The Resilient Mind - Train Your Mind To Become Unstoppable - David Goggins

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IcVJxlsUmGEAn 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, train your mind to become unstoppable with David Gagins. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I never talked about winning, because I knew the path to winning was going to be years of failing first. So I taught myself how to fail properly.

I don't want to teach you how to fucking fail. But if you're going out for insurmountable fucking odds, that make absolutely no fucking sense. A black kid that can't swim, 300 pounds will be a Navy seal. Okay. You better teach stuff how to fail first. Because if you sit in failure for too long, you will never come out of it.

So the first part of my success was learning how to fail properly. And then eventually, I started getting a few victories. But that's what people don't get. When you have buried yourself in such a deep fucking hole, you better first talk about the failures you're going to have first. And that's when that other voice comes up. It tells you we got to do something. It also tells you, boy, I'm not going to lie to you, Goggins.

You're in for a fucking climb, bro. You're going to get your ass handed to you, made fun of, the outside noise, the inside noise. Both voices are going to be fucking telling you to go fuck yourself. You are in for hell, bro. I am. So I better learn to fail. And sometimes all the voices are telling you the wrong shit, man.

But through years, years, not a podcast or listening to a book or reading a book, years of sacrifice, of suffering, of diligent, pinpoint fucking work on what you want to do for yourself. Not like, oh, let me just do a bunch of shit. Let me, I want to be in every task possible. No. Pimpoint what I want to do with my life. What happens is you have all these voices that are telling you you're fucked up and this can be hard. But for some reason, you put so much practice into you that you can ignore every one of them

that are telling you you're not going to fucking make it and still be able to fucking make it because you have put the practice in that you know this is the process. It's such a daunting task that all the voices are saying no. But you still have the conviction that I know I can do this.

And that's what it took for me to get here. 20, 30 years ago, I had this 35, whatever it was, 30, to 25 years ago, pipe dream. And ever since then, every voice was like, you're a fucking nut. But when you put that practice in, every day you lace them up. And I mean, Ron, it's just a metaphor for life. When you lace the motherfuckers up every day, pretty soon you win. Pretty soon you'll fucking win.

If you have the courage and the heart and the dedication and the mindset, everybody can go fuck themselves. I know what I know. I've listened to myself enough to know. I know what I know. None of you can hear what I'm hearing. And that's what people don't do enough of. They don't listen to their journey.

They listen to everybody else is shit. You're not looking at the truth in front of you. The truth in front of you is it sucks. It's painful. It's fucking mind-numbing. And that is the truth. And that's why a lot of people don't like listening to me because this is what it takes, creating another voice and sometimes

going out of it alone, all the time going out of alone because no one's going to believe in you. You know what? I was nervous at first. I'm going to keep the mother, I'm going to keep it real. I'm not a real smart guy. And what I mean by that is I was born with ADHD, ADHD. My brain cannot retain information. I'm not some genetic frequent when it comes to running when it comes to lifting waste.

I am absolutely the bottom of the barrel. and people will never believe me and they can just, you know, whatever, believe what you want to believe. So when you're asking this question about what does studying look like for me, I have to go over the same page over and over and over and over again.

While Jennifer can look at that page, while she's, you know, quizzing me, she'll learn it right then as she's, she doesn't know anything about it. She will quiz herself or quiz me and learn it as she's quizzing me. It's the most frustrating thing in the world how my brain works.

So what I do is I literally sit there with a pen and paper and I have my books and I go through and have to write everything down every single day. I will study the same page until it's photographic memory

from writing the same thing down. It sucks. Everything I do in life, it sucks. That's why when I was 300, pounds and 24 years old. It wasn't like I had some big epiphany of let's just go be a Navy SEAL and let's lose some weight. No, I knew

my entire life was going to be a struggle, which is why I just ignored it. I said, I'm not even trying to jump off into this shit and learn how to read, how to write, how to memorize, how to become something I am not. But through that process, something happened to me.

And I realize that's this is why I feel sorry for no one. In this podcast, they're going to really not like me. Because people are going to think that I am maybe lying or maybe fibbing or exaggerating. No. I am literally, I was the lowest form on earth. No talent, no ability to learn. And I literally know what it is to be rock bottom and to build that up. So that question about learning is a pain in my ass.

And I don't have to do it. It's the thing about it. I'm 49 years old and I'm a multi-millionaire. I don't have to do anything. So all I thought about when I was growing up is, man, I can't wait to one day get to the point where I no longer have to do this stuff. But what happens, I got older, it became a way of living.

How my mind is wired now is that everything I do is what I do. because the focus it takes for me to, like right now, I'm running. I'm not like a great runner. I'm not like injury-free. So like my first 20 minutes of the run, I'm limping. I'm literally limping because I've had several knee surgeries and my body was twisted and so now it's untwisting. So people look at me, oh, it looks like he's limp, you know,

like limping when he runs. I am limping when I run. My body's jacked up, so I'm focusing on how to get the best I have a broken body. So everything I do is a total focus on what I'm doing at that point. And that's why I don't feel bad for people who have ADHD, who have learning disabilities. But people don't want to go through the process of focus, of teaching yourself how to truly focus. This is where my message gets lost.

It gets lost because I may say, you know, MF or F. I may be because that's the passion that comes out of me because it takes everything, for me to learn a sentence. So when I speak about David Gagons, I can't speak about David Gagins in a way that's just calm and cool. Because when I wake up, I know the journey that it takes for me to find my greatness, and it's hard.

Nothing is easy. Nothing just like, oh, I wake up and I just do this, or I do that. It's just, you know, I watch people every day go through life, and it's so easy. For me to be where I'm at today, It takes every bit of me. So when I speak about it, and as I get going here,

you'll start seeing me, the temple will rise, the passion will come out, because I'm back there. I'm doing what I do every day to become a human being. And so nothing is easy. Like, running is running.

It sucks, but you have a choice to make. Do you want to sit down and go back to that guy you once were? No. So this is what it takes. It takes that misunderstanding of people, They'll never get it because they've never David Goggins. So that is what it takes for me to do what I do.

It may take you something differently. So for me, everything has to be in the studying. Everything has to be into this. Everything has to be, and everywhere I am has to be there. Me, focus, where I am. That's why you're my second podcast I've done since Rogan since the book came out. I don't have time for that shit. Because if I want to be great, I'm not trying to maximize money

or maximize people knowing me. I do these things because maybe someone out there will understand me and get it and say, I can grow from this guy and others just won't. The biggest misunderstanding about David Gaga's of all time, it's like whether you believe in God or not, I do. He put this lab rat, which is me, on this planet, and said, let me fucking see with a beat-up abused kid who has, who can barely learn, barely learn, who has a twisted body, messed up genetics,

sickle cell, this and that. Let me give him everything that pretty much disqualifies you from the military. But back then, it wasn't as stressed. And let's put him in this and see what comes out of it. So to do that, friction, you don't wake up in the morning time and go to the coffee maker.

Matter of fact, sometimes you don't even sleep. What it requires is when I'm at 2 o'clock in the morning. And my brain is thinking about a fucking drug. And I got to get up and look in my book to see that drug is how I remember it. And this is every day of my fucking life. That's why I'm not trained a fighter or I train some. I'm like, you have no fucking idea

how great you really are. Because you are using such minimal, minimal of what you have. The most frustrating thing in the world for me is when normal people judge a man like myself. on what it really takes to extract greatness from nothing. It takes every bit of who you are if you choose that route. If you don't, Merry Christmas, do what you got to do. But, yeah, all these things for me, like I told you me, I'm going to keep it real.

I'm not coming here to talk about, like, you know, perform without purpose. because I go through, when I write these books, I go through and try to dumb down David Gagas. How can I give normal people, and I'm normal, but I found something that most don't want to find. How can I speak to people and give them something from this crazy, psychotic brain that I've developed? How can I give them that?

So I sit down with Jennifer for years and write down, perform without purpose, callous your mind, armor your mind, the cookie jar, the accountability, shit that people can fucking use in their lives. No, no. I'm glad it helps you. But the barbaric life that I live,

that you have to live, the almost obsession that you must have to be great, you can't put that shit in a fucking book, bro. You can't put in a book. Can't. The brain that I was given as a child, it was easy to go home and think about how do I want to be a freak today?

How do I want to show up to school today and be a freak? It didn't require me going home and open a book up saying, it's going to take me all year to learn this fucking page. So instead of learning that page, I learned how to become a character. And maybe that character that I created, that 300-pound insecure guy that used to fake it-it-time-make-it type of guy, you know, let me,

become your friend, let me lie to you until you like me, type of guy, when you have any kind of, any manhood, womanhood, a human being, a soul, a spirit, any, I had no, I must have just this much pride, because that's exactly what opened the door for me. Because every day you were a character, every day you were a clown, every day you opened that Spanish book or that science book or English book, and you looked at it was like, it looked like a foreign language. And you're saying, where do I start? Who do I start?

And obviously it was necessary. The more I talk about it, it was necessary. Because what happened is I became haunted by the mere fact that this is my existence. And when you sit back as fucked up as I was and I had a laundry list, a table like this of what I have to do to become just a human being that can make ends meet, that can make $1,000 a month just to get there.

It was like, oh, my God, dude. Like, how they, I'm 16, 17. I can't read. I can't write. And I, oh, my God, I'm so behind the power curve. And my brain is about being depressed. And my dad beat my mom's not home. And kids are calling me nigger at school.

And I'm like, oh, my God, man, what the fuck do I do? And it wasn't like someone came around and said, man, you can do this. This is all me. Some people know where does this cold man come from? I'm not trying to be cold. It's the reality of my life. It's the reality of a lot of people's lives.

Because no matter how much you improve, no matter how much you change who you are, it's not permanent. You'll just wake up and say, oh my God, man, you're David Goggins. You break records. You do this, you do that. know, how are you, how are you able to just be so hard?

Because I never turned the fucking thing off. Because once it turns off, I go right back to the David Goggins that is. And that's the guy that I'm constantly fighting every day. And it's a choice. And that choice makes you misunderstood. It makes you crazy. There's no fucking passion. There's no fucking motivation.

There's no, oh my God, man, I fucking, this is, no. It's every day of your life just doing. No passion. No discipline, no motivation. All these words, I hate people. I hate that so many people fucking use these words now because it's watered. It's someone sitting in the room by themselves and they figure themselves out and say, God, this is going to fucking suck.

Where's passion when you're 300 pounds? Where's the motivation when you can't read and write? Where is it? So how did this happen? I just fucking did. I just did. I said, maybe at the end of this journey, there'll be something there for me.

If not, I can read. If not, I'm 1805 fucking pounds. There's no magic potion. There's no, oh, let me wake up and look at some shit. No, all those words are overused. They're bullshit. It's all bullshit. Just do your living.

How do you want to live? How do you want to die? How do you want to fucking be remembered? That's, that's it. That's it. Period. Let me teach you the real life how it really is. The reason why you're a loser,

and the reason why you're not fucking making it, and the reason why you're trying to go to all these, I go to all these fucking conventions. Speak all the fucking time. I look in the fucking audience, and these people sign up, sign up, sign up, sign up fucking every year to go to a convention, thinking they're going to learn something fucking different.

No, you're lazy, You know exactly what to do, exactly what to do. Because even me, in my state of I can't read and write, I knew exactly what to do. It just sucks doing it. It sucks to do it. It sucks to wake up every morning of your life and say, God, man, I'm not smart.

So guess what I got to do? I got to study the same shit that I got one of the highest scores in the nation on and do it again. Do it again. Do it again. It's not just there. It's not just there permanently for me. I do not feel sorry for you. I will not sugarcoat what I'm going to say to you because all of you know what I'm saying is the truth. Everybody knows it the truth. This is what it looks like. And you know it too. You know what too. This is what if you ain't got nothing, I hate to tell you what it looks like is ugly. It's not a documentary. It's not an HBO special.

You ain't go watch them, hey, man, you guys got watched this. No, it's like, oh God, this. It looks like a train wreck. It's like a nightmare. This looks like this guy got, no. That's what it looks like. Hard work looks horrible. It's not motivating. It's not motivating at all.

It ain't like Rocky Round 14. He gets knocked down and goes that dish to Apollo Creed. It looks like a man being stuck in a fucking dungeon. And there's no fucking way out. But you had the fucking key. But you refuse to use it. And that's nothing motivating about that. There's no fucking hack, bro.

there's no fucking hack yeah you may this and that and saunas and all this shit that they yeah it's great there is no fucking life hack to grow that thing how do you grow it do it and do it and do it and do it that's the hack it's going to fucking suck and that's what i realized that's what i realized life that's why i want to come on here today i didn't want to come on here and talk about no fucking passion and purpose and how to get the fuck out of bed and how to hit a fucking alarm clock and all this catchphrase bullshit because that wasn't how I lived I wasn't how I lived I woke up like every human being does and goes fuck man I'm a fucking piece of shit today how the hell is this gonna work out for me and you fight that and you fight that you don't override it there's no

override button it's the conversation in your fucking in your head so how do you do this that. We don't have enough of these conversations about the real conversation that every human being is having. And they have no idea how to get out of it, but they do. It's that shit right there, man. Yeah, build your will. How do you build your will? Exactly what you said, man. Exactly what you said. There's no hacks, bro. It's you against you. You against you. And if you misunderstand that, you have a real problem. You're real problem. I can understand, you misunderstand me running out of the street, shirt off, fuck this, no, yeah, I can get it, I get it.

If you misunderstand what's saying right now today, the problem is you, and you don't want to fix it. I wake up like, man, my knees hurt, mouth, my legs hurt, my body hurts, but you can still run. So why aren't you running? If you can still run, there'll be a time when you can't lace them up anymore, but you can still run. So I still run.

When the time comes I can't run, the body will say you just can't run. But if I can still do something that willpower that I have created, it makes me do it every fucking day. And that's what they don't get. What builds a human being is you start with the small building blocks. And before you know it, man, you become something that you, it doesn't even make sense to most people because it's just who you are now. That's why I can still run at 50 with 40, at 49, with broke down knees and broke down.

body because my body knows you still can. Therefore I do. Second, you stop, the willpower is gone. People can call you nigger. They can call you if you're a lesbian or gay or bisexual. Call you what the fuck you want. If you put yourself in the fire and you come out every fucking day like this, fresh it off, not scared to go back in there again. Come on, man. Your truth is real. You come out every day, man, with a way of talking to people that people don't have. Because there's no behind them and the truth is the starting line. When you sit in an ugly mirror and say, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, and this, you finally started your life. Maybe 40 years old. Maybe 40 years old, five, six kids, wife, the second, look in that mirror

and you say, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, well, basically, I'm not this, I'm not this, I can't do this, I can't do this, I'm all these insecurities, your life finally started. People love the lie. You know, I thought I was the only person. Like when I was growing up, I thought the only person that lied. Because I live in the bubble. And people love to lie about who they're not. They love to lie about who they're not, dude. And that's, for me, the reason why I'm so vulnerable and I'm so real and honest,

find somebody come out and tell me online about my fucking life. And for me to come where I came from and have the resume I have now, you know the confidence you get, how I don't care who you're going to, you got to judge me? You're going to judge me? What have you done in your life? So me being so honest and so upfront and so truthful, that came with me finally figuring out who I was,

but also conquering David Gagons, the demons of David Gagons. I've trained 99% of my life alone. No one pat me on the back. I did all of the work alone. and while I'm still hard on myself, I know what I did. So whenever times get bad, people, all this,

who's your care of the boats and love? That's real. I hate that people know me for that guy because that guy is not every fucking day. Like, when they see me, they want that energy. That's not me every day. I can extract it immediately when I need to because when you train alone

and I lived alone for so many years and this misery and you're able to get out of by yourself. I can take myself to such a level of real, real passion and purpose. And like the feeling I get is something I can't even explain by myself. I don't need anyone. See, people are haunted.

But they obviously like horror films because they keep watching the same fucking movie. I don't like horror films. A lot of people like horror films. So I don't say much to them. I say exactly what I said to you. right there because I was once you. I didn't like horror films, so I changed it.

Some people are just, they become, like you said, it gets real small when you're lazy and you're fat, your will. Their will is so small that they don't have any, and you can't give it to them. There has to be something, this is what I'm talking about now, because this isn't a hack. This has to be in you.

Something in you, has to wake up. And usually the only person that can wake it up is you. Sometimes you can read a David Gagin's book because I was all this shit and then a lot more of fucked up. But if you don't have a little flame,

you know, just that, just barely, you're done. I can't, I can't light it for you. And that's the harsh reality of this life that I want to get across so fucking bad. You can watch me, you can watch you, You can watch fucking Rogan and Cameron Haynes, all these motherfuckers. You can go to Tony Robbins and fucking bullshit, all this shit. You do all this shit.

If you, you could keep going back and keep spending money and spending money and spending money with no results. You can wonder, wow, maybe let me go try out David Goggins. He ain't going to fucking help you. You have to explore, examine the insides of yourself. And what do you really want out of life? your friend and a lot of people out here just don't fucking want it so guess what have fun with your life because you don't want it and that's the harsh reality i can't give you shit you can't give you ideas and in the day when i was losing the weight i had to miserably wake up

every morning in the cold because it was indiana november when it started i was miserable. This is your new life. Take it or leave it. There's no happiness about it. There's no peace behind it. It sucks. It just fucking sucks. And that's the one thing if I could teach anybody, anything. It just fucking sucks. And it's going to continue to suck.

And then one day you get to a special part in your life, that it might get a little bit better. But to lose, the way, you have to lose, my friend. Sorry. It's going to suck every fucking day. There's no dopamine. There's no dopamine in there at 300 pounds. You got nothing.

Your hormones are shot. You have to envision something that is more powerful than you. Something has to get you out of bed. And you have to create it. It has to be false. Because you're not it.

You're a fat piece of shit, and that's the reality of it. So you have to create a false reality to live in that just to get to work on yourself. That's the reality. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.