The Resilient Mind - Embrace Your Greatness - David Goggins

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

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, Embrace Your Inner Greatness with David Gagins. Get access to the Mental Mastery Program and other exclusive episodes by becoming a subscriber. Enjoy. When that long clock goes off at 4 or 5 in the morning, your mind says no. You just say, this is what we do. It's what we do now. Because to get to where you want to go, the amount of pain involved, the amount of mental pain,

of how many times you're going to have to do something that you don't want to do to get to where you want to go. There's going to be more times you do something that you don't want to do it. Why is the truth so important? You know what? Because first of all, it does set you free mentally. And it gives you a starting point. You have to have the truth to have a starting point. If I'm lying to you about who I am or I'm lying to you about whatever, there's no starting point.

There's a false reality. You have to create the real reality. So that's what I call my accountability mirror in my book. That's the real reality. Where the f*** am I going to start from? So for me, I was lying to this, lying about that. So I had no starting point. Once you come face to face with who you are, you have a starting point.

All right. I'm not real smart. I have no courage. I have no self-esteem. I have no nothing. Nothing. That's my starting point. Now we can move from there.

But if I tell myself, I'm strong. I have courage. I'm smart. And all these are lies. You continuously push that starting point backwards. So that starting point is the truth. The no fucking bullshit truth that only you can tell yourself.

So it's the starting point. The truth is the starting point. And most people are surrounded by people that don't tell them the truth. No. Because it's too painful. It is. Especially nowadays in this society, we like to surround ourselves.

It makes us feel so good. Those people who say, it's okay. It's okay. It's not okay. It isn't okay, man. And I get it. Society's changing, and we love to feel wanted and loved. Trust me, that's all important.

It is. But you have to have the truth from people. Hey, you're not working your butt off hard enough. You're not trying hard enough. We all think we're trying hard. But what are you gay? that off of. I talked to this one kid the other day. College is kicking my ass. I said, what are you gazing that off of? I go, are you trying? He goes, yeah, I'm trying my ass off. I'm

studying hard. I go, what do you gauge in trying hard off of? Well, in high school, I didn't have to try at all. And I made great grades. In college, I'm trying hard. You're trying hard compared to what you did in high school, which was it came easy to you. So your reality is something that you created off of something easy. So you trying hard is two hours of studying. I'm going to tell you a difference in trying hard and trying hard. Trying hard is something in your mind just doesn't stop where you know two hours isn't enough. So it's all about, you know, reality in what you're basing things off of. When I was 297 pounds and I was fat as hell trying to be a Navy SEAL, the scariest thing in the world to me even to this day was that that could have been the rest of my life.

I thought then I was trying hard. That's the scariest thing in the world. I thought then 297 pound working for eco-lapse, spraying for cockroaches, making $1,000 a month, I thought that was me at my 100% potential. Come to find out, I wasn't anywhere near that. 106 pounds less, graduate Navy still training, went on to do all these other things. looking back on that, that was me trying hard. That's why people got to understand what is in us.

We have no idea until we start trying hard. And I mean really trying hard where you're obsessed with, hey, this is my new norm. My new norm is that, wow, this isn't always fun. It's not always meant to be fun. And that's when you know you're trying hard. We all have two people. We have the easy voice, which is that 20% telling yourself, that you're, I'm easy at 90% of my full potential, maybe 100% at that 20%.

That's that voice that we all love. That's that very comfortable voice that, that's that mommy holding you saying it's going to be okay. Doesn't care how good you are, just loves you, just loves you, just loves you no matter how messed up you are in life. That's where you want to be at. So that's that one voice. This other voice that we walk very far away from is a voice saying, hey man, you

ain't doing shit. But we try to get this voice out of our head completely. And we live over here in this land. So what you have to do first is turn up this voice over here, the voice saying things to you that aren't nice, that it's in our head saying, you know what, man, dude, you're not, you're not doing shit. And it's not putting yourself down. People take this the wrong way in this new society.

I'm not saying to put yourself down. I'm saying listen to the truth. And the truth isn't in the 20%. The truth is in this other part of your brain saying, look, man, you're wasting a bunch of percentage here. We have 80 more percent that we're not tapping into because in this other 80 percent is suffering, pain, failure, failure, failure, self-doubt, darkness. And then a whole bunch of light.

But to get to this light, you got to go through all of this shit. So a lot of us know that. We know. We do know deep down. Yeah, I can get over here. But over here, man, this is much better. Because I got to go through this journey that is not fun. This from 20 to 100% this shit in between is not fun.

So we decided to live over here. So everybody goes, how do you do that? You know exactly how to do that. It's not a magic trick. It's all back down to a very primitive mindset of we just have. to do. It's like breathing. Breathing becomes normal. Like we don't know that we're doing it. That's how you have to live your life. When that long clock goes off at four or five in the morning, your mind says no. You just say, it's just what we do. It's what we do now. Because to get to where you

want to go, the amount of pain involved, the amount of mental pain of how many times you're going to have to do something that you don't want to do to get to where you want to go. There's give me more times you do something that you don't want to do, then you are going to want to do it. And that's your new norm. That's your new norm. So then it's like breathing. And then once you do this over and over and over again, it becomes like breathing. I don't want to live this lifestyle, but to get to the other side of this, I have to. If you really want it, you realize what trying is and what trying is not. Once again, I have to say it very loud and clear, I'm not about being a masochist. But what I found when I was 297 pounds, so I'm not a guy that read a book and said,

oh, there are the answers. All this came from here. It came from me putting myself on the hot seat and then saying, okay, wow. Okay, 297, this is where my mind was at. To get to 187, this is where my mind went to, to go through three hell weeks, to run 200,5 miles, to do 4,030 pull-ups. And I'm a natural-born fat guy. Even though I was born 175, I gained 10025 pounds.

I was lazy. That's who I am. I'm a guy like to sit back, watch TV, and eat pizza. Like everybody. Like everybody. All I crave is that mama voice. Please, love David. Love David.

That voice got me to 297 pounds. She used to cook for you too. When I got out of the military and I started gaining this weight a lot, my standard breakfast was eight cinnamon rolls, six to eight scrambled eggs, Half a pound of bacon, fruity pebbles. That was my standard breakfast. Whatever I wanted, I did. And that's where I started seeing myself get further and further away from my true self.

And your true self is found, honestly, in that very uncomfortable zone. I have this haunting voice in the back of my head. A lot of us have it. We just 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, 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 attack. So I was just put it off. But yet you did it. because it haunted me.

The voice in my head said, you know what, man, you're going to die, never even trying to reach your full potential. And how's that going to feel? So I'm going to live, even while I'm dead, I'm going to be,

because I believe in a higher power, whatever it may be. I don't know what it is. I believe that your mind lives forever. Some spirit, something lives forever. I'm going to be haunted by the mere fact that I literally just,

that's what I was. So whatever heaven or hell is, you're in heaven. hell the rest of your life. The rest of your life. And if there is a God, which I hope to God there is, knowing what I put myself through now, whatever memories I have, if there's any at all, I'll be a happy man. But I knew that I was going to pay for this while I was living and while I was dead. I was going to pay for this because basically to me, it was a huge sin. I'm basically just going to sit here and just be a comfortable man. Wasting your life is a sin, right?

Let's say you're in the hospital bed and you're getting ready to die and somebody walks in the room and you have one copy of your book and it's sitting right there on the table. And you're taking your last breath and you're talking to this person, you say to them, I want you to read this book. As you're dying, think about this. That book that you just wrote would have to change their life forever. And if it's not changing their life forever, you have to rewrite your book. I wanted to live my life in a way that when I died, I was proud of myself. I know what pride felt like and if it took

pushing myself to death I was willing to do that if I wanted to look in that mirror not impress anybody not money not fame not nothing I wanted to impress the guy in the daggone mirror and I worked endlessly and tirelessly to do that and it happened

I see what is not the norm was impossible where all the theorists say you shouldn't be doing this that's the world own way to go. And I'm like, hmm, let me see if I can pull this shit off. It's so easy to be great nowadays, my friend, because most people are weak. Most people don't want to go to that extra mile. Most people don't want to find that extra because it sucks. It's miserable. I really started to enjoy seeing what the human mind was

capable of and seeing that what is so horrendous, there's so much joy and glory in this shit. the most important conversation is the one you have with yourself. You wake up with it, you walk around with it, you go to bed with it. Eventually, you act on it. Sometimes you act on it good, sometimes bad. You got to change the internal dialogue. That person in your head that's talking that shit to you, until you change the internal dialogue in your head,

until you callous over the victim's mentality that the world is out to get you because of you are the only, you got to change that shit, man. I get that mentality. I once had that mentality that no one understands what the I'm going through. And if you keep that mentality, you're going to stay in the same

exact spot that you're in. Your mind takes control of you. You have to say, you, I run this mother. You have to be your best self and your least motivated. You have to have these different things in your mind on where you want to go

and know that motivation is not going to get me there. The only thing that changes your DNA is discipline. If you can get through to doing things that you hate to do, on the other side is greatness. You have to be willing to fail a hundred times to succeed once. And if you're not going to do that, man, you're not going to even get a fraction of what you're looking for. There is a new bar that you must always set in your life. And once you become complacent and you become civilized, you've arrived, you're no good for anybody.

Everybody's journey's different. Everybody's journey is different. I was on a journey to see who David Goggins was. And that journey took me in some of the hardest areas a human being can even imagine. And right now, I'm the happiest person on the planet because, you know, I had a climb out ever several times just to look down on my life to see what hell I came from. And that's what kept me going through all this stuff. Like I envisioned myself going through. Like when I was a young kid, they called me a nipple all the time.

I got my dad beat the hell out of me. and I had no self-esteem. I had this vision of if I can make it to where I want to go. Imagine when I look back on my damn life, how proud I will be. And now I'm here. I'm able to look back on this life I lived that many people will never understand because why when you're passionate, they think you're crazy. And you can't even explain to people why you're doing or why you did what you did

because you found your purpose. And once you find your purpose, you can't really explain it to normal people because they don't understand passion because they live everyday life just going, not really finding their purpose. So I become a foreign language to people. So they put me in a category,

if you're just crazy. No, no, no, no, no. I'm passionate. I found my purpose in this life. If you want to be great, you want to be baddest mother, ever at what you do, you can be misunderstood by everybody because you're going to be so

obsessed and so driven to get there. That's what it takes. The first step you have to do is face yourself and be accountable for what you're not. So then you can be what you want to be. I call myself fat because I was fat.

And people don't want to do that. They want to say, oh, don't call yourself fat. Don't call yourself dumb. If you're not real and raw with who the f you are, nothing's going to change in this nice new world that we live we want to hear you're just a little big. No, man, you might be fat. How you address it is you face it. You face it every day. You face it every single day of your life where you say, okay, like if you're fat,

you need to lose weight. It's patience. It's patience in this fact of accepting who you are right now, I'm fat. I don't like myself. Accepting the fact that if you lose three or four pounds, that's a huge accomplishment. I started realizing, man, just by going to war with myself every day and putting these challenges and these goals and these obstacles, these insurmountable obstacles. So what about losing 10 pounds? Me losing 5 pounds was an accomplishment. Me losing 10 pounds, and then 50 pounds. The more I did this, the more I gained confidence. I was just working. I was just sacrificing. And then through that, all these different tools started coming up.

But I would have never found these tools if I didn't put myself in a very uncomfortable place. We all look for toughness. We all want it. But we look for it in a comfortable environment. You will not find toughness in a comfortable environment. Those of you who are listening to this, whoever hear this, you will not find it. I was trying to look for it everywhere.

The only way you find it is to drown yourself in a position where you're just out of sorts, where you can't swim and you're drowning. Where you're drowning. You're drowning in life. But you say, you know what, man? I'm going to figure out how to backstroke or something. When you quit, your mind says, we're done. So it doesn't expand.

There's no expansion when you quit. When you say, you, uh-uh, this is. sucks, I'm drowning, I'm miserable, I'm suffering, I'm broken, but I'm not going anywhere. What happens to your mind is it does this. It says, he's not leaving. So we got to expand. We got to grow. We got to figure this thing out.

Well, I believe that he has to build belief. Belief is like, there's an after-school special belief where the mom says, believe in yourself, and that's all great, but there's also a built belief. And the built belief is one where you are constantly, like for me, I came from a bad place. How I build belief is through the daunting tasks I put myself through. So that's proof positive that I can. So it correlates. And that's how this piece of shit kid that I once thought I was built belief by saying, I was in three hell weeks. I went to Ranger School.

I tried out for Delta Selection. Undeniable stack of proof. That is proof, motherf. So whenever you think, whenever you think you can't, confidence comes from the thing that you built. You must build belief. You must build confidence. It can't be like, hey, I'm going to knock that shit out.

You got to look over here and say, I can knock that shit out. It's belief and it's built on what you put in. to yourself. And one thing I was able to do was to dream. 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. What do you mean don't make dreams your master? 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 is a mother-f-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 in 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. God do this, God 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.

We are all great. No matter if you think you're dumb, no matter if you think you're fat, no matter if you are fat, no matter if you've been bullied, we all have greatness. It just, you've got to find the courage. You've got to find the courage

to put your bow's headphones on and silence the noise out of this world and to find it. you have to get in a quiet place in your brain. We all live on our phones. We all live on Google. We all live in this whole social media world that I really hate. I absolutely hate it.

Why you can't find purpose? Because in your head, there's a bunch of noise. When I was younger growing up, they called me this, they call me that. I had all that noise in there. The second I put on the kind of quote unquote Bose headphones and silenced the noise, I listen to my internal voice. Half of us live our whole lives and never even listen to what the hell we want to do. Get off the podcast.

Don't be on social media too much. Cut out all the noise. Get back to the mental lab. You don't know what you want to be because you haven't spent time, real time with yourself. Spend time with yourself. Trust me. And once you find that passion and that purpose, your goals, your purpose, everything will start lining up. and then you'll find the courage to start that journey.

You have to believe that you are here on this earth for a reason. And if you don't believe that you're here for a reason, your life will seriously hurt. And I start looking at my life and all the shit I went through as God put me, some God, where you believe in put me here to go through this. And now I see all the hundreds of thousands of lives I'm changing by the hell I went through.

There's a lot of power in that. So my purpose, as I started going through this journey, instead of looking like, woe is me, God, man, why? Why the, man, why? I started looking at it's the perfect training ground. You knew exactly what you were doing. You knew exactly what the fuck you were doing, obviously. You put me in every situation possible to tell a story that needs to be told. The reason why my story resonates with people, because I don't hide. I'll tell exactly the fuck I am. I will admit to it. People are great at hiding. So they want to this fine piece. No, you got to take your shit, fix whatever. up in you, don't just shove it on their rug, fix it, and then you'll find some peace later. How the 297-pound cockroach guy who quit on everything is now considered one of the best man of the planet? How is that possible? It means I had to change one thing, my mindset. I had to believe and make that belief work, and through hard work, I did that.

Thank you for tuning into this episode. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.