The Resilient Mind - I'm Not Gifted. I'm Just Driven. - David Goggins

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

[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🌍 The Resilient Mind Podcast is a proud member of 1% for the Planet — building resilient minds and a resilient planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to I'm Not Gifted, I'm Just Driven with David Guggins. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I'm not the best at anything. I'm not gifted. I'm just driven. I'm a guy that came from nothing.

Anybody's capable of doing shit like this. Anybody. And I sat in that tub. She put the water on me. She called. my mom up. My mom was dating a doctor at the time. The doctor said, you need to get him to a hospital now.

She came back in. All I want to do is call Chris Costner on the phone, the race director of Badwater and said, I can did it. So she said, I'm taking to the doctor. I said, no, let me sit here and enjoy this pain. She said, what are you talking about? I said, you know, I go, I need to go to a doctor. I realize that.

But I never thought it was humanly possible to do what I did. I went 70 miles. And at 70 miles, I was dead. I was at 100% what I thought, what I thought was 100%. I went 31 more miles after being in the worst physical shape I've ever been in my life.

And I sat in that tub and the waters hit me. And it was the most amazing feeling of accomplishment. I did this. And as the craziest it sounds, it was the most amazing moment of my entire life. life to overcome such to come from this kid who was mentally torched himself and was tortured just all to this kid to this guy now who was able to overcome such amazing odds and obstacles and i called chris costum up the race director of bad water and he said the idea of a 24 hour race is to run 24 hours he only ran 19 and he put doubt in my mind that he would let me to bad water two weeks later roughly

December 5th was this marathon that we all signed up for. I couldn't walk. I could not walk. I ran 100 miles before I ran a marathon. 10 days or two weeks after this 100 mile in one race I did, this marathon, December 5th, Montevagos. That gun went off 2005, 14 days after I broke myself off and I qualified for the Boston Marathon. I ran 308.

Like, the gun went off and that thing came back. Like, all right, man. What if? And then I went to the Hurt 100, racing Hawaii, 26,000 feet of climbing over 100 miles. Probably one of the top five hardest 100-mile races in the world. Out there and got through the race. Did in 33 hours.

It was the ninth place finisher. And I qualified for bad water and got in. I went on to lose weight and train hard. And I got fifth in my first year and went back my second year and got there. I'm not the best at anything. I'm not gifted. I'm just driven. The hundred men that go into war

tend to be there. 80 of them are just targets. Nine do most of fighting. One is a warrior. I saw it going through train. I saw it everywhere I went. There's so many people who just show up to life. There's something about talking to a guy like you

that a lot of people hope that you're going to say some magic thing that's going to click in their brain. What you're saying is that you have to do those things. You have to suffer. You have to live in it. You have to be comfortable in it. And then maybe some of that shit will help you a little bit along the way. Me now is the guy that with his shirt off

who can do 4,030 pull-ups and 17 hours. which 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 end of the day. I was that guy who ran away from absolutely everything that I got in front of me. I wanted to quit so badly.

By 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 to read about how we can quickly get somewhere.

That's why the six-minute abs so powerful. You may get some results from it, but they're not permanent. The permanent result comes from you. I say it all time, you have to suffer. You have to make that a tattoo on your brain, so when that hard time comes again,

you don't forget it. I'm trying to find more. of myself. And the only way I can find more is to silence the world out as much as I can because it's getting busier every day. It's getting faster. I put my phone away up and I go dark. I go dark a lot and it's because I have to find out I'm on a journey of life and we all have a different journey. I like to take this four-lane highway, the easy highway. We all love that four-lane highway. We always step over the shovel. That shovel, I made my own path. But go Going through this path of life, this journey over here that you make yourself that's incredibly difficult and we're afraid.

It's easier to accept the fact that I'm just not good enough. You have to go into the dark chambers that we often shut off and you've got to open them up. It does not some easy lit up street life with nice smooth roads. That's right. I fail and you're going to be in your head. You could be saying I'm not good enough. And it's how you get through that. It's how you get through that on a daily basis when that thing is saying, man, I'm 43.

I've done so much. You start to become civilized. The refrigerator gets full. You start making money and you start, I'm not getting cold anymore. I'm retired. At 40 people shouldn't be playing basketball or footballer. At 43, I'm still putting in 100-mile weeks, still doing thousands of pull-ups, do thousands of push-ups

because I'm not allowing myself to become civilized. The worst thing that can happen to a man has become civilized. You want to be uncommon and much uncommon people. Period. You start putting yourself in situations that suck.

You'll find yourself. I'm big on being with yourself. I want to be forever proud of who I was as a man and change who I used to be. The liar, the insecure guy, the guy who can, whatever, I want to be proud. If I die at now, if I die at 8, if I die at 90, 100, I want to look at myself and say, proud of myself.

I believe in patience. I'm a patient dude. I can watch a piece of grass grow for 20 years because I know that this is how you get somewhere in life. By being that milk-like mentality, being able to watch something grow very calmly, patiently, I can't go any faster. You do that to her brain.

We put a governor on her brain. It's like to feel pain, discomfort, suffering, all those words that we hate to say because we have this happy, peaceful world we live in now. We stop. We slow down. And if you can get through these different barriers and gain 5%, 2%, 3%, that 40% becomes 60.

That 60% becomes 70, 80, and 90. And then you'll hopefully one day near 100. That dreamer mentality just would always fuel me. It would just fuel me. What if I can be a seal, man? Now I run 205 miles. What if I can go? Just what if I can go?

And what if, how would that feel? You have to go into those dark chambers that we often shut off, and you've got to open them up. 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 ran a quarter mile and walked home. I walked home and sat on my couch and cried. I sat down and I gave up.

You start out on the first day and then do you start running again the second day? Yeah, the second day, we're right back after it again. But I started realizing I can't run that far. Right. So what I did was I became damn near a professional cyclist with the miles I put it on the bike. I go to the gym and I developed this crazy workout where I was doing volume like two, 300 reps. And I spent hours in the gym. pool. Hours in the pool. I had to live in the water. The bike got easier. I was able to run more.

I went from like one mile. One mile was a great accomplishment. Two miles. And then from two to three was a big one. Then I went from three to six. I failed. I go back to scratch. But I started realizing this is part of the process. This is part of the journey. I'm if not good enough. I'm going to make myself good enough. When we have bad times in life, even the hardest person in the world, we forget how badass we are during that hard time. I have a thing where I take a couple seconds to reflect on. Hang on, man, you've been through this, you've been through that, you overcame this, overcame that.

I don't ever close my mind to the fact that this can be done. I've quit several things. I know what's on the back end and quitting. I wanted to be a man that detest mediocrity. I started callous in my mind at this point in my life. I lost the weight, and I went back to recruiter. I got into that class. I went through three Navy still hell weeks in one year.

Only got it ever be in three hell weeks of my life. one year to my knowledge. The first one I didn't make it through, the next two I did. And I started opening different doors that I didn't think were even there. They didn't think even existed. And the more doors opened up, the more I start realizing that my potential is damn near endless. 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'll go way past. I didn't have a motherfucker come wait. me up at 3 o'clock in the fucking morning, say, hey, you got to get your shit in. I had no trainer. I have a nutritionist. It was this self-discipline that I had to survive, to not survive, but I was weak to thrive. No one said, hey, man, you're 297 pounds, man.

I want to help you out. I had to overcome and it self-disciplines everything. If you don't have it, I don't look at you right, because I know you're capable of more. It's not discipline so much for me. It's all on you. It's all on you. The self part is what's big. We count on people too much to get us through shit.

And we look to our right, we look to our left, we're looking for help. And if you can build that self, you can build that total accountability in one self. We live in a society where mediocrity is often rewarded. We often forget how hard we are, but you got to reflect back. Take a couple of seconds, reflect, I've been through this, I've been through that. don't believe it. You ever endured shit? You're just blowing smoke, man. I'm not the best at anything. I'm not, I'm not gifted. I'm just driven. It's all about trying to share that message with people. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and

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