The Resilient Mind - 2026: The Year You Stop Letting Your Mind Talk You Out of It - David Goggins

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

[Explicit] An accomplished endurance athlete, Goggins has completed over 60 ultra-marathons, triathlons, and ultra-triathlons, setting new course records and regularly placing in the top five. He once held the Guinness World Record for pull-ups completing 4,030 in 17 hours, and he’s a sought after public speaker.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to the year you stop letting your mind talk you out of it with David Gagins. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. What is that smoke jumping stuff? So basically, it's, you know about wildland firefighting, about when the forest has fires. There's a lot of times there's roads and there's access to get there. So these, you know, whether it be a hot shot crew or whatever, these different crews who come in by vehicle, they can get into the fire that way.

What a smoke jumper is, is you can't get a vehicle into that place. It is a spot where it's tight. There's no vehicles. There's no access. So they'll send us in there, smoke jumpers, jump out of airplanes, and we'll land in these really tight, small drop zones with all of our gear. and we'll put the fire out. How do you take water in? We jump out.

So everything is... Hang on. You're jumping out of a... Airplane, parachute. With backpacks of water, like a camel pack type thing? So we'll jump out. We'll have this... It's called a Diddy pack.

And it sits in... You know, it sits like by your waist, you know, on your legs area when you jump out. And that has a lot of your gear. But what happens is once you jump out, the aircraft would go lower and will push out. all the rest of your gear.

Your water pumps. Oh, and that'll get air dropped in with its own little parachutes. Right. Right. So a lot of our main gear gets dropped into us. And then we're out there

for several days until the fire is put out by us and only us. That's insane. It's insane, yeah. Why do you do that? Well, when I left the military, I'm always looking for more.

I'm always looking for what's the next thing for myself. How can I grow? And that right there was the next thing for me. You know, I didn't want to sit back and, you know, just enjoy my retirement for the military. That's, there's, there's no growth in that. So I decided to go out and do this.

So you jump out of an airplane with a team. You get your kit also parachuted out of the back. You're now in the middle of an area where there's no evac. There's no vehicles that can come and get you. There's a fire. You need to put the fire out and you don't stop until you're done. That's it. sometimes there is a way to get out but a lot of times it's just you know if someone gets hurt on the

jump a lot of times we have to build like cut down a bunch of trees so a helicopter can come in land and get them out so we are the only access we have to save ourselves so a lot of times we are the team to get us in and to get us out what was the longest mission exercise that you did I think the longest one I did with seven days. And what's the sort of daily routine? Are you sleeping? Do you get much sleep at all? No, not really.

So what happens is, and the thing about being in Canada, so I do this out of British Columbia. So what happens is there's a lot of daylight. So when I'm out there, man, there's a lot of daylight. In the middle of the summer when it's hardest, when you've got tons of, right, okay. That's right. So there's not much dark. So you're basically working a lot of hours. So, and then when it gets dark, you're actually working through the nighttime.

And then you get a little, you know, you get a little rest and you wake up and you add it again. And then when the fire is out, you patrol the fire, make sure there's no more hot spots. Make sure everything is black and wet, because we literally wet the whole area down. So there's no hot spots. And then when that's all done, we'll demode, which means we'll clean up all the stuff, all our hoses. You know, we'll pack up all our stuff and then we'll get out of there. Did you ask to be paid for this? I get about, I think the pay is about 12 to 15 bucks an hour.

So it was funny about it, man. Like when I first started doing this job, people didn't know that, you know, I'm actually successful in business. And then it realized that I was like basically turned down millions of dollars to do this job. And they can continue thinking it. To make 15 bucks an hour. To make 15 bucks an hour. So yeah.

But, you know, like I said, for me, the whole money part of it, it's not what it's about. I'm all about that growth. And that growth isn't in these massive paychecks for speaking to corporations, stuff like that. The growth for me is in that $12 to $15 an hour when you're out there and it's like 20, you know, 20 degrees. And you're freezing your ass off. And you're thinking, you know what? I don't need to be here anymore. and you start questioning yourself while you're here.

And there's a lot of growth in that. Why did you decide to release another book? What was undone with the first one? Well, the first one was basically a bachelor's degree with the mind. It's how I look at it. And no one knew who I was. So this is the book, never finished as the book that I wanted to come out first. But how am I going to get so deep into something when no one knows who the hell I am?

So first, I have to give you some backstory on who they, hell David Goggins is. Some credentials. That's it. And so I got some basic credentials out there. And now I can dive in more because most people think I'm just some grand animal who runs and yells and this says fucking motherfucker all the time. And that's nowhere near the truth. That's maybe what they see in a one minute video. That's what we believe. But there's a lot of thought behind a person being a born loser becoming who I am today. You know just wake up and just rocky, to shit. You got to wake up and think about, you know, there's a process to getting better. And that process is never finished. It's an appropriate title. So one of the things that I've

been thinking about is the danger of success making you soft. And this must be something that you've battled with over the last few years. More money, more attention, more fame, more free things, if you wanted more opportunities to go places and do stuff with people. How have you dealt with this battle of success not making you soft you have to cap it you have to learn to cap success so what i do is like right now i don't like doing podcasts there's a lot of things i don't do to have to do now to get the messages out there to help people out and what i mean by capping success i believe everybody should live their life so everything that someone says in life take it with a grain of salt take what they give and don't be like oh david gagan said this or who

whoever said this. No, do not take what I say and do exactly what I say. So for me, what makes me who I am, because my mission is very different than yours or anybody else's. I have to go into a situation or okay, I'm a guy who wants to make people better. For people to get better, I have to continuously get better myself. For me to do that, I can't just say, oh, I have this resume, the resume is there forever, I'm good. I have to cap my success because for me to help people out, I can't just say I did it once and I'm good. I have to continue to reinvent the wheel of the mind and figure out more and more ways for you to pull because if I have a cookie cutter message, it may hit five people out of 25. You just failed. My message needs to be in a way where I can hit all

25 people. It needs to be broad enough to where all 25 people may not like the message, but they're getting something from it. And that is evolution. You must continue to evolve. And you don't evolve for me in my job unless I cap myself somewhere. It's okay, you made this much money. Get back to fucking work. It's time to get back to work. Stop hearing yourself talk. Get off the podcast. Don't be on social media too much. cut out all the fucking noise, get back to the fucking mental lab, because that's where the knowledge came from. So for me, I must cap myself so I can come back with better,

more unique knowledge versus all that cookie cutter knowledge that's out there. That's why people buy the books I have because it's not cookie cutter. It's real knowledge. The other thing now is when you first started, you were a lone ranger. Right. Nobody really knew who you were outside of some obscure endurance places and half-heard truths of these weird myths. Right.

But now you've got people's expectations laid on top as well. So not only have you got to deal with success potentially making you soft, so you've got to cap that, you've got to say no to more money and opportunities and cool people. Right. You've also got this extra layer of expectation that's coming through from other people, too. And I think that you talk about trained humility in the new book too. I've got to presume that that fits into this equation.

Right. It fits in big time. And that's one big reason why I do fight fire. because all the knowledge for myself comes from that place. It doesn't come from the place of success. My knowledge does not come from the place. Because for me, I built Goggins from the ground up. I was born David Goggins.

David Goggins wasn't good enough. He was a scared, bullied, abused kid who struggled in life. And that kid, whenever something got tough, you matter how hard I trained, no matter how ready I was whenever something got tough for me David Gagins the real David Gagins

would come out and he would quit so I realized this over a period of time so I had to build Gagins and in that process I have to go back to that mental lab and that mental lab is at scratch that mental lab isn't that trained humility and so that's where I get better

I get better when I'm digging holes in the ground. When I'm waking up early, no and I don't have to do these things. That's where I get better. So it's important to stay hungry. It's important to stay hungry, but it's important more to stay humble within that hunger. So while you're hungry, a lot of people are hungry, but humility is everything. What was that story about William Crawford, the janitor? Yeah.

So this guy won the middle of honor. So he won the Medal of Honor, which is the highest award in the military. And this guy went to the Air Force Academy, and he was a janitor. And no one knew who the fuck this man was. He had the highest award in all the military for heroics, for heroics, saving lives, putting his life in a line, could have been killed. and he is now basically, you know, cleaning shitters for young kids. And we can all imagine how that probably went. You know, there's probably some, you know, a little bit of taunting here and there.

And he just sat there and cleaned the shitter. So that's why he's in my trained humility part, because for this man to be at the level he was and had that kind of humility to go, I'm a middle of honor winner, but I'm going to put that in my closet, and I'm going to pick up my broom and dustpan. and I'm going to pick up, you know, this rag and clean this shit for these young men. That right there is amazing for me, man.

That's where you grow. That's growth, huge growth. And also it shows that he was doing his job. He was a servant. He didn't look at himself any better than anybody else. The second you do that, you totally lost. You cannot look at yourself. Like people with me even,

I always look at people. I know where you are. I know where you, because I've been there. That's why I helped so many people out. I've never been above you. I've always pretty much been beneath you, and that's where my knowledge came from, so I know how to reach those people who are in the dungeon,

because I've been there so many times. Speaking of getting too soft, did you see that there was a news story that came out recently about the treatment of seals during the selection process? Do you see this? Yeah, I saw it. Yeah, they were getting sprayed with tear gas whilst they were on the ground, and they were made to sing happy birthday

so that they couldn't hold their breath while it was happening. And there was a quote from this guy, I think this type of training is really senseless, said Sven Yort, a Duke University associate professor who studies tear gas and its effects, it looks more like a form of hazing. Right. I see all that.

Trust me. Like I said, you know, I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. I understand that guy. I understand exactly where you're coming from. That is your personal opinion, and I totally get that. But there's very few people in this world who want to do a job like that. And it takes a different kind of mindset.

Is it tear grass appropriate? I don't know. How hard that training is? I don't expect anybody to understand it, but 1%. But the loud voices of this world are the 99% who don't understand. exactly what you have to do. That's why when I speak and you don't understand me, it's probably a good thing because that probably means I'm in an area of life that you're not in, which is fine. That's why I don't judge people. And this guy right here judging that unless you've been there

and done that and you really can't speak about it unless you're in those situations that are so hard that takes a special human being to get through them. I think it's the same kind of feeling that I get when I heard about Elon Musk telling the employees at Twitter, we're going to ask you to work harder than you've ever worked in your life. This is a place. Twitter is now a company where people can go if they want to be in the top 0.0.0.0.1% of hardworking programmers and software developers on the planet. That's right. And there was everybody was up in arms. This is unbelievable, we're going back to this old version of capitalism where the worker is being abused and used and thrown away. What they didn't account for is that there is a non-insignificant

cohort of people for whom that's their dream. People who want to be able to get up on a morning, having gone to bed four hours before, and can contribute to some sort of progress that they think this is what I'm here for. And it's the same with the seals. If you're not the sort of person that is built to go through selection, it's like speaking a different language. It's like speaking a different That's it. And that's why I don't try to convince people otherwise. I understand that why you're confused. I understand why you say things like that. I'm not saying anything bad about that. I understand it. But also, what you don't understand, what you fail to understand is the other side that you need people like that. You need the Elon Musk's. You need the David Goggins. You need some of

Navy SEALs, some of these other people, you need those people. And they don't, they forget that. And it takes a very, very unique person and unique mind to do some of these jobs that are necessary in this world. Well, especially when we're thinking about someone going to war. Right. Do you want your armed forces to be underprepared for the battlefield because you didn't want to be too mean to them in advance? That's the problem. That's the problem. And that's a problem that I've always had, I've always had, is that right there, is that even, even some of the most trained people in the world fall back on that. It's easy to talk about. Like I said, when you go through it once, it's a perishable skill. Hardness, mental hardening, mental

toughness, it's a perishable skill. Just because you went through some training once and you got through it doesn't mean it lasts fucking forever and that's where most people hated me in my life because i realize that you don't just say oh i got it i'm checked off i'm good for the rest my life that's why you have recall you recall on fucking everything and you definitely must recall when it comes to the mind that is one of the biggest requalifications you must have and when you're at that level you got to recall every fucking day not once a year one of the other things that you did to stop yourself from getting soft was running the Moab 240. Yep.

Talked me through that experience. So I hadn't run a 100-mile race, and I think it was about six years. You know, I had, you know, some heart surgeries. I had some, maybe some questioning in my mind about, I call it part-time savage. I started kind of going through this. I started getting, you know, a little bit of injuries, a little bit of this, a little bit, things that back in the day never slowed me down. So when I got my head out of my ass and realized that, hey, we have more left, we can still push harder, we're not there yet. I realized, talking to a guy named Cameron Haynes, you did this race 240-mile race.

And I'll say, I go, is this the new level? Is this the new push? So when I decided to do that race, it was in the back of my mind like, man, I've really become an expert at running 100-mile races. So for me, this was the new level to 200 plus mile race. And what was so amazing about that, as you probably read in the book, I had a hard time the first time doing it. I came back and did better. But what's amazing about the human mind is that it becomes your new norm. Like to think that I can run 200 miles, 240 miles, and that becomes like running 50.

I never thought that was possible. This is why I'm always pushing that limit because I know that within pushing these limits, there's always more. So I end up doing almost like back-to-back 200-mile runs. When the 200-mile raise, 240-mile race was hard at once, it became something that was very easy after I figured it out. So that's why that happened.

Well, you got lost on the first one. Oh, yeah. And then you went to bed and woke up halfway through the night and nudged Kish and said, how long have we got left until the end of the race? But because you hadn't completed the official route, you couldn't go across the official finish line. Yeah. So you ring your race, like, paces, some of whom had gone home. Yep.

What, like, what do you think? So three in the morning and you're ringing people saying, you know, that race that we just finished? because of health problems. Can we go back and finish it? So the crazy thing about that, and that's... But I got lost the first time. I got seriously sick. Was off course.

So basically I bed down about 12 hours. Then I got back in the race. So I was still part of the official race now. Okay. So the first time I got lost, I got sick, got back, got lost, got back in the race after 12 hours of being out of the race. So now I get to about 200 and some of my miles. and I'm sick as hell.

Can't breathe. How to pulmonary edema, totally jacked up. And now the doctor tells me if you get off course now and you go to the doctor, you won't be able to come back and finish the race. So I didn't make a call. Like, you know what? I'm pretty messed up, got off. So this is where you're talking about.

I'm literally laying in bed and I'm feeling better. And I thought, honestly, I swear to God, I thought that someone was. speaking to me. I thought it was Jennifer. It was like, you're not done yet, motherfucker. And I'm like, what the fuck is this? It was actually probably my subconscious saying, get your ass back out there. So I wake Jennifer up. I'm like, hey, how much time do we have into the cutoff? I know that I'm already, you know, DNFed. So matter what happens here, I'm not going to be an official finisher of this race. This isn't for glory. No. This is now for the fact that you can. So you can sit here or not and think of it.

about that for a whole year until you come back here and do this. Or you can go out there for yourself and take some kind of pride in knowing that you could and you did. So basically, I wake her up, how much time left? She goes something like, I don't know what it was. What did you say what time was? Like, you know, whatever. And half my crew had left. And there's two people there. I woke them up. They were giving me a get on a plane. I said, look, can you guys help me out. I have 40 miles to go. I'm going to have Jennifer drop me back off at the spot where I left. I'm going to finish this fucking race. And I couldn't cross the finish line because I wasn't an official finisher. So I ended up finishing on a road by a telephone pole. And that was my

official finish. End up being like 250 miles, 25 miles. But it's one of the best races of all time because we're going through it fast but all the fucking times that I was like this is I'm not going back and I went back I'm not going back and I went back I'm not going back and I went back. It showed me even more of what we have as as humans if we're willing to go there and we're willing to push that extra step and like I say you know I always tell people a lot of people man how do you do what you do at the day I asked myself one question can I take one more step? And usually the answer is yes. So if you can answer that question and not take another step, that is real failure. That is real quitting. So a lot of people can take one more

step, but they choose not to. I don't know if you can take two steps. You got to answer that question after you take the first step. But I can always take one more steps. If I choose not to, that's on me. And I got to live with that. Does that link in with the one second decision? Yes. Yes. So the one second decision is I had to live through that one second decision several times during this race. So this race took me 100 and some hours, okay? And this is what people don't get. For you to finish that race, even though I DNFed, I still finished in the time. So there's a lot of pride in that. If you're 100 and some odd hours, let me use Hell Week. This is a perfect example. Hell Weeks 130 hours.

And 130 hours is a lot of seconds. A lot of fucking seconds. And if you lose, let's say you win every second but one. You lost. It only takes one second for you to lose the whole thing. So the one second decision is just that. You're in a situation where life is sucking. Let's say you're in extreme cold water.

and your life is flashing before your eyes. Every time that wave goes over your head, your thought process is, I got to get the fuck out of this water. And you're in Hell Week. And you're hour one of 130 fucking hours. It's all fun in games, okay? Because at the beginning of Hell Week,

the guns are going off. It's like a pep rally. So you're fucking hyped up. And your boys are linked arms and you're getting sprayed. It's like a fucking pep rally. The structure yelling at your bombs are going off. Concussion grenades, blanks from in 60s.

Yeah, hoo-ya. Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Motherfucker, yeah. But then what they do is they shut that shit off. They shut it off. All that hoo-ya, all that hype gets real quiet.

And they march you out to that surf zone for something called surf torture. And it's got watered. Pacific Ocean is cold as shit. So no more prep rally. You're now in your head. You're linked arms with, you know, your brothers beside you. You don't know if they could be there long or not. You don't care.

You think about yourself. You lay back and that first wave hit you. Your mind goes straight from hour two all the way to hour 130. You can't process five days of this shit. You're now in a fuck you. I got to get out of here. You're in fight or flight. It's cold.

I can't be cold this long. And then this is with that one second decision comes in. You forgot every reason why you wanted to be there. You don't care about seals. You don't care about any of this. You don't care about fighting for your country. You don't care about that gody gold trident that they put on your chair. You don't care about any of that shit no more.

All you want to do is go back home. You want the warmth. You may want something to eat. You want your girl to hold you. all those things of comfort are there in that one second. And this is where people lose. So what I do in that one second, because we all think about quitting when shit's hard.

But what you have to do in that one second is hard to process information during pain because that pain takes over and you can't think rationally. You're thinking about fight or flight, save yourself. That's not a rational thought. it's not a thought that's going to get you through hard times. Most people fail that one second.

So what happens is what I do in that one second. And there's a bigger process to all this. But in that one second, I physically stayed in that water. Because if I get out of the water, I quit. So I physically stay in the water. But mentally, I'm on the fucking beach with the fucking instructors. And the instructors is cold outside. So they got these parkers on.

they got their cup of fucking Joe and they're warm because they've already been through it so now it's your turn to go through it so mainly I get back with them I'm still in the water physically but mainly I'm back with them I'm chilling I got my parker on and now I'm thinking logically

because I'm warm now mentally I'm warm I've taken that one second let's not quit yet God because let's fucking think about your options where are you going to end up if you quit this shit where are you going to go where are you going to say to yourself because you know you're going to get warm the second you get out of this water you can take a shower

and you could be warm and you could be and in five days you could be out so i start thinking logically i calm my brain down because your brain just wants to get the fuck out ring the bill push your helmet down get warm and then you're really fucked and these are the things you have to think about the one second decision so that's what that's all about it's about gaining control of your mind putting things back in the proper perspective and then say that's what you're not that's all about saying I really do want to be here and I'm going to have a bunch of these one seconds through this 130 hour journey and I have to learn to control these because if I fail one of these one seconds I will not be a seal I will not be a doctor I will not be a lawyer I will not be whatever the

fuck it is so that's how important that one second decision is it's all about your mind takes control of you you have to say fuck you I run this motherfucker and that's what that's all about projecting yourself forward to see what are the consequences of failing, what are the consequences of stopping. Yep. Is about as powerful of a motivation strategy as I can think of, you know? Because what you're doing is you're trying to optimize right now to stop the discomfort. That's right.

But what you're going to pay for that in is shame and guilt and regret long term. So what you need to be able to do is bundle all of that up that is as yet unfelt, but will last for way, way, way longer. You know, the future is much longer than now. That's right. The future is going to extend out up until the day that you die. And the now is just for now. And even 130 hours is just 130 hours.

That's right. And you get to look back. And do you look back with pride and glory? Or do you look back with shame and guilt? That's it. That's the one second. You just summarized it right there. And most people fail those one seconds.

And then that one second leads to 20 years, 30 years, 40 years of fuck. I have people who, have been through training with me, ranger school, SEAL training, Air Force training, and I get calls from them today, and they have great lives. And all they talk about is how they failed in that one moment. And they can't even great, they can't even enjoy their life now because they're now warm. They're now warm.

There's no more suffering. There's no more suffering for me either. And we're in the same boat now. But you're suffering. So we're not suffering, but you're thinking about what you could have been. I am exactly what I should have been. And that's where people start to lose it. Because now I realize that in that one second.

I go through all that. I know how it's going to feel because I failed so many times before. Failure is the ultimate thing, man. I feel so many times before. That's why I don't look at failure anymore as failure. I look at my first, second, and third attempt. So that's what that's all about. man. Well, I mean, you went back to go and do Moab again the second time, which is your second attempt.

That's right. Had you banged your knee up? It was pretty bad in between the first and the second one. It was pretty bad way before either one of them. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it's been jacked up now for about 20 years. I've seen some gnarly photos of it recently. It looks. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So all those miles I've run on this thing, it's, it's been a lot of, uh, it's been a lot of gut checks. So you go back, you do Moab a second time. Yep. And then You turn your ass into like a hamburger or something as well. So it's not just the knee, it's the ass as well now. Yeah.

So at Mile 201, we have a good video of it. Matter of fact, Jennifer is like, there's some people up. So 201 is a spot where I was really finished in the first Moab. So that was a way market checkpoint for you the second time. So Jennifer is extremely happy right now because I'm there. Yes. and she knows I'm doing well now. I'm doing good.

We're going to get through this. And so she's videoing me as I'm coming up this climb on this road. And she goes, there's some people up here who want to meet you. You're doing so amazing. I said, my ass is fucked up. You need to get the fucking desicent cream. And it's literally for like 20 fucking miles. Like people don't get it, man.

When you get raw like that, bro, and you're walking because you the chafing of my ass it was hamburger meat and I'm like so she's all fucking happy and shit she's and I just look at her

and I'm gonna put the video up on social media but she's a fucking trooper bro hang on so could she was the leakage oh yeah that was on the video from behind so my shorts were absolutely raw dogged

yeah so when you pull them down, it's just blood. And so she goes in the bathroom because she didn't know what she was going to see. She has a decedent cream. She walks in there and I pull them down and spread them open. And I go put that shit all up in there. So she goes in for the kill. And she's putting this desistin cream all over the fucking place, man.

And you know what? This is the funny thing about it. That's when you know you got a good motherfucker with you, man. when you're that raw, you're that fucked up, and she's just like nothing. It was like saying, hey, can you like put some lotion on my back before I go lay out? That's how she was in there, man, getting in it.

That's it, man. Have you considered that that might be the most traumatic event of all of the things that you've done in your life, what you asked Jennifer to do that day? No, not at all. She did worse. So that Leadville chapter, when I talk about after I finished, and then the ultra-ravelling,

or unraveling had begun when I lay down. Oh, that was on the duvet, and you did another word duvet. Yeah, I didn't know what the fuck duvet was. How the fuck you not know the word duvet, man? Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Come from the streets, we call it blankets. Okay.

Anything that you wrap up is a fucking blanket. Cool. So I'm laying on the duvet and she's all fucking like about her damn ratings at fucking the Airbnb shit. And I'm really like, hey, I'm about to shit right here. Because it's not your place. No. Okay. No. Right. I can see why you can see. So that scene is, is, is, is, is, is, was, was bad. But once again, see, like a crime scene.

It's, yes, it was a crime scene. So you've done all of this stuff, right? You've done the seal selection week three times. Yep. Stripping the legs up so that you can run a bad water ultra race. The Asperger's everything. Yes. Of all of the physical pursuits that you've endured, which has been the most painful. By far. By far, my first 100 mile race, by far. This 2019 Moab, the one that I D enough but still finished, that's up there. But when you are so, I guess, you're not prepared to run 100 miles, and you take it for granted, and you didn't do any training at all, and you didn't have the right nutrition, and off a whim, like literally like you know what i want to raise money for a foundation that's how that happened

so i don't know if no story or not but basically i'm sitting there and the lone survivor incident happened where a bunch of you know some seals died i want to raise money for them i went to training with most of these guys so i had the bright idea to uh raise money you know i wasn't to do a hot dog or hamburger sell i was going to do something that people would be attracted to so i googled the world's toughest events And where it comes up is this race called the Bad Water 135. It's a 135-mile race through Death Valley in the summertime. Now, I had no idea about ultra-running.

I didn't know what the fuck ultra-running was. But when I heard, so when I saw 135 miles, I automatically assumed it was a stage race where you ran like maybe 10, 15 miles, bed down, and you got up the next morning and did it. So when I called the race director up Chris Costman, I'm like, hey, I would like to do this race. to raise money for a foundation he goes have you run 100 miles and i was like like in a week or like

what you're talking about he goes no like in 24 hours because that's what you got to do to qualify and i was like is that even is that even possible like i i i know so anyway he goes no you can't get in my race unless you qualify and i call him up on a wednesday and that's saturday and i was a bodybuilder at the time I did cardio 20 minutes a week on the elliptical trainer every Sunday. He goes, yeah, Saturday, you're in San Diego, Saturday is a 24-hour race where you run around a one-mile track for 24 hours. And if you can get 100 miles, I'll consider you in my race. So I'll go sign up for this race.

And the first 70 miles, I'm doing pretty good. And then I hadn't sat down. I was hanging on the bathroom. I was eating, I was drinking mildplex and rich crackers. I was, you know, eating rich crackers. Elite nutrition. Yeah, elite, elite high quality nutrition. So what happens when you're that ignorant and you go out to do this race

and you sit down in the chair, your body's done. So I'm sitting there and when you sit down for the first time in over 12 hours, your body's now going through some metamorphosis. like go fucking home go to a doctor get some help but I'm sitting there and I have this urge to go to the bathroom and there's a porter potty for me that fucking wall but I can't get up because my blood pressure is all messed up from my great nutrition that I was on and so I can't stand up so I look at my ex-wife and I literally say I'm going to shit on myself right now so I sit there and I'm shitting up my back and I'm peeing blood down my leg and I have to

30 miles to go. And I end up finding a way to get through that 30 miles. And when I got done with that race, it's the worst pain I can ever even, I can't even describe the pain of that last 30 miles to anybody.

No one, it's very hard. Whole body? Whole body. So when it ended, I'm literally dizzy going up my stairs to get to my house. I'm literally, I have,

my arms wrapped around her going up the stairs and every flight of stairs I got to have to lay down because I can't stay upright for too long or I'm going to pass out so I finally get in the house and I get in the house I'm once again on the floor I'm in the kitchen on the floor just laying there I finally make it to the bathroom into the tub I get roared in the tub and she puts the water on me I'm just laying there with the water coming on me and what I pee out looks like cold Coca-Cola. And I'm laying there in the worst pain of my entire life. I'm shaking.

I'm jacked up. And all I could think about was, I can't believe what I had just done. Because when you get to 70 miles of a race and you felt the way I did, to me, it was humanly impossible to even think about going 30 more miles in that shape. And once you do it, what came over me with, that shower hit me, and the reality hit that I spent 101 miles. And that last 31 miles was something that I can't even describe to people.

And she's like, we get to the hospital. So at the time, my mom was seeing this doctor, and he was like, you know, so she's describing to my mom what I'm going through. He's like, you got to get in the hospital now. And I just said, just shut up and let me enjoy this pain. I don't want anything to numb it. I don't want anything right now. Because what I had done was I just, in my mind, and people will take this wrong and take

as wrong as you want to, I don't really care. I had just climbed a mental wall that was amazing. And I don't want anybody to take that pain away from me at that point because that was all confirmation. It seems like, I've heard you tell that story a number of times, amazing. did that set the tone or the rhythm for what you wanted to try and achieve and feel again? Each time you're pushing further, there's more difficulty. I never wanted to feel it again.

I never want to feel it again. But what it did was it showed me what is possible. And that's what set the new stage for me. That's when I realized, oh, man, I've really been underachieving my entire life. I'm not saying that you have to go to that place because that place is a dangerous, dangerous place that... Borderline Rabdo, Heart, everything. It wasn't borderline, rabdo.

It was all that. Yeah. But you don't want to go there, but it taught me what is possible. So from that 19-hour lesson, when the biggest lesson had my life, it taught me like, okay, I got it, check. Tell me about this mixtape of hate that you've made.

So what started happening is as you get bigger, as you get more successful, you open the door for people to critique every fucking thing you do. And most of the people who are critiquing you usually aren't where you are. And all their critiquing comes from people who are really at a low level of life, which is sad. But what we do, people who are on the upper level, hearing the haters at the lower level, like I said, you'll never meet a hater doing better than you. True statement.

I started having fun with it. So I'll go through the comments. While most people don't go through comments, I go through them intentionally look for the bad ones. And while I'll block and delete you because the people on my page don't need that negative energy, I'll block and delete you, but I take a snapshot on my phone and I put it in the archive. So what happens is there's days where I'm like, you know what, I really don't want to do this today. And I'm like, oh, hang on. So I started making these mixtapes with all of these hate messages about people talking shit.

And it became such a source of fuel that it was amazing because I know why you hate me. You hate me because you're probably in the bed right now. You're probably an underachiever. you're probably somebody who doesn't want to do anything with your life. So I make you question everything about yourself. So I'm going to continue making you question yourself by coming out here and being even more successful. So I listen to that while I run.

I sometimes play in the house and sometimes gets on Jennifer's fucking nerves. I'm sitting and listening to somebody talk mad shit on a loop about me. And she's like, why do you do this? shit. It's half comical and it's half, um, it's half inspiring. I'm actually inspired by it. I've heard you say previously that listening to music while you train is cheating. So what you're telling me is that the silence of your own dark thoughts isn't enough of a soundtrack. And you've had to crowdsource insults from the internet, self-narrate it. Yep. And then play it to yourself while you train. That's it. I do that sometimes. Yes. Yes. We've got you,

phone on you right now. I want to hear it. No, I don't travel with my phone. Oh. Yeah, my phone does not go with me anywhere. Why's that? Once again, man, like right now, I'm with you. A lot of times people are in conversations or they're somewhere and they're elsewhere. You may think they're with you, but they're not. That phone is the biggest distraction in the world. When the time, so when it comes time for the phone, I'm on the phone. We're not, I don't use it. I'm all about being present where I'm at. So that's why that phone right now, no, we do have it. It's silenced, it's off.

So I do have my phone right now, but usually I don't take it anywhere I go. Got you. So while you're listening to the self-narrated insults of random people on the internet that you don't like. Right. What are you thinking of while you're listening to that while you're working out or while you're walking around the house? How that back in the day, when I was sometimes getting bullied or in a dark place, how sometimes that would have bothered me. how I would want to clap back.

I would want to be on there all day explaining myself to people and how now I'm in a place now where I can hear it and I can actually enjoy it. I can actually know where it's coming from. I've studied it. So I don't just like listen to it and like make fun of it. I actually studied it because I was once that negative person. I was once that person who saw someone successful

and didn't see how can I get there. I was like, oh, fuck that. They're probably cheating or they're probably doing this. I was that negative person because I wasn't there. And I didn't want to work to get there. So these people who hate on people, I've studied them. And I've gained a lot of knowledge from them because I gained a lot of knowledge for myself when I was in that dark place.

It's almost like reflecting an older version of you back to yourself. 100%. I had this idea called the reverse role model. So in a lot of places, people might grow up and not have good role models around them. You know, like it would be great if I had someone that was my hero that could tell me how to be X, good in school, well with work, fantastic in relationships, whatever it might be. And a lot of people don't grow up with that.

Right. And what I realized was, because that was me in part from where I was from, but I realized there was a lot of people that I got to see that were like the sort of person I didn't want to be like. Right. And that was the reverse role model. So I could look around and I could say, well, I really don't want his relationship with his wife. And I hate the way that he is using alcohol to get over the problems in his life. He doesn't have any integrity or tell the truth. She is a liar and a backstabber and a gossip. And the thing is that you can actually achieve a lot of success in life by avoiding failure. Most success in life actually is avoiding failure. Yes, you need to be able to be competent. But first, you need to not get out of the race. That's the one second decision, right? You need to not lose. before you can win. Right.

And the reverse role model is you weaving your way through a selection of people that you don't want to be like. And I think that you can get an awfully long way just by doing that. I did that my entire life. I had the ultimate blueprint by watching my family.

I was the youngest kid. So the youngest kid has the total advantage. You know, you may get picked on, you may get bullied with everybody, but you sit back and exactly what you said, I sat back and watched my dad. Definitely don't want to do that. My mom, my brother, whoever may be, I sat back and I paid attention to everything around me.

And it was the ultimate blueprint to how to live life. How not to live life. How not to live life is I watched people do shit. I said, I don't want to be like that. I like what you said about how the criticism that you see from people is coming from a very unique place. I think if you got to see the inner texture of the people who don't like using. existence, you'd feel more pity than anger for the most part. I think you'd pity them. Yes. And that's a realization that's taken a long time for me to come up with because

everybody else feels, or to me, it always seems like everyone else has got it together. Because I get to see only what you choose to say, only what I'm around you doing that I get to see, whereas I get to observe my own inefficiency and foibles 10,000 times a second, right? I get to watch the texture of my own mind, be completely unresponsive and useless. I see every single prideful decision, every single lie that I tell myself, every single time I make a promise and don't keep it. But I don't get to see that from everyone. So I'd always presume, because of this asymmetry, that everybody else had it so did and I didn't.

And it also made me think that everybody else's opinion was this perfectly balanced, well-researched, beautifully. It was, they had me nailed down to a tea. What they were telling me was the truth. They could see something in me that I couldn't. Right. And after a little bit of time and a good bit of building up of self-confidence, I realized that that's not the case.

No. I have pitying a lot of people. I do. I used to get angry about it. Like there was this guy, I talked about it on Rogan, this guy from Siltim 6, who went out there when I became, started becoming more famous. He went out there and just tried to destroy me, try to literally destroy me, talked about, how, you know, he just totally lied, totally lied.

Had to get a lawyer against him, all kind of shit. And I was getting ready to sue this guy. I had a great, I was going to sue him because he literally tried to destroy my character, my reputation. We're not doing this lie this ass off. And I thought to myself, it was about two months into it. I sat back, and I started feeling sorry for this guy. Like, really sorry for him.

I was going to pull a trigger, sue him. said, I'm not going to sue this guy. I said, for you to be this person who comes on and lies and tries to literally tear down, everything I've worked for, you are in a very, very bad place. Come to find out, he was in a very bad mental place. So I get what you're saying. I've learned to study people before I react because there's no successful person in the world who's in a good headspace that's going to ever attack anyone in that kind of manner. There's always going to be something wrong with them. So you got to always dive a little deeper before you get your feelings hurt, before you get your feelings hurt by that bully at school or that boss at work, take time.

Take that one second to pull back and study them because most people who are in good places, they don't care about what you're doing. They don't care about what you're doing. They don't try to you, they actually will try to build you up versus destroy who you are as a person. So that's where I'm at now in life, is most people who do that, they're in a very dark, dark place. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.