The Resilient Mind - You Against You - David Goggins

Episode Date: September 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: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalExplore tools from past guests of the podcast. Some links below are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you:💓 HeartMath: https://www.heartmath.com/resilient🧠 Muse: https://choosemuse.com/resilientmind🌿 Brain Ritual: https://www.brainritual.com/THERESILIENTMIND🌍 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.

There's been this unrelenting voice in my head. We all have this voice. It's the right or wrong voice. And a lot of times that voice guides us into comfort. And my voice guided me to comfort a lot. But I have this other voice. I heard my whole life saying, hey, motherfucker, what are you doing? No, man, we got to go over here.

We got to go over here to that rock pile over in the fucking corner where nobody's at. That's where victory's at. We're over there that corner. So this voice was giving me all these answers. I wasn't real smart kid growing up, but I had this crazy voice in my head saying, over there is where the fucking answers are. And I didn't want to listen to it because over there was pain. Over there was me looking in the mirror.

Over there was me being accountable for all these things I went through my life. Even though people put them on me, it's now a mind to own. And I didn't want to go over there by myself, but I had to. And this voice was guiding me there. It's God, would everyone call it? But that's what it was in me. Life is one big psychological warfare that you play on yourself. You plan yourself, man.

The most important conversation ever had is with myself. And the shit I was telling myself was so fucked up. It was so wrong. It was so misguided. And other people start to write that dialogue for you also. And it starts to be what you say to yourself every single day. And I started creating a whole other warfare.

A whole other battle started becoming, I was like, oh, hang on a second, Goddance. You have these tools. You have these tools. Your life was basically the perfect, the perfect ground. for training for where you need to go in your life. All the beatings, all the bullying, all the, you know, you going through learning disabilities, all the struggles.

It was the absolute perfect training ground for you to go to where you need to go. And that's how I started looking at my life versus, woe as me, poopy pants, kicking rock down the street mentality. It was not. God just hooked you right to fuck up. He hooked you right up, man, with the perfect place. You were training. You have the advantage of everybody else versus, my God,

they're so above me they came from a great family mom and dad love them they didn't have a learn they didn't start it they didn't struggle no man your struggle is what made you who you are now 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 need someone to hold people accountable

fuck that shit man Fuck that shit. 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. And it's not about being selfish. I'm trying to create a better me. So hopefully people who are hearing this are taking it the right way can say,

I can run a mile. Ain't about running 205 fucking miles doing fourth. I'm being a city. Any about all that shit. Shit doesn't matter. I want you to see how. fucking far you can go. And that's all it's about yourself.

And that's where it all comes from. No one's going to fucking come to help me. No one's going to fucking come to help me. It's fucking me against me, period. And so I had the man up. And I said, the first guy I started doing is facing every fucking fear I have. I'm at what the fuck it is, man. And these things would keep me up.

And not one, people who are hearing this shit, they will never really understand and grasp when you face these things and so many things, up and haunt you at night. 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 until I succeed. So I started calling recruiters up. I said, I'm going to be a fucking Navy SEAL. most people are missing something because they don't know who they are they never examine themselves they they've never done this experiment on themselves the lab rat we're all lab rats but you're also the scientist you create your own self most people are missing something because there's so much trapped in there i don't even want to say potential i think that's word you's used out too much too There's so much in you that God or wherever the hell you believe in, or if you're atheists, in you, that you have not unlocked.

God, I feel like I'm missing something. Yeah, because it's about 75% of you is still fucking in there, still chained up because you just didn't want to find your willpower. Didn't want to find your soul, your will, your heart, your determination, your guts, your courage. And what that looks like, it looks scary. Like your little scary lab I went in. Scary. To wake up every day and say, I'm stupid, but I want to figure out a way to be smarter. Versus saying, man, I just can't do that.

So you limit this box. So your box becomes so small of things you can do. My box wasn't even a box. It was a fucking little like little pinhole. And then through examining myself, getting some willpower, some courage, it became bigger than this table. But that's what we all do. That's why I wanted to come here today

and talk to you about real shit. Not no fucking, like, hacks? There's no hacks, bro. It's you against you. You against you. And if you misunderstand that, you give a real problem. 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 I'm saying right now today, the problem is you.

and you don't want to fix it. It developed a lot of anger, and I still have it. It will never go away. Because when you put yourself in the sewer like I was in, and please, if someone saved me, come out and announce it to the world. There's no one. There's no one. So when you know that,

and then I'm sitting at a table with all these smart people who are telling me what to do and shit and guiding me through my life now, I don't need you to guide my future. I know what's good for me and what's bad for me. And for me, it took every bit of focus I could. And I know social media, that's why people love to go on there because they want to show you the good side of life.

I'm not teaching good side of life. So I had to figure out a way when I came on in 2016 of teaching you what life really is for the majority of us is hell. And so while people love to show you the cars and the house and the vacations and shit, all that's good. All that's happy. I'm going to show you the side that I know most of you're going through.

And people hide very well. I don't want to hide anymore. I hit it for 24 fucking years. I'm going to teach you how to be vulnerable because that's the only way you fix yourself. You don't fix yourself by coming out here and me selling you some fucking books. That's why I don't have them. I forgot them. I'm glad people got something from the book.

I want you to learn that the only way you grow is how to look at yourself and say, okay, like I did. What the fuck I have to do to get somewhere? There was nothing good on there. Nothing. Yeah, I love playing basketball. I left that out. That's something I love to do. I don't care about that.

That didn't make the fucking list. Because the list that I had to live by was the very list that was the very list that was to get me at this table with you. And a lot of us have this voice in our head. We all know that voice in our head that tells us the truth every single day that we try to run away from that says, we're scared of this, let's go this way.

It started gnawing at me so horribly bad that it wouldn't allow me to live anymore without facing me. I had to go back in the dungeon. So when I tell my story, I tell it on the very surface level. I had to go down in the dungeon, the sewer where my mind used to be at and talk to that guy.

Because 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. But I want 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. It's too hard.

Life isn't fair. These things in life are not easy for me. You look to your left and you look to your right and you start to judge yourself off other people. Like if you're a female, well, she's skinny and she doesn't work out as hard as I do. And everything starts to corrupt your mind. You start to look around too much at other people and what they're doing. And that starts to corrupt your own dialogue. We are judging ourselves against too many fucking people.

You have to judge yourself against yourself. And that's the one thing I started learning, man. This isn't a race against me and Rich Roll. This is a race against David Gagons and David Gagons alone. And once you can silence all that bullshit, all the outside interference and things that are attracting your mind to everything, you can then start to grow and realizing I'm stressed out for no reason. This is my own little race. This is my own timeline. And this is how I'm going to run it.

You're willing to suffer and suffer and go back in the grind. That internal dialogue you have with yourself when you're in misery and you're uncomfortable, it's a real, scary, unfiltered, no-lying dialogue between you and yourself. And people know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about when you're in a bad spot in life and your mind is saying all kind of shit. That's who you really are. That's the real you. No Rocky Balboa moments going on up there.

They're like, hey, you know, it's around 14. Let's come on. We got this. No, it's like, fuck this. I'm out of here, man. This is crazy. That's where the growth happens. When you're able to stay in that moment and talk to yourself, talk to yourself back into the suck of wherever you're going through, and you start stripping those layers away.

But as you're stripping those layers away, you're building calluses over top of shit in your mind. That's where the growth starts to happen is when you have to force yourself to stay in it. You can't leave it. Every day is going to suck. And live like that. To be better. And I put this way, I'm in the water. The water's going on in my head.

The Pacific Ocean, you know it's freezing. February, cold as shit. Been through three hell weeks. For you to constantly win, win, when, when this voice over here, the real you is saying, get the fuck out of here. Go. You're nobody. You've always been nobody. And it's true. People don't hear that. That's a true voice. That's a real reality of David Gagans at 24 years old. It's not a false reality. And then you had to create another voice over here that is saying you're better than that other voice. And you're in the freezing cold water that both voices don't want to fucking be in. But you win. and goes from the water to the studying, to the running, to losing weight, to how you eat, to how you function as a man.

Every day of your life, you're winning these battles. And the thing about it is, you have to be really, 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.

Pinpoint 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 is going to 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, 30, so 25 years ago, hype dream. And ever since then, every voice was like, you're fucking nut. But when you put that practice in every day you lace them up,

and I mean, grun, 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. There's so much peace of knowing what I have accomplished and what I've done,

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.