EntreLeadership - #300: Defy the Odds with David Goggins

Episode Date: January 7, 2019

A retired Navy SEAL and one of the world’s top endurance athletes, David Goggins doesn’t know the word “quit.” But that wasn’t always the case, and understandably so. After surviving a childhood of unimaginable physical abuse, poverty and prejudice, David says that failure had become the narrative of his life.  That all changed when he decided to run toward his fear and, against all odds, became a Navy SEAL. Join us as David shares his unforgettable journey that will inspire and move you—and prove that anything is indeed possible.   entreleadership.com/podcast Buy the book: Can't Hurt Me Dave Ramsey teaches on The Power of Intentionality #142: Jesse Itzler-Breaking the Routine to Get Better   #226: Jocko Willink-The Discipline Advantage   #154: Jocko Willink-How to Lead and Win the Navy SEAL Way Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The most important conversation you'll ever have is the one you have with yourself. You wake up with it, you walk around with it, eventually you act on it. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's our feature interview this episode, none other than David Gagins, maybe the baddest dude alive.

Now, Jocko, you know, he might have a little something to say about that, but another Navy SEAL on the program. This guy is the Navy SEAL featured in Jesse Itzler's book, Living with a SEAL. Jesse's been on the program a couple of times, and so if you're familiar with that book and a lot of people are, you might be familiar with it just from this program. He's the guy. And so now he's got a book out, can't hurt me, master your mind, and defy the odds. So this is going to be fantastic stuff. And we've got some bonus content. Dave Ramsey teaching on stage from a recent event.

I'll tell you more about that later. But let's get right to this. So what do you say about the Navy SEALs? It hasn't been said. How about this? So David Goggins is the only man in history to complete the elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Control. You're going to hear that and so much from his story.

if you don't want to be inspired, go ahead and turn the program off right now. Here is David Gagans. This is a terrific honor always to be with a man or woman who has served our country. So let's start off by just saying, I'm happy of everybody at Entree Leadership and our audience. Thank you for your service to our country. I appreciate you. Thank you for having me on. Let's go back. The book is Can't Hurt Me. And the title, I'm assuming, but correct if I'm wrong, goes way back to early David Gagans. When did the hurt and pain, and then how did the hurt and pain begin to manifest itself in your life? Well, the can't hurt me started straight from birth. So my dad owned a skating rink in a bar in Buffalo, New York.

If you're familiar with O.J. Simpson and Rick James, they were two people that would be up to all the time. And my dad was a big-time alcoholic. He ran prostitutes. He's one of a good guy. And he had a hole in his heart, I believe, that in a whole, like, just, just, you. just a hole in his soul that couldn't be filled. So his insecurities would spill over on my brother, myself, and my mom. And so we got beat all the time for nothing, just for senseless things.

So that's kind of where it started when I was young. Unbelievable. And so obviously there's very few of us that are listening that may even understand what that's like. We won't try to today, but it carries over. It spills over into your academic life. So here you are a youngster. Your mom, you talk about this in the book.

your mom, make it up excuses as to why you weren't in school. But when you were in school, what did the physical abuse do to you in the school? So what happens is when you have a horrible foundation. And I didn't go to school much at all because basically we worked the family business. So my dad wasn't much on us going to school at all. He was big on, hey, we have a skating rink in a bar. So from the time I was able to walk, I was in that skating rink, you know, scraping gum off the floors, doing that kind of stuff.

and also handing out skates. But I didn't realize until about my second grade that I had a really bad learning disability. And my parents didn't pick up on it all because they were so busy. You know, my mom was going through stressful times and my dad didn't care at all. So when you're in school, you're not sleeping,

and you're working all night skates. So I would leave Skateland at 4 o'clock in the morning at 7, 8 years old. 4 o'clock in the morning, I would leave Skatland, and we would get ready for school whenever we went to school, which is very rare. And that's kind of how that went.

So I would leave scaling at about 4 o'clock, about 30-minute drive from Buffalo to where I was at in Amherst, and I went to school. And when I was in class, I didn't understand a single word that was going on because half I was sleeping. In order to half, I just couldn't pick up on what she was even saying. So it was just difficult.

Yeah. So you get there to school and you're behind already. You got the learning disability. Parents don't realize it. What did that do to your self-esteem? Well, my self-esteem started getting beat out of me at a very young age. So when you're getting beat for nothing, just because your dad is an alcoholic, and he wants to put his rage on you, you don't know what you're doing wrong. So when you're young,

that's when your mind starts to develop. And my mind wasn't developing at all. So I didn't know right from wrong or anything else. And so my character was very flawed. What I thought was right was wrong. We know what was wrong was right. It just really hurt my self-esteem, you know, just really quick. It just beat it down. And the reason I'm going here and want to stay here for a little bit is because beyond the men and women that are listening to this program that run businesses, some don't run businesses, some just listen for personal growth, there are a lot of people that are listening right now that either dealing with this very issue that we're talking about, self-esteem, there's a bunch of lies that have just been stacked on top of each other. And they're

dealing with that right now. Maybe the world doesn't even know what they're really feeling, or maybe they know somebody who has experienced this. This is so important, and this really speaks to the rest of your journey. When that happens, and again, you talk about this in the book, that there's a voice that took place, and whenever you kind of got some type of ultimate opportunity to look at yourself, what you saw was failure. And that just continues to stack on top of itself to where it becomes the new narrative in your life. Right. What did that do to you?

Take us from, again, just a snapshot from elementary school, maybe middle school, high school. How did that compound itself in a negative way? So when we finally left Buffalo, after all the physical and mental beatings that my dad handed out, we left Buffalo, and I went to a, to me, even worse environment. I went to a very small town in Brazil and Indiana when there was about five black families. and in 1995, the KKK marched in our 4th July parade. So that being said, it paints Brazil-Nia, that's the town I'm talking about,

in a very bad light. And there are a lot of good people in this small town, so I want to make that very clear. But what happens is when you come from a very broken foundation, your mind only sees hate and evil. There was one time I was in my sophomore year, walked in my Spanish class to get my, notebook, open my notebook up, and inside the notebook, someone drew a little character of me

and a stick figure hanging from, you know, like a noose or like a hangman game. At this time, my life, I was a sophomore, and I had about a fourth grade reading level, because I cheated all through school. All through school I cheated because I realized I was going to get put in a special school. Right. So I found a way to get by, and this is how I got by. Right. So what I'm getting at is all this between my stepfather getting murdered, or soon to be stepfather getting murdered, all these things compounded into the lowest of low self-esteem.

So what started happening was I started lying. I became an amazing liar because I wanted people to like me. When you come from a society like I did, I had zero self-esteem and I fear things. I had zero self-confidence. And I was looking for anything I could. I could gravitate to you. So it was lying. Yeah.

But that's when I realized. And it was a long process that without having self-esteem, you are done. Yeah. That's the number one thing you have to have in your life. What was the moment? Take us to the moment maybe where the process began to change for you mentally. And your head and heart start to align and go, okay, I've got to make some changes. My mom was working three jobs.

She wasn't at home ever. So she didn't know how badly. But my job is a man in the house is this, me and her. That's right. I didn't want to tell her how bad life was for me, how bad I was struggling, how much school I was missing, how far behind in my studies I was. They sent a letter home to her saying, you know, your son has missed like 25% of the year. These are his grades. She never saw one report card. My mom never saw one report card of mine. So my junior year, she got this, she looked at it, and she was going through so much stress in her life. She looked

me said, you're going to fail high school. And that was about the only advice she gave me. She was doing with so many issues mentally. And I sat there and I went to the bathroom and I used to have all these different haircuts and I used to dress all kind of crazy because I was looking for attention because, you know, being one of the only

few black kids in school, I was looking for somewhere to stick. I was like, you know what? I must create a character. And I went in the mirror and I called it the accountability mirror. I went in the mirror as my mom sat me down to bed. and said, you're going to fail. That's the only advice I had. In my principal,

no one had any good advice for me. I was alone. And that's what I talk about the voice in my book a lot. And that voice is God, obviously. But I went to the mirror, the accountability mirror. I looked in and I said, my God, man, you are on your own.

And what are you going to do about it? And that's when I slowly started to change my life. But, you know, it doesn't happen that quickly. No. But I slowly started to change when I was about 17 years old. I went to recruiters office. and the recruiter said, hey, you've taken ASVAB test.

And like I said, I had a fourth grade reading level my junior year. So long story short, I felt that a few times. I had one more chance to take that test. And that's when I really develop my work ethic. And how I learn, still to this day, is I have to get the books in advance and I have to literally get these spiral notebooks and copy down every single thing in that book and put it to, like a photographic memory. Oh, yeah.

And so I will go through and say, okay, page 71. I saw that question. I'll go back through, because I knew I had to written it down like 35 times. And that's how I recall it now. So even to this day, that's how to develop all my work ethic. Wow. So you pass the test. You're 17?

I'm about, yeah, about 18 now. Okay, 18. Yep. You pass the test. Take us through the next season here. So basically now I want to be Air Force Parer rescueman. Right. And so I couldn't even swim.

And in special operations, I didn't even know this. There's only 1% of African Americans in special operations, you know, totality-wise as far as Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Green Berets. And let me ask you this. This is a good one. I want to ask, what led you to this specific area of service? Was it random? Well, my grandfather was in the military for about 37 years.

And I was obsessed with the military growing up, just obsessed with the uniform. And I knew that that was my way out. The military, but I didn't know. you had to actually be intelligent. I thought it was just about push-ups and sit-ups. Sure, sure. So to be a pair of rescue men, they gave you this warning packet.

It's a warning order. And after I passed the Asbab test, they gave me this packet. It was like, okay, like a training packet. Push-ups, sit-ups, flutter kicks, all these different things. The very last page talked about swimming. You know, I figured I'm a pretty good athlete.

Swimming is easy. I'm negative buoyant. So why there's not a lot of African-Americans and special ops? because over 70% of African Americans are negative buoyant, which means they sink. That's right. And it's not due to muscle mass, it's due to bone density. That's right.

So when I went to the pool, I tried to float. That's the first thing you have to do is just learn to float. I sank like a lawn dart. Yeah. I'm at the bottom of the pool, walk in the bottom of the pool. So the lifeguard came over and said, hey, I can help you out. I've taught thousands of people how to swim. He tries to help me out.

I lawn dart at the bottom of pool again. And when I come back up, he says, man, you're screwed. And I was like, why? That's when you started talking to me about negative buoyancy and stuff like that, how hard it is to stay above water. So I put the same work ethic into my learning as I did in the swimming. A few months later, I was swimming. And then I go off to Parake Rescue School. So my whole thing was the military was my way to find self-esteem.

I had to start building on something. And I started building on, you know, education. Then I had to start learning how to find. mental toughness. And this is where I started finding. It was in the military. But once again, whenever life was started getting good for me,

God would throw a nice anchor and stop me right there. So I'm going through prayer rescue training and there's this evolution called water confidence. And water confidence is pretty much what gets people kicked out of special forces and special operations is the water.

And they try to drown you pretty much. This was not in the warning order. So I didn't know anything about water confidence. Long story short, what it is is they put 16 pound weight belts on you, whatever they can do to make you uncomfortable in the water. So for six weeks of a 10-week program, I became very uncomfortable. We got down to about 25, 30 guys left. I was one of them. And getting near graduation of this program, I'm thinking, my God, I'm about to get through this.

Barely, though, water confidence is killing me. Right. They took me to medical. They drew my blood and realized I have sickle cell. Yeah. So sickle cell is a blood disease that's some African-Mexam. Americans have, which is not good. No.

So they took me out training for a week, and when you go from being uncomfortable, that's your lifestyle, you get used to being uncomfortable. When you go back to being comfortable, your mind says, I don't want to go back to being uncomfortable again. That's right. So I was like, I don't want to go back to the water. So my whole mindset was, I want to get out of this training. So I was hoping that they were going to medically disqualify me from Pair Rescue Program.

That didn't happen. A week later, the doc called me in the office and said, hey, guess what, man? We're going to push you back in the training. I was like, okay, well, I missed a week. I got about two and a half weeks left. I can do this. I went back to the CEO, the command officer. He said, hey, guess what?

We're going to start you back from day one. And when he said that to me, my mind went back to the old David Gaghan. So I thought I had changed. Learning, learning how to swim, learn how to read and write. All I was doing was attacking the surface. I wasn't getting down into the dungeon of what was really bothering me. So whenever tough times would happen, any tough time that would, like really tough time that would happen,

I would go back to the sewer of my mind. So this happened, I went back to Lyon. I said, hey, you know what, CEO? This guy, you know, the doc didn't know about sickle cell. He didn't give me a good reason why. He's talking about sudden death, heart attack, stroke. I'm not comfortable. So he gave me a medical from parake rescue.

So he allowed me to leave. But I really quit. I didn't want to go back in the water again. Right. And that's when I went from way to 100. 175 pounds to 297 in about three and a half years. Wow. So I did a job called TACP, controlling fast moves behind enemy lines.

But that job wasn't a job that I wanted. And the spiral of depression of trying to find things that I was comfortable doing. And whenever you find things that you're comfortable doing, you're going away from the journey of life. And I was going so far away from my journey that my weight showed my whole mindset. Yeah. Well, we're going to keep going for it, but I want to stay here for a moment because one of the chapters that I've pulled out to talk about is Chapter 5, the armored mind. Yes, sir. And you talk a lot about negative self-talk. Yeah. And we all have a negative voice. Some of us deal with it more than others. Right. Some of us, we deal with it in different times.

It manifests itself very, very different for all of us. Right here in this story, I want to go right back where you left us. You lie, you get yourself out of that particular service. Right. And then you put on all this weight over three years. Was it the negative voice? How did the negative voice lead you to the weight gain and kind of keep you in the sewer, as you say? So the most important conversation you ever have is the one you have with yourself.

You wake up with it, you walk around with it, eventually you act on it. And my self-talk was most disgusting self-talk of all time. So the sewer of my mind, like I said, you have to go back in there and fix things. Bob us are afraid. Like right now, 20 years ago,

you wouldn't have found me on this show. I was too embarrassed to tell you, I stuttered, I lied, all these different things, getting beat up,

getting bullied, whatever happened. But that's where the true transformation starts to happen. I mean, you can look at people, anybody,

thousands of people, one person, and say, hey, this is who I am, and this is where I have to fix myself. And this is where it really happened.

I thought it happened when I was in, you know, 19, 18 years old trying to pass this military test. It happened here when I was almost 300 pounds spraying for cockroaches, making $1,000 a month. And, you know, people call me dumb.

People, my dad called me so many things and not even funny. Being beat just stripped me of all self-esteem. This is when I realized I was alone on this earth. I have God alone on this earth, and I have to fix everything. So this is where I started to develop. an indestructible mental toolbox.

Okay. So I came home one night after spraying for cockroaches, and literally I was praying at steak and shake, and I would go across the street to 7-11. I had a 45-minute commute home. So I worked from 11 o'clock at night to 7 o'clock in the morning. Okay. I had a 45-minute commute home. And my stop would be, you know, steak and chocolate milkshake, across the street,

7-Ele box of mini-chon chocolate donuts, and I would eat that on the way home. Sure. When I come home, I turn the TV on. I take my shake because the box of donuts were, I mean, they were killed. Oh, yeah. I killed those. Go back to the back, turn the TV on and take a shower. Listen to the TV when I'm taking the shower. This day, I heard these guys on the TV talking about Navy SEAL, toughest, class 224. So I heard stuff about Navy SEALs. You know, these are the baddest of the baddest. So I come out. Now, watching this show while I'm drinking my shake. And when you're watching the show of guys who are putting out there And they're quitting, quitting left and right Just can't handle They're going through Hell Week They show them going through first phase, second phase, third phase And they're dropping like flies

I looked in this one guy's eyes Who was ringing the bell to quit To put his helmet down out of the Navy Steel training And I saw myself And I saw what everybody said I was going to be Which was nothing What I said I was going to be That conversation you have

That's who I was So that's why I lied to people to tell them a different version of the truth. I had to make all those lies reality. I had to make them real. I had to become a real person. So that's what I put in my mind that I'm going to go to the toughest military training

on the planet. Where it has the most water, the thing I was scared of the most, I had to go back. So a lot of us run away from our fears. And we box ourselves in to a lifestyle of this is all we can. can do. I'm afraid of everything outside this box. So I'm comfortable inside this box. I jumped

the box. For the first time I left mentally, I jumped the box and say, hey, I got to come out here and play. Well, what's interesting to me, and I want to talk about this for a second, because you made a real decision. You want to talk about jumping in the fire that night because you're 297 pounds. Right. So there's a lot of hard work that has to be done just to get you ready if you can be ready that's right. To take on the seal training. That's right. So there's a lot of hard work that has to be done. So there's a lot of There was a lot of hard work. I want to point that out to our listeners and our viewers, just to get yourself to a point where you can do what it is you set out to do.

And the funny thing about that, it's not even funny at all. There's a good chance I might not even make it through Navy. So I had to lose 106 pounds in less than three months. Which is insane. Due to my age, due to prior service, due to the program was shutting down that I tried to get into, the special program I was trying to get into. I called up recruiters for two weeks. And every recruiter was like, hey, you know what?

No, no. Of course, yeah. One recruiter named Stephen Saljo, who's in my book, he told me he used to come in. And he gave me a shot. So basically, I had to lose 106 pounds less than three months. And that journey alone was very difficult. The amount of ups and downs, the amount of mornings I would wake up and just look at my shoes. Because my first run was a quarter mile.

It was supposed to be four miles. Right. And I walked home and cried on my couch. Sure. Here's what I want people to hear. Sometimes it, because it is intimidating. You just talked about how intimidating, how difficult the mountain was just to get a chance. Afraid.

Yeah. A terrible fear. Yes. Yet you made a decision. It is as simple as us making a decision, I'm going to do this no matter what. Is that essentially what happened that night in the shower? You know what? It was over a period of time.

That voice became haunting. When I was younger, I could get away from it a little bit. When it becomes something that steady this pecks at you all day long, no matter what you're doing, like if I was talking to you back then, I was 300 pounds. I could be talking to you in this voice at the same time like, what are you doing? What are you doing, man? You're a loser. Where are you going, man?

This is what you could do your whole life. So it would be talking to me as I'm talking to everybody. It was almost like I had two people. And I'm like, good God, just shut up. I want to be comfortable. I want to be left alone. I don't want to face all these things that life gave me. So you got to a point where you were sick and tired of hearing that voice.

I was sick and tired of not facing the fact that I've allowed life to make me feel like a loser. And a lot of us allow life to do that. And we accept it. And a lot of us talk about how we believe in God. We believe in something higher than us. if that is truth, you won't allow yourself to feel that way. That's absolutely right. A lot of people don't understand that.

If you really believe, God did not put you on earth to be nothing. That's right. And the thing that scares me the most is that that 300-pound man is the same person that's sitting in front you today. I could have lived my whole entire life. That's right. My whole entire life, I could have went to heaven being a 297, 350-pound man. man and God, so this I look at it, God would have looked at me

and gave me a chart. I believe that God has a chart of, he knows everything about you. What you could do? How long you're going to live? And he would give me a chart and laid it down in front me when I got to heaven. Seven years old, 350 pound man making $2,000 a month. He would give me a chart. Now, I read this chart

and a chart would have said $195, Navy SEAL, Army Ranger training, Honor Man, you know, all these different things, pull-up records, 4,030 pull-ups, change people's lives. And I'd be like, hey, God, this is not me. It says David Goggins on this chart, but it's not me. My biggest fear in life is that God would have looked at me and said, it was supposed to be. We all leave so much on the table for fear and insecurities and all these

are things. So, and by the way, folks, there's so much good stuff in this armored mind chapter. The whole book is fantastic. But I want you to take us now through, okay, you've got to lose 100 plus pounds just to get where you need to get to be in the seal. So you get there. Right. Now, Hell Week is notorious. I mean, it's unbelievable. Yeah. For the record, you've done it twice. I was in three. You were in three.

Only person in still history to be in three Hell Weeks in one year. That's right. In one year. Did you come out of all three? I came out of two. That's what I thought. Okay. So I came out of two. Which is unbelievable. But I was a 36 African American to ever become a Navy SEAL in over 70 years. Exactly.

So how the whole Hell Week thing happened was, there's only a few classes. Like, they don't allow you to do this anymore. Right. Go through that many Hell Weeks in one year. They say it takes out three to five years of your life. Oh, if you survive it. Yeah, if you survive it.

So my first one, in Hell Week is 130 hours. You might get two hours of sleep. And the whole job of Hell Week is to push a man to your absolute breaking point. To break you. Right. After about 72 hours, maybe a little bit less. Why do they want to break you? They want to break you because that is what they're looking for.

They're looking for a man who can be broken. Yes. And within himself, come back. Put himself back together while being broken more. So this is the whole beauty of this. I'm going to break you. Right. And while you're the most broken you've been in your entire life, your mind is now saying,

I still have almost 100 hours left of training. And I'm the most broken I've been mentally. physically in my life. How am I going to do this? And that's what they're looking for. Now, this is great. I want to pause right here where you left off just there. You've already done so much, David, just to get to that first hell week. Just to make it into the program. Right. Okay. You've transformed your everything, habits, physical, emotional. I mean, you're really, really making some great progress. And then you get there. And they start to break you. Right. I'm just curious. If you can remember.

I remember. Okay. Take us back there. That first hell week of everything you've accomplished, and all the junk back in your life. It wasn't even your fault, but it just was put on you. That negative voice, how did it manifest itself in that first hell week? It was amazing because in the first hell week,

I was still doubting myself. Sure. Because these guys come from the academy, the Naval Academy. These guys come from a lot of them, not all of them, but they come from really good families. They're almost like their dad. Mads were seals, their grandfathers were seals. They come from a lot better.

I mean, I had to earn my way just to get in the Navy, let alone be a seal. And I quit Air Force training, and now I'm going for the best. So my self-esteem, even though I was building it up and I lost weight and stuff like that, I'm now around the most uncommon of uncommon people. Yeah. And I'm like, my God, I'm here. Yeah. Do I belong here?

So your mind has a good way of taking the path of least resistance. Whenever friction happens, friction causes growth. Whenever friction happens, that's why a lot of us don't have any growth, because when friction happens, we go to the opposite direction. So in my mind, when friction happened, my mind said, oh, hey, man, let's get out of here, man. You're a fraud. Yeah, you're not real. You've lied your whole life. You come from this.

You can barely read. Those things, so whenever times got hard, my mind said, you're not good enough. Let's go. Right. So my eyes, my mind weren't connecting. Right. So how do you combat that? So how you combat that is this.

I call it the cookie jar. You have to remind yourself. We all have a story. All of us have gone through very hard times. But when we're in a hard time, our mind has a way of forgetting what all we've overcome. I have a way of taking one second when I want to quit and saying, okay, you endure this. So I look at my life and how I came up as the ultimate training ground versus most people look at it as why. What was me? God, why? Why? I had to flip this upside down and say, hang on a second.

God was training me to be one the baddest men on the planet. This was my journey. So instead of looking at like, oh my God, man, why did I start? Why did my dad beat me for? Why is this? It was to be right where I'm at today. Wow. Do you begin to realize in this moment how mentally strong you are? Yes. Because those things beat me. Sure.

But they didn't kill me. No. And I was able to work around them and figure out ways through it. So when I was in the worst time my life in Hell Week, I looked at everybody and said, I'm the most trained person here. Well, that's the truth. I've gone through more mental torture than any of you can even fathom. Yeah. So I'm looking at the baddest people on the planet.

I'm looking at them like this. You guys can't hold a stick. So I started looking at verses like, I don't belong here, versus like, I might be the best person never come here. Wow. Who could have pulled this off? Who could have been given a sewer to live in in their mind and say, okay, at birth, I'm going to put you in the worst place on the planet Earth. And let me see if you can go to the top of the mountain. Right.

With nothing. Right. But just hard work, grit, and figuring it out and not putting yourself back in the dead. dungeon every time something got hard. So that's what became my daily voice was, you really are the baddest person on the planet. And after a period of time, you start to believe that. And so that's what happened to the, you know, first He'll Week, the second, He'll Week, that became my new norm. Yeah. So what most people fear, I can never go through one. I don't want to go through two. Even Seals would tell you that. So I did 18 months in Navy SEAL training. It's only supposed to be

six months long. It became my new norm. And that's what people don't do enough of. You're always looking for a new norm. My mind started saying getting beat, getting tortured, suffering, broken legs, any issues, this is my new norm. And my mind started changing with the reality of who I want to be. And let me ask you this, because what I'm hearing and what I want our audience to really

grab onto, David, is that past pain, if we go back and we own it and examine it, get healthy to the extent that we can now turn it into, hey, this is preparedness for future pain. That's right. And so when you're in that training, again, all of us, we have no idea. We're just watching movies. But the physical pain is where it starts with the training. Right.

And then that becomes an emotional toil as well, right? It's coming at you from where sometimes it's physical and emotional because of how difficult it is to put up with the pain and not quit. Right. So how do we learn from you and the SEALs to handle our pain? We're in the midst of pain because it hurts. And it hurts physically sometimes, obviously, and then some of us are dealing with emotional pain. What do we do in those moments when we're feeling the most pain and we're going, I cannot go one more second. So this is the thing. A few years ago, the Navy SEALs designed a program called Bud's PrEP program. And my last two years in the military, I did 21 years,

they sent me down to Great Lakes, Chicago. And we were training these guys to get ready to go to Butts, seal training, because a lot of guys weren't getting through. We thought this program would help them get through. So these guys would leave our program studs, push-ups, sit-up, swimming, everything. But the numbers were the exact same. same. So I was scratching my head, like, how to work these guys go through two months

of this before they get the buzz and still quit? And we'll answer your question in a second. No, go for it. I started going back through my mind and realizing one thing. We were building bigger, stronger, faster quitters. Why is that? If you don't work on the one thing, the most powerful weapon in the world is your mind. Yeah. So the answer to your question is this, whether it be physical pain or mental pain, we all have to start from zero with pain. And what that means is, if you don't go back,

we all have something that bothers us. Everybody in this world is insecure about something. That's right. Something in life, whether it be your family, your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your wife, your husband, your kids, something has messed you up. And whenever you're in physical pain,

even though you might not be thinking about that, mental stuff that happened to you. Your mind is thinking about it. All these dungeons that we've created, all these trap doors that our life has created. Most of the time we quit is because we don't have any mental tools to get us through the other side.

So my whole thing for people is you have to examine why are you doing it in the first place? What makes people quit so much in still training and all other special life training is the mind is always comfortable to sit there you watch the Navy SEAL show

Discovery Channel you're in a 72 degree house you have your lemonade your milkshake whatever I can do that Oh sure You're comfortable Although I'll say this

I never say that Well some people do Yeah A lot of folks think You know Because it feels very comfortable In that comfortable environment Oh totally absolutely

The second you get out there In that environment Where it's 40 degrees Like in my third helmet You know we had a guy die of pulmonary edema, died out there in my third hell week. Oh, no. You have to really want whatever you're going for.

If not, all these questions that come up, like you said, how you go one more step further? Your mind's going to ask you all these questions. How can you go one more step further? If you don't have the answers to that, and I can't give them to you. You have to know why am I here. For me, when I was going through still training, I was willing to die. So all these negative questions that kept on coming up in my head, I had the answer for them.

It's those people that don't have the answer for those negative questions. Right. And if you can't answer those questions, you will quit. Right, right. You will quit. That's good. I believe very much in the power of psychology. I really do.

Use a lot of the techniques and principles on my own radio show. And the studies of the brain is so powerful. But while you're not a psychologist, you are somebody who's overcome some tremendous mental battles. And I think we can take something very practical. You have trained your brain as much as you've trained your body. I mean, I'm sitting here looking at you and you probably have 0.0% body fat. But what I'm most impressed with is training the brain. Would you say to those of us that are listening and watching today that every time you would get through a day of hell week or just a day of training, whatever it was, that the mind does almost like a muscle, the voice does change and you can train the negative voice?

the mind, as you know, is not a muscle, but it almost is. It really is. If you stop going to the gym, your muscles will atrophy. If you stop training your brain, the same thing will happen. So I learned to callous over. I did 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours to break the Gensbecker World's records. Your hands become very calloused. Callous is protect your hands.

What I learned to do is through mental hardening is callous my mind. I had a victim's mentality. I learned to callous my mind over the victim's mentality. And you have to be willing to put yourself in very difficult situations at all times to be able to do that. So my big takeaway of life is if you're constantly taking the easy way out, you're never going to callous your mind. I was at MIT. They called a person like me to MIT to speak to some of the biggest head guys on the planet. Oh, yeah.

These guys. Oh, brains. So I was on this panel. And I'll talk about it in my introduction of my book. And all these brainiacs were there. And they called me in. Like you say, I didn't go to college for this. But they're all theorists.

I'm a practitioner. That's why I asked you. Absolutely. That's the difference. And so they're all sitting there. All these great, smart minds from MIT are asking these brilliant guys' questions. I ain't say a word. I'm like, I'm intimidated.

But I know that half of what they're saying is wrong. Because what these theorists did, even though they're very smart, what these theorists did was they took a poll on normal people. And this is what you get. Of course. This is what we cannot do. So theorists love telling you what we cannot do. This is what we can do.

So one person in the crowd asked me a question, why aren't you saying anything? I said pretty much, because I disagree with almost everything up here on this panel because I'm living proof that everything that they're pretty much saying is not true. That's right. Because you were an average person. I was a below. Below, sure. Sure, sure, sure. Below average person.

I was a chameleon living in life who could barely get by. So I know that they were taking the normal mindset of people. They weren't talking about the one percenters. The people who want it like there's no tomorrow.

And so that's what I started realizing was we have theorists and we have practitioners. So what's in my book is from going into the to the dungeon. And when you're in those points where you want to quit and not quitting

and seeing how the mind starts to operate in those moments of fear, anxiety, self-doubt, insecurities. And that's where you learn to fix it. You don't fix it in 72-degree weather. Drinking the milkshake, watching TV, you fix it

by going into the environment. And that's what I want to ask you. You know, I'm sitting here and the audience knows, David, that I put myself on the chopping block a lot because I'm quite comfortable with it. I want them to learn from me, but I'm going to throw something at you. I'm sitting here listening and I'm going, you know what?

A lot of people would say that I'm pretty darn successful, okay? And I've pretty good habits. You know what I mean? Very involved with my wife and family, my three kids, you know, give everything I can at work, really have. I'm living the dream. Honest of goodness. Right. But I'm also sitting here going, I'm not as mentally tough as I need to be.

Now, I have tremendous faith, which is great. My faith is very, very strong. Right. Could be stronger. But I'm also sitting here going, you know what, I can't remember the last time. I did train for the half marathon. That was tough. Did it in three months from the couch to the race.

That was tough. I was proud of myself. But I'm not as mentally tough as I need to be. And so that being the context for this question, when we sit and listen to you share your story, how many of us who are doing well, we're achieving at a high rate, but if we're honest with ourselves, we go, you know what, we could be doing so much more. Right. How do we begin?

What would you say to us if you were a little coach? coaching session. So you coach me up right now. And I'm being serious here. What are you saying to me? Ken, how do I need to be pushing myself? What would you say if I'm hanging with you for a day and I say, all, just rock my world for a minute? Okay. First of all, I'm coaching you, right? Yeah. I mean, straight up right now. I'm, I'm confessing that I don't think I'm as mentally tough as I probably should be. I don't think I'm exercising mental toughness. I am in other areas of my life feel pretty good. But I don't think I'm as mentally tough as I should be. Well, here's your answer. A lot of us like to visit a very uncomfortable world.

Like living with the seal. He visited for 30 days, an uncomfortable world. That's my lifestyle. People ask me, so why do you still do this every day? I'm 43 years old. I did 21 years in the military, now I'm a firefighter. I'm a wildland firefighter. I don't need it.

I'm good. Why do you still do this? You right now are a leader. You sit in this chair right now. to thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. That's why you do it. While you get up at three, four, five, six o'clock in the morning is because you are setting the example for others to follow.

So people always go, what drives you now? What should drive you now is no more you. Like you said, I'm comfortable. I'm good. It's not about you anymore. That's right. You have to change your mindset to God gave you everything you wanted. That's right.

It's pay time. That's right. You got to now start paying bills for the people. That's right. And your mindset, so you're suffering now, like when people say, why do you get up at 6 o'clock in the morning? So then you can come in and set the example for everybody else. And I'm doing that part where I'm saying, do I need to be challenging myself, you know, again, 44, 3 kids' wife, you know, a lot going on? Do I need to be just for personal growth?

Do I need to be doing some challenges that just challenge me mentally and physically? If you're not, I don't care. what age you are. Right. Or where you're at in life. Right. The second you stop doing that. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. And therefore, you stop being back to that leader. Right. Right. At 44, you're 44. 44. And I'm learning in my show. I'm reading. I'm growing like crazy over here. I'm saying, I'm sitting there going, you know what? I can't. I don't suffer. Yes. You're growing in a comfortable world. That's the point. You're allowing yourself to grow. Yeah. In a world that you're world that you are fine growing in. Yes.

There's no real growth there. Yes. Okay, good. Now you're stepping. This is good. Now you're stepping on me. There's no real growth there. That's right.

The real growth is right now, you don't want to, you know where you should go. That's why you're not there. Right. It's that place where you wake up and you're, man, I don't want to do this today. Yes. I'm not challenging myself physically like that. But see, what people don't get, though, the physical is what starts everything. That's right.

It leads to the mental. mental and emotional growth. People have no idea. People have, man, why have you running 205 miles? It's not about that. It's not about being me. Yeah. You have to challenge yourself physically.

That's right. Every single day of your life. I think that's right. And that's where the growth comes from. I think that's right. The growth comes from there. Yeah. A hundred percent.

Yeah. Yeah. Like the physical pain does something for us. It does something for everyone. Yeah. For everyone. It takes the growth in your mental aspect, in your spiritual. Everything growth.

because you start feeling better about yourself. And not many things on the planet make you feel good about yourself like getting after it. Doing something that challenges you mentally and physically every day. I think there's something here. And again, David, I'm putting myself out there.

I think anyone who's listed in this program, if you're not doing something physically on a regular basis, and let's just be honest daily, to make sure that we are constantly expanding our ability, mentally and emotionally, we aren't going to be fully everything that we're supposed to be. And I think that's what I'm convicted by. And I think that's a big takeaway from the book.

Incredible stuff. All right, let's get to the empowerment of failure. Again, it's so, you know, how much of these military minds when they put these seals through this crazy training, it's more than just getting them battle ready. But it's also how to handle something that we all deal with, and that's failure. Would you say that that's the difference between the great soldiers is how they handle it? failure. What makes a person great? And I have to kind of correct you on the, on the military part of it. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Fix it. In my military life, I've gone through almost every special forces unit. Once I realized that I have the ability to be with the best. I was on a hunt

for the best people in the world, the best military people, because that's what I thought it was at. Everybody thinks that's where it's at. One thing I found out about even the best of the best, once they go through the hard part of training and they get through the other side of the crucible, very few, not all, but very few maintain, let's say you're going through still training, buts very few go back there in their mind and train to that level anymore.

So a lot of people's reputations, ranger school, buds, stuff like that, it comes from a six-month program. Gotcha. Once they get through that, no one wants to live that way. Right. That is my lifestyle. Yeah, you live that way.

I live day one, week one of training every day. That's what. I mean an example, by the way. So when you're not out fighting a fire, which is incredibly difficult, you're in Brentwood right now. It's where you're, right, you visit a good bit. You're on the go all the time. So this morning I woke up. Okay.

At 43 years old, retired from the military, went on a 10-mile run. Okay. Got them a 10-mile run, ran straight to the gym, did an hour and a half gym workout. Okay. I'm here right now. After I leave here, I'm going to go home and stretch out for two hours. Okay. You'll stretch for two hours.

I've done this, and that's in my book also, the last chapter I talked about it. I got real sick, long story short, stretching out. It's really helped out my SOAS muscle. Okay. That soaz muscle attaches to your T-12. There's a lot of nerve innings going through there. What's the SOAS muscle? Where is that?

It's your hip flexors. Oh. So all of us who sit down like I'm sitting down right now, whenever you're in that fighter flight mode, let's say you're driving your car and the car's coming to hit you. You get that tense. So my childhood all the way up till now, it's been just squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

So about six years ago, I got the point where I couldn't get out bed. The docs couldn't figure anything out. Nothing out with me. And I had this huge lump on the back of my head from my spine being compressed. I had these huge lumps on my hip flexion muscles, you know, a so-as area.

And it's the only muscle that attaches your lower body to your upper body. Okay. And I just slowly started stretching out. I said, I'm going to probably die. The doc's going to figure it out. I was slowly dying. It was literally collapsing.

Like there was no blood flow to organs of my body from all the stress in my entire life. Started stretching out. I was in all these medications. Six years later, no meds. I'm on one medication. Really? And I was on about 17, 18 medications. Wow.

So the two hours of stretching continues to help the body. The mind also. So that's... Because you're quiet, nothing else going on. That's right. But what happens is when you're so-as, it's so tight, it sends all these different hormones to your mind making you extremely stressed. And so by stretching out, it releases that muscle.

So when that is tight, even you can be relaxed. That muscle being tight is tricking your mind saying, we're in a stressful situation. Interesting. Firing you up, firing your mind up. Would you tell people who struggle with anxiety to give that a shot? people who are having any kind of surgery on their knees, hips, back, neck, shoulders, if you don't have full range of motion, and I'm telling you right now, I have so much I can talk

about with this, you need to first of all get full range of motion before that somebody cut on you. If you're dealing with anxiety, any kind of issues like that, a lot of it has to do with your muscles in your body being tight. I couldn't sit down here for a minute with you six years ago. I had trouble sleeping for seven, eight years. I'm talking about sleeping for two hours a night. Wow. Was it? Because all this adrenaline going to my body.

And when you start in this hip? Because you don't know how many people are dealing with anxiety? Tons. I mean, they're on medication. 100%. And what you're saying is you start with those hip flexors. You start with your quads. Quads.

Because your quads are so big, they get so tight. Okay. And once they get tight, they start pulling on everything else. Okay. So open your quads up first. At least that's what I did. And then work on those hips. You've got to open those hips up.

You have to open up that hip flexion muscle. and then you want to release that back. Because I'll have back problems. A lot of times it's just that SOAS muscle literally just pulling. Yes, pulling the back muscles down. Wow. Unbelievable. There's so much.

I figured this out literally by saying I can't run. I can't go to the gym. I'm sitting here dying. I'm real tight. Just let me start stretching. So I shave my head almost every day. As I was shaving my head, I started realizing this bump was going down. Interesting.

And the more the bump went down the back of my head, and on my hip flexors, the more I started feeling better. I go, there can't be a correlation here. There was a hundred percent correlation. Now, this isn't any doctor. Yeah, no. No doctor. This is all me.

Sure, sure. I don't know if it's true or not. I know for me, it changed my entire life. Wow. Well, it's very interesting. The little nugget there for you leaders out there. This is a little physical nugget. Good stuff there.

Well, let's talk about failure. You have a chapter 10. It's entitled The Empowerment of Failure. You know, we've got men and women that are listening here that, again, they're entrepreneurs. or they're leading in business or maybe they're young and they just want to make the most of their lives. And, you know, you and I have been blessed to be around some great people who've really taught both of us that failure is actually a prescription for success. You know, my good friend and mentor John Maxwell wrote a book called Failing Forward.

Right. Years later, re-titled it. Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. Right. I just want you to encourage our audience on how they need to embrace failure. Well, what's funny about failures, we're afraid to fail a lot of times because we're afraid to get those people

telling us that we're not good. That's right. That we shouldn't try again. This is how I look at it. First of all, those people are going to be there. And 99.9% of those people who are in your ear after you fail haven't even tried what you're attempting to do.

That's first of all, but they have a voice. So that voice needs to be, you know, we're done. You don't even talk to me anymore. Like, when I felt the pull-up record, I was going for 4,020 pull-ups. And I felt it twice before I finally got it the third time. I had so many people telling me, you can't do it. And I was like, how many pull-ups have you done in your life? So that's the first thing.

Look at who's talking to you negatively first. And failure is the only way to grow. The only way to grow for me. Everything I've ever succeeded in, three hell weeks. You know, everything, Ranger School. everything ever failed, I felt miserably so many times. But what you do with that failure is you go back, you learn from it. And not just learn from it, I call it the live autopsy.

When you get all this stuff, you get a scratch piece of paper and you start writing down, don't even acknowledge the fact that you failed. You're looking at it almost like the daggone light bulb. Like, okay, this went wrong, that went wrong, that went wrong, that was wrong. And then you go back into it. All failure is is a tool for success. It shows you how to get there if you're willing to stay in the fight. That's the hard part, though.

After failure, all these voices start to say, no, we're not good enough, we're not good enough, we're not good enough. No, we haven't tried enough. And that is so true. We just haven't tried enough. But, yeah, without failure, I wouldn't be who I'm the day. Before I let you go, I wanted to close with this because we opened with the tragedy from your father. who, I love how you said it. He was a hurting, hurting man.

Yes. Who hurt you, hurt your brother, hurt your mom, probably countless other people. I want to talk about another F word, and that's forgiveness. Curious, if your dad's alive, is there forgiveness there, your forgiveness for others who did so many harmful things to you, maybe people that you've never been able to forgive in person. People that use racial slurs, called you dumb, called you fat, whatever. Just curious, a tough man like you who's. to overcome so much. How has forgiveness played in it? So when I was 22 years old before I went to

the Navy Seals and I was almost 300 pounds, I saw my dad through an eight-year-old's eyes. I saw him drag my mom down the stairs by her hair after he knocked her unconscious. I saw him beat me so bad, me and my brother was so bad that we couldn't go to school because mom I had to write a letter excusing us from class. So at 22 years old, I went back to see this man. He's now dead. And I went back to see Was he as bad as I thought he was? Because now I'm an adult. And I went back and he was.

Same guy. Same evil man. So talking about forgiveness. When I learned about people who bullied me, my dad, so many other people out there, forgiveness is important, but how you're able to forgive people is not you can just walk in and say,

hey, I forgive you, man. We're good. No, these people did damage on you. It's not, that easy. No matter of God's in your life or not. How I do it is this. You have to go in and examine the person that hurt you. Take yourself out of it. Whatever they did that you take yourself out of it. I had to look at my dad through a mature man's eyes and say, okay, what causes a human being to be this way? What makes a man beat someone like he beat me, my mom, my brother like

that for no reason. We're causing so much hate. And I started to study him. And I started realizing he had a lot of issues. The people who made fun of me, you look at them, you look at where they live, where they came from, their childhood, their upbringing, their mom, their dad. Everything comes from a source. So you got to take a different vantage point in life before you forgive. All the evil in the world, it comes from something. So that's what I was saying. able to do. I was able to go back, look at my father, and realize to make a man this evil and have this much hate, it came from something and it did. It came from how he came up. And that's what makes it easier to forgive. That a lot of times it's not you. They don't hate you. No.

They hate themselves. Absolutely. They don't hate you. That's right. So when you realize that that all these different things, they're like, I didn't anything to anybody, a lot of times they have so much hate just for being born, that they have to find something to put that hate on. And maybe the color of your skin, maybe because you're just their son or their daughter or whatever, and they're just mad. And that's how I was able to forgive. Wow. Everything and everybody. Well, folks, he is David Goggins. The new book is Can't Hurt Me, Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds. And folks, if you know his story and you've

actually listened to the man today, you know that he's done both. He has mastered his mind, and he certainly has defied the odds. This is great stuff. So proud to be able to sit with you today and to be challenged personally and professionally. I know our audience is much better for it. David Guggins, thanks for being with us. Appreciate it. Thank you so much, man. Thank you. All right, David's book again is Can't Hurt Me, Master Your Mind and Defy the Ods. This is an absolute must-read book. If you know someone or if you are going through a really tough time and you feel like maybe there's not a light at the end of the tunnel, and you don't have the mental and emotional capacity to keep pushing through. I think you need to read this book. You can get it

wherever books are sold. We also have a link in this episode's show notes. All right, at the top of the program, I told you we'd have some bonus content for you. The Power of Intentionality, one of the best talks that our founder, Radio icon, and Hall of Famer Dave Ramsey has ever taught on. This is almost an hour long, and this is from an actual Entree Leadership One Day, State. in Phoenix just this past November. This is a powerful talk. And you've already heard some great stuff from David Gagins about what it takes to get yourself in a place of transformation.

And so Dave's going to give you some practical steps to begin transforming your life and your business. Watch it right now by going to the link in this episode's show notes. All right, that's going to do it on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman Show.

According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to. do and then we'll help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes.

Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman in iTunes or go to Ken Colemanshow.com.