Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Navy SEAL & Endurance Athlete David Goggins on Being the Hardest Human Alive

Episode Date: February 15, 2017

This conversation is with David Goggins. It's real. This podcast is not for kids -- it's for adults -- who want to understand toughness and authenticity. David is clear. Very clear. He lives in true alignment. He's figured out who he is -- and he lives accordingly. Period. The odds were stacked against David ever making anything of himself. He grew up in an abusive household, barely graduated high school, and struggled with serious health issues, to name just a few of the challenges David had to overcome. In spite of all of these obstacles, David never had a “woe is me” mentality. David is the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces to complete SEAL training (including two Hell Weeks), the U.S. Army Ranger School (where he graduated as Enlisted Honor Man) and Air Force tactical air controller training. David has completed multiple ultra-marathons, triathlons, ultra-triathlons, bike races and arduous mountain ascents, setting new course records and regularly placing in the top five. His achievements made him the subject of a lead feature in Runner’s World, where he was named “Running Hero”, and Outside Magazine named him “The Fittest (Real) Man in America.” The Navy SEALs even asked him to be their poster-boy and appear in a recruiting commercial._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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or you stand for nothing. So when you're in that situation, it's hard for you to lie because you can't lie because you know now you got to hold yourself to a higher standard than anybody else will. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to better understand what they crave, what they're hungry for, their unique philosophical framework of how they understand

how the world works, how they understand how they work, how people work, how their craft works. And we also want to understand the unique mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft. It's not that we want to do what they do. It's that we want to understand what they're searching for and the mechanical ways that they've gone about creating the path to lead them closer to it and the artistic ways that they figured out the nuances, especially on the path that's been less traveled. And in this conversation, it's with David Goggins. If you don't know who he is, you will at the end of this conversation. He is very clear.

It's real. This podcast is not for kids. It's for adults who want to understand toughness and authenticity. David is clear, very clear. and he lives in true alignment. It's a rare thing. He's figured out exactly who he is, and then he lives according to it, period. Just flat out clear. With that very brief introduction, let's jump right into this conversation with David Goggins. David Goggins, how are you doing?

Doing good, man. How about yourself? I'm doing fantastic. So this is going to be a blast. I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you. You've influenced the Seattle Seahawks in a really cool way. So I want to celebrate what some of that has been, and then, uh, I want to learn. So I'm looking forward to jumping right in with you. Great. Look forward to it. Yeah.

Cool. Okay. So let's start, let's start with Seahawks. Like how did, how did you get connected? Cause, um, I don't think I know that part of the story. Well, it's kind of crazy how that happened. You know, Pete Carroll is the kind of guy that is, how to – he's trying to find how to inspire his guys. And he actually – you know, he found me, man.

I was in San Diego, and when Pete was with USC, he actually went down to visit the Navy SEALs and walk around. And I was out there, and some guys were saying, hey, this is David Goggins. This is what he's done and you know that was a couple years before he went over to seattle and next thing i know a couple years later when he's you know with seattle he's giving me a call i'm like who the hell is this and it's uh you know pete carroll's like hey dude i i've done research on you i met you that time you know in San Diego, and I think your story is amazing. I want you to come talk to our guys. I was like, well, shit. Okay, let's do it.

That's so good because, as you know, Pete is always looking for a competitive advantage and ways to amplify and celebrate what it takes to go the distance. And you understand it now. And so guys respond to you in a really cool way. So before we get into what you've done from a SEAL's perspective, from a special operator's perspective, from how you've led from that point of view, I want to start first with what was it like when you were growing up? Only child? Did you have, like, what was that environment like, both family and environmental? Well, that was actually the, that's what started David Goggins.

Well, that's what started Goggins. You know, David Goggins was the kid that was bullied, that had an abusive father, that didn't go to school at all because his dad believed in his family just working the skating rink in the bar. David Goggins is a guy that his soon-to-be stepfather got murdered. David Goggins is a guy that got called nigger all growing up when he moved from Buffalo, New York. David Goggins had a hard way growing up and he had to change it to Goggins. So when you talk about it now, like right in this moment, what is the emotion or the energy or what is the thing that's happening inside you when you talk about just a really tough young age? Well, I started becoming real passionate, and people get confused when I talk. That's why I like talking to the Seahawks passionate and people get confused when I talk. That's why I like

talking to the Seahawks. Some people get confused when I talk. That's why I have two speeches when I talk to people. One speech is very toned down, but how I feel when I talk about it is very passionate because I'm reliving what the hell I had to go through to become successful because you gain mental toughness or you gain like self-esteem from the age of six to the age of 12 in that time in my life i was getting beat up mentally physically emotionally spiritually i literally had nothing and i'm imagining i'm talking about i'm imagining that the hardcore fucking journey that i had to go through to become a successful human being. So right now, me talking to you, my armpits are sweating and my house is like 68 degrees because I'm actually

reliving what it took for me to become successful and how I had to stop feeling sorry for myself and get in the fight and stay in the fight and how hard it was to maintain fighting. Okay. So when you were young, you got the short end of the stick. Probably at that age is what it felt like, but now you're using it. And it sounds like, I don't want to use the word traumatic, but it's heavy to go back to even talk about it, which is what you do for a living. Is that right? Yeah, that's what I do for a living. And it's actually not heavy going back to it.

I actually love, now that I look back on it, I had to change my whole thought process to become successful. So looking back on it, that's what gives me the passion and joy that I have for my life now. Okay. Okay. So you don't – you're not like – you don't try to in some kind of way avoid and not feel what you felt. You embrace all of it in such a way that when you get to the truth of the way that you were raised and the heavy stuff that you did go through, you feel it now, but it doesn't stop you. It fuels you.

Is that? Yes, exactly. That's it. Okay. Yes. How do you do that? Because so many, so many people, when they think about the past heaviness and the real trauma and the real scary stuff that they've been through, that they avoid it. That they lock it up, they put it in a cave, and they never go into that cave again.

And then they tap dance around the entrance of the cave thinking like everything's okay. And it's not. They don't have the ability to go into the cave to face that stuff in there so that they can be free. So how did you do it? Well, basically, I had to flip it all over. I had to flip it upside down because I saw I was going nowhere. I was blaming everybody for how I came up. And by me being afraid to attack it, I became a victim of people deciding, like, I believe that we're all artists. I believe God, or whatever you believe in, he makes you an artist. And what your fucking job is to do in

this world is to paint your own damn masterpiece. And the key word there is your own masterpiece. So other people in my life, the people who are calling me nigger, the people who all about my dad, who was everybody who was against me, I thought in my head, they were trying to paint my masterpiece. And my masterpiece in their eyes was exactly what they were saying. I was this person. I was that person. I was dumb. I was fat.

I was a nigger. I became that masterpiece to them. So I realized instead of me feeling sorry for myself, I had to say to myself, the only person that's going to control your destiny is you. And what you have to do is change the way you think and how you start thinking. Instead of being a victim, you need to say, well, thank you, God, for giving me this piece of shit life. Because now what I'm going to do, I'm going to turn it upside down and I'm going to destroy it. So I had to welcome the challenge to be great. And the challenge to be great was hard for me, but that's what I needed that.

So instead of looking at my life as, oh, my God, I'm this, I'm that. I graduated 213, not 214. I graduated in class, and there's only three black kids in this whole school. The KKK marched in our Fourth of July parade in 1995. What was me? I took that and said, now, if I can become the hardest man God ever created coming from this shit, that will mean something. I will become relevant in my own mind. And that's what I did. I just changed the way I thought. Okay. Take me back. Was there a moment or was there an event that took place? And I don't want you to make anything up, but was there a moment

where you remember like, I'm done with this and you made a fundamental decision? It was funny, man. There's several moments because as a human being, you always go back to wanting to feel sorry for yourself. So I will give you one moment that was a life-changing moment for me. So I grew up in this small town and like I said, there was,000 people in it and I came from Buffalo New York but then my mom left my dad long story short I ended up in a small town called Brazil Niana and I got my brand new car I paid for it it cost 1500 bucks um cutting grass stuff like that and I drove it to school and they spray painted nigger we're gonna kill you on the side of it and um and in my in my textbooks they they had that in my textbooks and they had it they had a noose in my locker they did damage to me and one day i went to my spanish class and i got my notebook and on the

front of it it said we're gonna kill you nigger and And I left class and went down to my principal and I said, Principal Freeman, what are we going to do about this? Okay, hold on real quick. So what was your response to that? What was your emotional response to that first? Well, internally, you feel horrible. What does that mean? What is horrible for you? What is horrible for me is it's lonely okay it's low you you feel very lonely because you know that you know my mom was

working several jobs and you know me and my dad had no relationship i didn't have anybody to go to to say hey help me in this situation my mom was she she did the best she could she was a single mom and she worked her ass off and um but my life was i had to raise myself you know coming up a lot and so when i went down to the principal's office and said this is what happened to me this was going on he looked at the book the notebook he said well they spelled nigger niger and he said and that's all he could say you know so it was a reality check for me that there's not a single motherfucker on this planet that is going to help david goggins besides david got so okay so he didn't get you and he wasn't giving you a gift

i just misread i think what you said because he didn't give you a gift like listen they're stupid he he was almost like he missed you he didn't understand what it was like to be you. And that's when you had this moment, right? That said, okay, I see how this is. Right. Okay. So, you know, once I saw that, once I heard, I mean, this has been going on for several years and it just got to that point where, you know, you, you feel so small, you feel so belittled, you don't want to go to school because you know, you're, you're, you're tired of being called names. And, and then you start to, you know, act like, you know, you start sagging, you know, you're, you're tired of being called names and and then you start to you know act like you know you start sagging you know you you're trying to find your way so you're trying to blend in with people you're trying to act like they act and act like this this this people act

you know you're trying to act all different and i just realized hey man i gotta see who the hell david goggins is and that's when i went on the David Goggins journey. And it was a tough one. And then, okay, so that was kind of the moment, if you will, right? Where you said, okay, I've got to figure out me because everyone else is being cruel and not getting it. So it's up to me. Right. Okay. And then if you went into that moment, was there, was it like, and I know you said there was many moments, but if we can use this one as a way to kind of capture, because you could have had one, two, three, four different options. You could have been, you could have just

gone to rage. You could have swung on the principle. You could have just sat there and cried in whatever kind of way you could have been numb. So you could have gone a lot of different ways, right? Right. So can you go back to what that was like at the moment when you made the decision or the choice to say, okay, I got to take care of me? Actually, it was a moment of relief. Oh. of relief. It was a moment of relief because when I finally realized that I have to figure out who I am, I could stop pretending and lying to myself and lying to everybody about who I thought I was and who I wanted to be and who I wanted to fit in with. And I wanted to be, you know, I went to

Indianapolis, Indiana for a short time before my soon to be stepdad got murdered. And so I wanted to be a cool black kid that sagged his pants and learn all the daggone lingo. And then when I moved with all these white kids, I wanted to, you know, act like they acted. And I was just lost because no one accepted who I was.

And I didn't accept who I was. And that's when I realized, you know, it was freeing for me to say, you know what? Fuck everybody. Nobody likes me anyway. I'm just going to be the hardest guy

God ever created. I'm going to set this journey out to be me. And wherever that ends up, that's where it ends up. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn Sales Navigator can come in. It's a tool designed specifically for thoughtful sales professionals, helping you find the right people that are ready to engage, track key account changes, and connect with key decision makers more effectively.

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Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars.

And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them.

One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart,

you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life. When you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David D A V I D protein P R O T E I N.com slash finding mastery. Okay. And then, and then why hard? Why was that the virtue that you care so much about? I care so much about it because growing up, I honestly believed I was the softest human being that God ever created because I was beat down mentally. I had zero self-esteem. I faked everything.

People probably thought, oh my God, this guy, he's kind of cool. No, everything was an act, and, he's kind of cool. No. Everything was an act. And you can lie to yourself all day long. You can lie to people. I mean, you can't lie to yourself. Because every morning at 16 years old, I started shaving my head. And I look in that dirty mirror and all I saw was a liar.

And I saw a weak human being. And all I wanted to do was change the reflection in that fucking mirror okay so and you couldn't you didn't know how you didn't know I didn't have the courage okay so okay so how how how can you pass on that gift right now to other people by me just asking the question like how did you or I could ask another way how do you have the courage to change honestly it's it's it's a good question you're asking and it's a lot of answers to it but the biggest answer is you have to find out what you truly want in life you have to realize that you have to believe in something whether it's god yourself you have to believe in something that

that you want to be better that you have control of your life and if you work your ass off it's God, yourself, you have to believe in something that you want to be better, that you have control of your life. And if you work your ass off, it's kind of like if you're chipping at a stone and that stone is going to give away. After a while, it's going to start breaking away. And basically, I looked at that as my life. Like I'm going to continue. I will fail. I don't care about failing. I don't care about anything.

I will succeed. Okay. Did you – failing. I don't care about anything. I will succeed. Right. So, so much. And I, the way that I think about, you know, your energy and people that, that respond, I respond the same way too, is that their spirit is animated, right? Their spirit is not, it's just an animated spirit, which, you know, call it the Holy Spirit, whatever you want. This animation of the spirit is phenomenal and you can't help to feel your energy. Did you set out that that was also going to be part of it? Or was that an extension that came after you figured out how to be hard? No, I actually, I'm a very spiritual guy. I believe in God. I don't go to church or anything like that. But what I do is I believe that there's something much higher than David Goggins. And I started searching for every bit of strength I could. And it wasn't like, so I don't sit at home and say, hey, God, bless me at this, bless me at that. All my prayer is, is give me the strength to overcome what I have to overcome. And basically what it's about is having a belief system that you believe that you can do anything you can, but it's going to take you failing. I mean, I never blamed God or anybody for my misfortunes.

I never did. I may have felt sorry for myself. I didn't say, oh, man, why me? Why this? Why that? I always knew in my mind that I was put here on this earth for a journey. And this is obviously part of my journey. But I have to beat this fucker.

I have to beat this fucker. The only way I'm going to beat it is with the drive and passion and the desire to go through anything in front of me. And if I get knocked down a million times, I continue to get up. Feel sorry for yourself for a second. But God, I'm going to win. I will win this journey. It's not about winning a race or becoming a SEAL or becoming a Ranger. It's the fucking journey that everybody has that a lot of people are scared to even start because, you know, like for me, I was scared to be a SEAL.

People don't know that. I didn't want to jump out of a fucking airplane and shit, but I didn't want to live the fact knowing I was scared to be great. And it takes overcoming all that. There's so much that goes involved with being great and to being a master of your own self that it takes a long – but it takes courage. It takes courage to not care what people think about you and what you say when you do fail yep that's exactly so i think that you know that one courage can be developed okay and for sure and the way that you develop courage is putting yourself in challenging situations and choosing to act nobly right so doing the thing that is difficult to do for a greater cause that's how you build courage exactly and but what's at risk are two things, failure.

And the second part of the failure is when somebody's identity is wrapped up with what they do, failure becomes life-threatening, the perception of life-threatening, which is, as you know, because you faced it down so many times, is a trap. Like that's a massive, massive trap. Okay. So you want to be the best in the world, the hardest, or you want to be like you want to be rock solid within yourself? Like are you trying to be the best or your best? I'm trying to be my best. So when I say I want to be the hardest person in the world, that's what got me off the couch. That was – so am I that? I don't care. I really don't care.

That's what, so the, the best conversation you're going to have in your entire fucking life is the one you have with yourself. So when I'm talking to myself and I'm down, I'm telling myself everything I need to hear everything I don't need to hear. I'm telling myself the daggone truth. So how I became who I am today is because I looked at myself in the mirror and said, hey, you're acting this way. You're not real smart. You're this, you're that. I gave myself who I was and who I was was not a pretty picture, but I had to admit who I wasn't. Did you write it down or how did you make it something other than a story? Nothing wrong with the story, but what did you do with down or how did you make it something other than a story?

Nothing wrong with a story, but what did you do with that? How did you have that conversation? Well, it was every morning. Like I said, when I wake up to shave my head, I would reflect on the day before. What did I do to stop lying? You have to tell yourself that you are lying. To stop cheating on every daggone test you took. I look at myself in

the mirror and say, okay, today I got to change this because yesterday you did this. I call it the accountability mirror. I held, I started holding myself accountable for every daggone thing I was either afraid of or I lied about or I cheated on or whatever. I started holding myself accountable because I had to, I had to develop a core value of myself. It's not about anything else. It was about my own core value. I had to believe in something. I had to believe in myself.

And you can't believe in yourself if you're a piece of shit. So, you know, if there's nothing substantial inside your heart and your soul, if there's nothing there, you mean nothing. Okay. You mean nothing. Was that – if you're looking back now, was that that you were a piece of shit or that you were speaking to yourself based on the way that others told you you should speak to yourself as if you were a piece of shit like was there was your center rotten or were you were you just focusing on the things that were flawed based on the way society thought you should think i think it there's you know it's it's kind of both of them can go for me i started believing what they were saying but i gave myself an excuse to be that you know because my dad was this, this was that. People don't like me. I'm not real smart. I didn't go to school. I have ADD. I stutter so bad I can't even talk to people.

I had so many freaking issues. And, you know, people said it. I said it. But a lot of it was the truth. It was just the truth. But what happened was growing up, I developed this because my life was bad. So I'm not putting it on people. I had to change the fact that I didn't grow up great. I had to stop blaming my family and stop blaming the kids and stop blaming other people for my fucked up life because they're not going to change it. They helped make it fucked up. Now I got to fix it.

And that's kind of – so it was a double-edged sword. So there's, okay. I fully hear you on that. There's this thing that, that I think I'm really clear about as well, is that there's a couple steps in, in this process that you're talking about for transformation. And it first begins with a decision. And until you make that fundamental decision and you, each person has to make their own decision about who they are and where they're going. But until you make that decision decision we're constantly looking for shortcuts and hacks and until you make the fundamental decision is where um we just were along for the ride as opposed to dictating co-dictating our experience in this life and so your decision was that you're going to be the hardest man alive right and that And that was my decision. And, and, um, yes. And, but basically I chose a very hard path to, to, to, to, to create that.

Okay. Let's get to that. But first let's talk about what is the definition or characteristics or what is the essence of being hard? If we, if you can help me understand that. There's a, you know, once again, there's a lot for that, but, but for me, it's to, to face yourself, to, to, to face fear. So everything I did in my life up to date, I was not designed to do. So I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I hate jumping on planes. I hate shooting guns. I hate everything that Navy SEALs. I was, I went to ranger school, air force, Ops, all this running 100 miles, 200 miles. Everything in my resume, I did not want to do. So everybody asks me, how do you develop mental toughness? How you develop mental toughness is becoming hard. How you become hard is doing shit that you don't want to do. So most people live in this nice, comfortable place

that makes them feel really good. The temperature in the house is 72 degrees. They got a refrigerator full of food, their car, everything is great. Everything is great. And they always ask, how do I become hard? You sure as fuck don't become hard by living that way. And you have to take yourself out of your comfort zone and bury yourself in something that makes you feel so horrible that you have to see how your mind's thinking in that horrible situation and overcome it while you're in shit. That's what makes a human being hard. Yeah, that's a 1000%., I've got to push on this a little. 1,000%.

I'm not questioning anything you just said because that's the moment of test. And hopefully you get 1,000 tests a day, right? If you're on this clip to want to be a great human being, we need lots of tests. But our humanness, our brain brain our body is designed to find the path of least resistance it's to find the efficient you know path rather than the hard path and so people that can do difficult things that's a real significant skill to be able to say I can do difficult things and it fundamentally changes your physiology when you take the next step into any

environment that you want to go into and and so, but I want to push on one thing for you, which is the word resilient. So hard for you is about doing difficult stuff and like being able to understand how your mind works when you're in the middle of the shit. Resiliency, I want to learn from you how you think about it, which is bending, which is flowing, which is adjusting is adjusting which is sticking with it but not necessarily driving your head through the brick wall but figuring out how to go around it sometimes so how how do you think about resiliency that concept well i always say something and one thing i say is that every wall most walls have doors and sometimes you gotta find the door so yeah you know you know being resilient is another word that i am okay you have to be very resilient in life yeah okay and the only way to build

resiliency as well is doing difficult things exactly yeah and sticking with it if you can't do a difficult thing and pull the eject button and think that you're going to be hard and or resilient well there's something that everybody people love saying this right here well it wasn't well maybe it just wasn't meant to be and And if I had that mindset, I would still be 300 pounds spraying for cockroaches at EcoLab. Wow. You were that heavy? I was 300 pounds twice in my life. Because you fundamentally changed your entire composition. I changed my whole life. I changed everything about me. Yeah. Okay. So like just for an image, for people that haven't seen your image, can you give a height, weight? What does that look like now? Not that that matters. Like it doesn't matter. Like 300, 500, it doesn't matter. But you fundamentally changed the way you thought and that behaved and it also changed your physiology. So height, weight, what does that look like for you well i was six one

300 and like 300 pounds and now i'm about i'm six one 180 and then i don't know what six percent body fat it's something ridiculous yeah if that if that okay so are you happy and a lot of people asking that question if if you were to hear my whole story, how can one not be happy? Yeah, I'm extremely happy. Okay. And do you have peace? Can you be hard and have peace? I just found peace here recently because I always was go, go, go, go, go. And the only way you can find peace in your life, because I was always like, it's not enough.

It's not enough. It's not enough. You have to find time to reflect on all the shit you've done in your life. I was always like, it's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. You have to find time to reflect on all the shit you've done in your life. I never took time to reflect on all I had accomplished. Just since I retired from the military, you have a lot of time to sit back and say, wow, man, I made something out of nothing. You get a chance to reflect and the peace that comes over you is truly amazing. Okay. And is that a daily process for you, to find those moments of reflection to settle in to now?

Or is that kind of haphazardly, when I have the time to reflect, I do feel a sense of peace and content? Oh, no. It's there 24-7 now. That's what I was looking for my whole life. I finally have it. Yeah, because that's what I was trying to sort out. Because you were go, go, go to become someone. And then the truth is, though, that you just wanted to be you 24-7.

I wanted to be happy with David Goggins. And to be happy with David Goggins, you have to do something to be happy about, to be proud of. So I had to do all that stuff that I've done so I can sit back at 41 years old and say, now I'm proud of myself. Some people don't need to do all that. Some people need to do a fraction of that. Some people need to do nothing. I believe that you're not doing enough. If you're just happy and content with having a life where you go do your job and do this and do that,

and you have nothing to look back on and say, wow, I overcame a lot of things. I think you're really cutting yourself short. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life.

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Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. So what has been your greatest adventure so far of all the things you've done? Maybe you could give us kind of a list of some of these. You ran over it, but they're phenomenal. 200 miles, whatever, whatever. What has been your greatest adventure?

Well, if you want a small list, I'm one of the only people in the history of the military who's gone through Air Force, Special Ops, Army, Ranger School, Honor Man at Honor Ranger School. I've been in three hell weeks. I completed two of them in one year. I went from that. I've done every military school on demand from Free Fall School to everything else. I've run 205 miles at one time. I did eight consecutive 100-mile races and eight consecutive weekends.

I ran over 7,000 miles 2007. I had the Ginsberg of Rutgers for their most pull-ups in 24 hours with 4,030 in 17 hours. But with all that being said, I've done a lot of things. And it was just the whole journey. So it was a journey that everything I said I did, I truly did not want to do. I did it because I wanted to better myself. I didn't want to sit back and say, you know, I'm happy with where I'm at.

I want it to be great. I want it to be great. And that's what I did when did that transition happen for when the young punk that's going for it to see if he is okay, if I could just do this XX miler, I'll be okay I'll be great, and when did you go from that to being able to say, wow, hold on now

and tell me if I'm wrong I don't know if you need to do an XX miler again to demonstrate that you are a man. And so a man that you are in love with, or love, I should say. So when did that shift happen? Because I think if we can unlock this, we're going to speak to 99.9% of the world is that I need to achieve or do to be okay. And maybe 99 is too big, but it is too big. But there's so many of us that are caught in the rat race of needing to achieve to feel okay. It's like selling now, the stress of now for one day later, retirement or vacation or happiness.

Well, it's a good question. And for me, it started flipping for me versus I wanted to achieve so much to feel better about myself. But what happened was once I realized that what God had given me to start with was so piss poor, but I actually started loving the fact that I had nothing to start with. I started flipping my mind that way. But as I the fact that I had nothing to start with. I started flipping my mind that way, but as I started realizing that you need nothing but the breath in your fucking lungs to become great. Once I realized that, once I started pushing myself to different limits and realized, shit, it just takes you fucking changing your mind and how you

think about situations and how you think about, let's say you have a deck of cards and you're playing war and you have a bunch of twos, threes, fours, fives and one ten. If you put down a five, I put down a five and we go to war. I may take your fucking aces and I'm back in the game. It's all about how you look at life. And when I started realizing that life became more to me than I wanted to become this to make myself feel better, it became I'm on a fucking journey now. I'm about to see what a human being, that human being being David Goggins, what the fuck can I do? What can I achieve? How great can I become? How far can I go? What are the limits of God? Do I have limits? So I took the whole, you know, I want to feel good about myself. And after I realized that shit was just breath and a healthy heart and just a mind that's willing to change your circumstance and believe that you're great. I took all that shit and realized, okay, I feel good about myself.

Now let's go conquer the fucking world. Okay, so how do you do just that? How do you fundamentally change your belief system or install a belief system that you are great? How do you do that? Do you need evidence outside of you or is it for you? Is it making that fundamental decision? It's a fundamental decision, but a lot of this stuff is just words. Like, you know, you can say all these creeds and all this crap, you know, hey, to be hard. I mean, you know, everybody can go online and read all these creeds and what dedication means.

And I can say, you know, I mean, just look at different things, different sayings. Everybody gets so unmotivated. They weren't words to me. So I can tell you right now it's a fundamental change, but it's much deeper than that. I mean, you know, like people don't know how to do it because people don't truly want to do it. That's why people say, hey, how did you do this and how did you lose 100 pounds in 60 days? Well, you know, you're asking me how you're erasing your fucking time. Like when I sat back and said, I wanted to have to be a true

want. It can't be like, well, how, well, you're asking too many fucking questions already. You have to be so fucking driven. Like, like, like motivation is crap. Motivation comes and goes. If I motivate you right now you get to hear in this podcast to to go run 100 miles or to run two miles and it's 20 degrees out in chicago you may open your fucking door and say it's fucking cool to go back inside a person that's driven you will open the door and say i'm putting gloves on i can get my run in so once you change your mind to believe that that need to be driven, but what the fuck drives you? Only you can answer that. And what drove me was I'm going to become better than what the hell

I am today. Some people don't know what it is that drives them, but you got to go on that journey first. What's going to make me be the best? I love it. Okay. So you know what makes my hair stand up in a bad way is people go, oh, Mike, so you do motivational speeches. Holy shit. There might not be a deeper insult. Like seriously, because it only lasts moments. Motivation only lasts moments. to try to unlock is it is a fundamental decision and you reorganized your life based on what you were most hungry for and you're very clear that it was to be the hardest human being alive okay and that's how it started off you know the hardest human being it's all relatives right i i wanted to change from being a weak guy to a guy that can be put in a hell storm and come out surviving it and so that's your that was your attraction to special operators, right? Exactly.

That was the place to go build or demonstrate that you can do it. Right. Okay. So now, looking back now, how do you get in your own way? Honestly, I have a thing called the cookie jar. And the cookie jar is a bunch of shit that I had to go through to become, you know, like I said, I was David Goggins and David Goggins was a meat man and now I became Goggins. And Goggins is the guy that can endure anything. jar and find a whole bunch of fucking cookies that remind me of who the fuck I am and where I came from and how hard it was to get there. So when times get bad for me, I reach in the cookie jar

and I pull out a cookie. And sometimes the cookie says, hey, you went through three whole weeks in one year. And sometimes it may say this and they say that. And it reminds me every day of, hey, when times get bad, you endured conversation that we have if it's not based in real something real and it's not credible and you can't back it up it's just words that's it it's just words so what you've done is your cookie jar basically you've externalized so that you could remember and be clear of the difficult stuff that you've done anytime you're feeling like you're twisted, you can put your hand physically into something and say, oh yeah, oh, that's right. I have done some crazy stuff. Okay. I developed it. I developed the truth. I developed the truth and the truth allows you to do some amazing things, but you have to develop the truth first because until then it's just a bunch of words, it's a bunch of lies. When you're on the frontier and your heart feels like it's bleeding, I'm sorry, your lungs feel like they're bleeding, your body hurts, and you've already played the script like, yeah, this is when I'm my best.

This is what it's about. I'm right in the thick of it. I said I want to be hard. Now I'm hard. This is what it's about. And it is very hard. And you've played that script maybe for an hour. And you've still got another four hours to go right

okay so there's like that there's that temptation to be able to play it small play it safe pull the eject button tap out when sometimes we do need to tap out sometimes you know we can break ourselves oh yeah okay so sure so how do you how do you do that like How do you negotiate that physical overwhelm with another four hours? I'm just making that up. How do you talk yourself through that? Well, I'm not going to make this up. I will tell you how I do it, exactly how I do it. I've gone 205 miles in 39 hours nonstop running.

So I run a one-mile track. So let's picture this. When you get to mile 100, so let's, I want, I want everybody listening. I want you to think about this for one fucking second. I hate running. I was 300 pounds twice in my life. I enjoy eating shit and watching football. That's David Goggins. So here I am at mile 100. I have another 105 miles to go. OK, so just not like I'm sitting there thinking I'm the hardest guy in the world. I'm a human being. So what I'm thinking is I need to bag this fucking race.

My body's aching. I feel like shit. I want to go home. That is the realness of the situation. I have I've gone 100 miles of 105 more to go home. That is the realness of the situation. I've gone 100 miles. I have 105 more to go. But that's why I signed up for that race because that's what I want to tell myself. I know what I'm going to tell myself. How I developed hardness was figuring out how the fuck am I going to get another 105 miles to go. So what I do is i cut that big piece of shit up and i take it in

small pieces versus 105 miles i'm going to the next damn step yeah there you go so you got to break big things up into small pieces because your mind like so what happens in hell week hell week is 130 hours of continuous training. And what happens is you dump these guys in the first hour of Hell Week. What makes it so brutal is they put you in the coldest water you could possibly imagine. And what happens to your brain is you lose control of your thought process.

And you immediately think it's only been one hour. I have another 129 more hours to go. And this is the coldest I've been in my fucking life. So your brain cannot possibly comprehend what's going on right now. We spaz out. What I'm able to do now through the fact that I've been through so much shit is I know what my brain is going to – so I already know what I'm going to think about.

I thought about quitting too, but I realized – you got to realize what's the end result if I do quit. You got to think about all these things and think about how glorious would it feel once I graduate. Okay. But people create stories and they create a story of why they didn't finish or why they didn't move. And they create a story like, man, my left hip blew up or I got pneumonia and you can't finish. Maybe that's a good story. But they create a story like, man, my left hip blew up or I got pneumonia and you can't finish. Maybe that's a good story.

But they create a story. So I don't know anyone. I have never met anyone that says, I am a very, very bad human being. I'm awful and you shouldn't be around me. Like I've met depressed, obviously. But like people create stories so they'll feel OK. And so this trap, this inner dialogue that we have becomes this massive trap that we let ourselves off the hook from the story. Right.

So how did you so so you just said I need to entertain what it's going to look and feel like later when I know that I wasn't staying in the difficult thing. Well, like I said at the very beginning of the podcast, what you have to do first as a human being. So before I started my journey on trying to become hard and trying to find all this bullshit about David Goggins, I first had to master one thing. The fact that I had to become real with who the fuck I am. I had to stop lying to myself and hold myself accountable. So yes, I also was the biggest person of saying, oh, you know what? My hip's kind of hurting. I can make up this story and just kind of get out of this. No, because now I worked on myself first before I started my journey. So now if I'm in that situation, I know I'm lying to myself.

I'm lying to everybody else. So if I have fixed that problem, I have now fixed the story that I'm trying to tell people of why I did quit when it's just a story that I made up because I've already fixed the problem that I'm no longer telling stories. I'm holding myself accountable for my actions every day of my life. That takes away that equation. But that equation is the hardest one to do before you start your journey is that you have to have a code, an ethos of yourself. Every man and woman must form their own ethos on what they stand for in their or her life they have to stand for something or you stand for nothing so when you're in that situation it's hard for you to lie because you can't lie because you know now i hold myself to a higher standard than even

the navy seals are holding me to host you know i'm saying you gotta hold yourself to higher standard anybody else will and so is that for you? Is that different? So I'll ask people. I'm really clear about the statement from me, and I'll ask people this all the time. I ask two things, and sometimes they get a little confusing for me. I'll say, what are you willing to die for? What will you fight for to the end? And that's what you and I were just talking about, right?

And then what I would love for you to bounce off of is how is that different than a philosophy? And the way I think about having a philosophy is that a philosophy is the decision-making framework. It's the filter that you run all things through to see if you're being true to yourself. So how do those two things, in your mind, are they separate or are they really the same thing? It's kind of, I mean, I think they're really the same thing. Okay. All right. I kind of thought that that's where you're going to go with it. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and

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slash finding mastery. That's really helpful. Now, if you could think of a scale one to 10, and I think I know the direction, but I want to see the difference between these two scales. Internally driven, which is like, I'm doing this because of the way it feels, and for authenticity within myself, versus externally driven, which is I'm doing it for approval from others, a big house, a big car, big watch, whatever. So if you go 1 to 10 on both of those scales, I just want to see what your difference is. Well, I'll start with the external first because that makes me laugh. I don't even own a car and I retired and I'm at home with my mother right now at 41 years old figuring out – I'm about to move somewhere. So I don't own a car and I'm chilling.

I don't give a shit about anything external. Just to make that clear, 1 to 10, I don't give a car and I'm chilling I don't give a shit about anything external just to make that clear one to ten I don't give a shit how about that one so so I don't care so where I came from growing up I cared about what everybody thought about David Goggins oh my god please accept me please love me because that's gonna make me feel better because I wasn't loved as a child when you go on a journey of life and you figure out who the fuck you are you don't give a damn who the hell the Joneses the Adams the Browns the Smiths you can all go somewhere and have a good time you know who you are so you don't care about the external shit I care 100% so on a scale of 1 to 10, it's 100. About I want to see my internal and always my internal.

That means everything to me because that's what matters. If you matter to yourself, you don't care about anything else. You don't need a house. You don't need a car. You don't need anything. You have the the the biggest skill the the biggest thing in the world to master is the internal part of a person's life and it's your life it's not about it's your life master it become internal that's it it's everything we could stop right now you know seriously like that that is exactly the the thought that drives everything and and then

i'll add one kind of extension to that that's a very close cousin for me which is the purpose to do that is so that you can be there for others and to be able to love deeply to help them through difficult times and so i add that that extension i'm curious like does that matter to you at all or is that important to you like the bond and brotherhood or loving relationships you have with others or is that not a driver I've grown to

well I've always loved very few people because there's very few people in my life that deserve that kind of so I'm a very passionate man and so I'm not giving everybody that deserve that kind of, so I'm a very passionate man. And so I'm not giving everybody that shit. A lot of people don't deserve what I have created. And basically you have to earn that for me. And there's very few people who've earned that for me. And, um, we all have to earn our way in life. And, but I'm very big. I mean, my whole life is about taking care of those people.

And there's very few of them. There's very, very few of them. But I'm all about my family, which is very small now. Pretty much is my mom and whoever else is in that wheelhouse. It could be my girlfriend. But it's just very few people that are in that small circle of mine that belong there. Do you have brothers and sisters? I have one brother that is – we are pretty close now. He's had a hard life also. We came apart, and we separated for a while as far as talking to each other. And his daughter got murdered last year.

And that brought us together because once again, you're always growing. So, you know, we're both stubborn people. And at that time in my life, I realized that, hey, buddy, you need to fucking go talk to your brother and help your brother out. And we became close because I, you know, you're always growing. You're always growing. You're always trying to figure out, you know, how to become better. Even where I'm at now in my life, I've overcome a lot. I've done a lot.

I'm continually to change my thought process and try to become better as a human being. So now with all the work you've done on yourself and all the challenges you've had, what does scare you the most? What are the things that you're most afraid of? You know what's funny? I found so much peace in my life. I used to be so scared back in the day of so many things. Once you find a lot of peace in your life, that fear goes away. And I'm not scared of too much anymore because if I die right now talking to you,

I'm happy. And do you think you needed all of the achievements that you've had to find that peace? Or did it somehow just get merged along the way that peace is really what you're searching for, not accomplishment? You know what? Peace is what you're searching for, not accomplishment? You know what? Peace is what I was searching for, but I had to suffer.

I had to know. It wasn't about the accomplishments. I had to earn. I had to earn the right to be on this planet. And what that means, people are saying, like, what the hell are you talking about? A lot of us think that we're just born and we live and then we die. No, it's not that easy. I truly believe that you have a path and a journey that you have to start, and starting the journey is very scary.

And it's not about the accomplishments. It's about starting the journey and not getting off that path when it gets very scared, when you get scared. And suffering allowed me to be very proud and have peace in my life to know that I've endured. I didn't run. I endured. That's really cool because obviously you've done a lot of running. Yes. And when you were doing those long-distance running, were you running towards something or from something?

I think both. I think I was running from something to begin with. I was in search of myself. That's why I kept on going to these different military schools. And every military school was a hard one. Every military school was a kick in the ass. And I really wanted to kick myself in the ass to really figure out more and more about me. And I started running these long distance

races to do the same thing. And I got to a point with even running in these long distance races where, you know, you, you find so much peace in yourself that it's just, uh, you know, you just, you, you come to the spot in your life where you want to be. And it becomes very, very clear. Once you get there, you know, you don't know when it's going to be. Some people are 60, some people are 70, some people it's never because they never start their journey. But for me, it became very clear when, um, when I got there, what I was looking for. Okay. And then where are you going next? Like you're so hungry to do difficult things, to become hard, can't run from it. If you believe in anything above you, whether it's God or whatever the hell you believe in, or you're just yourself, you can't run from your path because why? Your path is leading you to a spot to help someone else. Okay, so we're going to vibe on the same exact way there.

So if I take a left because that path's easier, I'm fucking up the whole damn process of life. I'm supposed to go down this path right here in front of me because this path is going to take me here because now I can turn back around and help people along the path that I made. So basically what I'm doing now, my journey now is to go back and pick up all the people who are like, how? Asking that question, how, how, how, how? And people think that you have to come from this great family with great knowledge and great money and great success in private schools to become someone successful. My journey is telling you something very different. You can come from nothing and as long as you believe you have a breath of air and the will to succeed you can do something so that's

what I'm doing now is I'm trying to share this story with people and let them know that you don't need dick shit to be great. God, you know, no critique in this question because I flat out love how you speak and where it comes from. Why do you use so many curse words? You know what's funny? You'll never hear me say God's name in vain. There's something we need to talk about i've to become who i had to become because you know i was a scared kid i was i had to become dark i had to go to a spot that most people will not understand especially in this day and age

oh my god what's wrong with you why you need help whatever no no i don. To succeed in a world that is so scary to you, to be able to jump from planes and go into houses where people are shooting at you and to become that person when the real you is a scared little kid. You have to develop something inside of you. You have to develop Goggins. And Goggins became that motherfucker who looks at you and said do you really want to fuck with me do you really want to know you know like you want to test my resolve do you want to see my ability to go to distance where where your world ends and mine begins I had to create this mindset of talking to myself in a way to where false motivation becomes real motivation. I started to believe it. And once you believe it and you believe the darkness and you can go through the darkness and you can find the light and you can do all these things, half of my anger, half of my passion

became, I find a lot of the cuss words became just part of that angry, passionate guy. You know, it's just, I mean, don't take offense in it. I don't, it doesn't mean anything. I'd rather say, fuck, then, hey, can you please help me out? You know, because the mindset of, you can go fuck yourself, versus, hey, can we do this? It's all a mindset. So the cuss word for me was a mindset.

Yeah, it does. And it conjures something up and i don't know when you say dark for me it doesn't conjure dark but you're saying it's tapping down into a place that is let me see if i can get it right for you which is hey listen get the fuck out of my way because you you do not understand what you're messing with it's yes and that's it and i talk about darkness darkness, it is darkness. Trust me. But the words aren't dark, but they're touching a dark place. Is that dark place hostility?

Is it violence? Is it rage? What is it? It's not hostility at all. It's not rage. What it is, is when you're in – I'm going to give you an example. Okay. You can either be peaceful. Some people get by and they find this great peace. And I'm there now, but I had to rage war on myself and rage war on a lot of things. So let's picture this.

Picture yourself day three, hour 75 of 130 hours, and you're in hell week. And your mind is thinking all this shit about, oh, God, I wish I was at home. I wish I had a warm shower. I wish I had a bed. I wish I had this. God, it's horrible. But you have another 60-some hours of hell. So to defeat hell, in my mind, this is David Goggins talking, I don't give a fuck what anybody else thinks about you handle how you want to handle it, how I handled it I had to become hell to defeat hell

I had to become hell, and I believe in God, but when they put my fucking ass in that water and it fucking sucked and my mind went to these places of I want to get out of here I want to quit, I had to become this fucking guy who went to this dark spot that instead of saying, I hate the water, I loved the fucking water. Let me stay in this motherfucker all fucking day. I don't want to get, so I had to change what people were thinking.

I didn't make water my home, the cold, the hell, the elk, how I felt, the shin splints, the stretch fractures. I had to love that feeling of pain. Yes, the human side of me wanted to quit and say, God, this hurts so bad. I had to create a dark, evil person to get through the evil that I was enduring in my life. Period. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health. This is about creating the conditions for growth. Now, hair health is one of those areas that often gets overlooked until your hair starts to change.

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What are they reporting back? Fewer wake-ups, deeper rest, and feeling more recovered when they jump into their work here at Finding Mastery. Lisa has several models to choose from. So whether you're a side sleeper, a stomach sleeper, or somewhere in between, there's a fit designed specifically for you. And what I appreciate most is their purpose they've donated over 41 000 mattresses to people in need i love that so right now you can get 25 off all

mattresses at lisa.com plus an extra 50 off when you use the code finding mastery at checkout that's lisa l-e-e-s-a.. The promo code is finding mastery for 25% off and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. So what was, what is the, what is the most optimal mindset that you would create as you're dropping into war? And is that similar to when you're about to do an XX miler, like an ultra? And then I'd love a third mindset, which is when you're going to have an intimate conversation with someone that you care about. I'd love to kind of get some swath there. Okay, well, first of all, when you drop into combat, you have to really be – you have to become hell.

But people don't understand one thing. You also have to be a very clear thinker. So you have to be a person that can think outside the box. You have to have great essay, which is situational awareness. But you also have to have the courage. And sometimes you have to go to a dark spot to be able to open that door because when you're a SEAL, you're opening a bunch of doors. You're blowing up doors and behind that door are the it's the enemy that may have an AK-47 pointed at you so to do what you have to do to go in that door yes it takes peace

it takes calm it takes relaxation it takes center focus it takes drive but it also takes going to war with someone you have to be willing to go the distance, whatever the distance may be. You have to be willing to risk your life. You can't go in that door timid because you have to go in that door thinking, if I die today, so fucking be it. But you're going to know you were in war with David Goggins. That's one mindset. When you're in a race, you have to start off a hundred mile or whatever, very calm, very cool, very relaxed, because you don't want your heart rate to get too high. So

you can't go to thinking I'm dark. I'm crazy. I'm evil. I'm this and that you want to be calm and cool. It's okay. It's a long day. I'm out here running. I want to be focused. I want to be, I want to be very peaceful. I want to be very mindful. I want to start running and kind of ignore a lot of things. I want to ignore like I'm not even running, like time and reference of time. I'm not even present right now. I want to – you don't really – for me, I don't start becoming present in the run until mile 70. Wow, that's crazy. What do you do in the first 69 whatever miles well that's where

you have to just you're just honestly i have a way if you really start to know yourself there's so much about oneself that we never explore because we never go there and i've been able to go there so many times i'm able to go to so many different spots in my head and so many different situations because i realized how I thought in hell. So everything I've done in my life has been very painful, very trying to me because I didn't want to do it. So I figured out, so most people write books on mental toughness. No, they're bullshit. Most of them are bullshit because they didn't go through shit. So how the fuck do you know how to get through hard shit if you

never were in hard shit? Because you don't know how your mind thought in hard shit i know how the mind thinks when you're going through hell so i figured out a bunch of ways to get through it and one way you have to get through hard things you have to learn how to set your mind in a spot to where you think you're not even running i mean how the fuck do you do that you do it off of knowing who you are as a person and how you can set your mind off into the distance and to a spot that is not even real to most people. I'm sure you say it all the time, what you just said, but you tripped onto something that is – or said something that I want to respond to, which is if you haven't gone to a dark place and if you've ejected before it's gotten darker than you thought dark was or harder than you thought hard was, you never get to learn. You never get to learn. And it is, we call it mindset, but it really is about setting your mind. And that setting of one's mind is the control and the will that we've been given and to just it's a disgrace

to the human experience to let the world set your mind to let others dictate your mind and it's a complete disgrace and so you know um but you also asked me about how i talk to someone that i'm yes yes yes yeah so there's tons of sides to me. So people who are listening to this understand I'm not just some geranimal at all. So I actually care and I love and I'm compassionate and I'm all these things that people say, oh my God, this guy, what's wrong with him? God has to put some people on this earth to protect this planet. I happen to be one of those people. So Merry Christmas. You have to have a different mentality to do that. But I also realize, speaking to people that I love and people who need my help, I can't just say take an SIU pill with a can of hard.

With an SIU pill, it's a suck it up pill. You have to talk to people and you have to be able to be compassionate about what they're going through. And you have to know I've been through a lot. And I know what people – I've been through almost every situation that a lot of people can go through. And you have to know I've been through a lot and I know what people, I've been through almost every situation that a lot of people can go through. So I have compassion for what they're going through. But with that being said, since I've been through a lot, I'm going to give you compassion for a second, for a few seconds, for a few moments, for maybe a few days. But at the end of the fucking day, we're going to change that shit and we're going to overcome it.

So that's how I do that. I'm going to feel sorry for you for a little bit. Not feel sorry for you. I'm going to let you feel sorry for yourself because that's a natural process of life. But after that, we're going to figure out how we can destroy the evil beast, which is us. You are clear in your approach. Okay, let's go. Can we shift gears and do a couple one to tens, like on those scales?

Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so ten being the high on this. Okay, so your ability to switch on to meet whatever demands of the environment. One to ten, ten being high. Ten. Your ability to switch off and recover, like at night to fall asleep. Five. Ten.

Ten. Ten. Probably an eight. when there's emotional risk at play uh probably at eight okay one to ten your fear of failure um i have no fear of failure whatever skill that goes on is that i have no fear of failure because i've felt so many damn times i i like it okay it's good okay your fear of success i have no fear of that either whatever skill Okay, one to ten, the importance of music. One, I don't care about it. Spirituality. If I can go higher than a ten, that would be, yeah, a hundred.

Okay, practicing spirituality. A hundred. And by practicing it, I will be clear. I do not go to church. I believe for me, it's every day of your life. How you accountable are you as a human being?

That's what I hold myself very accountable and I hold myself accountable to God. And when you think of God, is it Judaism is it judaism is it christianity and i'm not i don't care if you're religious or not but like is there is there a particular group a hindu like what is there a particular group that you connect with more no i i don't connect to any group i i was born and raised a catholic i don't do that anymore

i don't practice anymore okay my god is my god my God. Okay. And that's it. Okay. One to 10, the importance of science. The science of science, science or science of the brain, science of the body. Whatever. Just science in general. Whichever one. I would say seven. Okay. So breaking rules, one to 10.

Are you a rule breaker or a rule follower? Rule follower. Okay. Being self-critical ten is like i'm really critical of myself um ten you have to be critical of yourself to succeed and be better one to ten the habit of getting great sleep it should be a ten but for me all the things i've gone through my life and becoming great there's a there's a great sacrifice to your body and it really does something to your adrenals which is a whole another story so i'm working on that now now that i found peace so it's getting better i'm around a six or seven with that and then uh caffeine one to ten uh i don't do it at all. I don't do caffeine at all. Did you ever do drugs?

Never. I never smoked, never did drugs, none of that stuff. Okay. And then mindfulness training, some people call it meditation, one to ten,

could be anywhere in between. The highest number you can go, higher than ten. I believe in that. Huge, huge. Yeah. And then what does that training or practice look like?

Do you do breathing meditations? Do you do movement meditations? What is your thing? You know what? My thing is very different than most. I do a lot of stretching. I stretch out a lot. But my meditation is basically just internal conversations with myself. Okay. So, yeah. Is the world dangerous or safe um it's very dangerous right now because we fall we fall doom to not being our best because of a lot of uh following idiots and falling doom to whether you're black or you're white or you fall into this group or that group and we just fall into bullshit like we we we get off on all this stuff that yeah it matters but doesn't matter as much we we spend too much time on bullshit like just on nothing that's relevant to you becoming

better if everybody worked on being better the world would not be dangerous it's dangerous because people are worried about stupid shit. Got it. I love the way you think about things. Are you street savvy or more analytical? I'm very street savvy and I become analytical as time goes by. Do you learn better in a slow-paced environment or a fast-paced environment? Both.

I used to learn better in a slow-paced environment because I was AD was add and all that shit but i didn't like being add so i believe a lot of times you're add because you just that's what you accept so i wanted to learn to be more fast-paced so i actually can learn both and you know good at both of them okay do uh where are you on the need of control? Low, medium, high? When I was younger, it was very high. I need control now. I could give a shit. If you're in my life, I want to protect you. Some people take it as control. I know a lot about the world and what's going on out there. And I know.

So, yeah, but I don't give a shit, really. And then optimistic or pessimistic about like the future um i would say optimistic okay and then do you do what you feel is right or do you do what you think is right i do what i know is right and then where does pressure come from um pressure you it always comes from yourself i mean for for myself it always came from me like like nobody pressures me for shit because once you develop who you are as a person everybody else can go to hell and then like how do you think about success um success is what is what you think success is for yourself so success success, like for some people, is being a millionaire.

For some people, it's graduating Navy SEAL training. For some people, it's having their own podcast. So it's all of what you want in your life. That success for me, it was I wanted to find peace. I wanted to find David Goggins. I wanted to see who I was, and that's success for me. And then kind of the last question, right? In this little thing here is like, how do you finish this thought? I am David Goggins.

Yeah. Beautiful. Okay. So, um, I think you said it earlier, like your definition or how you think about mastery and can you just take it one more quick riff on that well how i look at mastery is uh is i believe in god like i always say i believe in god and i believe that god put us all down here and we're all artists and some people think an artist is a person that paints a picture yeah that is an artist but i believe an artist in i'm trying to say as an artist is a person that you're you're painting your life and you're trying to paint your, once again, your greatest masterpiece. It's not mine. It's not anybody else's.

It's yours, whatever that may be in your brain. And you have to sit back and see what it is. And you have to start painting that masterpiece, and you have to paint it to the best of your ability. And you have to go through a lot of brushes and a lot of canvas and a lot of shit. But once you start to paint that masterpiece and you're on track, you'll know it. But you just got to continue to paint it, man.

You're your own master. And that journey is fucking hard. It is fucking hard. It sucks. Period. And anybody wants to hear that and say, oh God, this guy, be peaceful. I'm peaceful. I love myself. I'm happy. All that stuff. Because everybody asks me all

the time. I'm all that. But damn it, the fucking journey sucks if you want to be great. Period. David Goggins, what a gift. And your authenticity, your willingness to do the difficult, and to go the distance is a gift. And so your honesty and

everything that you've just captured, the man that you've become, I've loved this conversation. So I want to thank you. And then I want to find out where people can find out more about how to get you connected to bring you into their organization or wherever that they can, you know, benefit from being around you a bit more. So how can we be more connected to bring you into their organization or wherever that they can you know benefit from being around you a bit more so how can we be more connected to you so all those social media sites that jennifer says you know what's so funny this is how this is how crazy i am i don't even know if there's david goggins if it's at david goggins i am David Goggins. So what does she send you? Because that's what it is. Because I don't even care.

We'll take care of it. We'll put it all in the show notes and we'll sort all that out for you for sure. And then I know you're doing a lot of keynote speaking. Is that the best way to reach you for a keynote? Or is it the website? Or what's the best way to reach you? You know, I think website and also uh getting a hold of jennifer kish you know at uh basically it's uh jennifer and that's you know j-e-n-n-i-f-e-r

jennifer at david goggins you know dot com so if you reach out to there um you know you can book me stuff like that and you know you can follow me on instagram twitter it's just you know david goggins at david goggins i believe it is and um i think my facebook is actually i am david goggins not for sure exactly but you know you can figure that out oh yeah we'll take care of you on that part so thank you that's i mean i don't know what else to say so thank you thank you enough i appreciate you have a good day all All the best. Bye now. Bye man. Bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of finding mastery with us.

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