. And then when I would lie to somebody, I would say, "Hey, man." Now, I go I had to go back now and apologize to him. I lied to you. You know how hard it is to go back to somebody and say, "I lied to you."? "Hey, man, you know what? Back there, I lied to you, dude. I That was really jacked up." So, I figured out these ways of total total accountability. Like right now, I had to run this morning before I talked to you cuz why? That's what I'm about. I'm about mind, met, body, fitness. A lot of folks talk so much [ __ ] about, "Hey, I'm going to change your life. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that." Are you accountable for what you're doing? Are you accountable, and I mean to the T, for what you're saying? I am. And that's where it started. It started with that total total accountability of let's not lie today. Let's tell people the truth about who you are. And when you can get on and tell someone, like I'm doing right now, exactly how [ __ ] up you are, that's the goal in life. To put your life on a billboard on the busiest road in the busiest highway in the world and say, "This is how [ __ ] up I used to be." Take it or leave it. The first time we talked, I didn't really understand um why the the um being called a [ __ ] on your book. And you said that was one of the best things that ever happened to me cuz the principal told me, "Oh, they're just ignorant." And you said that in that moment I realized nobody was coming to save me. And it hit me. But it I didn't really understand it till I read the book. And in reading the book, really understanding how one thing after another from the abuse from your father to fleeing that to your mom being MIA and then thinking she's finally found love and then the [ __ ] guy gets murdered the day after Christmas. I was like, "Dude, that Really, no one came to save you." No. And seeing that now and hearing you tell these stories, I realize like that's the crux of the power. But how did you stop feeling sorry for yourself? When you really sit back at your life and you in that dark room and you're looking at where you started from and you tell yourself, "God, dog, man, my my mom is this way, my soon-to-be stepdad got murdered, my dad beat the [ __ ] out of me. I can't read and write to save my [ __ ] soul. I've lied about it to everybody. I've cheated on all these tests. My God, man." And then you put a goal in your mind. How you going to feel, man, when you accomplish this goal coming from that [ __ ] Coming from the [ __ ] hell you came from. A lot of people start from a good starting point. They have a good foundation. What if you can surpass all these [ __ ] We have everybody who is [ __ ] way up here, started up here, and you had you started with no legs. You had to grow [ __ ] legs to even start walking, and then crawling, and then running, and then you start passing people with all that's given to them. I had to use all this negative [ __ ] that was making me weak and horrible as a person. I had to use this as the power that now fueled me. I had to flip it on its head and say, "Hold up. This might be exactly what I need. The darkness is exactly what I need. It's how you look at your situation." And I was looking at it all [ __ ] up. In the book, you tell people to make a list of everything working against them, every real valid excuse. Why do you have them do that? There's a lot of power in that list. So, in that list of who you are, what makes you [ __ ] up, all these other things, it goes back to once again accepting. You have to first accept it before you can fix it. A lot of people walk around, "Oh, man, I'm good. I'm good." No, you're not. You have to accept what you're not. You have to And people don't want to do that. That's the only way you can fix it. You have to accept it first before you can go on the journey. A lot of folks haven't start the journey, man. They never start the journey because they live in this fake life that who they want to be, they act like they are, but they're not cuz they haven't fixed all this stuff yet. You got to fix this first before we can start our journey in life. So, that's why I have them make this list. You fix these problems, now your journey can begin cuz you no longer care about how people are judging you. When When you care more about how someone's judging you, you're going to stay right there. There's no forward momentum. So that's what I think about that list. All right, speaking of making that list, accepting where you're at so that you can address it. In the book, you talk about like what the things are that you're going to be doing, you're going to be putting the list together. How do people go about using, I don't know if it's the accountability mirror, how do they go about addressing each of those issues? Okay. So, let's say the first one is You're not the smartest person in school. I had that issue. So, my big thing was how I addressed that problem was I had to sit down. Each thing that is wrong with you has to be a focal point. You can't look at this gigantic list and say, "I got to change all this [ __ ] My god, this is crazy." No. You take off the first one. I want to be smarter. For me, that was my thing. I have to I have to become more intelligent. I have such a severe learning disability that I can't retain [ __ ] I had to now get that one thing and then strategize in that one problem. How can I do this? I'm not going to learn like you. I'm not going to learn like anybody else. How am I going to figure this out? So I then figured out, okay, where are my strengths here? Where are my weaknesses in learning? All right, man. How am I going to do this? And I figured out a way to do it by the strategizing. So how I learn to this day, if I have a big manual to study, I will have to get a bunch of spiral notebooks from the from the dadgum store and each page I have to write each page out, maybe 10 times. So there was a thousand page dive manual that I got 18 months before I went to dive school. Most people, "I'm not smart. I'm going to go see if I can pass this test. I realized, hang on a second, I'm not smart. How can I get past this? How can I get through this obstacle? I need to get I need to acquire this book 18 months in advance cuz it could take me 18 months to write down each page over and over again to then put it to memory. So, when the question came up, I'd written that question so many times down in that in on you know on paper that I could recall, okay, page 71 was where I remember seeing this. And I could recall that way. And that's how I did it. So, you got to strategize on each problem you have in life. Slowly break down that problem. Don't think about all the problems you have, just one at a time. And before you know it, you fix all these problems, but you cannot focus on all of them. Just on the one thing at a time. If you keep growing, you're going to have more to give. And when you're growing and giving is when life is magnificent. It doesn't matter how many statues, Oscars they give you or Emmys, or how much money you have in the bank. We've all seen people had all those things and I get the phone call cuz they're depressed or somebody commits suicide in that area. So, it's really an inner game and I think that's what's missing for us today.