The Resilient Mind - Why Mental Toughness Starts With Honesty - David Goggins

Episode Date: February 2, 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 Now⁠⁠This episode is brought to you in partnership with Chris Williamson. Follow his YouTube channel by visiting: https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisWillx🌍 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 why mental toughness starts with honesty, with David Gagins. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. So thinking about trauma and stuff that you go through in your past, throughout most of school for me, I was pretty isolated, only child, pretty unpopular in school. And the main issue that I had was, it wasn't bullying, it was isolation, I think.

It was being lonely. Right. And that was primarily what was causing me to be sad throughout school. So I do this interview for the BBC about six months ago. And in it I talk about, I haven't opened up that much about bullying. I need to do it more. And it is, you know, even from watching you go through opening up about your trauma as it is inspiring. So I do this interview for the BBC.

And I mention a little bit about bullying in school. So why don't you mention? I haven't got around to it yet. I maybe still feel like it detracts from the man that I want to be, the masculine man, the respected podcaster, that it somehow undermines me as a person, that it makes me weaker, which is obviously what was part of the bullying's purpose in school to be able to do precisely that. So I do this interview for the BBC. And I mentioned in two paragraphs or something, but millions. of people see this article. And I get back one day and in my Instagram message requests is this message from a guy and I kind of recognize his name, but not fully. And I don't know whether you

know, but there's like a character limit in Instagram. And this is five character limit messages long with multiple paragraphs within each of them, right? So I open it up. And this guy says, hi, Chris, you might not remember me, but we went to school together. I bullied you. My daughter is four and she's about to go to school. And given that she's about to go to school, me and my wife have been discussing about the kind of child that we want her to be.

And that caused me to reflect on my time that I spent in school. I saw, I've been thinking about messaging you for a while. I've been considering talking to you because I really felt like I needed to, because I felt ashamed of the way that I treated you in school and I knew that it had hurt you. And then I saw this article from the Bible you see and I just had to reach out. And I've been sleepless nights speaking to the wife,

tears and all the rest of it. And I swear to say that I'm sorry. I'm very sorry for what I did. I want you to let you know that my daughter is going to be raised in a way that will never treat anybody like that again. I don't expect you to forgive me. I don't even know if you'll see this message. I'm happy to see that you seem to be happy. but I needed to get it off my chest. Right. I'm like, fuck, totally taken aback. Like, wasn't prepared for this.

I've come back in from the gym or something and I'm sat reading this message like, fucking hell, that's heavy. So I go back through and I think, well, how do I feel about this? How do I feel about this person? How do I feel about my experience? Right. Because it was so formative, right,

shaped so much of the way that I see myself, the way that I see the world. I had to deprogram so. much of the patterns that I'd learned through that time. My desire for validation from other people. Right. My need to be liked. My constant vigilance, my ambient anxiety that was always looking for what was going on, my concern of being laughed out. My adamant nature that everybody was able to judge something about me that I didn't know about myself. But this guy had like fully, fully opened up to me.

And I thought, well, you know, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful message. So I replied to him and I said, hey man, I very much appreciate you reaching out. I think it's an incredibly brave thing to do. And if me going through what I went through and then the pain and discomfort and such

and your subsequent suffering of reflecting on what you did, if that has led to a world in which your daughter will be the sort of person who will behave in a manner that's going to make the world a better place going forward, I think that's a price that's worth paying. That's awesome, man. That's a great story. That's a great story.

And you're the expert on it. That's why you should talk about bullying. I know. Yeah, you're the expert. and that's why I do it. You know, that's why I become so vulnerable because all that knowledge you gain because now you are successful.

And there's so many people who are getting bullied in so many ways that, you know, you just show them that there's a path. But the path is really, like I talk about, studying the bully. That's the path. Studying the bully. Were you ever tempted to become a bully?

Never. Never. I'm always, like I said, like I told you before they started, I wanted to be a priest. I want to be a priest, you know. Could you imagine one of those sermons? It'd be sick, because I would cuss. Because I would definitely cuss. Praise the Lord, motherfuckers.

That's it. I would definitely cuss. I would definitely cuss, man, because that's the world. And there's a lot of people who probably hear this. Like, oh, my God, this is, oh, my God. Let me close my ear. You know, the world's tough. The world's tough.

And when you come up the way I came up, the only way I can fucking describe something sometimes is say fuck or motherfucker. Because that's how dark this shit was. And I can't make it flowery. I can't make it PG. Like, oh, I want my kids to, like, I have a clean edition of this book. Oh, you have a non-explicit version.

Yes, because people are like, I want my kid to read your book, but you cuss so much, I can't. I imagine it's about half the size. Yes, it's very small. Yes. So the funny thing about it is, like, how long are you going to shelter your child from a world that's evil as shit that's going to come at you? It's going to come at you, whether you've been bullied or not.

There's going to come a time when it's going to come at you. and it can be a lot worse than fuck or motherfucker. It could be a lot worse. And so we are training kids and people to be soft in a world that continuously gets harder. And it doesn't correlate. Like that guy talking about the tear gas with the seals. Is that necessary? I don't know.

But what is necessary is you have to build a person that can withstand the pressures of whatever they're going to be dealing with in life. And we don't do that. I'm not trying to send a message of run 200 miles, be the best motherfucker in the world. But be tough. You better have a part about you that's tough, a part about you that can break down situations and get better.

And break down situations very quickly within some trauma in your life, some devastation in your life because it's going to come the devastation the trauma is going to come and you can't allow that to become a jersey barrier it can't be a jersey barrier it has to be something that you can maneuver through very quickly and move forward that takes a lot of toughness well unchosen suffering is going to happen right so the only thing that you can do is have some chosen suffering to prepare for it it's the only thing you can do that's the only thing you can practice for the unchosen suffering is have chosen suffering do something that sucks every day I had Huberman on the show a few months ago,

and he told me about bringing you into his lab and putting you in VR underwater with sharks. Give me your experience with Huberman. He's great. He knows his stuff. He knows his stuff. Yeah, he's just a, he's a very knowledgeable man on what he's doing. What's being in VR with sharks like?

It's nothing. No? No. No, because one thing about me is I did in reality. You put me in VR's VR. It's a fake thing. And I work in reality. I only work in reality.

I don't work in fake situations. So that's why I didn't work on me. You put me in a real ocean, in real sharks, you'll get your real reaction. You put me in a room that I, when you walk in the door and you sit down in the chair and you put some shit on your fucking face. I know I'm in a fucking chair. I know I'm in a room. If you get that psych to fuck out,

you need to study that more than that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Why are you so sensitive? Why are you so sensitive? Yes. If you are on a high wire because you're afraid of heights,

but you're sitting firmly on the fucking ground, you need to study the fact that you're doing something wrong. Don't study the afraid of heights. Study why the fuck do I know? I'm on the fucking ground in a fucking chair, but I'm afraid of what's on this screen. So I don't allow anything to go beyond the truth. He said that, obviously, you didn't know this in advance.

It could have been the most lifelike VR in the history of the world. And apparently it was a group of you guys, and someone had to go first. Someone had to go first. You're not that good with water. Not sure how you feel about sharks, but can't imagine you're a fan. And you were just like, me.

Me, please. I'm first. Yeah, I'm like that with everything. Because why sit back in the back and think about, let me watch you go first? You can watch me go first. Is there anything that you'd like to study with Huberman? Would there be any, like, cool tests? Is there anything that you've been thinking about to do with performance or anything like that at the moment?

No. You've just got your own mental lab. I've got my own mental lab. Everything I need is in my mental lab. everything because I'm in constant study of myself that's and I know what needs to be conquered because I'm constantly going through what I don't like when I'm not comfortable with

you know like I'm I know and only I can fix these problems because I have to face these problems so I have a rolling a rolling log on what needs to happen so I'm really good about being a counterfeit about, okay, you need to be better here, you need to be better here, you need to overcome this, overcome that, and I do a good job of doing that.

You talk about performance without a purpose. What's that? So, like, for instance, let's say you have no races. Let's say you have no classes, no nothing. You have, there's no purpose in your life. You know, people need to have purpose to get up. They need purpose to perform. You need to get to a point in your life where there's no purpose. nothing on the docket. There's no 5K. There's no, there's no, I'm going to get into school to be this or that, and still perform to the highest level. Because what people don't get is one day that thing's going to come up. And if you're not constantly performing without purpose, you're not going to be ready when the time comes. It's this magical thing, purpose that we're all looking for. But what's funny about it all is that we need these things to perform.

them. But we don't take a second to realize the purpose is always there. The purpose never leaves us because the very purpose is you. You are always the purpose. There may be another purpose, like being a seal or going to college or whatever, but the main purpose in life is you. So if you wake up in the morning and you don't want to do something, you don't care enough about yourself. And that's what you need to really research is, man, why am I not doing this for myself? Because that is the number one purpose in life is to better oneself. So that's the only purpose I fucking need. So the reason I get up every day, even though there's no race or there's no school,

there's nothing in front of me, is because I have pride in myself. But where do you go to? You wake up on a morning, it's cold, it's wet, it's dark, you've got no car, in your knee, you've got shitty shorts, whatever it is that's the issue today. Keep talking. You've got these problems, right? I need you to keep talking about what you were just saying. It's warm on the couch.

Your Mrs. says stay in bed. It's comfy. It's cozy. You've got work later on. You had an argument last night. You're slightly hung over. I know every motherfucker ain't going to do what I'm going to do. So this is how you level up.

That's how you level up. I know there's a whole bunch of people. With that right there, that fires me up. That makes me fucking happy, what you just said. That brings joy to my life right there. Why? Because I know there's so many people that have the ability and just refuse to get off that couch.

Refuse to study a few more hours. Refuse to go deeper, to go further. And that's where I gained the advantage. 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.

It's lonely. You talk about that you were kind of lonely by yourself. I was the same way. And that used to hurt me growing up. Now I fucking thrive in that shit. That's the only place to be. Well, that was one of the things that is so surprising about growing up through difficulty. you know so loneliness is one example right growing up as a lonely kid what you realize is a lot of the

things that you feared or hated or embarrassed about as a child end up being the genesis of the things that you're most proud about as an adult so the fact that you can work and thrive in solitude gives you the opportunity to be able to move to america and start a podcast or decide to do a hell week three times in a row or it doesn't matter how long or dark the call you're just going to stay. The fact that you were forced to be vigilant and to assess people to work out what's going on. When you became an adult allows you to detect the vibe and the energy of whoever it is that you're speaking with and know that this person's someone that I want to hang with and this person's somebody that I don't. All of the things, in fact, I would go as far as to

say there's not one thing in my life that I see as a pure advantage that doesn't have a dark side to it that came about at some other point as well. Right. So one of the reasons that I spent so much time as a kid in my bedroom listening to audio tapes because I didn't have anyone to play with, right? Only child, a little bit sort of unpopular. So I'd be in my bedroom listening to audio tapes. We'd go to the library every two weeks and we take the tapes back and we get new tapes

and I bring them and listen to them again. Right. But you rolled the clock forward 20 years and what's the 20-23 version of an audio tape? It's a podcast. It's a podcast. That's right. A lot of the things that you love and value in yourself, in adulthood, are the light side of something that you were ashamed, fearful, disgusted by when you were younger?

Yeah. I mean, I think that comes from overcoming. A lot of people, you know, wonder, how did you become this? How you become so vulnerable? How are you doing a podcast now when you were this kid? You overcame things. You fought them. And now this is what happens.

This is on the other side of overcoming. It becomes, you become very, very powerful when you overcome yourself. All those things you once coward from, you're afraid of. When you face them eye to eye every day, you now become a person who has a great podcast. Let's say that there's someone listening who resonates with what you're talking about. You know, they've been through trauma. They've been through hard times. But they keep breaking promises to themselves.

and they're struggling to get off the couch and they're having a pity party, how can they stop feeling sorry for themselves? That's a difficult one. Because you have to want it. You have to want to be better. And it starts off with you have to have pride in yourself. You have to have pride in yourself.

You have to have, there's something about you, whether it's your last name, whether it's just the smallest thing. you have to be proud of yourself. And if you have no pride of yourself, I can't give it to you. Because you're always going to compromise. You're always going to fold.

Always. I'm very proud of myself. That's why when people said, you know way you can do better than can't hurt me. Roger that. We'll fucking see. It's that pride that wakes you up. Now I'm not talking about bad pride.

I'm the attention to detail for the human being I want to do. I call this thing like, I want to be the standard. I want to be that guy. Like every place I went in the military, there was this ethos about how this place is, how we're going to live, how we're going to represent ourselves. And I walked around and I saw that most people didn't live up to that ethos. Like if you go to whatever, whatever company, they had this mission statement on how we want to run our company.

I made one for myself on how I want to be. And that is why if people can make up a mission statement and ethos in which they want to live by, and every morning you wake up, you hold yourself accountable to that mission, that accompanies your own. Make up your own mission statement. What do you want to be in life? And once you do that, now you can work with somebody to get better. You can work with yourself to get better.

But until you know what you want to stand for, you will always just be sitting down. You'll never stand for anything. What's that quote? If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything. That's it. It's a true statement. In the book, you talk about Roger That, there being two types of Roger That. I absolutely adore the second type.

Received orders given, expect results. That's it. That's it. So cool, above and beyond, more than was expected to the letter. That's Roger that. That is for me what Roger that means. Received orders given. Yep.

Expect results. Expect results. That's right. So fucking dope. That is it. That is it. And when you hear that from somebody who gets it, you know it because you can look in their eyes. You feel that energy, man.

It connects immediately. They're out here to get a job done. Roger that. So. The start of the book, or at least the start of the audiobook, you've got a few different intros. Right. Rogan, your mum, and the rock.

Right. Slightly odd trifecta, but I do think it works. So obviously your time, Rogan's had you on now the third time that you've been on. What have you learned since being friends with him? He's a very singular individual. You know what? One thing about him is that he's made it. And he's all about everybody else making it.

There's one thing that he believes in is that there's enough food, enough cake for everybody out here to eat. So there's a lot of people in this world who don't want to see you make it because they think you could take a piece of their pie. That motherfucker's like, look, dude. Pie for everybody. I got 14 pies, bro. One for every motherfucker here.

And so he's all about people making it. And that's something that a lot of us can, you know, learn from. that people think, oh, I made it, I'm going to hold on to it. I'm not going to help anybody else out. The thing is, I don't even know if he was, uh, something tells me you had that philosophy before he'd even made it as he was on the come up. Yeah, I mean, I really didn't know him that much back then. But, um, the, he really is to me the Oprah of the modern day.

He's the Oprah the modern day. You know, that, that guy's just has made so many people, known to the world, gotten so many messages out. So, yeah. I said, I was talking to Andrew Schultz about the same thing, and he'd said very similar sentiment, especially he's coming from a comedy angle, right? And if you're going to be championed in comedy,

it's super, super difficult. Right. And what he said was that the comedy world is so zero-sum, like your gig is not my gig. And the fact that you can have someone that just gives that gift out is very rare. Another friend, his wife does Ayavadic medicine. So I'm not really too sure what it is, but she did something to do with like tarot card reading.

And he asked her, he was about to go on Rogan's podcast. So he asked her to do the tarot card readings about Joe because it might give him a little bit more insight or it would just be interesting in general. And the tarot card that she pulls out might not be tarot. It might not be tarot. It'll be something similar. The card that she pulled out was an older warrior.

cross-legged sat under a tree with his hands like that. This guy that, and he's got a weapon down next to him. Weapons laid down, transcended the battle. And I was like, holy fuck. I'm not too sure, I'm not too sure about what's going on with this tarot card reading thing, but that one seems pretty accurate.

It's probably perfect for him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's something about raising other people up as you go along. Oh, yeah. That, you know, as you get a platform, as you have the opportunity to expose other people that are, almost all of your time as a podcast

is slip streaming other people who have bigger platforms and then after a while you get to this stage where you can be that springboard for others some unbelievably talented person that nobody knows about there you go

now the world can know about you he's done the best at that he's the best at that what about the rock have you ever met him you ever trained with him never never we just deemned and I was like I'm gonna give you a shot in the dark

you know the guy follows me He knows about me, whatever. I was like, this guy's so big, man. He didn't get to fuck it. That's the end him, man. Within like 20 minutes. Hey, man, what's up, brother? sends me a voice message in DM.

Been following your work, man. Love what you fucking do. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, yeah, no problem, man. I'll hook you up. I'll be more in honor to hook you up. And in the audio book, what people don't know is I left him alone. I was like, hey, man, thank you.

I appreciate that. I want to bother you. go back to doing the great work that you do. You're so busy. So I was doing the audiobook. He was like, hey, brother, you want me to, you know, read what I wrote for you for the audio book? And I was like, yeah, that's great. That's how the idea came about.

It was actually the Rock's idea for him to do the blurb. So then I got Joe Rogan, and I got my mom to read the blurbs. So that came from him. I wasn't going to put the blurbs in the audiobook. But he was like, hey, man. I got a studio right here. I'll blast it out, send it over to you, and we'll get it done. That's a training session that the world wants to see.

I believe so. I believe so. That should be part of the book tour. It should be a training session between you guys. Talk me through what the next phase of your life has in store. So after this podcast, I probably won't do another one for a very long time. and I did my book came out on the sixth. It's now the 16th.

I did my 10 days of the book, and now it's done. And now it's going back to the lab. So now I go back, go back to firefighting, go back to finding another level of David Gagons. And that's done in quiet areas and finding more of myself, finding these spaces haven't discovered yet in my mind. and I really love that about life.

I love mastering self. I love it. I love it. There's nothing more because I know where I came from, and it's amazing that where I came from, that person could have died, that very fat, lazy, unfulfilled person. And with inside that person was this person talking to you,

it's very freaky to me. And a lot of us have these two people that you have greatness way over here, but you decide to live in this space over here. Because between greatness or between this space here and greatness, there's a lot of fucking work. There's so much space to fill in with work. And we just say, fuck it.

I just stay over here in this space. So I like to fucking examine all these spaces And there's still more There's still more still a lot more Are you aiming to find peace at any point Think about this I love that question I'm so glad you asked it

You know a little bit about me When you've come from that place I talk about To the place I'm now It's not the piece you find It's the piece I find And I find so much peace in looking back at that young David at eight years old with white splots on his face and stuttering and hair patches falling out and I look at him and like man there's so much peace

and knowing what I've accomplished and what I've done so my peace may be different for others that's why I never critique or never judge anyone because I don't know your story where you come from I found peace years ago years ago in the battle, in the battle you find peace. When you go to war with yourself, you find a lot of peace because you know exactly who you are. And that is where the peace is really found for me. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.