Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 155 - David Goggins

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL and an ultra-marathon runner/triathlete. He has competed in over 60 ultra-marathons, triathlons, and ultra-triathlons, setting new records and regularly placing in the top 5. He finds that these races callous of the mind, much like going through Hell Week for BUD\S training. He grew into child abuse and bullying but didn’t let these event define him. Instead, he choose to rise above and continue to improve physically and mentally. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject ➢ YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

can talk for a minute and then kind of dive into it. Let's just go ahead and get started then. Can I get a hey now? Hey. So today I'm really fired up because we have a special guest today. And I'm also excited that it's not an in-person because I, as much as I'd love to have this person here in person, some people are too busy sometimes to make all these different things work. And I think this is, I'm really interested to see how this podcast does, because I would like to do more podcasts like this.

I think on our end and on other people's end, it's just more convenient. Yes, we'd love to share times with people and take people to lunch and hang out and stuff like that. But it doesn't always work out that way. But for today, we have David Goggins on. And I'm really excited to have him on the show. I've been trying to hunt this guy down relentlessly for a long time. And unfortunately, I was not able to get him before he got on Joe Rogan, blew up, and now he's putting out a book. And I wasn't able to get him before kind of all this started,

but I was really inspired and motivated by some of the stories that I heard from him. And then once I found out that he was a former power lifter, I was like, wow, I was like, oh, that's cool. Retired Navy SEAL. He wrote this book, which comes out December 4th, Can't Hurt Me. And if anybody knows about pain, it's David Goggins. He grew up with a really crazy and really, really rough childhood. But as he got older, he realized, look, man, I need to figure out a way to fit into society. And I'll let him tell the story when he gets on here. But basically he was just tired of being a loser. He called himself a piece of shit. Basically, he was just tired of being a loser.

He called himself a piece of shit. And he ended up seeing a thing on TV that got him fired up. I'll let him talk about that as well. But he basically saw some Navy SEALs training. And he thought, man, I'm just a real puss. I can't get out of my own way. I make a lot of excuses. And I'm completely unhappy with myself.

At that time in his life, he was already a power lifter. He was already lifting. But he was just kind of a big fat guy and he wasn't happy and he wanted to make some changes. And so from that point on, he started eating like chicken and vegetables and running and doing all these things. And now he's got world records and pull-ups. He's got world records for the amount of marathons he's done. He's just an absolute savage. And if you're not following on him on instagram then you're making a big mistake because this guy will motivate you to get your ass up off that couch this guy will motivate you to get your butt moving um even on days that you don't want to move and i think a lot of people are going to realize that there's quite a bit of similarities between

you and him as well i'm pretty excited to dive into that yeah i i'm really i really pumped for it. So let's give him a call and let's see what we got here. Hello? Hello, this is Mark Bell. How's it going? Good. How are you? Doing great. What's up, brother? How's it going, David? Going good, my man.

Yeah, really excited for this podcast today, and we're just going to dive right in. The thing that I find really fascinating, I find a million things fascinating about your story, but one of the things I find really fascinating is that you were a powerlifter. Oh, brother, I was a big-time powerlifter oh brother i was big time powerlifter man big time i love uh on the cover of this book that you have coming out december 4th can't hurt me i love how there's that image behind you of what you used to be a big a big fat power of my life yeah uh what kind of lifts did you put up back in the day well i was a big um three lift guy squat bench press deadlift and uh my bench press was the weakest it was about a 4 4 45 um but i was a big time um squat deadlift guy

i was pulling around 650 660 and squatting about the same. Nice. Those are, yeah, those are some, those are some big numbers. So one thing that really, uh, really stood out to me is, you know, you have this moment, you're powerlifting and a lot of powerlifters. I know they take great satisfaction and going to the gym and throwing around some heavy weights. They're not too upset about the way that they look. They're not upset about being fat.

They're kind of, they're kind of content with it because it helps them to throw around those big weights. But you had a different realization. You were just watching TV one day and you saw some Navy SEALs and that kind of motivated you, but it made you also think that you were a piece of shit. What was the, like, what was the driving thing behind that? Like, how did you feel that way about yourself when you were, you know, seemed like you're lifting, seemed like you're fairly healthy. So like, what was the driving force behind that? Well, the big thing that got me lifting with my self-esteem was real low. I was, um, so I hid behind that big body.

So I was 175 pounds before I became that 300 pound guy. And the reason why I became big was to hide my real, you know, soft, insecure, fearful of everything self. And being a large individual, it scared people away from the real soft David Goggins inside so I built this humongous exterior to keep away the enemy because my mindset wasn't um what it is now so um when you know these things about yourself and you know that you're hiding from certain things and you know why you became big I didn't become big for the love of the sport. You know, it wasn't like, you know what, I just want to be some jacked up cat, man,

walk around, eat fucking, you know, 10,000 calories a day, you know, bring around my, you know, eight gallons of fucking water to the gym, sit down with my damn smelling salts and just get the fuck after it. I love that part, but it was hiding a lot of shit going

on in my in my life in my personal life and um so that that big guy became my armor became my shield so people wouldn't pick on me anymore they'd be scared because i would you know just either just beat the fuck out of them or just eat them whatever the fuck came first. So when I'm sitting there watching that TV show, I was there alone. And it made me think a lot about, you know, you can lie to everybody, but you can't lie to yourself. So it was extremely hard for me to sit there and not feel something. And I saw these guys going through that training and whatnot. I was afraid of the water, afraid of a lot of different things and I saw these

guys going through that training. I was like you know what, I have to one day start to face myself. I can no longer hide behind the 300 pound body that I built because inside that body was a very weak individual that I had to start overcoming, had to start facing. So that's kind of how it all started. You mentioned quite a bit about pain and being scared. It kind of seems like to me, maybe early in your life, you built up that exterior so that people, you know, couldn't get close, couldn't hurt you. You've been hurt before in your life, had a rough upbringing. Um, but it seemed like almost from all the stuff I've seen of yours with the running and, uh, changing your life around

and getting a lot better habits, waking up early in the morning, um, eating better, just all these disciplines. It almost seems like so much of this is like your own personal development, uh, mixed in with, uh, just a lot of like education. Now what you're doing is physical, but it looked like it's like attacking the mind in a totally different way. You were scared to really get, you know, get into some of these things that you were afraid of, get into some of these things that you were scared of. into some of these things that you were scared of did you at one point just decide to lean into all that were you like you know what this is where the magic is this is where the gold is i didn't need to lean into that shit it kind of happened that way um basically i had a list in my head we all have this list in our

head this magical list of all this shit that we don't want to even do because it scares the hell, you know, it scares the crap out of us or it makes us feel like we're not good enough. We all have the list. We all have it. So I had a humongous list of insecurities and crap, you know, being called nigger growing up and my dad beating the hell out of me and having learned disability, stuttering, all kinds of shit growing up, you know, a $7-a-month place for a long time. I had all kind of crap going through my... Soon to be stepdad got murdered. I had all kind of just demons that just made me just afraid of everything. And I designed this program myself. When I realized I had this voice, we all had this voice in our head, whether you believe in God or

rather whatever the hell you believe in or don't believe in, whether you believe in yourself. There's always this voice in our head telling us different things. And the voice in my head, it kept on calling me like, you know, you're just a pussy, man. You are a big fucking pussy, man. You're scared of all this shit over here. You're scared of this big laundry list of stuff, man, because your dad beats you and this happened and this happened. All these things that happened in my life, I wasn't facing them. Even though I didn't cause a lot of them, they're mine to own now. Now, and the one thing that I really realized was for me to become a tough guy, and that's

what I wanted to be. I saw myself as a very weak man. And for me to be hard and be tough, I had to's what I wanted to be. I saw myself as a very weak man. And for me to be hard and be tough, I had to start going over to that list, that scary list to start facing that. Because I knew over there, I was going to find a whole new person. Because if I kept on doing the things that made me feel comfortable, I was going to continue being that same person I always was, the lying, insecure, fearful person living this nice, comfortable life of mine. So I just designed a very uncomfortable world for David Goggins. And in that world, I found a whole new different.

That's where I created Goggins. So there's David Goggins and there's Goggins. I created Goggins in that fucking meat eater world over there of mine. It's really, you know, in your book, you have this exercise basically for people to do at the end of each chapter. And one of the things that I found really interesting was that you would write your goals on a mirror. And I did that my entire power thing career. So when I saw that, I was like, oh my God. And then the learning disability, I'm in the same boat. When it came to that, I, I spent the beginning half of my life thinking I was stupid. I bought into it.

I was like, man, maybe they're, maybe they're right. Maybe I am dumb. And then even, even as I progressed and became fairly successful in terms of what I was able to lift and powerlifting, I still kind of thought I was dumb. I still didn't think I was worth enough to like coach people. I even had an idea and a concept, which now has given me a lot of financial freedom, which is a product called Slingshot. I even had that idea for a long time, but I didn't pull the trigger on it because I was scared. I didn't know. I was like, how am I going to get this made? Like, I'm dumb. I'm not a business person. And so I kind of fished around and I talked to some different companies. They all thought it was a bad idea. And eventually I

bought into that too. I was like, yeah, it is a bad idea. It probably is a bad idea. I'm dumb. Why would it be a good idea? And then my oldest brother of almost 10 years ago to this day passed away. My oldest brother, Mike, he had drug and alcohol addictions. And he kind of sounds like he dealt with a lot of things that you dealt with at a point where he didn't feel like he had much self-worth. But at that point, I realized life was short, man. Life is short. And I better start attacking some of these stupid things that I'm scared of.

I don't even really know how scared I am of them because I never actually even really tried. I just am petrified or terrified of them and I never even really put any effort in it. How do I know what it looks like for me to do business if I never even tried it? And that was a point that I was at. But once my brother passed, it kind of flipped a switch and I started setting goals and I started doing things like you mentioned, writing your goals on the mirror well yeah it helped me out a lot man and I started with uh very small goals you know it wasn't like I went out there and well I started out real big and I realized that the big goals were just crushing me you know because they

weren't happening fast enough and I had to start making big things very small and I had to take a lot of pride and a lot of uh self a lot of satisfaction from the fact that you know I had to lose 106 pounds in like less than three months wow which was an impossible task for anybody to do so instead of looking at 106 pounds man I was happy to lose a pound I was happy to run a quarter mile because you know how it is as a power lifter man you're not running anywhere yeah i mean for me when i was a power lifter man i was so crazy about calorie content and losing calories that i hated even walking to the refrigerator you know i didn't want to lose i didn't lose any calories kind of losing calories meant losing strength.

So I was a freak about all that stuff, man. So I had to totally flip my mindset about all that stuff and just find very small goals and start achieving them, being proud of myself through those small goals that I accomplished. A lot of people are listening to this right now, and a lot of people probably feel they're not worth a shit. They probably feel like crap about themselves. I feel and they're not worth a shit. They probably feel like crap about themselves. What is something that you're able to share with people that can help flip a switch or is there anything, you know, or do they just need to come to their own realization?

They need to hit bottom. They need to go through some shit first in order to get there. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Well, you know, what's funny, man, is that I'm not speaking for every big guy by any means, but I was once the big man and I, and I realized a lot of us's funny, man, is that I'm not speaking for every big guy by any means. But I was once the big man. And I realized a lot of us big guys, man, we got some serious demons. You know, I hung around big guys and we'd all break down and we started talking about our personal lives and how fucked up we all are.

And, you know, hey, why don't you become big, man? We all had almost a similar story of insecurities. Yeah. And, you know, walking around in the airport looking like a gargantuan, man, people look at you differently. You get a little more self-esteem. So I'm going to be talking to a few of us out there when I say this, man. The biggest thing in life that you have to do is you have to be proud of yourself. have to do is you have to be proud of yourself. You have to start developing that personal self-esteem. And it has to be something that is an internal thing. It has to come from a lot of

hard work and dedication. And you really have to, I call it like right now, I see your headphones on your head. I walk around life with so-called headphones on my head, man. I don't really wear them, obviously, but I just have these earmuffs on. I silence out the noise. I silence out the judgment. I silence out the self-doubt. I silence out all the naysayers. And, you know, those people get in our head and then we start getting our head in the most important conversation we'll ever have is when we have ourselves.

And like you were saying to yourself, man, I'm dumb on this, on that. I was the same fucking way. So that's what you're constantly repeating to yourself in that internal conversation. Man, that's who you're going to be. conversation, man, that's who you're going to be. And my biggest thing for these people who are out here is honestly, man, you have to start callousing over that victim's mentality. You have to start building this mental armor that no matter what anybody says that you can be in a room full of a million people and all million can be like against you and calling you names and whatever you like this you know what roger that you can go fuck yourself man i know exactly where i'm going i know exactly what i'm doing and that's the kind of self-esteem you have to build in yourself man in this kind of

society today because this is tough it's tough out here nowadays when you talk about callusing your mind i love that analogy know, for the lifters out there, they should be able to grab onto that pretty good. You go to pick up a 700 pound deadlift and you haven't deadlifted much before your hands are going to tear and it's going to feel awful. But if you've been deadlifting over a period of time, you probably have some calluses on your hand. Your hand is used to it and it may be painful, but it'd be less painful. Have you been able to lower the, lower the pain that you go through every time you go to do something that might be scary? Like I know now, like you're a public speaker, like, and getting up in front of people when he used to be this fat guy that didn't feel very good about himself,

that's gotta be really hard. But have you lowered, have, have, have things been less scary or are you still as scared as you were when you were young? Oh, no, man. Things are less scary for sure. So when I was in sixth grade, we had a play and I used to stutter real bad, man. I mean, like I couldn't say a fucking word without this going off of my stuttering, man. So whenever I'm in front of people, I tell them that. I literally walked off a stage. I couldn't get the damn, I had one line to say in sixth grade, one line. And I literally walked off stage because I couldn't say the line. So I get in front of these people, I speak for an hour, an hour and a half. And I look at them before I start speaking

and I say, my God, this is pretty amazing. When I was a young kid, I couldn't even stand in front of two people to speak in front of them. Where I'm getting at is I found great power in facing my fears. By doing that, it gave me such confidence to stand in front of a lot of people because I now know what a lot of us are going through so much shit, but I had the guts to face it. I had the guts to tell people how, how, how messed up I am, how messed up I was, the struggles I'm going through. Very few people have that in them to do that on a, on a, on a public platform. And that gives you a lot of, a lot of confidence when you finally get to the point when you really mean, I don't give a fuck what you think about me, there's a lot of power in the fact that you can stand up in front of people and look at them. And if you mess up or whatever,

if you start stuttering, you don't care. And to have that kind of mindset, I'm finally there now through facing myself. So yeah, all those things, I don't, I don't fear too much anymore, man. And if I do, I, I attack it. You want to reach a lot of people and you have an awesome message. There's going to be some people, right. That just, that are still going to hate your guts. They're still going to be, maybe they're annoyed. Like, oh man, this fucking guy's running again. Like I got to see this shit again. Maybe they're down in their life and they just can't stand it anymore. They're mad because you cuss too much or whatever, whatever it is, their opinion of you is right.

Now there's a side of you that says, you know, F you, I'm not on board with that. But there must be another side of you also thinking, man, I still wish I could, I still wish I could help that person. I still wish I could reach them because I know that they could really use this information. What do you kind of think about some of those people who are like, man, this is just a bunch of motivational bullshit, man. Why do I got to listen to this? Well, you know what? I understand that because that was once my attitude towards everybody in life. I had a pants, poor mentality. Whenever I saw somebody getting after it, it made me feel like crap. The first thing I did was I judged you. Oh, he must be on steroids. He must be cheating. He must

be doing this. He's just an asshole. I immediately put you in a box because I wasn't where you're at. So once again, my low self-esteem kicked up. So I know where a lot of it comes from. But if people were to take time to just listen to my story and realize where I come from, just give me, like, for instance, one big thing that changed my life was I was watching Rocky when I was really young. And Rocky won round 14, changed a lot of my mindset I mean as we all know it we all should know it if not get off your ass and watch the tag on movie hell yeah but but Apollo knocks Rocky down in the 14th round is beating the hell out of him and even Rocky's Mickey his trainer Rocky's trainer saying stay down Apollo Creed

turns around hands in the air he's all happy thinks he beat this gladiator finally because the guy just kept on coming after him as Apollo's turned around I think the count's like six or seven he sees this guy getting up he's stumbling in the corner but he's getting up the referee's looking at him he kind of pushes the referee away and he gets his gloves and motions to Apollo to come over here. Come on, I got some more for you. And when I saw that, it was only about two minutes and 13 seconds. And that one scene said, that's exactly what I want everybody in my life to look like. If you look at Apollo Creed's face, it looks like Rocky took his soul, took everything from him. And I was like, I don't care about beating you.

I don't care about winning trophies. I don't care about winning anything. All I want to do is go to distance. winning trophies. I don't care about winning anything. All I want to do is go the distance. So if people will give me just a little bit of time, give me that two minutes and 13 seconds, look through all the cuss words, look through all the bullcrap, look through all the running, look through all that stuff and there's a lot of messages in there and you may find two minutes and 13 seconds in in in that big long message so just trust me there's a lot more than meets the eye here with me whether you like it or not you and i just became best friends oh man i love that movie and i know exactly the scene

you're talking about my brother and i have watched rocky millions of times i'm sure many fans have watched it many times over but it's the scene before he even goes to fight when he just says all i want to do is prove i'm not just another bum from the neighborhood to me that scene like makes the whole movie what it is he just wants to prove he's not a bum he doesn't he's not even trying to be great he just wants to prove i'm not a bum. I'm not a dirt bag. I'm not worthless. And then that scene that you're talking about, Apollo puts his gloves, both his gloves down by his side and just like shakes his head. Like, fuck man. Like you're coming for more. Are you kidding me?

Yeah. Who are you? Who made you? Yeah. Where do you come from? Yeah, man. There's so much of a message in both of those scenes. You know, like the scene you're talking about, you know, when he gets up out of bed on the couch and walks to the ring.

He's in the ring. He says, hey, these shorts are wrong. You know, and then he walks back and sleeps in the bed with adrian and he says what you're saying now man and he wants to go the distance with this guy man i there's a lot of power in all that stuff so that i guess that was actual a real mistake in the movie i don't know if you're aware of that but i i'm a huge rocky fan so i guess that was the actual mistake they when they ran that off they actually messed up and didn't get his trunks right in, in the thing. And so that's, they put that scene in there later because they screwed up that huge giant printout and didn't have any more money to do anything else. I watched the making of that too, man. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a Rocky geek. Yeah. The, uh, the, uh, what you call it, the motion camera,

whatever kind of came from that, the still, still camera, steady camera. Yep. Um, yeah. And, you know, I, I think that that's a great message for people. And that's something I try to share with people as I have this message of be made of something different. Don't be like everybody else. Don't buy into the bullshit. People are telling you eat different, think different, train different, be a little different.

You know, why not be a little different you know why not be a little different why not take some risks you were eating uh as we were talking in the beginning here what's your food like well i'm a i'm you know what i still almost eat like a bodybuilder type of guy still even though i'm a i'm a big time runner now but I'm still big into the gym because I never wanted to be that guy who I used to call those guys when I was a big I'm sure you know what I'm talking about when you're a lifter and you see those

I used to call them running geeks I would see running geeks on the treadmill all skinny and stuff man you can't probably lift your body weight that was our conversation I gained a lot of respect for those running geeks. Right. But I want to find that happy medium.

So I'm really big into the protein content. I'm still a big meat eater. What I was just doing was I was taking in my essential amino acids. I've taken a lot of amino acids, my essential amino acids. And I eat a lot of acai, stuff like that, man, with essential amino acids. And I eat, um, a lot of acai stuff like that, man, with protein in there. Um, so I'm just really big on getting my protein content in and a lot of eggs, still, still eggs, bacon, um, steak, you know, so I'm five or six times eating like five or six times a day. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm'm i'm eating as much as possible um i eat very light

during the morning time and i kind of almost fast during the morning time and then you know past like 11 12 o'clock man it's like game on and i kind of open up the floodgates that's because you're up so early what do you think about you, a lot of people will say, you know, sleep is this, you know, really, really important thing. This is stupid to wake up at four o'clock and exercise and stuff. But you seem to have made that a habit where you're up early, you're training early. What has that done for you? You know, it's done a lot for me mentally, but I really believe that you have to get that sleep, man. I'm not saying you got to get it every single day of your life,

but there has to be times, man, where you really rest your body. So I rest my body a lot at nighttime. So I'm really big into doing stretching. So I do these stretches. It's almost like a yoga type of stretch that I've kind of made up myself. I got some tips from different people in the stretching. I kind of made up my own personal routine. So every night for two hours a night, I really believe in prehab and rehab, resting the body and getting the body ready. So even though sometimes I don't sleep that

much, I'm really into the body and the mind totally calming down and getting reset for the next morning so you can attack the day properly so you basically stretch before you go to bed type of thing yep every single night haven't missed well i missed two days the last five years five and a half years and uh if you if you don't have the opportunity to train the next uh, what happens? Does that throw you off? That never happens. Basically every morning that you wake up, you get in some sort of training. Yeah. I will guarantee you one thing about me is that we all talk about time. We don't have enough of it. That's bullshit. What you don't do right is you don't prioritize what is important in your life. And for me, me training and the things that I do on a daily basis, that's how I start to build my armor.

My mental armor starts to get built up by doing these things that are uncomfortable for me. So I still hate running. You know, I was a big guy twice in my life because I like to gravitate towards the heavy lifting and also big time eating. I love to eat. I love to lift. So running is very uncomfortable for me. So, um, I do that every single morning. Every time I get up, I will get it in no matter what happens during the day. I will put off meetings. I will put off whatever I will escape. I will miss a meal. I will do whatever it takes to get that, to get that exercise in. That's your time to yourself. And it's not negotiable for anybody else to take any of that time. That's right. That's right.

What like, have you, so that must've been something you learned over a period of time and you must've learned over a period of time to eat better. And these things were these transitions hard or did they come pretty easy? Like, did you kind of just cut to a rocky montage and you're off to the races with everything you know what um it it was pretty hard for me at first because like i said man uh being a power lifter you can kind of get away with a lot of not so much dieting and you know not looking at calorie content and powerlifting was very easy for me. Very tough sport, very tough sport.

But when you're resting five minutes at a time, sometimes 10 minutes at a time, I got a lot of break times. My mind got time to rest. Going out there running for 200 miles at a time for 39 hours and doing 4,030 pull-ups, like, you know, I did 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours. You don't have much time to rest. Right. And so the discipline of all that, of the structure of the endurance type of sports that I do now, and there's a lot of structure in powerlifting. Do not get me wrong. God, dog, a lot of structure there. It's just it takes so much mental focus to be locked in for 39 hours and to be locked in for 17 hours, hitting the pull up bar every single minute for 17 hours.

amount of mental focus it takes for that. And that started very small for me. And it's kind of grew from there. So even my diet, I slowly started cutting out this, cut out that. But to lose 106 pounds, I had to go cold turkey. I went from 297 to 191 in less than three months. So there wasn't anything like, oh, I got to, let me just cut out this cheeseburger. No, I'm cutting out donuts, fries, cheeseburgers, all that stuff, man. It was like, OK, grilled chicken breast. Here we come. And that was pretty much the diet. So but I definitely, you know, recommend people you got to start slower. You'll definitely backtrack real quick. The transition into that is that, was it just like, hey, I'm just going to eat a lot less calories, period. I'm going to have chicken breast and maybe vegetables or something like that. Was that the diet?

Yeah. Basically, I went to recruiter's office and he said, you need to lose 106 pounds in less than three months. I was like, oh, shit. I was familiar with dieting just by being a lifter and getting into sampling powerlifting and sampling bodybuilding. So I knew how to diet correctly. It just sucked doing it. And I hated cardiovascular activities. Hated them. So I'm like, God, I got to do all this stuff combined. I have to do all this stuff combined.

So I basically found the foods that would almost trick my mind into thinking I'm eating a lot, but they have little calories in them. Got it. So I was able to eat a whole bunch of green vegetables that, you know, they have no calories. But you're thinking you're eating a shit ton of food and you're not. Grilled chicken breast, you ever heard 10 calories in a grilled chicken breast or whatever the hell it was? And I was eating these small grilled chicken breasts thinking, my God, man, I'm full. And I wasn't. I was starving.

So when a 297 pound man is eating these little meals throughout the day, man, and you're used to consuming like my breakfast. When I would drive home in an Ecolab truck, I spray for cockroaches. I would drive home and have a box of mini chocolate donuts and a chocolate milkshake for my 45-minute commute home at 7 o'clock in the morning. When I would get home, I would drive to my mom's house two miles away. And I know you're familiar with them. It's those cinnamon rolls from Pillsbury. They're great, man. My God. And then I'd have a half pound of bacon, and I'd have eight to nine hard eggs scrambled hard and dry. And then I would chase it down with a bowl of Fruity Pebbles or Fruit Loops. And that was my breakfast. And you go from eating that kind of breakfast to, like, I'm going to have a banana.

Those come up pretty quick, man. i'm gonna have a banana all right those come up pretty quick man did you kill off a lot of those cravings and a lot of the you know you uh being hungry and stuff like that over a period of time you know what happened when i started to work out like i was i became uh obsessive about moving so even to watch tv i bought this cheap ass stationary bike that, you know, like the calorie count on it was all wrong. And I don't even think it kept calories on it. It's like this makeshift crap that you put together yourself from Walmart. But I sat there and I would ride this bike and I became obsessed with doing cardiovascular activities and that was literally the more weight I lost it was coming off so fast that I literally had no cravings at all because I was living off

of this high of my god man you have lost 50 daggone pounds in almost a month and I'm like so I was really gaining a lot of strength from the hard work i was putting in and i was battling all these demons along the way that um me being in a victorious mindset was really fighting all those different cravings man so i didn't have many of them uh in this quest to you know fight off all these things you're scared of, did it ever cost you too much? Did it ever cost you a relationship or ever cost you something because you're so obsessed and so excited to lose weight or to kick the day in the balls? Has it ever cost you anything? Yeah, I think it.

And don't take this wrong. People out there will think I'm not happy. And I am happy because this is my lifestyle. This is what I want to do. But trying to find your best self, you become unbalanced. And people always talk about this mythical creature called the balance. You want to be balanced. And I think balance is a bunch of bullshit.

You want to be balanced. And I think balance is a bunch of bullshit. If you want to be great at anything, the Michael Jordans, the Tiger Woods, the greatest people of all time, the dad gone, you know, Kaz Myers, you know, all these guys, you talk to these guys, you talk to Roger Federer, they, on the surface, they have a life. But I guarantee you drill down deep, man. They are so off fucking balance. Their life doesn't, you know, you get them on a teeter-totter, you're not going to come down. You know, it's just not balanced. And that's how you become great. And that's just my mindset.

So you lose a lot of your life. But you, I made a choice, is a choice to become unbalanced. And the people in my life realize that. And the people that love me realize, you know what, this is who I'm with. This is who he is. This is who he wants to be. And so, yeah, you, you do lose a lot, but you gain a lot also. So it's, it's, it's, it's what you want. I think what you said about it being a choice, I think that's probably the most important thing. Then it's easier for everybody else to understand. Like if you just didn't have balance because you're unorganized and you're not making time for stuff because you're, you're getting drunk and you're sleeping in late and you don't have

time for your, your significant other and you don't have time for this and that. Well, that's kind of a different story, right? But if you're making a conscious choice, look, you know what? I'm not that happy with my life. I want to go after all these goals. That's what's going to make me feel good. And that's where, you know, the significant others and your friends and the people around you, that's where they need to get behind you and say, yeah, man, go for it. Like I'm supporting it. Like you want to lose weight. I can go for it, man. Exactly. And I had a great, well, I've never had a lot of

people in my life. Um, it's been my mom and you know, it's my fiance right now. So I've, I've, I've never had a lot of people in my life and I keep my circle real small. Um um noise distracts growth and the more people you have in your life the noisier your life gets the more distractions you get in your life the more shit you start to hear growth comes from a very quiet place in your mind and when you can organize it you have to organize your mind and we have so much noise and distraction. There's, there's no organization in that. So I believe in keeping my circle real small. And those people know who, you know, they, they know what they get from me. And I know what I get from them. And it keeps me going forward, never stagnant.

What would you say to somebody who doesn't have anybody that, you know, you mentioned your mom being there for you the entire time. There's probably some people out there listening, man, that doesn't, they don't have any help from anybody. Well, I will say this, man. I had her in my life, my mom, great, great person. But my dad beat the hell out of her. And it beat the hell out of me. And when you have that done to you you lose a part of yourself so my mom was there but a lot of times she wasn't so I know how it

is to be alone you have to be able to flip alone on top of his head I gained a lot of strength from having a sewer mentality and what a sewer mentality is is how many people can make it out of the sewer alone with no coach, no trainer, no one to guide you, no one to mentor you, just having a straight up killer mentality, having a warrior mindset, having a no matter, having a round 14, I'm going to get the fuck up mindset. And you have to learn to flip that loneliness into like total like power. And that's what I was able to do. I was able to like, you know what? If I can come out of this fucking sewer that I'm living in, in my mind, if I can overcome all these things by myself,

how much strength will I gain from this? And you gain a shit ton of strength from it. And so that's how I looked at my life growing up. I stopped looking at all the bad things that life handed me. And I started looking more as the ultimate training ground for where I want to go. To build this strength in your mind, do you think it had to be physical? Yes, I really do. You think for everybody?

Yeah, I think almost for everybody. The mental aspect, everything in my life. So I had a learning disability that I talked about. My physical gave me the self-discipline. And that literally has carried me over to to I can sit down and study. It may take some people an hour to study. I have to sit down for maybe 10 hours to learn the same fucking shit, and that's very frustrating. So I always talk about running and swimming and all the stuff I did in the military, pull-up records and powerlifting, all these physical feats. Some of the hardest

shit I do in my life is just learning. But I got that self-discipline from waking up at three and four o'clock in the morning to go out in the cold weather to get my run in, to get my lift in, to get my swim in, to do those things, it totally transfers over to my learning. It's that self-discipline you gain from feeling good about yourself by overcoming yourself on the physical aspect of life. And it transfers to your whole work ethic and everything you do comes from the physical aspect of life. I truly believe that. And the physical and the mental are all one. They are all tied into one, man. Right. You can't learn how to dig deep and how to, you know, overcome your toes getting all jacked up from running 200 miles. You can't learn these things without really going out and doing it. There's got to be some sort of physical.

That's something I talk about often here on this show is, you know, when you're getting underneath those weights, you get underneath, you know, a PR, whatever the weight is for you, that's a new challenge for you. It's scary to you. You're not sure if you're going to tear something, you don't know what's going to happen, but by you exploring that, by you going through that, you got stronger coming out the other end. And just with what we do, you happen to actually physically get stronger, but there's things like running, there's rock climbing, there's all these different things you can explore, but I agree a hundred percent. It has to be physical. Otherwise you're not going to be able to grow and expand the way that you should. Last question is, and you, you've said that,

you know, you kind of built everything off of this. It seems like they had to find something to be proud of. And it's important for people to grab a hold of that concept. Like you better be proud of something. You got to work towards something. And so even if you feel like you're not a whole lot of anything, you got to be doing something productive. You got to be proud of something. For you, what are you the most proud of? What's the most proud, what are you the most proud of that you've done so far? So that book you have right now on your desk, the book Can't Hurt Me. I'm going to tell you right now, man, I got an offer for $300,000 for that, for that book. And I turned it down.

And the reason why I turned it down, I am the most, I don't care about trophies. I don't care about money. I don't care about powerlifting feats that I did or running feats or anything I did. What I care about are the words in that book. is the fact that I overcame myself. I am the most proud. I literally can die right now on this podcast at 43 years old. I know the real truth about David Goggins. And I had so many Mount Everest in front of me. And whenever I climb one, fucking another one will pop up. Another one will pop up. And then I fall down a couple of them.

And there wasn't anybody there to say, hey, David, I'm going to help you up, man. It was just me and me alone and this voice in my head saying, we're not going to stop today. I am the most proud of the fucked up cards I got, the fucked up hand I got when I was born. And I'm so glad I got that hand because it taught me so much about the man I am today and what is possible for a human being. You don't need to have a great family. You don't need to be smart. If you have work ethic and you are willing to outwork the motherfucker

besides you, you can do absolutely whatever you want in life. And that is my biggest treasure that I have is what I have up here in my brain. What I found out, what I learned through this journey, man, it's not for sale. It took too much grind, man. It took too much grit to develop this mind and to have this power I have now. I'm not a theorist. I'm not a theorist. I don't read a book about how a motherfucker used his mind. I'm a practitioner.

I put myself in hell repeatedly like a sword. How you make it? You put it in the fire, you beat the shit out of it. And that's what I did in my mind, man. So that's what I take the most pride of right there. That's, that's awesome, man. And, and thank you so much. You know, that the book, it was, uh, awesome, you know, corresponding back and forth with, with your team. And they were

like, Hey, you got to read the book. Otherwise you won't come on your show. And I'm like, Oh shit. I've never read a book in my life. I'm like, God damn, put me on the spot. But I agree with, you know, a lot of what you're saying. And I have been mesmerized by a lot of the stuff that I've seen on YouTube of you. So I really appreciate you coming on the show today. You have any parting thoughts, anything you want to plug people towards? I know the book's coming out December 4th. You want to tell people where they could pick it up or where they can find you? Yeah, man. So you can get the book, Can't Hurt Me, you can get it on Amazon.

We have an audio book coming out. We have a paperback. We have an e-book and also the hardcover there. All this on Amazon. Since I self-published, that's about the only place you can get it pretty much is Amazon. You can find it in Barnes & Noble. That's about the only place you can get it pretty much is Amazon. You can find it in Barnes & Noble.

That being said, also, you can find me Instagram, you know, at David Goggins for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all that shit. All I talk about on all that social media is how to get better. It's not about looking at my abs, look at me, look at my, you know, it's about mindset. I'm always preaching mindset. And once you change your mindset, man, it's, it's, um, open-mindedness. You can't be open-minded to the fact that you had the possibility of being a badass. Once you close the possibility down in your mind, it's never going to happen. So keep your mind open to the

possibility that you are a badass. Awesome having you on the show and I can't wait to someday meet you in person. Hey man, sounds good, man. Hey, I can tell you were a large man. I can still lift some weight, brother. Yeah, you got to come up here. Yeah, yeah. We got, we're where we film this from is a super training gym in West Sacramento. So sometime when you're in NorCal, we'll have you come in and throw down. I love it. Hey, one question for you before I let you go. Yeah, for sure.

How much do you lift? What are your lifts? So I've retired from powerlifting, but my best bench press, and these are equipped numbers. I'm sure you're familiar with the bench shirt and that kind of stuff. I did an 854- pound bench. What the fuck did you say, man? 854 pound bench. Yep.

Dude, fuck you, man. I'm out of here. That's unbelievable. That is unbelievable. That's awesome. 1,080 squat. Good God. And a 766 deadlift. People don't even know what you're talking about right now.

No, no, they got no clue, yeah. They have no clue what kind of poundage. See, I have a fraction of an idea. All I can say, dude, is Merry Christmas. That's unbelievable. That is unbelievable. Well, that's the reason why I ask you like you know what you lost in the process of like going for that because for me you know there was just that that mindset of like digging that deep is a is a dark and twisted place in some weird way

and I related to what you said earlier about how like sometimes people might not think you're happy I think people might think that of me too, because I'll accomplish something or do something. And I'm like, man, he doesn't even seem like he cared that he just did that. But I do care. I recognize it,

but I'm always onto the next one. Cause it is, it is about your mindset. I love it, man. That's some, that's some Bill Kazmaier shit right there. That's right.

All right, my man. I'll catch you later. Thank you so much. That was awesome. Bye. Later, brother. Hell yeah.

That was crazy, huh? That was dope. I love his reaction to your bench press, though. I know. We need to post that on Instagram. Yeah, that definitely took the cake. I think he's laughing at me because he did that for like five rips this morning. Yeah, or he did. Yeah. That definitely took the cake. Cake. I think he's laughing at me because he did that for like five reps. It could have been.

Yeah. Or he did. Yeah. Some, some form of something that just like, oh, that's cute. Here's this. Yeah. No, it was great because, you know, he, you know, with him being a powerlifter, he had the, uh, he has the background, he's seen him before and he not, he, he understands

like Jesus. Yeah. It's like I said, so many similarities, dude. Yeah. Like the learning disability, uh uh rocky being over 300 pounds i don't i don't know if i don't know if anyone i don't know if a lot of people have watched rocky the way that he's talking about i don't know if people have watched rocky the way that like i've i've broken rocky down and like analyze the shit out of it and that was as a kid i mean i haven't even really i've watched it recently as

well but like i haven't really gone down and broken some of the stuff down but there's it's scene after scene of these like magical and really potent moments where you're like wow that was fucking incredible and they didn't even i don't even know if they meant to do some of this stuff like when he talks about um he says to adrian he says to you, it's Thanksgiving to me. It's Thursday. You know, like we used to say that to my mom when we were kids, like we, you didn't even know why without even seeing, without even knowing about Rocky necessarily, even though Rocky was out obviously, cause it came out when I was born, but even without that scene, you know, my mom used to say, Hey, look, it's Christmas day. You boys aren't going to the gym.

Like, no, we're, that's, we're going, we're going to you. It's Christmas day to us. It's another bench day. Yeah. It's another day to get stronger. Like that's where we're going. That's where, and we used to meet, my brothers used to follow the, uh, snowplow to, to the gym.

Cause you know, I grew up in New York and so, you know, we're waiting for the, them to plow the roads. There's like six inches of snow on the road. My mom's like, you guys aren't going anywhere. There's too much snow on the ground. Like, oh, well, as soon as that snowplow comes, which should be any minute now, we're going to follow right behind that son of a bitch and go right to the gym. And that's what we would do. We'd break her down. That's, that's dope. Um, another similarity between you two, uh, you call, you know, putting, you call it putting points up on the scoreboard. He actually calls it a cookie jar, you know, cause it's like, whenever you're, you're doubting yourself or whatever, like, or whenever you accomplish something that goes in

your cookie jar, you do something else that goes in your cookie jar. So that way, when somebody doubts you, you look back at your cookie jar and you're just like, wait, no, I am, I am a pretty, I'm a badass. Like I can fuck these guys. And guys and so but you know yours is putting up points on the scoreboard i'm just when i'm checking out you know like researching david i'm just like this is weird like it's it's fucking cool though anyway that's all the time we got i'd love to sit here and chat forever but uh we got other shit to do today strength is never weakness weakness never strength check out david goggins book it'll out. I'm not sure exactly when this episode will drop, but his book comes out December 4th. You heard him.

He said, you can get it on Amazon. Make sure you check out all the stuff the guy's got. The guy's got a lot to offer. And remember what he said about some of those people that might not like his rah-rah spirit. He said that he was in that position himself before. He understands that position. And I thought he had a really good perspective on that. And I think anybody that is, uh, maybe wasn't a fan of his before should open their mind

up and realize all he's trying to do is to get you to toughen up your mind, callous your mind. I love that saying. I think that's something I, I mean, I think there was stuff in that podcast right there that you can go back and you can listen to and you can listen to and you can listen to over and over again and you can get a lot of quality from that podcast I'd even suggest get out a pen get out a piece of paper and freaking write some stuff down the stuff that David Goggins shared with us today can change your life a lot of the stuff we talk about in this podcast can change your life for the better.

That's all we're trying to do. Somebody may think this or that about me and the company and this and all these different things. We don't have any advertising on here. This thing is free. All we want you to do is tell other people about it if you enjoyed it. That's all I ask you to do. That's all I want you to do. But we're just trying to make people better, man, because it's fun.

You know what happened today? Andrew ended up hitting some good benches today. He missed one. He came back and got it. Yesterday, he hit a PR deadlift. He deadlifted 300 pounds. He wanted to deadlift 300 pounds by the end of the year, but Christmas came a little early. Came about a month early, and he was able to hit a 300-pound deadlift 300 pounds by the end of the year, but Christmas came a little early, came about a month early and he was able to hit a 300 pound deadlift. To me, that kind of shit feels good. Now that's

physical. I can physically see that in him, right? So it's really easy to judge. It's really easy. You could actually physically see that one week he did this amount of weight and the next week he did that amount of weight. Not everything in life is going to be so visible that way. Not everything, you're not always going to be able to see the goal and then the goal is crushed and you're not always going to see things like that, but that is the goal. You do want to try to get better every day. And the way that you get better every day is being prepared. Try to be prepared for every day the best that you can. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Strength is never weak. This week, never strength. Bye.