The Resilient Mind - Become Relentless - David Goggins

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

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, become relentless and unlock your full potential with David Gaggins. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. If you want it, you will find time in your life to do it. If you don't want it, you will continue to do exactly during now to give me excuses. You're going to make every excuse on why you can't do it, and that's why I can't connect with you. That's why you hear the passion, come out of me and you want to say it's anger? No, because I know it can be done. And you're telling me on why it can't be done. And then what you do is he's crazy. He's in a canic. No, you don't

want it bad enough. If you want it bad enough, you will figure out how to make this shit happen. People don't want to go in deep, man. All the answer inside of you. It's a very primitive way. It's very barbarian. It's how we all think. It's how a man once walked the earth. and then we get all soft. The most powerful thing we have is our fucking brain. It's our mind. And we don't use it anymore. What separates me from a lot of people is they go into a daunting task.

And the task is overwhelming. You have to be open-minded to the possibilities that I can do this. Once you shut your mind down to the possibility that it can be achieved, there's no way it can happen. I know that if you're in a fight, you have to attack. You have to keep attacking. the enemy has to know he is not going to give up. You must break the soul

of whatever the fuck is in front of you. That's what I realized. I was never breaking the soul of anything in front of me. If you keep on attacking something, nothing wants to stand in front of anything that is relentless. Nothing.

There's so many times in life you don't want to be doing what the fuck you're doing. You can't just fucking quit. Remember this. It's isn't a hobby. It's in a fucking joke. It's a fucking lifestyle.

So what you say to yourself? It's important. There's no fucking coach. There's no training to keep you going. Only you. The whole thing is this. Don't say a word. Stay uncommon.

I'm not uncommon people. You're never done. Don't stop when you're tired. Stop when you're done. Stay hard. 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. 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, is I watched people do that. I said, I don't want to be like that. I know where you are. I know where, because I've been there. That's why I have. That's why I help 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. I call it part-time savage. I started kind of going through this. I started getting a little bit injuries, a little bit of this, a little bit, things that back in the day never slowed me down. 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 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 ended up doing like

almost like back to back 200 mile runs when the 200 mile race 240 mile race was hard at once it became something that was very easy after I figured it out all those miles I've run on this thing it's been a lot of

it's been a lot of gut checks because when you get to 70 miles of a race and you felt the way I did it's to me it was humanly impossible to even think about going 30 more miles in that shape. And once you do it,

it came over me when that shower hit me, and the reality hit that I spent 1001 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 would 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 didn't want anybody to take that pain away from me at that point, because that was all confirmation. I never wanted to feel it again. I never wanted 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. That place is a dangerous, dangerous place that you don't want to go there. But it taught me what is possible. So from that 19-hour lesson, the biggest lesson in my life, it taught me like, okay, I got it, check. As you get bigger, as you get more successful, you open the door for people to critique everything 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. I'm like, oh, hang on. So I started making these mixtapes with all of these hate messages about people talking. 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 where I run. I sometimes play in the house and it sometimes gets on Jennifer's nerves. I was sitting and listening to somebody talk mad on a loop about me. And she's like, why do you do this? It's half comical and it's half inspiring.

I'm actually inspired by it. People understand. This wasn't like a part-time job. Man, when you've done without, like Kobe Bryant, when Cook and retired at last game, he had like 60 points, walked off to court. He didn't cry. He said, oh, I'm going to miss the sport.

He walked off. He gave everything he could. Man, when you give what I've given, I've given everything. People make, oh, you ran on fpped up knees. You taped your feet up. You did blah, blah. He had two heart surgeries.

You kept on going, which makes me who I am. David Guggins is an introverted, soft kid that got beat up growing up and had to lie to create friends, to get friends, to be accepted. My life has really been about two people. I had to invent a whole other human being to get outside of my comfort zone. and that human being became Gagins. It took a while to get to that point where enough was enough. And I had to make a change in my life.

I was at the all-time low, and I wasn't going anywhere, and I was exactly what everybody said I was going to be, which was nothing. So I had to make a change. Gagins is like the guy that walks out of the phone booth. He's like that Superman that walks out of the phone booth. It's kind of strange how sometimes

I have a conversation between David Gagins and Gagins. And Gagins would tell David Gagins about he's done. And David Gagons like, what the hell, man? Why are you doing that? That's nuts. It's kind of this battle between trying to find more of yourself, knowing that the real you is afraid, likes comfort, likes living in the world that likes to pat you in the back,

give the things that you want to hear, not the things that you have to hear to get better. That's where all this kind of started from. When people hear this podcast, they're going to definitely want to put a title on me to make themselves feel better. Basically, what you're doing is you're giving yourself a get out of jail free card. So all you're doing is, this guy was some super freak. He found some super thing in his brain that was locked up. He unleashed it and became this guy.

Because every day I wake up, I dread the day. I dread the day of what I'm going to bring on myself to get better. the most important conversation you'll ever have is the one you have with yourself you wake up with it you walk around with it eventually you act on it and my self-talk was most disgusting self-talk of all time so the sewer of my mind like I said you have to go back in there and fix things a lot of us are afraid like right now 20 years ago you wouldn't have found me on this show I was too embarrassed to tell you I stuttered I lied all these different things getting beat up getting bullied, whatever happened. But that's where the true transformation starts to happen.

When you can look at people, anybody, thousands of people, one person to say, hey, this is who I am. And this is where I have to fix myself. And this is where it really happened. You know, people call me dumb. People, my dad called me so many things. It's not even funny. Being beat just stripped me of all self-esteem. This is when I realized I was alone on this earth. I have God on the Earth and I have to fix everything. So this is where I started to develop an indestructible mental toolbox. I looked in this one guy's eyes who was ringing the bill to quit to put his helmet down out of the Navy Steel training.

And I saw myself. And I saw what everybody said I was going to be, which was nothing. When I said I was going to be, that conversation you have, that's who I was. So that's why I lied to people to tell them a different version of the truth. I had to make all those lies reality. I had to make them real. I had to become a real person. So that's what I put in my mind that I'm going to go to the toughest military training on the plane.

Where it has the most water, the thing I was scared of the most. So a lot of us run away from our fears. And we box ourselves in to a lifestyle of this is all we can do. I'm afraid of everything outside this box. So I'm comfortable inside this box. I jumped the box. Everything I didn't want to do is what got me to where I'm at today.

It's about what you're saying to yourself, but it also comes to work. So whenever I was getting beat down, physically, mentally, spiritually, whatever I was going through, just saying, you can't hurt me. I have this haunting voice in the back of my head. A lot of us have it.

These ignore it. And it was there for years. So I knew in the back of my mind that I could pull off this whatever. Whatever I wanted, I knew I could. I knew that, but I was afraid of the work because I wasn't gifted with brains. I wasn't gifted with God-given talent

as far as like athleticism. So I knew to get to where I had to go to be in the same playing field as these men to even try out for this program, I knew the work was going to be something that I didn't want to even, even attack. So I was just put it off. It haunted me.

That's what I realized for myself was I wanted that comfort zone. Everybody looks for that pat on the back. They don't want to hear all the bads. They want to hear everything that they're doing right. And I realized that's what kept me in this world. That's what kept me in this world of not accomplishing anything. What I did was I became that big, bad, nasty that you don't want to walk into at nighttime. I became the roughest critic in the world on myself.

And that's what changed me. I stopped caring about people that what they thought, being judged, wow, if I say this, if I started right now, are you going to make fun of me? I stopped caring about that. And that's when my life started really changing for me, slowly but surely, or situations that have wronged me. Because once you've come to a place where you are really happy with who you are in life,

no one quit you anymore. Even though they're fucking with you. It doesn't. It doesn't with you. What do you want in your life? We have so much influence coming at us that we are so lost. We don't know what we want to do because we don't spend enough time with ourselves. Greatness is whatever the hell you dreamed of in your own mind.

You got to first see it. You got to first create this vision in your mind. Once you create this vision in your mind, it's how am I going to get there? but you've got to go inside yourself to find it. And that means you've got to be quiet. Shut up, go in a room, stop talking, search your soul, search your mind, search your abilities, and you'll find it.

But if you're not looking for it, you won't find it. So you've got to go start your journey. And the journey starts with you finding, why the hell am I here on this planet earth? Why am I here? If you don't know that, you will live the rest of your life, search it. always asking the question why?

I'm waking up and I'm giving myself all this armor. So when I come out in the world, look at that phone, I'm ready. I'm not waking up late. I'm not rushing around. I'm not disorganized because I know I'm going to get hit in the mouth. There's an art to getting hit in the mouth. And that is why these things are important. You have to wake up and you have to give yourself belief.

You have to give yourself confidence. What works for me is that everyday resume. the things I know of accomplice, the things I know I've done, real hard work, the real calluses on my mind, the real calluses on my hands. That's it.

You don't need to pound your chest in the mirror anymore if you have that. A lot of it is limit to horizons. Limit to horizons are like, I use me as an example, always. I came from a small town in Indiana where there was a handful of black families. and a lot of people in that town,

when you come from a town of 8,000 people, it's like we had a local plant, Great Dane. You're like, you know what? I want to work at Great Dane and get a house next to my mom. That's what you know. So many of us come from these small places in our mind that we're not willing to think outside of only what we've seen. Our mind works in such a small compartment.

And one thing I was able to do was to dream. Many people, but don't make dreams your master. But I was able to dream outside those four walls of that small town. And until you're able to really put yourself into that dream, but don't make dreams your master, that's where you truly become what you're destined to become. A lot of people sit back and they dream about being a sports figure or dream about being a seal or dream about being an astronaut and all it is in dream. They don't put the work behind the dream.

That dream has become their master. When you become the master of your dream is when you say, I want to go be a Navy SEAL and you say, okay, I'm going to lose 106 pounds less than three months. The dream was the one thing I thought about and the dream. was now gone. Now what comes in, the dream goes away and the laundry list of details and tasks come up. Got to do this, got to do this, got to do this, got to do this, got to do this. That's when you become the master of your dream. So a lot of people out there dreaming. But guess what happens? That alarm clock goes off at 4 a.m. to train. I'm very aware of my eating, my sleeping, my disciplines of life. And I started to get to you.

too far away from them, it's a hard stop. The only thing gets you mad nowadays is that so many people die with untapped potential because they think that someone else has been better than them. And they were born not with the greatest tools. You need the ability to grind your ass into a fine powder. And when you're in that fine powder, find a way to build that motherfucker back up repeatedly. I was always trying to do it because I knew I sucked. and so when you know you're trying to get somewhere,

you know you suck, you know that you believe that you're a born loser, you are taking snapshots, man. Like, you know, you see something on your phone. Like, oh, man, I'm going to take snapshot of that. I do that in my mind. So when I get in these moments, I'm like, okay, wow, that's good knowledge right there, man.

I snapshot it. Because I know that I can use that later. I can use this because I'm not out there just, I'm not, most people that go out and they run and they go out and they do, and they're like, oh, this is beautiful. mountains and no I don't like it my body hurts I'm hurting how do we get through this it's a lab it's my mental lab and I and so when I come home I'm not forgetting it in the second like every day I get

done running every day I get through working every day I get through studying whatever it is that brings to that place of knowledge I come home and in that book was mostly written a scratch piece of paper in hand so I come home from from running and I write everything out I write everything out I write everything thing out, all those things. And as I'm running, I'm talking about it. So all these things that pop my head as I continue to run, I'm going through it. I'm starting to layer it down. I'm starting to break it down into, okay, that's happened. Okay, now let's layer this. Because that's just not how it happened. It just didn't happen that way. What led up to this. And so it becomes me by myself in school. I'm literally going to school right now and I'm learning. So when I come home, I write it out.

and then I'm able to write out and I'm able to think about it. It's okay, oh, this is good. This will help me later on. And then it becomes what it is now. I did a lot outside the military. I've made money. I've done almost every race out there,

hard race in the world. I've broken pull-up records. I've done a lot of, so when these bad times come and also, not like work your ass off so you can enjoy, yeah, you're taking a shot. You know, you may not live to be old, but what if you do

and you work your ass off when you were able and you were able to get up early able to grind if you front-loaded properly the back half of your life is money and that's what I did

so basically I don't take any days off as far as working out the first thing in the morning time is you have to build your confidence and every day you're constantly gaining and losing confidence you're never staying the same

So how you build your confidence is if you like what you see in that mirror, that's how you start your day off. If you wake up and you look fat, you look out of shape, you're not feel good, which is, you know, or you don't feel good inside. So my whole big thing is get up and work out. Sheds some calories. Get the adrenals going. Get the mind going. Get all that going. Every day I run.

Every day I work out. A lot of people, what they do is they have these finish lines. And I have a saying that says, I don't stop when I'm tired, I stop and I'm done. When I was younger, I didn't have any goals. It's not really so much about goals. It's just a do-list, a to-do list. And as a human being, if you don't have a to-do list, you're going to sit back and it's fade away. Your brain is the most powerful weapon in the world.

If you can't control your own brain, you've got to tell your brain where you want to go and how you want to go and how you want to get there. You got to control it. If not, it's over. When you quit, your mind says, we're done. So it doesn't expand. There's no expansion when you quit. When you say, uh-uh, this sucks. I'm drowning.

I'm miserable. I'm suffering. I'm broken, but I'm not going anywhere. What happens to your mind, it says, he's not leaving. So we got to expand. We got to grow. We got to figure this thing out. So then these compartments in your brain,

they have to work. And then you start to engage parts of your mind that you never engage before when you're in suffer mode and you say, I'm not going to quit. You're forcing your brain now to operate. On a level, it's not used to you. But then it becomes used to me.

The only way anything gets accomplished, you've got to work hard. I can't remember what's in this paragraph to pass this test to get the military. Read again. Do you not getting it? Read again. But if not getting it, write it out.

And guess what happened? I got it. I can't swim. I'm negative buoyant. Go back again. Go back again. Go back again. I got it. I realize if I keep going back and going back and going back, your mind was safe. Okay. We're going to figure it out because he is not going to stop. The biggest trophy I own now is that book. The biggest trophy I own now is not the book itself. It's what's in the book. It's what. Like I don't give a fuck if that sells one copy. honest to God, man, what I did, and that's where I hope people understand, your life in the journey you put yourself through, there's nothing more than that. And that's all I want people to do is realize that you have to struggle.

You have to struggle. The bigger the struggle, the bigger the peace. The bigger the suffering, the more peace. So a lot of this isn't your fault why you do some things you do, why you feel the way you feel. But no one's coming back to save your ass. You have to go back to where it started, wherever that place is for everybody. It has the courage to go back there and start fixing what broke you.

And that's, and that's why I was like, hey, I'm f***ed up. I'm going to go back and fix this stuff. And I know. The one thing that made me who I'm the day is being vulnerable. It's breaking myself down to the absolute rock bottom. And being able to tell people who I am. And that's how I fixed it. Literally, look somebody in the eyes.

You know what, man? I have a whole bunch of character problems. Character flaws. I've lied about this. I've cheated here. I'm insecure here. This isn't the real me. I lied to you about that.

I wanted your acceptance in life. All those things happen. But the thing about it is that we get judged so quickly by who we are. We don't know. We don't go to where it happened. Life created this person, me. And I had to realize, man, that's okay, man. It's not my fault.

Now I can go back and fix it, though. So a lot of this isn't your fault. you do some things you do, why you feel the way you feel. But no one's coming back to save your ass. You have to go back to where they started. Wherever that place is for everybody, and have the courage to go back there and start fixing what broke you. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.