David Goggins: “Those 2min 13secs Changed My Life!” Do THIS When Life KNOCKS You Down!

The one piece I was missing was me having the courage to face myself. And once you do that on a daily basis, it's not about the running. Most of us, we live in a box, and we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. What we do is we shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL, an ultra-marathon runner. He also held a Guinness World Record.

For the most pull-ups completed in 24 hours. He is one of the toughest men on the planet.

Who's gonna carry the boat? I come from my father. I have what he has. And I didn't want to be him. Why he made fun of me, why he beat the hell out of me, my brother, my mom. It comes from a dark place, an insecure, dark, dark place. A good human being doesn't need to break anyone down. All they do is want to build you up. When you get to where you want to go in life, you finally get there, you finally reach that point, and you're there, and you're happy as hell. Realize this. You're not there yet.

I'm so excited for you to check out this interview with David Goggins. His mindset and his level of thinking just continues to inspire millions of people around the world. And if you haven't heard yet, David is speaking live at the Summit of Greatness in Los Angeles next month. Make sure to click the link in the description below to get your tickets to see him live, along with Dr. Joe Dispenza, Cody Sanchez, and more. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We have the inspiring David Goggins in the house. Good to see you, man. Thank you. Very excited about this. I first heard about you through Jesse Itzler's book, Living with a Seal and he came on to talk about his experience and he actually didn't mention your name because you didn't want to be known a few years ago, but now you're wanting to be known and you're putting your message out everywhere. And I'm just curious quickly why did you want to not be known then but now you do want to have your message out there?

Well, when Jesse wrote that book, Living with a Seal, I was about two or three weeks from getting out of the military. So, you know, being a SEAL, you know, I didn't want to be mentioned David Goggins in this book. So the second the book popped, I was retiring. So the book came out November 15th or November 1, 2015, and I retired November 2015. So that's why, that's the, that's the biggest reason why.

And when did you start putting yourself out there doing interviews and talking about your message and you got on social media and started sharing videos? When, when did you decide to do that?

Well, I've been talking to people for several years and I wasn't really big on, like my mindset is very different than most people. It's a mindset of, I don't want to be known too much. I don't want too many looky-loos in my life because that's where I gained my strength. I gained my strength from a place of quiet. And the more I got my story out there, the more I realized it no longer be David Goggins, the quiet man. It'd be David Goggins, the guy that's on Instagram answering this, answering that, 'cause I'm also a guy that's always about, if someone reaches out to me, I'm not gonna sit back and say, oh, you know, whatever. I'm gonna reach back to you. So this could take time out of me trying to gain strength and me trying to get ready to go. So that was a big deterrent for me to get on Instagram and all that stuff. I'm not big on social media anyway. But then I realized that I have a very, God put me in a very interesting spot in life where He made hell my teacher. He made hell my teacher. And a lot of people don't understand that. So I'm trying to give people a different thought process of life where failure, hell, disappointment, discomfort is a great learning tool. And many people don't understand that. And a lot of people won't even understand this interview when we get done with it. But it's these few moments in life that you have. Like for me, I always talk about it. Rocky won round 14. That one two minute and 13 second clip of Rocky getting up when Apollo knocked him down. that one clip when I was going through a very bad time in my life, I saw what I wanted to be. And it wasn't a guy that won. It wasn't a guy that won everything he did. It was a guy that kept getting up after being knocked down. So I realized if that two minutes and 13 seconds changed my life, so I was, I saw something that I needed to be in the world I was living in. Maybe my story will give someone the two minutes and 13 seconds they need to change their life. Means that people live in a very comfortable place, that's fine. Don't listen to me. A lot of people are looking for that two minutes and 13 seconds and I might be that person. That's why I started sharing.

Yeah, you talked about in the very beginning, I like this. What do you say here? Your job is to be the best of your ability. This will hurt. The mission is not about making yourself feel better. The mission is about being better and having a greater impact in the world. And it sounds like you understand the fact that you need to put yourself out there a little bit more. It's gonna reach more people and impact more people as opposed to always being quiet.

Right.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Exactly. I had to find a happy medium. Yeah. You know, I had to find a happy medium because what's the point? Like, we all have a story. And I believe that we're all. We're all teachers. We're all teachers. And if you don't learn something and give back, like, like, like what you learned. Yeah. What's the point of living?

You're wasting.

Yeah, you're wasting. You have all this knowledge of what you learn. Some people may think you're crazy. Some people may, you know, may put a title on you, but it's. It is, you know, it's those few people who are like, you know what? I need to hear that. So you had to put yourself out there.

So was there an awakening for you in the last few years that said, okay, I'm not doing this enough. I'm putting myself out there. I'm not telling my story. I'm wasting certain aspects of my life by not giving that message out.

There were a lot of emails that came in to me and I didn't realize, you know, when you live your life, you don't know what it's doing to people. 'Cause it's my life. I didn't know my life was as bad as it was because it's my life. It's what I went through.

I think it's like the norm.

It's the norm. Yeah. That's what I did, man. But when I started getting these emails from people saying, Hey, you know what? You changed my life. That part changed my life. That part of your story changed my life. And because I have so many different parts of my life that so many people resonate with different spots. Maybe it's the obesity part. Maybe it's the bullying part. Maybe it's the learning disability part. Maybe it's the abusive parent part. Whatever it may be. So many people draw from my story and I started getting these emails and I was like, God man, you know, I'm a big believer in something more powerful than me. I don't know what it is, but I'm not the end all. So I was like, I gotta start doing more. If I'm touching these people's lives, a.

Few people here and there.

Right, maybe I need to go out here and do some more.

It's a crazy story, man. If you guys haven't gotten the book, you guys can pre-order the book. This is actually the galley copy here, printed out. Make sure you guys check this out. Can't hurt me. Master your mind and defy the odds. And when I was reading the first part of the book about your childhood, I mean, your father just seemed like was just so abusive physically. I mean, it's one thing to be emotionally abusive and another thing to be physically. And when you have both, it's like the perfect storm of like the makings for chaos in your life. Right. and it just sounded like he was just nasty. Nasty and everything was your fault and you were always wrong and you weren't living up to a standard both you and your brother and your mom. And it was just constant physical abuse over and over. I mean, the story of you just being bent over and him just whipping you over and over and you just gasping for air. I was just like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. How did you deal with that? How did you overcome the constant physical and emotional abuse?

You know what? It's all I knew. So when you're born to that, it's all you know. I mean, you know something's not right because in my mind at a young kid, I could tell, man, you know, the way I was processing things wasn't right, right? I mean, I suffer from severe toxic stress, and that was one of the big reasons why I started, you know, I had a learning disability. My focus in life was way off. I was afraid. I was afraid of everything. And when you have that kind of foundation growing up, and that's where you start life at, is being beat, being abused and also working all nights at a skating rink, not going to school, and you have a guy who's an alcoholic, and the second he got drunk, he got mad. And so our house lived in fear. Yeah. And the one thing that you can't ever get out of a kid's mind is your mom's face. The terror of your mom's face.

The terror of your mom's face. That's the worst.

So, you know, I didn't care about my brother, I didn't care about me, but I saw this woman go from Mary Poppins, the sweetest person on the planet earth, and when you see your mom start to transform to a shell, to a person whose face becomes stoic, a person who has no emotion. And that changes a kid. Yeah. And when you're young and you have to grow up so fast. So about eight years old, my mind was of a 40 year old at eight. You know, my family, like life came at me and it makes your brain, you know, you're not outside playing with kids. You know, you're trying to avoid getting beat. Yeah. You know, you're avoiding all these things. Yeah.

Then you go home, it's supposed to be safe.

Right. And you're getting beat again. Exactly. And what's funny about that, we lived on Paradise Road. Yeah. We lived on Paradise Road. And it wasn't so paradise. No, it was anything but paradise, man. You know, once those doors shut, you.

Know, my dad gave everybody a different view of him.

He wore the nice tailored suits. That's right. He smiled. That's right. Your dad's amazing. Those doors shut, man. and the devil himself came out. So it was rough. And that's why my foundation was so beaten down at a young age.

So learning disability, I grew up dyslexic so I can relate to that. I'm just like constantly feeling stupid and insecure. Right. You know, I had a tutor my entire life.

Horrible.

Until I finished college, I had a tutor. Second grade reading level when I was in eighth grade. It was just like a constant struggle emotionally. and I took that outlet into sports and said, I'm gonna just train myself to be the best I can be in a place where I can learn something differently and pick up a different skill. But with your learning disability, with your dad beating you, screaming at you, emotionally challenging your mind, with the racism you dealt with, with the different struggles you felt with bullies, what was the hardest obstacle to overcome from up until about 1516.

The hardest obstacle was myself. I started realizing more and more and more that all these people were gone. What was haunting me was me. I can't control my dad. I can't control the people calling me. I can't control all these things. But they were things that kept me down. It started becoming my reality. My reality was what they made it out to be. And I became the most important conversation you'll ever have with your life, you know, in your life is when you have yourself. And my conversation was absolutely horrifying.

What were you saying to yourself?

I'm dumb. I'm nobody. My dad, I mean, my dad was great in mental warfare. A drunk, insecure man. will make everybody around him feel like hell. Yeah. Because he wants to give you no power. And that's why he was so mean to my mom and myself and my brother, because he didn't want anybody to get above him.

Mm-.

He want to keep you down low. So when you're growing up with all this stuff, all this hate, and it wasn't the beatings. I could hit the beatings all day. It was a mental torture. So when at a young age, your your parents put a dialogue in you of confidence or you're nobody. So that voice in my head was, I'm a loser. And then it was confirmed when I got in school and in third grade, I was falling behind. They wanted to put me in a special school.

Yeah.

You know, with kids who can't learn.

Right.

Then it was confirmed, you know, what my dad was saying. So that confirmed it. Then I started cheating. So I started realizing, you know what? I'm taking the easy way out again. And it started snowballing from there. Now the kids are calling me n****. But it wasn't all the kids. So what happens is you start to get this picture that everybody hates you. Because your reality becomes so big that you can't see the clear picture.

It might have been three or four kids.

That's it.

Doing it over and over.

Right. But it was the whole town. Everybody hated me.

So the world hates me.

That's right. Yeah. And that's when it became toxic. And that is where I became my worst enemy.

Wow. So those are the conversations.

Those are the conversations.

When did you start to realize that those conversations weren't supporting your life?

I was a-- so my mom was getting ready to get married and this guy came into our lives, his name was William. he came into our lives and like I always say, whenever my life's getting better, God will put another challenge in front of me. He gets murdered.

Oh man.

And we moved back to Brazil. So we moved from this town, this small town in Brazil and we moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. A lot more blacks, a lot more different colors.

Yeah, yeah. Weren't you living in New York at some point too?

I was born in Buffalo, New York.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, I went from Buffalo to Indiana, And if me Indiana to Indianapolis, Indiana. Indianapolis, Indiana, you know, he got murdered when I was in Indianapolis. We went back to Brazil. We went back to Brazil. This is when the racism started. Really? Because now I'm 16. So when I was first in Brazil, I was eight and nine. Kids don't care. Yeah, here's the kid. I look different, but kids don't care. Yeah, kids don't know. But when I moved and I came back, I'm no longer a kid. So all the kids I grew up with, I'm now different. I'm different. So there's about five black kids in my school. And the reality came when I came out one day and on my car was spray painted, you were gonna kill you. Oh my gosh. In Brazil? In Brazil. In Portuguese?

No, no, my fault. Brazil-Indiana. Oh gosh. Yeah, my fault.

Brazil-Indiana. I was like, no, no, no.

Brazil-Indiana. Brazil-Indiana.

Yes. From Brazil to Brazil-Indiana. Got it. so I was in Brazil, Indiana, and about 10 minutes from Brazil, Indiana is a small town called Center Point, Indiana. And Center Point, Indiana is, was at that time a huge hub of the KKK.

Wow.

In 1995, the Klan marched in the Fourth of July parade. And I don't know if the picture is in, if any pictures are in there, but if not, there's a picture in the book in 1995, 10 minutes from my house, of crosses being burnt.

10 minutes from your house.

10 minutes from my house.

Wow.

So when you have all this negativity growing up and now you're cheating and you're doing this and your dad beats you and your mom's fiance gets murdered and tragedy after tragedy after tragedy and then you come to this and your mom's working three jobs. She's not home at all. She never saw one report card of mine. She didn't know how bad off I was in school. She was hustling trying to make money. And I was the man of the house, lying, sneaking around, not going to school, cheating. Right, everything I could. And so I walked out of school one day and saw this nigger was gonna kill you on my car. And I went in to get the principal. There's several incidents like this that happened. I went to get the principal and the principal, he didn't have anything, he couldn't give me any advice. And I went to my mom about it, 'cause my mom was already bothered by my dad beating her down, and now her fiance got murdered. So I didn't wanna bother her mom.

That's the last thing on her mind. She's like, I've dealt with this my whole life.

Right. I didn't wanna bother with anything, man. So I kept everything away from her. So I'm in the crowd, trying to scrub this stuff off, and I got home, and so happens two weeks later, she gets a note from school. And the note says, you, son is going to fail. he's not going to graduate. And she's like, what is this? And I had to come clean with my mom of all the years of me cheating, of all the bullying, of all this and all that. And she was such in a bad spot in her life that the best thing she could do was like, hey, you know, you're going to fail. You're going to fail school.

Wow.

And I was like, my God, man. Like, you know, she. She was in a dark place, and I was in a dark place, and we were kind of on our own in. In the same house, but living different lives. And I realized at this time in my life, she was a great mom, but I was on my own. And that's when a real big change happened for me. So I said, I'm gonna join the military.

This is 6 17. 17.

You know, I wanted to go into the delayed entry program, and I went to take the ASVAB test, and I cheated. So, that's what you knew.

That's what I did.

You're good. So, I got my friend, 'cause I walked into the recruiter's office and the recruiter says, Hey, you gotta take this ASVAB test. Second I heard test, I was like, man, oh, hang on a second. I can't test in my life, man. I'm gonna go, can I come back tomorrow? Yeah, yeah. So, I come back and the recruiter starts handing these tests out. I'm like, great, I'm gonna sit with my boy, I'm gonna copy off my boy. He had a different test than I did. Ooh. So, I couldn't copy off him. And that's when the light bulb hit on. So I failed this test several times.

You failed twice or three times?

I actually failed it twice. And the third time, I said, Mom, I need help.

Wow.

And she said, we don't have much money, but we can afford a tutor for one hour a week for six months, because this is my last time taking the test. And so I had to learn. So I had a third grade reading level. I'm a junior in high school. So I had six months to learn all this stuff. and I only had a tutor for one hour a week. So basically what happened was she would come in for an hour and I wasn't picking it up any of it. I couldn't retain anything. It was so much to learn that overwhelmed me. So basically what happened was I realized I had to go by the store and buy spiral notebooks and I had to literally write down every single thing repeatedly. Like so what may take you an hour to learn? It took me hours, 6-8-9-10 hours. I'd write the same thing down.

Simple stuff.

Simple stuff.

I hear you, man.

So I started memorizing, yeah.

That's my life.

So I had to memorize. So I didn't really learn it. I could just recall it from writing it down so many times on page 71. I remember seeing that. And that's how I did it. And I ended up passing that test.

Crazy.

And I got in the military. So.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

What was the greatest lesson your mom taught you growing up?

Honestly, the greatest lesson she ever taught me is a lesson that she doesn't know how much she taught me because she wasn't much in the teaching mode. My dad took her soul. But what I did as a young kid is I observed everybody. I wasn't really smart in the books, but I was real smart when it came to life. And I was able to sit back and watch her mistakes. I was able to see how she struggled through life and how I don't want to struggle through life. And I was able to see, she never picked me up. The biggest thing she did for me, and this is the honest to God truth, and she doesn't even know she did it, when I would bust my ass, when I would fail, when I was at the bottom of the sewer, She never picked me up. She never gave me that cookie and said, Hey son, you know, it's going to be okay. She didn't have time for that. And sometimes she gets upset when I talk about my past because it paints her out to be not the best mom. If I had any kind of mom in that kind of environment, I would have never made it. Because she forced me, for whatever reason, she forced me. Till you better figure this out or you're gonna be a statistic.

Wow.

And this is something that she didn't sit down and tell me. I realized this, this is the world that is in front of me. And what most people do is they see this world and they look at it as an excuse to get out of it.

Yeah.

I started looking at it as this is the ultimate training ground for the rest of my life. I have all these valuable lessons, 'cause if you look out in the world right now today, it's not a nice place, but I'm very prepared for it.

Yeah, you are.

I'm prepared for it. I'm prepared for all the failure coming my way. I'm prepared for everything my way. And that's the biggest lesson that she taught me by not teaching me, by never saying it's gonna be okay. Matter of fact, she told me the exact opposite. Life sucks. That's what she knew. It was the truth.

That was her reality.

That was her reality. Yeah. And so I saw that. And so I started at that point in my life, I have a lot more failures, as you see in that book, but I started down the road of instead of the path of, you know, least resistance, I started choosing the path of most resistance to prepare myself for the journey that was coming my way.

Wow. And most kids don't prepare themselves for the most resistance. They want to get out of things.

They want to get out of things.

Get off the hook, put in the extra reps, and with the easiest path to get to the top.

Right, exactly.

Huh. You know, I look at my life as like, and here you talk about really diving into pain and embracing pain and finding, looking for the pain. And I think there's a safe pain and then there's probably an unsafe pain of just jumping off a building and whatever, trying to land on 20 floors or something. It's probably not the safe way to do things. but doing 200 miles of endurance running is like a different way of pain, looking at pain. And that's what I've been looking for my whole life is like finding the pain. And I talk about like do something every day that that's painful.

Right.

In a good structured environment. You've been doing that for the last couple years now. It's like you work out every day. You haven't missed a day.

I've been doing it for the last 20 years of my life.

20 years?

I've been doing it for 20 some years of my life.

20 every day you work out.

So I used to take one day off a week. I used to take one day off a week.

For the body to recover, right? Makes sense.

But that one day off was an active recovery day where I would get on a trainer and ride for like two hours. Wow. But at a zone one heart rate, very low heart rate, and I replaced the carbohydrates in my body while I rode because the best way to recover for me is to do something at a very low heart rate because therefore your blood's flowing through your body. as your blood's flowing through your body, refuel it with the nutrients, because then your blood's flowing, the nutrients is going through all your cells in your body, all that glycogen is now flowing at a low heart rate. So it's not burning it, it's refueling it. So every Sunday used to be that. And it kind of snowballed into, as human beings, we believe, like so many people, before I give them a workout plan, they're talking about recovery. Everybody that hears me speak, they want to go straight to recovery. Work out first. Work out first. Before you talk to me about recovery.

How to recover, yeah.

Work out first. We are always looking for, like whenever I talk to people, people take my words and they put it in a way to where they want to feel comfortable. This guy, you know, they want to put you in a box. They want to put a title on you. No, you're putting a title on me to make yourself feel better about yourself. If you read this book of mine and you see where I came from, this portion was not built. This portion was not made by God. This portion, sorry, this portion was built. I made this person. I made this person by diving in to the insecurities that life gave me. because now they're yours. They're yours to own. If you're not smart, call yourself dumb. It's okay, because you are. But take that knowledge. Putting yourself down. If you're fat, call yourself fat. I used to be 300 pounds. We. We want to talk so soft to ourselves. We're looking for that recovery day. And that recovery day is everything in your life. Everything in your life is a recovery day. We're looking for it. It's not coming. It's not coming. Get over that recovery day. And that's the mentality I took with me. And what happened through that process was all the frivolous things of life started to float away. I used to tell people lies so they would like me. Because I was so insecure. When you start to build yourself up and start to have the one thing that we don't have is confidence. Real Authentic confidence from hard work. Everything else goes away. You no longer look to other people for your self-esteem. That's right. You now know. I walk in a room now and I know the hours and years and decades I put in the David Goggins. That's something, it's not on the wall. It's not a trophy on the wall. It's not a medal around your neck. It is actually a feeling in your heart and people go, why don't you ever smile? I don't have to. Yeah. Yeah, I do have a stoic look on my face. I'm a very focused person. But the feeling I have in my soul and in my heart, that's why I need to smile. I don't need to smile. I don't need you to look at me and say, oh my God, you look happy, because half us aren't happy. We're giving you something that we think you want to see. I don't do that anymore. I don't care how you perceive David Goggins. because through my journey, I figured out the one piece I was missing. I thought it was cars. I thought it was women. I thought it was money. I thought it was everything. The one piece I was missing was me having the courage to face myself. And once you do that on a daily basis, it's not about the running. People are going to be like, you're just about working out. Where I got my work ethic from was the hours I had to spend Learning this, when you sit down and you're not smart, and you have a disability, and you still want to be at the top of your class, I didn't want to just get by. When I realized that I can learn through hard work, and I can beat the valedictorian in school, but I got put in 10 hours more a day than he does. You know what kind of strength comes from that? When you're sitting down, that guy, that valedictorian, studying for an hour, and you know, I caught you. I caught you and I am dumb, but I have the work ethic to catch you. That's where David Goggins got really invented. Yeah. Was at a kitchen table with 20 spiral notebooks that were empty. And then three months later, they were full. And when you can go through that, I still have them in my storage unit, you go through these spiral notebooks of your life. And you realize, this is how I learned. This is unbelievable. There's no miles. It's not about the miles. It's that having to discipline every day to say, for me to learn this one math problem, it's gonna take me 10 hours.

Wow.

And that's where it, and you realize through hard work, you can outwork anybody. Remember how badass they are? But that's the part people don't wanna dive into.

Yeah. When someone's lacking confidence in themselves, what's the answer you would give them? If they're like, how do I gain more confidence?

It starts with yourself, man. You gotta start diving into those things that you are afraid of. You don't gain confidence by going to the spot that makes you feel good. It's gonna be a false reality. And the second life gives you that challenge, all you want to do is go back to what made you confidence or what gave you confidence. is that happy spot. No. What gives you confidence? What gave me confidence was spending years at a kitchen table trying to learn how to read and write on my own. Realizing I can't learn the way you learn. I can't. But I can learn. What gives you confidence not being afraid is overcoming the fear. I used to stutter severely bad. So right now, I don't know how many people are going to watch this. You know what gives me confidence? It's knowing I no longer care if I sit or start stuttering to you. That's what gives me confidence, is facing these things, overcoming them. And maybe not overcoming them every day, but facing them. And facing them and facing them pretty soon like this, you know what, man, this is where it's at. It's not in that comfort zone. It's in the discomfort zone, is where my confidence is getting built. That's where it's getting built. But people want an easier answer. There has to be an easier way. There's not. I'm sorry. I searched for it my entire life. You cheated. I did. I lied. I did everything. And I still felt empty. I coach a lot of people nowadays, billionaires, who call me on the phone and say, Man, I'm still missing something. It's because they did what they were good at. And they had this beautiful family, two, three houses, cars, everything. Has everything in the world. On the outside looking in, like, my God, man, how can you be unhappy? I walk around with the backpack with all my stuff in it, no car. And I walk around, happiest person in the world. Have nothing, happy as hell. It's because I found out the whole key to life is not in all that. you have to face yourself. So many people live to be 100 years old and they die miserable, having everything, because they never examined. I call it my live autopsy. You never examine this happiness, peace, Enlightenment. It's all up here, man. It's all up here. If I start talking like this, people go, man, you know. I don't know. It's the truth, man.

Yeah, it is true.

It's all up here. You just gotta be willing to go and face it. And that's the hard part.

What's your biggest insecurity today?

Not to be arrogant, I don't have one.

What was the last one you had? And when was that?

The last one I had was probably still me. me still living because I always talk about I pay rent. So we used to live in a $7 a month place when I was growing up.

And this is in Buffalo or is this?

This is in Indiana. So we had a lot of money in Buffalo. And when my mom left, my dad, we went to nothing for a period of time before she got on her feet. And that $7 a month place used to be, it was who I was. I was no one. I was in the sewer. My mom wasn't there. I had nothing. And you always feel like you have nothing. I achieved so much. I was a Navy SEAL. I've gone through Ranger School. I've gone through Delta Force selection training. I've done so much. I run 200 miles, pull-up records, everything. Learned to read and write, became pretty intelligent. And I still was like, man, what is wrong with me? It wasn't until I got real sick, and I talked about in the last chapter of that book, I got real sick and I was about 38 years old. I'm 43 now. And my life got real quiet. I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours to I couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, but once again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Why is that?

In that moment where my whole life changed, I went from a guy who worked out every day, trained every day, to a guy who couldn't get out of bed. My life was taken from me. The one thing that kept me going was my training.

Now you didn't have that.

I didn't have anything.

Now you just had to sit alone.

Alone.

And not train.

And that's what changed me. And that's when I realized I hadn't thought, hadn't taken time to think about what I had done in my life.

You hadn't reflected yet?

I hadn't reflected. I'd done all these things, but there was no finish line. I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect.

I was just going.

I wouldn't even, I finished a race of life, and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I'd go on.

You're like, on to the next.

I get in the car and I go. You wouldn't even take the medal?

Gone. Don't care about it.

Like, I'm not gonna waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony.

Most people sit around and that's what they like.

They need the ceremony if I accomplish something.

Validation.

I haven't done anything. Let's go.

Let's go.

Let's go. I'm just getting started. I'm just getting started. What's right? When I started figuring out life, that I was leaving so much in the tank, I caught my 40% rule. I was leaving so much in the tank once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied, and now I'm a 180-pound person who lost 106 pounds in less than three months. Learn to read, learn to do this, learn to do that. I was like, I need more. I was fueling my mind with everything. I never took time to say, my God, you came from this hell and you're here. So those insecurities, and this is how I explain it the best way. SEAL training became pretty hard and a lot of guys weren't getting through it. So they designed a SEAL PEP prep program.

Like a boot camp for the boot camp.

That's right. Yeah. And it was two months. In my last two years before I retired from the military, they sent me there to train these kids.

Wow.

To get ready for the bus.

18, 19, 20 years old, yeah.

Young kids. So when they get to Navy SEAL training, man, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming. I mean, they were hybrids. Wow. But they get the buds, and the same amount of people would quit.

Why is that?

This is why. We were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.

Hmm. It's not about, Not the mind.

That's right. We weren't diving into the sewer. Everybody's got a story. We don't share it on social media. We share our nice life on social media. We all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine.

Yeah.

Most of us aren't willing to talk about it. I'm gonna talk about my dungeon. I wasn't getting into the dungeon of these guys' minds. I wasn't building that so-called mental toughness. Mental toughness isn't something that you sample. It's something that you live in every day. So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure and they look for comfort. Whenever hardness comes, and you all know what it is, it may be different for you than it is for me, But you go back to your insecurities, and then when you go back to insecurities, you then look for comfort within those insecurities. And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to give you when you were sad, when you were sick. We look for our wife or our husband. We look for comfort. It's in those moments you must retrain your mind to think differently. in hell. I wasn't training them to do that.

Why weren't you training?

I wasn't training myself. Because at that time, I was doing what I was told. These guys need to meet a standard.

Physical standard.

A physical standard. The physical standard is not what they need to meet. It's a mental standard you must meet in life. So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards. I wasn't meeting the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come. Wow. I wasn't, I had come 8,000 miles from where I started. But if you never know that, you're still in the $7 a month place. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life. And in that bed, and I thought I was dying, because that story is long, that sick portion of my life is long. I didn't care if I died or lived. Wow. Because I was for the first time in my life happy.

Wow.

And at peace. Because I reflected back on where it started.

You said, well, I have come a long way.

That's right. And no one saved me. It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self-respect you have, that's why I walk around the streets with a backpack and just like, I don't need anything else. Yeah. You figure it out by going inside yourself, by callousing over the victim's mentality. You're always a victim, even if you have everything in life, until you realize what you've achieved. You have to first realize what you've achieved in my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father, but she hasn't done that one step. Really?

She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect on it.

She continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life.

And live in that space.

And live in that space versus living the space that she's in now and reflecting back on my God, this is what I've done with my life.

So have you talked to her about this?

We talk about all the time. And you have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing to really go to. Not, not surface. I don't, I don't live on the surface of anything.

Yeah.

Surface is what got me where I was at. It got me from 175 pounds to 300 pounds, telling everybody, I'm good. I don't, I don't give a damn. I'm good. No, they're, they're Hollow words. A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore. Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance. It's real. And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls. I act on mine. A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose the path of least resistance so we go a different route. I'm afraid of something is telling me you must Do this thing. You must do that. Yeah. You have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality. We go left and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives. It's because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out. And how I look at it is I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four lane highway. that has road maps and all this other stuff on it, man. Tells you where to go, gas stations. The next 10 miles up, you're gonna see a McDonald's, a Cracker Barrel.

Yeah.

It's the easy route.

Very few of us want to go to the right side.

That Cracker Barrel's that Midwest life.

That's right.

That's right. That's right.

From Ohio, it's all about it, man. Indiana. Cracker Barrel everywhere. Dude, that's amazing. Bringing back memories. This is powerful, 'cause I've been telling people this, I've been living that way unknowingly my whole life of like whatever the thing is I'm afraid of. When I was in high school, I started doing those things. Right. And it was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid. Right. So I need to do the things that scare me the most. That's right. You know, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Tiffany's heard me share these stories, but I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of like singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I want to do this. I'm gonna give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away. Sure. And I feel like that's what more of us should be doing. I'm hearing that that's what you, how you live your life. That's all it is, man. And it helps me feel so much more confident. When you overcome that fear of saying, this doesn't have control over me anymore.

It'S like you can be at such more peace in your life. It's 100% in your life. Most of, like, for instance, I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL. It's until you opened your mind, open-mindedness creates that. We all shut down our mind. Like for instance, when I broke the pull-up record, everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was 4,020 pull-ups. That's the first thing they did. Oh my God.

4,024 hours or was it? Yes, it's 4,020 pull-ups in 24 hour period.

The first thing I did versus closing my mind, you're like, oh my God, that's crazy. I went and got a pen and.

Say, how many is that every minute?

Exactly.

Every hour, every second.

Instead of taking life and making it out to be this grandiose thing, start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box, and we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. But we do is we shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. This is all I'm good at. And we take away the possibilities of you could be this, you could be that, you could be all these things. And I never thought at 300 pounds I could be next to seal. So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book. There'd be no book. There'd be nothing. So what people understand is that they live for themselves, not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives by facing life, by facing yourself. And through that, I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives. And what haunts me the most, you ask me what haunts you the most? what helps me most is that if I would have died at 300 pounds, let's say I was 75 years old, I got to heaven, and God has a chart like that on everybody's life. God knows all. Let's say that. I don't care what you believe in. Doesn't matter. I'm not judging anybody. Let's say my thing is God. You get to heaven. I'm 300 pounds. I sit down. I was a cockroach Terminator my whole life, and we're sitting down just like this. You're God, and I'm David. and he gives me that chart and he says, look at this. Now, look at this chart. And on the chart, it has all these different things, but my names on it. But these things aren't me. I was gonna change the world. I was gonna. I was gonna set records. I was gonna be a Navy SEAL. I was gonna be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're gonna get the VFW award. You could be honored here, honored there. I'm like, God, I was. this isn't me. Like it says, David Goggins, I was an Ecolab guy. I spray for cockroaches and I'm 300 pounds. I said, here, I'm 185. It says here, I got a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things. And God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be.

Wow.

My biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world. and there's a final judgment, and you talk to something much bigger than you. I don't want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says, you,'re in heaven, this is what you should have been on earth. And are you really in heaven now or are you in hell? Thinking about how much I left on a table for fear, for not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall. So in my mind, I believe that, and God knows all. At least I believe that. I want God to be up there right now as we're speaking, writing stuff down, saying, My God, he exceeded even my expectations. That's how I live my life. I now know that there is no cap on the human mind. There's no cap. We cap it ourselves.

Wow. Is there a cap on the human body?

That's right.

Is there one?

You're...

I...

I don't believe so. Because one thing I found out was, I didn't, for several years I gave myself a way out.

When you were 300 pounds or...

When I was 300 pounds, when I was... All the way up till I was 24 years old, I would climb a mountain, I'd fall back down. I start climbing, I fall back down. For the first 24 years of my life. I went to my first hell week, my second hell week, and then my third hell week came in SEAL training. And the CEO, Captain Bowen, looked at me, I'm on crutches, I'm all jacked up. He says, Hey, this is your last time you're going to go through BUD/S. This is it. I had several stress fractures. I had double pneumonia. I was jacked up, and he gave me a few months to heal. They said, this is your last time going through. I shouldn't even let you go back through. Wow. I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures. Stress fractures, not shin splints.

That's hard to finish.

Stress fractures. Starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training in the world, with stress fractures. And this is when I started to not put a cap on the body, if the mind is there. Every morning I would wake up at 3:30 in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, go to my dive cage, go in there before anybody saw me, I'd get duct tape, and I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the mid of my calf, and I would put two black socks on. And so I ran not using the pivot.

Oh my gosh.

And I ran my hip flexors. So for the first 45 minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain. But what motivated me Through that whole process was the fact that this kid came from that. I'm in the hardest training in the world, in the worst shape of my entire life. What if I can graduate amongst these studs? Wow. All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions. They're gladiators in my class. They're all healthy. Most of them, they're not broken like this. They may have some, you know, everybody's sick going to that training. But if I can graduate, it would change everything for me. If I can start the hardest train in the world, broken and graduate. So my mind fed off of that. You are now, from the weakest man, you are now the hardest man to ever live. If you can do this. If you can do this. Life is one big mind game. Yeah. And you're playing it with yourself. Is it true? I don't care. It got me through the hardest training, starting out broken. Where most people quit, I had just started.

Wow.

And when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around, that's what made me powerful. And my body followed. And three months later, my stress fractures were healed by running on them.

It's calcifying it, just like.

I never had them since. I'm 43 years old. Wow. I ran 7,000 miles in 2007. Haven't had a stress fracture since. And I'm not saying to do that. I'm just saying that when the mind and the body connect and you don't give yourself a way out, the only way out for me at that time was death. Wow. I'm gonna be a Navy SEAL.

Or I'm gonna die.

Or I'm gonna die trying. Yeah. Period. And my body said, Roger that. We're gonna get you through this.

So when the mind gives it no way out, no way out, your body says, okay, okay, I believe you now.

I have to heal.

I'm gonna figure this out with you. We're gonna do this. It's gonna be. the worst part of your life, but you're gonna survive.

We're gonna survive.

Wow.

And as you hear in that 100 mile race I did, I started figuring out more and more and more and more about at the other end of suffering is a life that no one, and I'm not talking about go out there and kill yourself. Don't take these words and flip them and say, oh my God, no. It just be uncomfortable. I call it suffering.

Don't physically injure yourself.

Yes. Not saying that.

And then be out for six months.

That's right. That's no good. That's no good. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying do what I did. I was in a spot that life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you. I had choices.

I chose this path. And you're still choosing it. I'm still choosing it.

You can go back to that guy at any moment. Because I found out, I found out something with those stress fractures. I found out something. do facing all these things. I found out a whole nother world, which is why I walk around with all my stuff in a black backpack.

Wow.

I found it a whole nother way. A whole nother way of, no matter how far you get in life, you have to be able to go back to scratch in your mind at a moment's notice. You can never get so far beyond scratch. what that means is when you accomplish something in life, if you want to go back to scratch and go back to that seven dollar a month place where I once lived and visit that place for a long period of time, if you were here when you went back to scratch, you would now be here. Scratch is what makes you better. Scratch friction, obstacles create growth. There's no friction when you're this far up in the game anymore. You think there is.

The real, that's right.

When you cheat so much, the friction is minor. Because why? I'm sore, I'm gonna get a massage today. I'm hungry, I'm gonna eat today. The refrigerator is always full. So your comforts are now, so your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the $7 a month place. So you have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you're at now. I'm not saying stay there and stay there. Visit.

Visit it.

And then you raise your level.

Take a day trip.

That's right.

Yeah.

Always take day trips. Yeah.

Don't stay there.

That's right.

But take a day trip.

Take a day trip.

So when you complete some massive obstacle and challenge, whatever the adversity that you force upon yourself, because these are all curated experiences for yourself, you're scratching constantly. What happens now, since this was five years ago, you would just leave, you want to take the medal, you would just go on to the next. What happens now? Do you take a day to reflect, a moment, 10 minutes? How does the process work? And then how do you get back to visiting the $7 place you lived in?

Now, I don't have to go back and visit it. I don't have to think about it. It lives with me now. Every day of my damn life, that feeling that I had to go back and think about, I found a way to just have it.

How did you...

It's constantly there. I have a self-talk. I have a self-talk. It's called my cookie jar. It's a constant reminder of David GuT. Every day of my life, I believe in quiet. There's no growth outside of quiet. The world is too noisy. Your mind needs quiet for you to find who you are. People ask, what's my purpose? Why am I here? You're not gonna find it nowadays unless you lock yourself in a quiet room in your mind and find it. It's too noisy. For me, I could be in a busy street in New York City, horns honking, and I'm walking around with like nothing. It's me and myself in a quiet spot. And when you are constantly reflecting on who you are, where you've been, the journey you've gone through, the journey you can continue going through, the feeling is always there. You don't allow the world to pull you so fast that you forget. You don't allow yourself to pull you so fast that you forget. It's not about staying in that moment. It's about you want to get to the point where that feeling follows you like breathing. It becomes a part of your life, part of your DNA. But it's made like these calluses on my hands right now. They're made. Yeah, they are now on my brain. This is now a part of me. It's a daily process, a part of me. And how I go back to a seven dollar a month place all the time is now I go out and I dig fire line. I'm a wildland firefighter. I don't need to do it. I'm a 43 year old man. I work with 27 year old kids. Yeah. I'm a rookie. Every day I'm a rookie, it feels like.

And why do you do it?

That's why I do it, man. There's a story I'm gonna tell you about why I do it. So I make, I have a good living now for me, where I'm at in my life. I was out on a fire in Colorado and we were digging fire line on this like 50% like it was like on the side of a dad going up mountain. Yeah. And we're trying to keep the fire from moving and we're digging this fire line 14 inches or my fault 18 inches wide, three miles long, 12 of us digging. And it is the hardest work. You make $12 an hour. Okay? Nothing.

You set up your shop.

Like when you're done digging, you just pretty much lay down, you go to sleep and you get up, you dig some more. Really? This happens for two weeks long. What are you digging?

It's like a hole, you're digging a line.

So you're trying to get down to to a mineral source. So you're trying to get down to the earth. So that if that fire is moving, it can't burn dirt.

Really?

So you're moving fuels.

Yes, got it.

So not only are you digging, you're cutting down trees. It's hard work. But the moral story is I'm 43, don't need to do it at all. This is why I do it. You're making money. I'm making money. I have a good life. I don't need to do it. Everybody asks me why I do it. This is why. This 21 year old kid was out there and he wanted a pair of running shoes. So all he wanted was a pair of running shoes. 60, 70, 100 bucks to whatever, you know, easy for us. Yeah. 100 bucks. He looked up at the mountain that we had been on for days digging this fire line and he said, that'll take me five or six hours of work to buy those shoes. So I'm not gonna buy them. It's the perspective of life. That perspective of life right there. That is the value that we lose. When things start to come so easy in life, it's the perspective that 21 year old had, looked about that mountain and thought, he looked at his hands, he looked at the amount of hours of pulling that Pulaski, that tool, and raking that ground and then cutting those trees. and moving them and that hours of work, he looked at his feet and said, these old shoes would do. It's that perspective in life that we lose. And that's that story that most people may not mean anything. It's that story I always want to have in my life. You cannot lose perspective of where you've come in life.

Yeah. So true. We were in Guatemala, was it this year or last year? last year. We were in Guatemala last year. We support a charity called Pencil of Promise that builds schools for kids who live in poverty and all around the world. And every year I take a trip to just see where our efforts are being, you know, felt and being made. And these are the poorest places in Guatemala, Laos, and Ghana. Places they have nothing. There's no schools, they're little villages, they live on dirt. huts, everything, right? And we go and we build these schools. We actually, the villages build them themselves. We just fund the experience and they empower, we empower them to do it so that they take ownership of it. But I'll be there for a few days and watch these kids so happy with just like a pencil. They're just so happy to just like have their family around and they'll go and they'll show us their huts and like they're just so happy to have community and then I'll fly back and go through Beverly Hills right over here and I'll see like these mansions, you know, I live right next to it. And I'm just like, it gives me so much perspective of like, you don't need to have all these things to find peace and joy and connection and intimacy and all these other things that we want. You don't need these big mansions and to live in this nice place. You know, I like living here but it's not like, It's perspective for me is what keeps me motivated as well.

That's right.

To keep doing the right things, to keep showing up, keep working hard. And I think it's right, most of us miss that perspective in life.

We get so far away from reality.

So far.

And the reality is, man, when I was seven years old, eight years old, all I wanted was a 99 cent quarter pounder from Hardee's.

I know, right?

And that made me happy as hell.

Some curly fries, man.

That's it, man. That's it.

Yeah, the thing is a lot of us have been conditioned or some of us grew up with wealth or grew up with comfort. So we're conditioned that way and we're grown up expecting now that things should come a lot easier.

Right, that's a damn shame.

We get frustrated when we don't get it right.

Quickly.

Quickly.

Yes.

Yeah, and I'm always talking about delayed gratification. The longer I can wait to receive gratification, That's right. The more fulfilled I am.

I'm a person, so when I got sick like I did, I actually had to quit this race called Badwater.

Yeah. 135 miles. Yeah, yeah.

Through Death Valley. It was 2014 when I got real, real bad. I pulled out of the race at mile 50. I went to the emergency room and the docs were like, you know, we can't find this, we can't find that, we know what's wrong with you. When I got in that bed, so this is the crazy thing about gratification. Long term, I'm able to watch grass grow by finding out this. I sat there, couldn't run a quarter mile, couldn't get a bed. The only thought I had in my mind, I pulled out of that race, I told myself, I'm gonna go back to Badwater one day and run it. I'm gonna win the race. Haven't been back since. Haven't been back since. 2019. I'm not saying I'm gonna win it. I'm just now in the shape to go back. Wow. I haven't won 100 mile race since 2014.

Wow.

Because I've been that sick. I'm just now imagine the gratification I'm gonna get by getting to the start line of that race. And what if I can win it?

Be pretty sweet.

Pretty sweet.

Four or five years. Yeah.

Imagine that. Of having that kind of deal, of having that kind of self-discipline to every day wake up. and having these setbacks where I can't even run a mile.

Wow.

But I'm thinking about running 135. I can't run one mile, but I'm thinking about running 135. And with that process, guess what happens? Sooner or later, you can run 10 miles. It may take a year, but it gives you more and more hope that it's possible. And I'm at the point now where guess what? It's right around the corner.

Wow.

Most people in that time frame, in that, in that, in that mindset, I can't run anymore. It's over. No, it's just could take a little bit longer. You have to turn the negative into a positive. At the end of it all, if you can sit back and wait, if you can wait six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12 years, when you get to that point, when you finish, that's the feeling for 12 years. Let's say, let's say, wait, 12 years to get there. That's what keeps you going, is you gotta feel, I'm doing it for one second.

Years of pain.

For one second. One second. Think about it. You cross the finish line, it's over. One second.

Most people do that, and the one second isn't what they thought it would be. And then they're pissed and upset and they keep going on to the next 'cause they never reflect back on what they did.

It's not the one second, it's the 12 years.

Yeah.

It's the 12 years that I want. It's not the race. It's the 12 years why you did it.

It's not the winning.

It's not the winning.

It's not what place you got.

No.

But most of us focus on, that's right. Oh, I gotta win this.

That's right.

If I don't, I'm gonna be upset. I would achieve all my athletic goals for years and then 10 minutes later be the angriest person in the world. So angry and frustrated, nasty with people. And I would delay my gratification for years to achieve what I wanted.

That's right.

And I never understood that either.

Being a perfectionist is the worst thing that can happen to a person. You never live. Like, I lost that 106 pounds in like two and a half months, whatever it took me. that was the biggest trophy of my entire life. I didn't care if I graduated Navy SEAL training. I didn't care. What I just accomplished in that timeframe, it's massive. I don't know, there was no trainer, there was no like, it was funny about this, we talk about mental toughness nowadays, it's like the biggest crave. When I grew up, it was just suck it up. It was just make it happen. You had to figure out. It was called Figure It Out, man. And all these nuggets that I gained along the way, that's what it was about. It wasn't about the Trident, it wasn't about all those daggon medals, it wasn't about any of that. And that's why I hate even talking about being a seal, you know? I mentioned stories, people, why you talking about it didn't define me. The journey getting there was harder than going through it. Yeah. You know, so that's the whole thing about life, man. It's that journey that, that makes you who you are.

Yeah. And as opposed to focusing on it, did I win or not?

Right.

What did I gain from the last 12 years?

Right.

And so when you finish now, what do you think about? How long do you reflect back on the effort it took to accomplish that race or what?

A long time. Weeks, years.

You'll reflect on it.

I reflect back now. There's times now where I will reflect back on my first 100-mile race.

Still today.

Still today. And it'll give me the same exact feeling. Because what I did in that first race, when I was under trained, I did it on four days notice. I hadn't run more than, I think, 20 miles the whole year. And I did it to raise money for this foundation, to try to get in the bad water. What I had to pull out of myself on that last, that's where that book, Live to Seal, kind of originated. Jesse Itzler saw me at this race.

He was racing too.

Yeah, but he did it as a team.

Right, you did it alone.

I did it alone. And that's what I talk with people about, man. I spent so much time, people always like, why do you run so much? You know, you try to get in shape. No, the things I do in life, most of life, you're alone. You may have a whole support crew around you, but up here, you're alone. Most of the stuff I do, I'm training for that one, those moments. Those moments when I was at mile 70 and I had 30 more miles to go and I had, I crapped up my back and peeing blood down my leg, I had 30 miles to go. There's only so much someone can share and can do for you. When you start to dive back in the cellar of your mind and you're pulling out all these tactics, all these mental tactics to get through this 30 miles when you're in the worst shape of your life, and no one's coming to save you. And you get through that. I want to go back there. When I got done with that race, I laid in the tub, and my ex-wife helped me get up the stairs. And I'm laying in this tub, and Coca-Cola's coming out of me. Just looks like dirt. And she's a nurse, and she's freaking out. And she puts the shower on me, and I'm looking at her, and all I want to do is call the race director up, a bad word, saying, I qualify for the race. And she's thinking, we gotta go to the hospital. So, you know, she's calling my mom and my mom has a doctor friend of hers who's over and they're freaking out. And I said, everybody, just shut up. Wow. Shut up. I'm in the worst pain in my entire life. And no one would ever understand this. No one. When you've gone that deep inside yourself and all those feelings of pain that I had, I was in the worst pain of my life. ever. And some people think, man, you're just crazy. No, when you've done that and you figured out so much on your own and all that pain and discomfort I had in that tub laying there, passing out, everything was confirmation of what I just figured out. I just figured out the code. I figured out a code. A code that many people aren't looking for. And I want it to be known. I want that feeling. This was confirmation. This was like a scientist's notes. The notes were here. The notes were all this feeling. It was a confirmation. And no one at that time could understand what I just done. I cracked the code to human potential. in myself. And I was still like, oh my God, like this is unbelievable what I just did. So it's that quiet place. It's that place by yourself. It's those hours and years and decades by yourself in the grip of life. When life has you by the throat and choking you out and you're sitting there calm because you're trying to figure it out. You're not panicking. You're not quitting, you're not throwing in the towel. You're saying there's a way around this. And when you figure it out, when life has you gripped in a vice, and you can figure that out, that's when you overcome. That's when you overcome. And that's why that one moment for me in that tub, I didn't want anyone to take away from it.

Wow. This is crazy man, I love this. Do you have any fears today?

I do have a lot of fears today. But it's hard for me to call them fears anymore. I don't use that word anymore. They're almost like it's another challenge. Because anything that makes me feel that fear feeling is gonna get overcome.

You go do it.

It's gonna get conquered. That is, that's almost like fear is my ultimate guide.

Of where you're supposed to be going.

Of where I'm supposed to be going. It's my ultimate guide.

So, I- what's the big challenge then for you then?

The biggest challenge for me is always going, I want to be comfortable.

You want to be comfortable. You want to sleep in a nice bed and relax. I mean, normal human being.

You want to chill out. And the time is going to come. It's time for everybody to get civilized. The worst thing in life that happens to a man is that he gets civilized. Or a woman, anybody. Yeah, yeah. 'cause you lose the hunger for life. You think you've arrived. And once you have an arrived mentality, that's my biggest fear. Is I get to the point where I'm at that point where life has come to me and I have that feeling of I've arrived. I now know my life for what I know it to be is over. Even though that's where comfort is and everything else, I found the most life in the most uncomfortable places in the world. I was the most David. The. The Goggins that I invented. Because David Goggins was weak. I never want to get rid of Goggins. The guy I created, that weak person that. That used to be the guy I created that can handle anything. You don't want to let go of that guy because you realize that that guy was made. you weren't born him. And that is, when you get comfortable, Gog starts to die. He starts to die. That one creature from the black lagoon that can live in the sewer, that can eat rats all day, that doesn't need water, that doesn't need sunlight, that doesn't need nothing, he can just live because he knows he can. That's a powerful human being that you never want to And it's in everybody. That's the scary thing about that's what makes me so upset, man. Is that everybody wants to put this daggone label on me. They forget the first three chapters of my book. They forget how this started. A lot of times it takes someone's wife dying or something like that for them to change.

Yeah, near death.

Yeah, something. No. No, no, none of that. I wanted to figure out, is there more to this horrible feeling of feeling like a loser? Can I change this? And once you figure out, I have the ability, not through your mom or your dad or through a special school, through you. You have the ability to change this. That's what makes it so mad. Once people put this title on me, you now give yourself a get out of jail free card. It's like, oh, he's just crazy, he's special, he's unique, he's this and that. You just saved yourself from not having.

To do the work.

From not having to do the work. And that's why I want people to hear my story. I'm trying to take away all that bull crap that you want to put on me. I'm trying to make you suffer up here to know what my God, man, he really had a hard way to go.

Wow.

There was nothing special about him. He wasn't talented, he wasn't gifted, he wasn't nothing. He wasn't nothing and he made it. I want everybody to feel uncomfortable around me. That's it. Because I want you to go home and think about yourself.

Yeah.

Think about yourself, man, because you're leaving so much on the table for the possibilities of what you can be.

You say most people are at 40% potential. What percent are you at?

I like to say that I live in the 90% time, sometimes 99. 100% is dead. 100% is dead.

99 sometimes.

99 sometimes. The reason why I know 99 is because the first five hours of my day, I am very uncomfortable.

What do you do?

First of all, every morning I get up and people think I love to run. I don't.

That's why you do it.

That's why I do it. And people don't understand that mentality. Oh, you have to love it, man. No, running has changed my life. Because every morning I know I'm gonna do it. If you know it, every morning you do something you don't like. Every morning I would do it for. And guess what? If I just ran for an hour a day, a day is 24 hours, right? What percent is that? What's one hour over 20? Was that Four percent? A small percent. But anyway, that's why I know I'm at a high level, because I'm at a dis, not wanting to be uncomfortable, I put myself in the dungeon every day off jump, out of bed, it starts.

Shoes on.

Out of bed. Why most people lose the battle in the morning, like once you leave your beautiful house, The war starts. Nowadays it starts before you leave home. The phone rings, social media's up, the world's attacking you. If you don't control what you can to build that armor, so in the morning time, what I'm doing is I'm building my armor. It gets broken every night. I get up in the morning time, I start to build the armor, let's run, okay? Gotta do our push-ups, our sit-ups, our pull-ups, I go to the gym, gotta do our stretch.

Every morning I'm building my armor.

You do one hour in the morning of training? Oh no, in the morning time I do at least an hour and a half And then I go to the gym.

Of running? Hour and a half of running?

Yes. Then I'm in the gym and at nighttime, every night, for the last five to six years, about five and a half years, I've only missed two days of stretching for two to three hours.

Two to three hours a night stretching.

I've only missed two days in five or about five and a half years.

Wow. Stretching.

Stretching.

Why stretching?

That is where I-- so, the sickness I had was my psoas muscle got real tight. And it caused my body, long story short, to pretty much choke me out from the inside. So when you're young, your psoas muscle is your fight or flight muscle. We're sitting down right now, we're using the hip flexor muscle. When you're under stress as I was my whole life by being afraid of.

My father being- Tight and clenched.

Tight. Your whole body's tight. Then I teach a job like being a Navy SEAL. It's even tighter. and then I put myself under stress. It's just tightening, tightening, tightening to it's a vice grip. And you need healthy blood flow through your body. I wasn't getting any of that. So I push so hard in life. People say, oh, because you ran so much. No, sorry. Life.

Emotional stress. Yes.

Emotional stress made me just tight. So now I couldn't sit down here for 10 seconds. And I was like, I was wound. What that's done to me is it allowed me to be even open, even more open-minded. I stretch out, I get my body lengthening out, it lengthens my mind out, the possibilities out, I calm myself down. So during the morning time, I build the armor, I face the world. Because now I know there's gonna be some disappointments along the way, every day. Yeah, that's life. But if you face disappointments already. In victory, the things I can control is I can control my run. I can control how my house looks, how my world is. I can control that. So I've won. Open my door of life. Life starts to beat me down, but I'm facing it with the body armor that I created.

Yes.

And now I'm facing life with the proper tools. Unlike I hit the snooze button, I'm running late, my house is a mess, my mind's a mess. Now life's already beat you. So you open the door and now life hits you and you're already frustrated. You're already in that anxiety mode. You're stressed already. And then life starts to pile more on top of you. You get home, you're exhausted. And that's how life happens to everyone. You have to live and win what you can and build the body armor. Start callousing the mind so you're ready for combat outside of your house. 'Cause it's gonna come. And that's what I realized at a young age. I had no body armor. I had no callus. So when life came at me, I ran, I tucked, I lived in the fetal position trying to get away from life. I wasn't protected. I didn't protect myself. I had nothing. So I started realizing, I gotta form an armor. So I'm gonna have to lie to you to make you like me. So I'm not approaching people feeling insecure, saying I have all these material things I don't have. When you have that body armor, you tell people, Hey man, I'm not real smart. But I try real hard. I won't win this race, man, but I've been running for the last four years every day.

That's pretty good, yeah.

That's the mentality that you need to have. Look at people knowing, I know you and everybody else, It has issues. So why am I worried about how anybody thinks of me? We're all in the same boat here. Some boats may be bigger than others, but we all have problems. So be it. We're all in the same boat. Some of us are willing to not lie about it. I'm at that point now where I no longer care, 'cause why? Why can I go on here and tell people how f*cked up I am? 'Cause I faced them. They no longer define who I am. It's not me. It was me.

They don't control you anymore.

Yeah.

When you're training in the morning or training at night or stretching at night, what are you visualizing or thinking about?

Nothing. When I'm training in the morning time.

And it's a run for an hour and a half in the gym and.

Sometimes it's longer.

Calisthenic type stuff.

An hour to an hour and a half is the minimum. If I'm doing like a 100 mile race, now I'm starting to build my miles back up, come training for a race in January, that could be two, two and a half, three hours. Then once I come home from that, it's right in the gym, immediately. So I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm dehydrated, sodium low, everything. And that's where, that's the edge.

'Cause it's even more uncomfortable to die.

That's right, 'cause all I wanna do.

Then, Stretch, stretch, stretch, water, relax.

That's it. I had a long run. I'm hot, I'm dehydrated.

You already didn't want to run.

That's right. So that's when, because why? In the race of life, life's not gonna give you a glass of water when you're thirsty. And I realized that. And once again, people like, my God, your life is horrible. It's not. Yeah. This is how I live. This is how I live. This is what I want. I don't judge anybody. This is how I live. And if there's not people like me in this world with this kind of mentality, it's not be like David Goggins. Go run 200 miles. Take something from this. Take something from this. Remember where I started from. You don't need to go where I went.

Right.

I went this far because I started opening different doors to the seller in my brain. My God, is this possible? Oh my God, that's possible. It is possible. I started opening up different compartments. You can leave them shut. I don't care. So what I do now in the morning times, I do this because why life's not gonna give me the get out Jeffree Star card. And if I come on here on this podcast and talk this stuff, I have to live what I say. So when you come up from a world of used to lie a lot, and my big thing is facing all this crap, I cannot tell you something I have not done. Because why? When you start to formulate this character, this code of ethic, this ethos that you live, not anybody else, this your own, I cannot tell you something. that I haven't done. Why? Because it will haunt me. You are now drinking the Kool-Aid. A lot of people write books on self-help, mental toughness, all this crap. Half of them are living up to that standard. Half of them are living up to that standard. You have to be able to practice what you preach. It has to be what you are. That's why when people say, my God, when you speak on stuff, it's so passionate. Because you're making me relive my life. It's not a comfortable life. This life was made. This life was earned. And if people like it, great, if not, so be it. At night time I think about nothing.

When you're stretching or when you're...

When I'm stretching, that's my time. That's my time to sit back and recharge for tomorrow. Because why this is not Mental toughness is not a class. We have this class that they designed, eat an elephant one by that time, self-talk, visualization, arousal control. It's all great. It's all great. It has to be a lifestyle.

Yeah.

You work on mental callusine. on a daily basis. Because you're, even though your brain, your mind, like your brain isn't a muscle so much, you will lose it. You will lose the ability to suffer in the worst of times if you come out of it for too long. If you can lift 315 pounds and you stop going to the gym for a month, I guarantee you won't be able to pick the same weight up again. All the stories I talked about today, all the things in that book, if I went and said, I'm good, I gained all this knowledge. If I stopped today, the knowledge is gone. I have to go back deep to retrieve it. I don't want to go back deep to retrieve it. I want to be able to call on it now. That's why I do these things. I know what not doing them will get me.

Right, right. There's so much more I want to ask you, but I want to try to wrap it up here with three final questions. I didn't even get to any of the questions I had on here, because I was just so inspired by everything. But if you guys haven't picked this up yet, you can pre-order it right now. Again, can't hurt me. Master your mind and defy the odds. Make sure you guys get this book, get a few copies for friends, Give them out as gifts. This would be one of the most powerful things you give to someone. This is called, actually I'm curious about, I asked you about the greatest lesson from your mom, but I'm curious, what's the greatest lesson your dad taught you? Whether he actually said it or you observed it?

I observed it.

Or what not to do.

So I observed it from my dad. When I left, I was young. I had a young man's a young kid's point of view on my father. So when I was 22 at 300 pounds, I went back to see my dad. Because I wanted to make sure that what I saw at eight is the same vision. It's my father. I don't want to not talk to my father. No matter what he did, no matter what I saw, but was it through a young kid's eyes? So at 22, I went back and I was able to examine him as a man. As a fragile man that I was.

Sure.

But I was able to examine him and through this process, so by this point in my life, I was examining myself and realizing I have a whole mess of problems, big time. Some were from him, some were for people that bullied me, a lot were from me. And in knowing how messed up I was, I was able to examine everybody around me. I examined him and I examined him to know, my God, the insecurities that you must have, the problems that you must have inside of you, I don't want to have those. I come from my father. I have what he has. And I didn't want to be him. Why he made fun of me, my brother, why he beat the hell out of me, my brother, my mom. It comes from a dark place, an insecure, dark, dark place. Why he womanized, why he sold prostitutes, why he ran, all this stuff he did. A good human being doesn't need to do that. A fulfilled human being. doesn't need to break anyone down. All they do is want to build you up. So anybody you meet that calls you out of your name, that bullies you, that messes you up, that makes you.

Feel.

Not lifted, they are dealing with something deep rooted. Yeah, you have to have a tough tone with some people to help them out. There's a difference. you have to be hard. I'm hard on people, but it comes from a good place.

Yeah.

The biggest lesson he taught me was how not to be. And that's why I had to fix what I was. Because insecurities make everybody around you feel like hell. And that's the one thing I did not want anyone to feel like. That's why I judge no one. Tons of whites have called me. I've been, tons of people have hurt me. I judge no one, 'cause I know where it comes from. I know you. I was once you. That's why now the place I'm at, you get a get out of jail free card. You need to help yourself. You ain't bullying me, man.

Right, you're fine.

You're, I'm good.

Whatever you throw at you.

I'm good. You're like, I know what's wrong with you, 'cause I was once you.

Right.

So I started to examine people, examine myself, examine my darkness, realizing how I cannot be, but I got it from examining him. Saying, I cannot be that.

That's a powerful lesson. So it's a good lesson that he taught you through that observance. How do you react or respond when someone says something to you negative or cuts you off in a car or something happens in life every day? that could potentially upset you? Do you react? Do you respond? Do you do nothing? Do you give them a hug? I mean, what is the process for you?

The process used to be angry David Goggins.

You scream at them, swear at them, yeah.

Yes.

Pick a fight. That was the old me. Yeah.

The old me was pick a fight, go, go do whatever. Through this process of my life, when you get to this point, I'm at, yeah, and I still be in a car and I'll talk to my fiancée, this is jackass, whatever, or whatever. I now know that I can escalate a problem that's not really a problem. I now, I have a throttle and that's through self-examination. Is this a big, is this a big deal? Is this something I need to approach with a level three engagement of like, we're going at it, or is this a level two engagement? So now you have to be mature enough and I'm really big on maturity because I was never mature for so many years. With age and knowledge, you have to bring in maturity. Age doesn't mean you're mature. It's going back in and saying, okay man, look, I'm at a point in my life, what is smart? If I do this, I can see the future. I can see that if I do this, this is going to happen. I'm going to escalate this problem. Is this warranted? There are some things that warrant me to escalate a problem.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's what I do now. I take it through a process.

You rate it, yeah.

Yes. It goes in the rating program.

Got it. Powerful. This is called the Three Truths. I asked this question everyone at the end. It's called Three Truths. Imagine it is your last day and you get to pick the day whenever you want. You get to live as long as you want. You pick the day, but it's time for your body to go, right? You've created everything you want to create. You've been at 99 percentile of potential for as long as you can live. You've done it all. You've checked off the list that everything that God says that you were supposed to do, it's happened.

Right.

Written the books, everything you want to do, done. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your written word and videos and audio stuff that's out in the world, you've got to take it with you. But you get to write down on a piece of paper the three things you know to be true about all of your experiences. And this is what you leave behind. The three lessons, or what I like to call the three truths. What would you say are your three truths?

The first one is, you are your own hero. You are your own leader. You are your own master. And that is a big one because we idolize so many people. and we want to be them. We want to be someone else. And in doing that, you lose all the potential of who you are. You mimic, you be them, you are them, you become them, and you lose you. And we look up to so many people in this world who will let us down. We're humans. I'm gonna let you down. You're gonna let somebody down. If you put them on a pedestal, You then lose time when that person comes up and lets you down. You must hold yourself accountable and being your own hero, that's what that does. You make yourself so totally accountable for who you are. You focus on you and only on you to become the best person you could be for others. Because we leave a lot on the table not searching who we are. And then therefore, you die not knowing your greatest potential.

That's one.

That's one. The next one I would say is the biggest one I would say is never pick the easy road. Never. Never. And it always goes back to kind of that hero mentality. Never pick the easy road. Ever in your life. That is the one road that is doom. It is doom. If you want something like six-minute abs, all these different things, if you want it so fast, you may achieve what you wanted, but you want the permanent fix. The permanent fix comes from the hard road. The hard road gives you permanent results. The easy road gives you the quick fix. You will go back to where you started on the easy route. That hard route is so permanent that it ends up callousing you everywhere. Everywhere.

You keep a six-pack forever. You keep it.

Because you know the work that goes into it. Yeah. And the last one is, when you get to where you want to go in life, when you finally get there, you finally reach that point, And you're there, and you're happy as hell. Realize this. You're not there yet. When you get that feeling that you arrived, be afraid. Be truly afraid, because now you start to do this.

Slowly die.

Slowly die. Either you're getting better or you're getting worse. You're not staying the same. Yeah. So when you get to where you think the journey's ended and you're sitting back and you're like, I arrived, I'm on Mount Everest. I climbed 29-0-29.

Yeah.

The best thing to do is fall back down that damn mountain as fast as you can and start climbing.

Find the next climb.

Find the next climb. Yeah.

Oh man, I gotta sign up for another event. Sign up for another endurance event.

That's it. Just kidding.

Where can we connect with you online? Where do you like to, when you spend five minutes a month, where's that space? My social media, whether it be Twitter.

Or Instagram or Facebook, it's all, this is David Goggins, @DavidGoggins.

Cool, David Goggins. Your videos on Instagram are great. You should post more. Have someone at your team post more, 'cause they're awesome.

Well, they're all me.

That's all you.

Yeah, so I have no team. It's me and my fiance, there is no team. She'll be in the car, she'll be on a mountaintop, she'll be somewhere. It's all my material, it's all who I am. That's why I post once a week. Once a week right now?

Once a week, every Monday you'll get a post. There you go.

That's it.

It's some video that's gonna inspire you to do something. It's gonna be some video. I need to do at least five more minutes of working out, something at least. Well, I want to acknowledge you, David, for your intensity, your work ethic, your passion, and also your pure real heart. Because just meeting you for the first time, walking in together, just like I could tell how real you are. And you're just a no BS type of guy. The adversity that you've overcome is Crazy. Obviously people have overcome more than you, me and lots of people in the world. But what you had to overcome physically and psychologically and emotionally is unbelievable. And to see that you weren't a statistic and instead you chose every single day to make a decision to be more than that is really inspiring. And I know this is going to impact and inspire a lot of people. So I acknowledge you for your heart and for inspiring me. You know, I thought I worked out hard, but this is like, I feel like I'm doing nothing in my life. So, you're gonna inspire me to continue to make bigger commitments and longer commitments moving forward now. So, I appreciate everything you do, man, and I'm excited about getting this out there. You're welcome. My final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

Mom, you know what? My definition of greatness is this. It's not a definition, it's an example. This is greatness. True greatness. Let's say that I'm the greatest tennis player of all time. Okay, let's say that. I hate tennis. Let's say I'm the greatest tennis player of all time. And I did 22 years. I won all the Grand Slams. I have all the, I beat Roger Federer. I am the best ever. And we're having an interview. and you're talking about my greatness, what I achieved, and I'm retired. Don't play tennis anymore. Haven't touched a racket in years. And you're making me go back through my life. You're kissing my butt about how great I am. Sure. And I'm answering your questions. Every question I'm answering it. I'm with you. But in the back of my mind, all I'm thinking about is all the times I could have won those matches that I lost by not bringing my best mindset. You're haunted by all the opportunities that you missed by not bringing your best at that time when you could have won, but you didn't win because you allowed life to interfere with that one shot when you're sitting there getting ready to serve for the match and your mind is not thinking about where that ball placement needs to be, but thinking about your family this or this at work or that at work. That's greatness. Greatness is your recall on every single shot that you missed throughout a 20-some year career. Every shot, you can go back and say, I was here. This person was in the red shirt there. Greatness is being so aware of the time of life in the second that went by. and you can recall like it was yesterday. Greatness is being able to go back there, not making that same mistake again and being haunted by it. That is greatness.

Daily Goggins. Thanks, man. Appreciate you, man.

Thank you. Powerful.

So I teach three rules of leadership.

Number one, 70% of leadership is how you lead yourself. And these were the rules that I kind of created for myself and what.

I wasn't doing in the past. What were you doing it for? I was living the do as I.

Say and not as I do. Okay.