I Was What EVERYBODY SAID I'd Be... NOTHING! | David Goggins | Top 10 Rules

I'm not the smartest kid in the world. Okay. Instead of 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. And I think I'm the hardest guy in the world. You gotta believe that. You gotta believe you are something. The whole thing about comfort zones is if you live in one for too long, that becomes your norm.

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe that you have the ability to do something special that can change the planet. And so to help you on your journey today, we're gonna learn from Navy SEAL and ultra marathon runner, David Goggins and my take on his top 10 rules for success. Rule number 1 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best.

I came home one night from work spraying for cockroaches, and I Long story short, I turned on the 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 and out of the water, guys ringing the bell. They were just suffering. And I was weighing like 297 pounds, and I had to make a change in my life. You know, I was at an all-time low, and I wasn't going anywhere. And I was exactly what everybody said I was gonna be, which was nothing. So I had to make a change.

What was it about seeing suffering? That's really interesting, and I actually get it, but I wanna 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 nigger every day of my life growing up. Lived in a small town. The Klan headquarters at that time was about 20 minutes from where I lived. One of the high-ups in the KKK's son sat behind me in 2 classes, so he called me nigger all the time. I got my first car, they spray-painted "nigger, we're gonna kill you" on it. So I was just an insecure, scared kid, and the only way I could find myself was to put myself through the worst thing possible. I'm gonna say the exact opposite of what the world, today's world is saying. So we read a bunch of books nowadays. As humans, we wanna 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's in, like we're writing a book every day of our lives. Every day we're seeing who we are as people. When I was growing up, I lied for people to accept me because I didn't accept myself. So I would make up stories so then you would accept me into your world. I would, everything I did was for someone else to like me. It wasn't until I started reading my own book about how pathetic I was as a human being. I could blame my dad, I can blame kids at school, I could blame having health issues, ADD, my mom not being around, great mom, but she was doing her thing. 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 until I said, you know what, for me to fix this, I gotta read what the hell, what the fuck 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 fucking day of your life. Roger that. I'm not the smartest kid in the world. Okay. Instead of 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 do you get smarter? Educate yourself. So the things that we run from, we're 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 allowed me to become, in my own right, who I am today. David, tell them about the cookie jar. The cookie jar is something I invented. As you all know, your mom has a cookie jar, and sometimes you might have an Oreo, sometimes you might have a Chips Ahoy, sometimes you might have an oatmeal raisin cookie. You never know, it's just in there. My cookie jar has every single failure and success of my life, something I overcame. So, what happens in time of life when you're stressed out and things get bad, even the hardest guy in the world, me, everybody thinks, and I think I'm the hardest guy in the world. You've got to believe that. You've got to believe you are something. I will, in my mind, reach into my cookie jar, and sometimes you forget how hard you are in times of need, because you're stressed, but you forget. I'm a fucking Navy SEAL. I'm a Ranger. I'm this and that, but you forget all that because your life sucks. I calm down. Second, get control of my life. Reach in the cookie jar. Well, you got called nigger your whole life and you're now the only person in history to do this, this, and this. Put it back in the cookie jar. Reset my mind. You have to remind yourself of how badass you really are in times of need. That's the fucking cookie jar.

So many of us are on cruise control, myself included, and we get into our daily routine. And routines are unbelievable, but routines can also be a rut. Only if you really challenge yourself and push yourself and get out of your routine, your comfort zone, can you get better. Like, you can't improve when you're on autopilot. So you have to set goals and you have to set challenges that you don't necessarily think you can do or gonna push yourself way further than you think you can to improve. So you got to get out of the complacency of the routine.

The whole thing about comfort zones is if you live in one, for too long, that becomes your norm. It never allows you to gain experience, gain knowledge, gain any kind of mental toughness.

Well, I learned that we all have a reserve tank, that we're all capable of doing so much more than we think we can. And only by really tapping into that reserve tank, whether it's in business, whether it's in physically, you want to get more fit, only when you really push yourself and push your limits can you find out what you're really made of and what's in your reserve tank. And I mean, he taught me that every single day. And it just led to me getting better in the various buckets in my life as I tapped into that reserve tank.

Yeah, I think I said, don't be a fucker.

You know, we call it the 40% rule. That's something that David kind of told me and shared with me, and I bought into it. But it's proved effective, not just in working out, but even in business or my family life. It's like when I'm frustrated, when I'm done, when I hit a roadblock, when things get complicated, You have so much more in you.

People say, man, you cuss all the fucking 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 really hard. No. That motherfucker takes your damn soul, rips it inside out, and then they say, now we're going to fucking start. It allows me to express where I was at at a point of my life. If I don't give you all of me, why the hell am I here? Why? How will you learn from me? People 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. I don't hurt you because you have thin skin. No, tighten up, people. It's okay. Trust me, it's okay. You might be called nigger one day. It's okay. You might be called some Jewish word or some faggot 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 and say, roger that, now I'm going to harness this shit 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, because that's all you can be afraid of. Once you overcome the reflection in the mirror, you've done it. I literally broke all the metatarsals in my feet. Stress fractures, shin splints, everything. The pain going through my body— I've been through every training known to man. Ranger school, Hell Week 3 times, all kind of stuff. This event I'm explaining to you right now, I don't have enough time to explain it to you in detail, was the worst thing I've done in my entire life, pain-wise. This is when I realized human being is capable of going through limits unknown to most people. This is where hardness comes in. People can read a book on hardness and tell you about mental toughness and hardness, but until you put your body through hardness and realize that there's walls and doors you must break through, and once you break through them, you are amazing and your body resets. But we are scared to get to that wall because that wall says what? Stop, right? But every wall has a what? A door. You got to get that key in your pocket and don't be scared to see something outside that door. I would like to know when you're in that moment failing and you have to keep going, what do you say to yourself? What if? A lot of times I'll be in a 200-mile run or something like that and I'm all jacked up. Body's broken, mind's broken, spirit's broken. I started to say, what if I can pull this off? When I first walked into the Navy SEAL recruiter's office, he looked at me and said, there's only been 35 African Americans in 70 years make it through. You know what I said to myself? What if I can be the 36th? It's the what if I can pull off a fucking miracle. What if I can become someone that no one thinks I can be? And just me talking about that, I have the hair going up on my arms. 'Cause it makes me just like, what if I can be that guy that people who call nigger and this and that, and now I'm speaking at Tom Ferry's fucking event? What if? That's it. So this, the first ultra marathon wasn't smart at all. At all. Just, so basically what happened was I was at military free fall 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 Luttrell's 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, 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 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 Kostman. "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. I've— my weight has varied a lot through the SEAL teams and out of the SEAL team. 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, right? 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 stress 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 34 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 outta the fucking chair. So I'm peeing blood down my leg.

Whoa.

Pooping up my fucking 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 had 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. I'm not gonna say motivated because 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 at this time, everybody goes, "Were you thinking about the guys that died?" And I'm not gonna 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, 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 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, so 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 flexion 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, because 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. That's all it is. Self-talk and visualization are the two keys to my success. I believed for that last time, 19 miles, I was indestructible because I took myself in that chair, crapping up my back, peeing blood down my leg, shin splints, stress fractures, I use all that for motivation versus negativity. I use 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, right, 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 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 this 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 used for motivation. What's the point of living? You know, a lot of us go through our daily day routine, kiss the wife, kiss the husband, whatever you're doing. And that's our life. You know, I believe everybody's put on this earth for a journey and everybody's journey is different. But most people don't, you know, take their journey. They try and take an easier path. So that's what it's all about, is you got to accept your journey. And a lot of times your journey sucks, but that's what you got to do. It's always about giving back. You know, God gave me a gift, you know, a gift to kind of achieve what I need to achieve, you know, a strong mind. And if I can kind of relay that message to these young kids, young men and women, it's just having these events around It just helps them out, helps them grow. Kids need mentors nowadays. Yes. And to hear a positive message from people who don't have much, to know that, hey, I can do it. Yes. That's what it's all about. You don't need much to become a lot.

I started doing this triathlon and endurance sports, ultra runs, just to test my soul, to see what I'm about, to see in a 150-mile race at mile 75 when I feel really bad, that's when you know. That's the only time you can find out what the human body is all about, what you're made of. To find out limits to myself, limits to the human soul. And every day I'm trying to see if I have limits. I run anywhere from 125, 150 in a week. So I'll try and put in about 450 miles a month. Usually every day I wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and I run anywhere from 10 to 15 miles in the morning. And then I live about 25 miles from work, so I get my bicycle, commute into work, do a normal work day. At lunchtime around noon, I'll run again anywhere from 5 to 8 miles, whatever it may be, come back, work. And around 5:30, I'll ride back home, 25 miles on my bike. If I'm feeling good and I want to get more miles, I'll get off the bike and do like a short 3 or 4 or 5-mile run. That's my everyday life. So I don't just train like an hour or so. I train until something is uncomfortable. And then that's when you know who you are. The only easy day was yesterday. It just never ends. I mean, I've done some races where you're on a 1-mile track and you run for 48 hours straight. So imagine running 48 hours around a 1-mile track. It's not like you're sleeping. You're running for 48 hours to see how many miles you can get. You want to talk about mind torture? My life doesn't have a finish line. So when I cross the finish line of the Ironman, it doesn't matter because I know that, you know, 2 or 3 weeks from now I'll be doing something else if I bite through more pain. I believe, you know, everything I try to do is kind of defined by excellence, but I don't think I ever reach excellence myself because I have my standards of my life are really high. So I don't think I ever reach it, but I try to every day. You have to be a good individual first before you can be a good team player. I know for a fact how bad Hell Week is. I went through it a couple times. It's probably the most brutal, like, brutal military training anybody can go through. So everybody to my left and everybody to my right, they've been through this. So I know mentally, you know, these individuals are extremely hard. And when stuff gets bad, And, you know, in any situation, I know these guys have my back. I've done a lot of things I thought were impossible. Nothing's impossible anymore.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because MGOP Official asked me to. If there's someone you'd like to vote on for the next top 10, check out the link in the description and go and have your say. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Michael Sean Phillips from Lead the Team. Michael, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and for doing the review on your website. I really appreciate the support, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed the book. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.

What power have you found in the darkness?

First off, before I answer that question, I want to say, everybody listen to this, um, I'm the happiest man on the planet Earth. So people may take this 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. 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, 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 daggone smile on my face all the damn time. So, you know, Merry Christmas. But basically what the dark side is, is we all have a cookie jar and we all have a jar of fuck.

That's its official name.

It's a jar of fuck. Man, where shit just, it just ain't going right. And in Hell Week, what they do in Hell Week, 'cause 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 may get 2 hours of sleep and they beat the shit outta 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 nasty God-given guy. 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 them. 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 BUD/S, my job, what drove me was I wanted you to go home that night after you beat the living shit 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 grip suffering for another 100 hours. I wanted you to think about me knowing that I'm comfortable being very uncomfortable. 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 pillars for me. I'm using it for strength. I just flip negative into positive. That's all it is.