The Resilient Mind - Conquering Fear (A lesson in Overcoming Hardship and Adversity) - David Goggins

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

In this episode, David Goggins shares his story of how he transformed himself from 300Ibs to a Navy seal, in spite of his tough childhood. 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.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Source: PowerfulJRE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Conquering Fear with David Guggins. Get access to the Mental Mastery Program and other exclusive episodes by becoming a subscriber. Enjoy. How'd you become that guy? You know what? I grew up not that guy. Yeah. So a lot of people put a title on me.

They want to, uh, they see me now. They see me now as a guy that with his shirt off who can do fourth. 30 pull-ups in 17 hours. You can run 205 miles and 39 hours. Who can do all this crazy shit? But what they don't understand is they don't understand the journey that it took me to get to this point. And what got me to this point was I was just the opposite of what I am today.

I was that guy who ran away from absolutely everything that got in front of me. But not many people knew that. I had two people. Like the real me was like this very scared. insecure, stuttering, got beat up by his dad, all this kind of stuff. And then I built this fake person that walked around like my shit didn't stink. You know? You know, yeah.

So that's kind of how I did it. And I, through a process of time, I realized that I was lying to myself and lying to people. But it's a fascinating journey, though, because you are that guy now. Right. I mean, you genuinely are a legit badass. Right. And at one point in time, you were a legit terrified person. Yes. So what was the process? Like how did how did you step forth? Well, it's a it's a long process. Right.

I'm I'm I was growing up. I was the first black baby born in this hospital called Miller Fillmore in Buffalo, New York. My dad owns skating rinks. He owned bars. He ran prostitutes from Canada to Buffalo, New York. My dad was a big time pimp, big time. Anything bad about a person big time hustler. He was American. You know that I moved with Danjo, Washington. He was that, but not that bad. Right. You know, he wasn't that big. But that's what it reminds me of.

He was that kind of guy. And beat the shit out of me, did she out of my mom? There was an incident one time when my mom got knocked out on top of the stairs and he drugged down the stairs by her hair. And at six years old, I never forget this. In my mind, I was always afraid.

My whole life, I was afraid. But I had this fucking voice, this conscience, that would always be battling me saying, hey, you got to get up and do something. I didn't want to do shit. You know, I was just afraid, but that voice would force me to get up, and my dad, you know, I try to beat him up,

whatever, at six, and I get my ass kicked. So this went on for several years, and I have a big time learning disability. Can my dad didn't believe in us going to school? So my dad, it was about the business, the skating rink in the bar. So the skating rink opened about 7 o'clock at night, and this is the time I was able to walk.

So about four, five, six years old, eight, nine. And I go to the skating rink, seven o'clock at night, and I worked the skating rink until 10 at night. And then we would scrape the gum off the floors, and we cleaned the whole skating rink up. And then my dad had an office. And my brother and myself was sleep in the office, and my mama would go upstairs and work the bar until 3 o'clock in the morning.

And then they cleaned the bar up. So after all that shit was done with, going to school really happened. So when I went to school, I was all kind of, you know, my learning disability. I had social anxiety. I was just a jacked up kid from living in this tortured home. From the outside looking in, we lived in an all-white neighborhood, and then we would travel to the ghetto of Buffalo, New York, where the skating rick was at. So we, you know, we worked around mostly blacks, and I lived around mostly whites, but no one knew what was going

on that house on 201 Paradise Road. You know, it's crazy. But my mom got courage to finally leave him, When I was about eight years old, we moved to a small town in Brazil, Indiana, and that's when the real war started for me. And Brazil and Indiana is a small town. Great people, a lot of great people. And I say that because a lot of people get offended. And I'm going to get to the point why they get offended. There was about maybe 10 black families at about 10,000 people in the town. And in 1995, the KKK marched in the 4th July parade.

So this was a, not everybody was racist. There was a lot of good people. Some of the best people I knew was there. There's also a lot of racism there. So me being one of the few black kids in that area, you know, in that area, you know, it kind of haunts you. I had stuff on my notebook, you know, nigger, we're going to kill you on my Spanish notebook. They had that on my car, nigger, we're going to kill you. This is early 90s.

And so even though I showed it didn't hurt me, it was jacking me up. So all the insecurities I have when I was a kid with my father, I moved into this area here, and it just got worse and worse and worse. and the shit haunted me. And that voice that I talked about, it kept talking louder and louder and louder, but I was doing nothing about it. And I decided to make moves. And I cheated all through school.

And it's kind of humbling to talk about my stories sometimes. And it's also embarrassing. But it's real. It's who the fuck I am. It's what I am. It's what it created me. And copy from the fourth grade to my junior year in high school on every assignment.

and I wanted to get in the military, I'm going to join the Air Force, and the guy gave me an ASVAP test. It was like a watered down SAT, and I couldn't copy on it because the guy beside me had a test A, I had test B, the guy on my right, had test C, so I looked at a copy on this test and I couldn't copy on it, so I got like a 20.

And I wanted to be an Air Force pararescumen. It's guys that jump out of airplanes and save down pilots. It's a special operator in the Air Force. And my score was so horribly low that we take it again. And he said, hey, I got like an 18 the second time, even worse.

I need to get a 50 out of a 99. And so my mom and I, for a while, we lived in the government subsidized apartments, $7 a month, and also food stamps. And we slowly moved up to a $2.30 a month place. But at the time, you know, pretty poor. But my mom afforded enough money for me to go to see a tutor one hour a week.

So for four hours a month, it had six months to study for my last test. I was only take the asphib test three times. And I studied my ass off and passed it. I got in the Air Force and realized there was more things in front of me. I was afraid of the water, terrified of the water. And I learned how to swim. But what gets everybody in this training in all special ops training is the water confidence

where they try to pretty much drown your ass. You know, all of our lives we've been breathing. And they take that from you. And they want to see how comfortable you are in the water. And there's only 1% African Americans in special operations. And I didn't know anything about African. Like a lot of them are negative buoyant, which I am because of the bone density. I struggled.

But six weeks in the program, there was about 25 guys left out of about 150. I was there. And I didn't go to sleep for six weeks of the program. And I wanted to quit so badly. But to quit everything in my life. I copied through school. I wanted to prove people wrong. And so here I am in this Air Force.

program starting to get a little more confidence but this water was kicking my ass and six weeks in the program the doctor gave me a blood test and was that have sickle cell sickle cell trait not the anemia but it still killed people but so they put me out training for a week and when you go from being very uncomfortable in that water situation and then now you're comfortable and i'm sitting back watching the guys drowned i'm not you know i'm not part of the activities anymore for this week i don't want to get back in that damn water again so the fear overcame me and all my insecurities from my dad, from this small town, from everything, started coming back. And even though no one knew how fucked up I was, kind of create this other person who was tough,

I live with this shit all the time. So me and that wouldn't go back in that water, the doctor called me back up. I thought I was to get like a medical kick out of the military. So no quitting for me. They'll kick me out so I can have some pride. The doctor said, no, man, we're kidding. You know, we could put you back in the training. And I was like, fuck.

But after a week, I'm like, you know what? I missed one week. There's only three weeks left. There's a good chance. You know, I could tough this shit out and go on. But I went back to the CEO and the command officer of the program. And the sergeant said, hey, you got to start from day one because you missed, you know, that week of training. And I broke.

I broke. I couldn't imagine going back through that again. So I made up a lie. And I said, man, the sickle cell thing is really scaring me. It was the fucking water. It wasn't sickle cell. and I pretty much quit. Even though they gave me a medical, I quit.

So from the age of 19 to the age of 22, I went into the job called TACP where you control fast movers behind enemy lines. Cool job, but there's no water. I was afraid of the water, so I avoided it. And I gained 125 pounds in that time frame. I went from 175 to almost 300 to 297 was my heaviest. And I started finding things that was comfortable.

And the more things I found comfortable, the more uncomfortable my mind was. Because that voice I was telling you about, it always was there. I was just trying to avoid that conscience. I wanted to be left alone from that conscience, and it wouldn't leave me alone. So I got out of the Air Force, and I started working for a job called EcoLab, where he spray for cockroaches at 24, and spraying at different steak and shakes, red lobster, whatever, from 11 o'clock at night at 7 o'clock in the morning. and what changed, I came home and watched this Discovery Channel show.

Class 224. I came home from Steak and Shake. I sprayed it down last, get a big old large 42-ounce shake, while across the street and get a box and many donuts from 7-11, and I would drive home for 45 minutes, this big old fat guy who, yeah, I worked out, but I was fat. I didn't run, didn't PT, I just hit the gym. So, driving home, turn the TV on, and what comes on, Discovery is, Discovery. channel so and that's where everything changed for me I was taking a shower I

walked out heard these guys and I watched the show and it made me reflect big time on the piece of shit that I am and I'm exactly what people said I was gonna be so so what was on this show that really struck home it was um I saw these guys going into water so I was terrified of it I mean I can't even express have you had a big fear and I know a lot of fighters have fears and stuff like that but they get over them. But a lot of us have these fears that you just don't want to fucking face. And I have a lot of them. Had a lot of them. And that's what it created the person who's in front of you today. And we'll get into that. But just a scared bitch is what I was. And but I was watching these guys

going through Hell Week, class 224. And these guys ringing the bell, quitting, dropping their helmet down, rolling out. A lot of guys just leaving. And it made me reflect on my fears, my insecurities and I saw real men when I thought were real men who were staying who were overcoming adversity who were overcoming all these different things that I had blamed so many fucking people in my life my dad my mom for not being there when I was 14 years old my my mom was going to get remarried to this great guy he got murdered and then I moved back to that small town in Brazil and and everybody was in blame my learned disability my my skin color you know me being everything and so um i sat there for a while and i was like man i got a fucking

i've got it no one's gonna fucking come to help me no one's gonna fucking come to help me it's it's fucking me against me period and um so i had the man up and i said the first thing i started doing it's facing every fucking fear i have matter what the fuck it is man and i and these things would keep me up and not no one people who are hearing this shit they will never really understand and grasp when you face these things and many things, how they keep you up and haunt you at night. I think there's a lot of people out there that know what you're talking about. I mean, and so that's what it did.

And I had two options to either be that 300-pound guy who's prayed for cockroaches and made $1,000 a month. And at 24 years old, knowing when I'm 50 fucking years old, I can reflect on this and think about what guy I never became, or I can totally just sack it up and fail and fail and fail until I succeed. So I started calling recruiters up. I said, I'm going to be a fucking Navy SEAL. And every recruiter, so there's a weight and height, so the weight and height limit to get in the military. And I was six foot one and two 97. And I had prior service, which was a big deal. So I called all these recruiters up and all of them said, hey, how tall are you, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They got into conversation and see if I is even qualified. And by the time I got to my weight, phone would hang up pretty much, like, hey, you know what, call somebody else, you know, try to get in the So I tried to get in the reserves. And I called this guy named Steven Salgio, recruiter up. And he said, hey, come on in. He saw me, put me through the weight standard, all the stuff.

And to get into the class I had to get into, I had to lose 106 pounds in less than three months. So I was like, fuck that. I can't do that. I grabbed my chocolate milkshake and went back to EcoLab. I'm going back to work, man. This is my life. So in this job, you look, you're looking for cockroach.

He's looking for rodents and stuff like that. this next morning or this next night, I went to work and I hit the, I don't like cockroaches too much. I hit the motherload of cockroaches. And this restaurant got full of cockroaches and rodents and everything else. And I sat there and said, this is my life. I said, this is my life. You are exactly who the fuck. This is it. And I said, this ain't going to be it for me. So in that restaurant, I quit my job, left my canister in that restaurant, my, my, my spray canister, got back in my eco-lap truck, and I went home. And I started working out like somebody, I became the most obsessed person on the planet Earth. And I was basically, I had to

invent a guy that didn't exist. I had to invent a guy that can take any pain, any suffering, any kind of judgment, be called nigger, be called whatever the fuck in the world and be able stand in the fucking room and say, go fuck yourself. I had to build this callous mind and I built it through suffering. I built it through downright fucking just crushing myself. If it was raining outside at 3 o'clock in the fucking morning, if it was snowing, the first instinct is don't go out there

and do shit. My instinct was we got to fucking go out there. Anything that was fucking horrible in my life that I would normally say no that was inhumane to most people, I had to go do it. And I started callous in my mind at this point in my life. And

I lost the weight. I lost and I went back to recruiter. I got into that class and I went through three Navy still hell weeks in one year. Only got it ever be in three hell weeks in one year to my knowledge. The first one I didn't make it through, the next two I did. And that I just didn't, I didn't stop anymore from there. And I started realizing through this, through this process that the fucking mind is what you created. And I started opening different doors that I didn't think were even there they didn't think even existed and the more doors open up the more I start realizing that my potential is damn near endless and it and it changed my whole mindset so I went from david guggins and I

created guggins and that journey is a priceless journey that it's hard for me to explain to people because it sounds so quick and easy like I lost this weight and I went through three hell weeks I went to ranger school went to delta four selections whatever it is it was brutal it's a brutal journey every fucking day and everyone's, are you happy? If anybody knows my life story and I try to give you just a snippet of it, where I'm at today is in front of Joe Rogan telling you my life. To get through where I became, to get through where I'm at now, there's nothing but pride I have for myself that I can't really,

I can't really show people because I have this face, I have this face that they see like, are you happy? What's wrong with you? I'm driven. I'm obsessed. And that's what you see. That's it. People need to hear the story.

This is an exciting story for people because there's a lot of people out there that feel trapped and they feel stuck and they feel like they can't do anything. This is who they are. You're a guy who felt that exact same way, but figured out how to not be that person and be a person that you would admire. How did you, what were the first steps? Like you had some slips before, right? Because you quit because of the water thing. But then when you went back the second time, you decided you're going to lose all that weight and you quit that job. Did did you did you was it just straightforward from there or whether some days where you just failed and then you picked it back up again

So my first run when I decided to lose the weight. I was like I said 297 I was about 32% body fat and I went my idea was to run four miles for my first run I didn't know how bad it's gonna fucking hurt me I used to run before I was fat and I was like fuck it I can do this I ran a quarter mile and walked home I walked home and sat on my couch and cried I'm with my mom's house who was about 40, about maybe 20 minutes down the road and cried and getting her couch saying, man, I can't fucking do this shit. I don't know what I'm going to do. I just got somebody pregnant. My life was this fuck.

I was making $1,000 a month. My rent was $8, 10 a month. And my mom just kept fucking with me and kept fuck. You're not good enough, man. This isn't for you. Man, these guys are the bads motherfuckers on the planet earth. You're not that. And what it was, and it's kind of funny, I was obsessed with rock.

Rocky. Rocky won in particular. And when I was a kid, I come home every day and I watched this fucking show Rocky. And I would fast forward with the little VHS tapes to round 14. Round 14 fucked me up like nobody's business. Why? The song came on. When I bought the pull-up record, I listened to the song for 17 hours, it's two minutes and 13 seconds. And I'm able to visualize and dream like nobody's business and I know that I can create a vision that many people can't and I work for it

so the vision I had was when Apollo Creek beat the fucking shit out of Rocky beat the shit out of him he kept fighting he was a dumb fighter couldn't read couldn't fuck that was me couldn't read couldn't write just punchy everything about him

and Rocky beat the shit out of him he was in that corner everybody was saying stay the fuck down and him getting up him getting up Apollo creed raised his arms

up in the fucking air turned around and thought he won the fight he turns around and sees this guy getting up and it was the face of Apollo Creed

that changed my life the face of Apollo Creed it was like just by that motherfucker getting up not winning just by him getting the fuck up

Apollo Creed was he was champ he's the best Rocky had taken his soul had literally taken his soul his head goes down He looks at him like, what the fuck are you?

I want it to be that. Not Rocky. I want to be the guy that people looked at. I don't care if you liked me or didn't like, I don't care. But it said, this motherfucker is going to keep coming after whatever the fuck is in front of them. I wanted that. I wanted that. I wanted that worse than anything in the world.

So that is, I kept picturing me falling down and getting up. And every motherfucker that called me nigger, I was dumb. Even myself, even myself, I wanted to feel something besides defeat. I wanted to just go to distance. And that going to distance pushed me to a point of where now I go way past the distance. So you go the first day, you run a quarter mile and then you walk back home and you're upset. How do you move forward? So basically what I did was I came home and I had a chalk and milkshake.

I sat down and I gave up. I said, this ain't going to fucking happen. I could lose 106 pounds and I can't even go a quarter of a fucking mile. I started being able to take negative shit and be happy. And this whole, I say what if a lot. It sounds corny and it sounds weak, but it's true. One of the recruiters said there's not many Black Navy SEALs. As a matter of fact, I was a 36 African American seal in history.

It's over 70 years. Because of the fucking water, you know. Right. I mean, people get mad. I mean, it's fucking true. Just get over it. And so I was like, man, what story would it be if my fucking fat, dumb, lying to be friends with people, insecure ass, can overcome this shit. And that what if mentality, that dreamer mentality just would always fuel me.

It was just fueling, man. What if I can be a seal, man? What if I can go from, we're in a quarter of fucking. a mile. Now I run 205 miles. What if I can go? Just what if I can go? And what if, how would that feel if I'm graduating? I'm going to get at the graduation thing I was talking about 224, like the video I sat down and watched. This command officer stood up and he said to the graduation guys who are graduating buds, like 18 of them. He said, we live in a society where mediocrity is often rewarded. And he went on to say something about these men detest mediocrity. And I wanted to be

man that detest mediocrity. You just listened to Conquering Fear with David Goggins, a lesson in overcoming hardship and adversity. Continue strengthening your mind by checking out our other episodes. Don't forget to follow and subscribe.