"I #BELIEVE That I'm INDESTRUCTIBLE!" - David Goggins (@davidgoggins) - #Entspresso

I'm back! Good morning, Believe Nation. My name is Alex and my one word is belong. And I believe the world would be a better place if more people felt that they belonged. So to help you on your journey, today's message is be driven. Over to you, David Goggins.

The first ultra marathon wasn't smart at all, at all. 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 was in a bad op, op went bad, he was the only Navy SEAL that lived. Long story short, you gotta get the book, read Lone Survivor, great story. Morgan is Marcus Charles' twin brother, and I was there with Marcus. So what happened was myself and Morgan were in Free Fall 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 Morgan, 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 wanna raise money for families. All these guys died, they all had kids, I wanna 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 gonna raise money for it, so I said, "You know what, I have to Google something that's evil, something very hard." I knew nothing about ultra marathons, I hadn't even run a marathon, I knew nothing about this world. So I Googled the top 10 hardest races in the world, and what comes up is the Badwater 135. It's a 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, barbecue outside, and then go run some more the next day. So I called the race director up at the race and said, "Hey, Chris," his name is Chris Costin, "I wanna do your race." So we had a long conversation, you know, I was much heavier then, and I hadn't put running shoes on in 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, 'cause my weight has varied a lot through the SEAL teams and out of the 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 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 in my race." I'm gonna 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, 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 stretch fractures, shin splints, muscles were tearing. I was in bad shape. I was eating Ritz crackers and drinking Myoplex. 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 a clown show. So I sat down at mile 70, and at this time I was married. And I look at my wife, and I was like, I'm messed up bad. So I literally start to turn white. And when a black guy turns white, you're pretty fucked up. So here I am, I'm all fucked up in this chair. I'm at mile 70, they got 35 miles to go. I'm jacked up. I gotta go to the bathroom and the bathroom's like 20 feet from me. It's a porta-potty. I can't get out of the fucking chair. So I'm peeing blood down my leg. Whoa. Pooping up my fucking pants. Pack, and I got 30 miles to go, and I can't stand up 'cause my blood pressure's all messed up. I've been in 3 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, and I'm not, I'm not going to say motivated because motivation is 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, everybody 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 nigger, me against me. It just became something that I took so violently personal. And I broke this thing down into small pieces. I said, "Okay, I gotta get nutrition. I gotta 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 staying up, I was literally walking around with my wife at the time, and she goes, you're not gonna make the time. She goes, you're run— 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 gonna make the time, I ran the last 19 miles nonstop. And I can show you right now when we get done with this. Matter of fact, I'm gonna 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—

No, see what happened was, like my shins hurt so bad from having stress fractures that the only way I could continue on was I taped it so I wasn't doing the flexor motion that activates your shins. So I taped my ankles and my shins up, and I got that from— because in my third Hell Week, they weren't gonna let me go back through, you know, training anymore. Right. So I literally went through all of BUD/S, my last SEAL training, with stress fractures and 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 happened is my feet would go numb. And I did that every single day for 6 months. Whoa. And that's how I got through my third Hell Week, 'cause I was so broken from the first two that the commander said, "Hey, the CO said this your last time we're sending you through." So that's how I got the idea to do that. So with the right, 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. Mm. That's all it is. Self-talk and visualization are the two keys to my success. I believed for that last 19 miles I was indestructible. 'Cause I took myself in that chair, crapping up my back, peeing blood down my leg, shin splints, stress fractures, I used all that for motivation versus negativity, I used it for motivation. I said to myself, "Who on this fucking Earth would still be going right now?" You are. You are. You gotta be the hardest motherfucker on the planet. Is it true?

I don't give a fuck.

At that time, it got me to the finish line of that fucking race. I believed it. I believe it today. I believed it enough to where my body said, "He's not gonna stop." And that's, I took all the negative things, "I need to go to the hospital," this and that, and I used it all. Who the hell could even get outta that chair? You did. Who the hell would even think about taping stress fractures up? You did. All those things I use for motivation.

To be driven, you have to push past your discomforts. I love David's story because it talks about mentality pushing past physical limits. So here's a guy with broken feet, bleeding, urinating, defecating himself, He's gotta do 100 kilometers in 24 hours and he's only got 30 or 20 left. But what I want you to focus especially more importantly on is don't get so overwhelmed and paralyzed and think of him as an exception. He is a rule and we're all every single day capable of being incredible and driven in the things that we value and we find important. So I am going to give you an example something that happened to me recently. In the past month and a half, I've been trying to live a more healthy lifestyle because I want to have more energy in my day-to-day life. So I went back into the gym last week and I started swimming. Now, I hate swimming, but it's an amazing full-body workout. And so when I went to the swimming pool for the second time, I'd set a goal for myself that I'm gonna do 6 laps, then 4 laps, then walking 2 laps. So as I started swimming, first lap, I'm doing great. Second lap, I'm really killing it. I'm getting pumped up. By the third lap, my mind starts to wander. And it starts to wonder, oh, I gotta do this email, I gotta respond to this task. And as I started getting distracted from my goal, what's in front of me, I started slowing down. Started getting a little bit more tired. My breath started to get a little more shallow. And so I caught myself in that moment. I shook my head as I'm swimming. I'm like, no, I gotta focus on something that's important. And so my mind, I visualize myself seeing my body more important than just like fit, but more energetic and just exuding energy. And suddenly my body had this inner rise of power and energy and I started increasing it. I started swimming again. So I'm getting through my third lap. I'm getting through my fourth lap. I got two more to go. Getting into my fifth lap, I'm already getting tired. I'm finishing my 5th lap, I'm getting ready to do my last lap, and about 20 feet away from the edge, I'm almost there, my body really starts to get heavy, my muscles really start to get sore, and I look at that edge, I'm like, you know, I can't, I can't, I can't do this, let me just stop, let me walk it off, it's okay, I'll try another time, it was too much for me to chew. But I didn't, and what pushed me was I just focused on that edge and I'm like, I just I just have to reach the edge. That's all I have to do. I don't need to think about the other laps I'm about to do after I rest. None of that. I need to reach that edge. And so I push through and I reach that edge. And so how many times in your life when you're focused on some goal, on a diet, talking to some girl, you find some kind of excuse when you are uncomfortable, when you feel overwhelmed, when your muscles are exhausted, when you're mentally exhausted and you come home and you're like, you know what? I wanted to learn Spanish, but I'm so tired from work. I'll deal with it tomorrow. I'll deal with it the next day. The only way you can ever truly be driven is enjoy the discomfort, enjoy the exhaustion, and push past it. Because right now I'm still riding the high of last week of not stopping 20 feet away and then disliking and hating myself for it. When you focus on David's story or even my story, you have to understand that every single day you can be an unstoppable force for the dreams and goals you envision for yourself. But the only way that can happen is by not giving up when things get hard or things get uncomfortable. And focusing on taking your big visions of healthiness, more energy, happy relationship, better father, whatever it is, into small everyday chunks. If you do that, you're gonna be a star. So the question of the day is, what is one thing you can do today to make yourself a little bit uncomfortable but get you closer to your I want to give a quick shout out to Dave Walker. Dave, thank you so much for purchasing a copy of Evan's book, Your One Word. It really means a lot to us. Thank you so much for watching. We believe in you, and we hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. And we'll see you tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

Let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be Yeah.

The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon.

Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.