The Resilient Mind - You're Only Living at 40% of Your Potential - David Goggins

Episode Date: September 9, 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.

You know, a lot of us are going through hard time in life. Some people have been bullied. Some people are distressed out. Some people are insecure. Some people are fat and overweight. And the world puts a lot of this shit in your mind. It's not just you. Yeah, you help it.

And my whole thing is about I had to develop a mindset, a mindset that was indestructible. I had to armor plate my mind. And it's about what you're saying to yourself, but it also comes at work. So whenever I was getting beat down, physically, mentally, spiritually, whatever I was going through, just saying, you know, I would put, you know, you can't hurt me. Can't hurt me just became a message. You know, I would say to myself and that's just kind of where it comes from. I believe that most human beings are only living at about 40% of their capability.

So the mind has a governor like a car. If you're driving a car and the car has a governor on it, the car may say 130 miles an hour, but the governor is set for 90. Once that governor sets in, you get the 91, that car starts doing this. The car wants to go. The car wants to go, but that fucking factory said, uh-uh, we're not going past 91. We have a factory, a nice governor in our brain, and it's the survival mechanism. It protects us from pain and suffering. The second we feel that shit, our mind says, oh, no, this isn't fun.

We should back off. We should sit down, find something more comfortable. And there's something about the mind. The mind has the tactics. advantage over you at all times. At all times of your life, the mind has a tactical advantage over you. Why is that? It knows what you're afraid of.

It knows your insecurities. It knows your deep, dark lies. And it starts to push you away from that shit. It pushes you in a direction that is comfortable. The mind controls everything. So what I realized was that when I was growing up and I was 300 pounds and I got all fat and I got all insecure, I realized that my mind kept taking me in this direction. When things got uncomfortable for me, when I was facing my insecurities, I was facing my fears.

My mind said, oh, no, we have a tactical advantage. We need to get you, separate you from this feeling. This feeling over your life is all about feelings. We want the happy feeling. We don't want that feeling of this sucks. Why am I here? And you don't have any, so you can't answer those questions, so you leave. I started realizing that if in that moment you can answer those fucked up questions and you are now in charge of your brain versus your brain ruling you, that's where all that stuff comes from.

So the 40% rule is all of that. You get to 40% your brain says, we're done. Let's roll, man. This is starting to get painful. This is uncomfortable. So you sit down. You have to figure out ways and everybody's different. That's how the book kind of talks about.

Like we all have these things about, you know, five steps to this and four steps to this. It's not more than that. That's all bullshit. It's a practice that you have to. It's a habit. So if you know that at 40%, I'm feeling pain, at 40% I'm feeling pain, that's where the 40% rule kicks in. Now it starts. Okay, I'm feeling pain.

My mind's saying all this shit to me. It's saying, get out of here. Run, flee. The fighter flight kicks in. Okay. we're done and we're not good enough. It starts telling you all these things. You start to believe it because the mind controls all.

This is the time where you have to gain control back of your mind. It's okay, let me see if I can go 45%. And once you start giving yourself more and more hope and start realizing, okay, the mind starts to be, okay, what are you doing? We're supposed to be going right and you're going left. You start then controlling your mind, start finding more in yourself. And then it goes from 40% to a lot further than that. But that's the start of it, though.

Get to the spot where your mind is saying stop. Whatever that is, you got to get there first. And then that's when that shit starts to work for you. You got to control yourself in that moment. So a lot of people can live with themselves. That's the first thing. A lot of people can live with themselves, look in the mirror and say, I'm okay with being afraid.

I'm okay with going on this easy highway over here. The easy highway has all these fucking signs and shit, directions, how to get somewhere. And you have to first be uncomfortable with how you feel about yourself. With that voice that allowed us like to run away from. We all have it. We all have that voice that say, hey, man, you know, you're kind of wimping out right now. You're kind of being a little punk right now.

But LaVos say, okay, that's okay. It's okay to tell these little white lies to ourselves. So we first have to face the real you. The real me is David Goggins. The real me is a guy looking at you right now saying, I don't want to fucking be on this show right now because I used to It's a stutter as a kid. And I'm afraid of that.

I'm afraid that here in a second, I'm going to start fucking stammer and stutter. And the whole world is going to know that have all these issues. But that's when I see right now, okay, Gagons, you got to go on this fucking show. That's Gagons. Gagins is saying, okay, David Gaggans, you're a punk. Life made you this way. We can't live like this.

We can't live in fear. We can't live in judgment. We can't be afraid of what the fuck people right now are looking at me saying, about me. We cannot be afraid of that. That's Gagins. Goggins saying, fuck all of you who don't like me, who don't want to, and that person then comes in. But you have to be David Gagins and say, man, I'm afraid of this. I'm fucked up here. Life made me this way here. I stutter. I have these issues with reading and writing and I'm fat and I'm insecure. You have to face that in that dark room. In that dark room is who you are.

But in that dark room is where you have to create another human being that walks out of that dark room to face who you are. That's the only way you're going to get over all those things. You have to create someone else. Not like you have two different personalities. It is you, but you have to find strength. And that visualization of almost me cracking out Goggins, like almost like that Superman Cape, like I'm coming out a different person, a person that doesn't give a, fuck about anything, who doesn't care about being judged, who knows I'm weak, who knows I'm

afraid, who says, whatever you think about me, take it, whatever, I'm here. That's guidance. In the dark room, you face yourself, you realize you want to be better, you realize you don't want to be this weak, insecure person in the world, he has all these problems that we all have. We all have. Social media is a great platform to tell you who we want to be. Not who we are.

So that's where that dark room is. So in my book I talk about it a lot It's my junior year in high school And I fell back a lot I fell back in this fucking hole of life The second you think that you've overcome it You climb Everest You're on that last hold

And life will say Not today, motherfucker It'll push you down And my junior year in high school I missed a whole bunch of school Was lining my mom Had like a one point something GPA I was just jacked

I mean, it was, I was in one of the worst spots in my life. And my mom was going through a lot of shit too. And she didn't have time to sit back and baby me. And it was me against me. My pants were down to my knees. I was just, I was not, whatever was going on, I was in a bad shape. So I went to the bathroom and I had this weird haircut because I wanted attention. I was an attention getter.

I went to an all white school pretty much. Some of the kids liked me, a lot of them didn't like me, whatever. Didn't fucking matter. I was looking for something. So I would dress differently, crazy haircuts, and I went to the mirror, and the reflection in it revealed a lot of bad things. A lot of things that I was hiding behind the saggy pants. And I'm looking at myself in the mirror going like, God, dog, dude, you got to, you are

something else, man. Like, you have created a character. I want to be at the cool guy table, and whatever I could do to get attention I did. It wasn't me. It wasn't who I was inside, but I was scared for anybody to know who I was inside. So in that kind of ability mirror, I called it, I got real of myself. I said, you have a third grade reading level, which is hard to admit when you're a junior in high school that you copied on every single thing you did because of fear they're going to put me in a special school. We all know what special means.

I only have a title on myself the rest of my life. And being cool, you don't have a title on yourself. So I started cheating. I was dumb and people say, oh, you know, you had learned this ability. I don't learn disability, but I realized I was lazy. So I called myself out there. I called myself out every rich way possible. I didn't call myself out.

I was just honest. I was honest. Look at yourself, man. Look at yourself. And it was that day in a couple of days after that, I just got real at myself. And every day I came home, I called the accountability mirror. What am I going to do today to change what I see in this mirror? What am I going to do today?

And a lot of it was I stopped sit with the cool guys. I actually tucked my shirt in and went to school looking like, hey, man, this time I'm going to look. If you don't like it, so be it. I had to really wear this layer of skin. I had to develop a really callous skin on me to take whatever you're going to call me, you're going to call me. Whatever I'm going to be, I want a geek. But whoever I am, you're going to see me. You're going to see me for who I am because I need to change who I'm not.

And that accountability just became raw. And I became fat over the years. I fell back in the hole. I called 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 fuck you are, nothing's going to change.

In this nice new world that we live in, we want to hear, you're just a little big. No, man, you might be fat. And it's okay to hear that from yourself and from everybody else. So that's where it started at. And it's raw. And it gets ugly sometimes with me in that mirror. But I'm also proud of myself to be able to tell myself that and then fix what's in that mirror. So the first thing about it is once you realize it, you have to realize it.

You've got to call yourself out. Addressing it is very small. It doesn't go from like one morning, this way. Next morning I wake up and presto, you know, five steps to greatness. No, it ain't that, brother. You read my book, this is hard work. It's every day, like right now. I had to be honest with you, man.

I'm even shaking right now being on this show. I'm a big-time introvert. 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 and 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. Except in the fact that if you lose three or four pounds, that's a huge accomplishment. You have to live in your own fucking world. You cannot judge yourself. That's why social media and all these things are horrible. You can't judge yourself off of the so-called competition that we have made up in our mind. The things that how people look, how people act, how smart someone is.

This is a race that you run completely alone. And you're all by yourself. I had tons of sticky notes all over my mirror. It wasn't like be better than John or be as fast as whoever. Okay, David, yesterday you did this. Today, our next goal for the week is this. So I had a year goal, weekly goals, daily goals, hourly goals. And the big goal was I lied a lot growing up.

I wanted to be accepted. One goal was, let's go one day without lying. Let's go one day. And then when I would lie to somebody, I would say, hey, man, now I had to go back now and apologize and say, man, I lied to you. You know how hard it is to go back to somebody and say, I lie to you? Hey, man, you know what? Back there, I lied to you, dude.

That was really jacked up. So I figured out these ways of total, total accountability. Like right now, I had to run this morning before I talked to you because why? That's what I'm about. I'm about mind, mat, body, fitness. A lot of folks talk so much shit about, hey, I'm going to change your life. I'm going to do this. I want to do that.

Are you accountable for what you're doing? Are you accountable? And I mean to the T for what you're saying. I am. And that's where it started. It started with that total accountability of let's not lie today. Let's tell people the truth about who you are. And when you can get on and tell someone like I'm doing right now exactly how fucked up you are,

That's the goal in life. To put your life on a billboard, on the busiest road and the busiest highway in the world, and say, this is how fucked up I used to be. Take it or leave it. When you really sit back at your life and you're in that dark room, and you're looking at where you started from, and you tell yourself, God, oh, man, my mom is this way, my soon-in-stabdad got murdered, my dad beat the shit out of me.

I can't read and write to say my fucking soul. I've lied about it to everybody. I've cheated on all these tests. My God, man. And then you put a goal in your mind. How are you going to feel, man, when you accomplish this goal coming from that shit? Coming from the fucking hell you came from.

A lot of people start from a good starting point. They have a good foundation. What if you can surpass all these motherfuckers? We have everybody who was fucking way up here, started up here. And you had, you started with no legs. You had to grow fucking legs to even start walking and then crawling and then running. And then you start passing people and all this giving to them.

I had to use all this negative shit that was making me weak and horrible as a person. I had to use this as the power that now fuel me. I had to flip it on his head and say, hold up. This might be exactly what I need. The darkness is exactly what I need. need is how you look at your situation. And I was looking at it all fucked up. So in that list of who you are, what makes you fucked up, all these other things, it goes back to once again accepting. You have to first accept it before you can fix it. A lot of people walk around,

oh man, I'm good. I'm good. No, you're not. You have to accept what you're not. And people don't want to do that. That's the only way you can fix it. You have to accept it first before you can go on the journey. A lot of folks never even start the journey, man. Never start the journey because they live in this fake life that who they want to be, they act like they are, but they're not because they haven't fixed all this stuff yet. You got to fix this first before we can start our journey in life. So that's why I have to make this list. You fix these problems, now your journey can begin because you no longer care about how people are judged. you. When you care more about how someone's judging you, you're going to stay right there.

There's no forward momentum. A lot of us, mediocrity is everywhere right now, and we're all trying to find an easy way out, and we're judging ourselves. Let's say there's 10 people in this room, and we're all mediocre. But I'm the best of the mediocre people. I now think I'm great. I'm great. We surround ourselves around people that, make us feel great. They tell us what we want to hear. The second we put ourselves amongst the uncommon people, we don't like that feeling, that challenge and feeling of that person who's waking about 3.30 and morning and say, hey, push

your shit on, we're going for a run. We don't like that challenge. We like that person who says, hey, you know what, man, I don't feel good today, man. And they say, oh, it's okay, brother. We take a day off, maybe we get a pizza and shit, watch the game. We like that. We love that feeling. Why?

Because you understand, man, we're good, bro. We don't want that. fuckers like this, hey man, no, bro. Get your fucking shit on, man. Stop being a punk. We don't want that in their lives. We don't want that person who's constantly challenging our weaknesses. We want that person who's constantly, you know, making us feel nice and good and secure in us.

That's the mediocrity of life. We want to be the best amongst the average people. People wonder, how do you stay hungry all the time? Because after I accomplished something, I don't sit back like a lot of guys who graduate Buds, graduate this, graduate that. They get comfortable. They wonder why I'm getting weak, man. I don't know.

I lost my edge. What's going on? Because once you hit the top of the fucking mountain, guess what happened? I'm good. I'm good. So you wonder why you're falling down now. Because once you meet the top of the mountain, you've got to build a fucking other one. That's mediocrity.

There's a lot of people in mediocrity who have a nice resume. But they're one-timers, man. They hit a one-time deal. They busted it open, got a lot of money, but they're good. You're mediocre now, man. What are you fucking doing today, tomorrow, the next fucking day? That's what I'm listening to theorists. I don't listen to all that bullshit.

I listen to a motherfucker who's like this, man. What's wrong, man? I'm fucking tired, dude. Why are you tired? Because tomorrow, I get to do the fucking shit again, man. Whatever the shit is that made me fucking nauseous and sick to my stomach, it made me hurt. There's no ending.

And that's the person I'm not. listen to. That's the person who's gained knowledge. You gain knowledge through suffering. And on the other end of suffering is a world that very few, very few have ever seen. It's a beautiful world because that's where you find yourself. You don't find yourself in over here. You find yourself on the other end. Like the 100 mile race all was on. I ran it for 24 hours. I found myself on the other end of that fucking race. That 19 hours I found, wow, there's a whole other fucking world out here that I've never even, the world is in your mind.

And that's what all that mediocrity is about. Mediocrity is contagious. Not giving civilized is about having a savage mentality. Civilized is something where people, it's a comfortable world. A lot of us say, you know, like for instance, I see these athletes right now who retire. You know, I'm 38, you know, I'm 39. I did 20 years at the top of my game, and I'm chilling out now. You see them a year later and how they look.

What the hell just happened to you do? What the hell? You're one of the greatest athletes of all time. Kids looked up to you. Women, men of all ages, looked up to you. And they hit the pinnacle where it's time to retire. in their mind says, whew, I'm civilized.

The worst thing that could ever happen to any human being is they become civilized. It's that total accountability, like even when you retire, there's a motherfucker looking at me and judging me right now, man. I was the baddest person to ever live. It doesn't go away, man. You got to wake up, even though you retired,

you never retired. You're setting the example every single day of your life. And being civilized feels so good. I'm sorry, man. Once you get to the top, you may retire, but you ain't ever coming back home, man. Now you're judged. People see you falling off.

You want to be that guy who knows I may be retired from the sport or forever I did, but I'd be damn if you ever see me looking like shit, feeling like shit, not arriving. People, I've arrived. I've arrived mentality. You're always setting the example. Civilization feels so good. These comfortable feelings are what people want. They want retirement.

They want that. They need that. It's a yearning feeling. I want it too. People love putting a label on me about, my God, man, you're just wired different. Not fucking wired different, dude. I'm thinking right now, after I got past my stuttering thing, now I'm on a roll, I'm good now. You know what I'm thinking about right now?

I got to fucking wake up tomorrow and do this. the same shit again. I got to leave this fucking interview and go stretch out for two and a half hours. I hate that shit. But guess what it does, though? I'm constantly callousing over my victim's mentality that I once had growing up.

Every day you have to do this shit. Because why? When you stop doing it, you don't just maintain it. If you stop shooting a gun, you're not going to be a great shot if you pick a gun up a year from now. The only way to keep from getting rusty It's to constantly owe that

motherfucking machine. The machine is this. You got to keep challenging it every day. I'm in a search for a feeling. I'm not in search for a trophy. I'm not in search for a trophy. I'm not in search for more followers on Instagram or social media. When I started this journey

years ago and I realized that I'm going to be somebody and I'm searching for a feeling, a feeling of true victory for myself and only myself. The second I shut out the whole world and realize that one thing that I am in this world alone. I'm fighting in this race by myself. Yeah, I'm all about people. I'm all about team. I'm all about that shit.

But I'm really all about right now. And in my life, just like you said, no one knows the real truth about me, how hard I really go. I don't care if anybody knows. I want anybody to know. I'm an introvert. I live an introverted life. and I love that about me. That right there is my fuel. I know that there's really no one out there grinding like me. And if they are, so be it. If I know about you, I'll make sure that up my gang.

That's what the mentality is all about. My whole thing is a mentality thing. Like I told you the last time I was on the show, I viewed myself as the weakest person on the planet earth. my goal in life was to in my mind believe I'm the hardest man alive and that's why the whole thing is can't hurt me that's what it's about it's about whatever you think you are you have to make that dream a reality but that's where the hard part is is making that dream reality that's where the hard work comes is that's where people know how do you keep grinding every day you have to make those insecurities those fears like when I was through

hundred pounds, I didn't have any drive. I'm going to go be a Navy SEAL. What kind of stupid shit is that, 300 pounds? It wasn't like a drive to go be a Navy SEAL. I was an insecure, lying kid, afraid. I had to look in my insecurities and in my fear

and find drive in that. We're all looking for passion. Passion's all around you. You have a whole fucking stack of it all around you. It's your insecurities, all that shit. You got to dive deep in that shit. It's all in there. All the energy and fuel you need is right in yourself.

It's all there. You got a lot of stuff to do to overcome. And, you know, that's where I found it. I found it right there in my own insecurities. I found drive in my own insecurities. And that's the most powerful thing in the world. When you can find drive in your own doubt, fear, insecurities, you become very unstoppable.

Who is sitting here right now today? This is the real me, obviously. But I'm going to go kind of, I'm a very philosophical person, and I'm going to go there with you real quick. I believe in a higher power. Don't know the name, don't know where it's coming from, don't know anything like that. But I believe that this power and visualizing me real quick,

let's say it's a man up there or a woman, whatever, and they have a chart. And when you're born, they say David Goggins, born February 17, 1975 at 6 a.m. They write the chart down because they can see everything. They know exactly what you're fucking supposed to be. They know what you're supposed to be. You die, you go to so-called heaven.

You arrive at heaven, I'm 300 pounds. I retired as an eco-lab guy, which is okay, just a job, whatever. I go up there and God looks at me and he shows me my chart. And my chart on there says you were supposed to be a Navy seal. You're supposed to weigh 185 pounds. You're supposed to be one of the smartest people in the plant, this, this, all this. You see this. And now you're in heaven.

You made it to heaven, but you're like, God, Doug, I was supposed to live that life. I was supposed to live that life. And then you find out that the reason why, because we all think that if we pray on it, if we do this, if we do that, whatever, if we don't. work, whatever, it's going to magically happen for us. No, I believe that when I'm all said and done with, my whole job is to outwork the chart. Whatever the fucking chart says about me, the all-knowing power up there, I want to get up there and say, him look at me and say, I know everything.

I didn't fucking see this. I didn't fucking see this. I want to feel that. I want to get to the other end of this fucking world. And however I'm being judged, whoever's judging me to look at me and say, I did not fucking know. I had you at 185, I had you at this, but all this other shit, I was riding as you were living it. I want to find more all I can. And in that fucking sack of shit, you have to dive in that to find that to find.

more because if you're not willing to go in there and face yourself and I can find anything you can live right here on surface man right here on surface so if there is an ending to this world and there is somewhere to go and there's a judgment you're gonna get there and you might see a chart and that chart may tell you who the fuck you should have been and now you get the rest of your life to think about that man I could have lived a much better life if I just would would have just suffered a little bit more. If I just would have went in that shit and realized I had so much more, but fear in the 40% in living here versus living here, being afraid, stop me. So that's, I'm a big guy in visualizing. I'm a big guy in making a world. It may not exist. To me it does.

To me it does. And I'm overpowering myself every day. and you've got to find tools to do that. That's the tool that I use. So that's what it's all about. The impact I want to have in the world is for everybody to be able to face who they are. I want to have that kind of impact where you can go on TV.

You can put your life on a billboard. You're not ashamed of who the fuck you are. You're not ashamed of what life made you, what you helped life make you, all that shit, all that bad shit that's now in this big pot that's stirring. You no longer ashamed of what. You realize we're all fucked up. Stop judging yourself against other fucked up people who have hidden it better than you.

It's all they've done. They've mastered shit better than you have, and now they're flipping it back on you and saying you're fucked up. I want you to realize that this world, life is one big head game. And once you learn to play the motherfucking head game, it's no longer a game anymore. at all. You can start living your life. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes.