In short
Huberman Lab Podcast: David Goggins — How to Build Immense Inner Strength
Episode Overview In this episode, Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford School of Medicine, hosts David Goggins, a retired Navy SEAL, ultramarathon runner, and bestselling author. They delve into Goggins' extraordinary journey of overcoming personal hardships through mental and physical toughness. The discussion focuses on Goggins' mastery over his inner dialogue, the science behind willpower, and the relentless pursuit of self-improvement.
Key Themes and Concepts
David Goggins' Background
- Early Life Challenges: Goggins shares his experiences with physical and mental abuse, learning disorders, and obesity.
- Transformation: Through self-reflection and a grueling work ethic, Goggins overcame these obstacles to become a Navy SEAL and highly accomplished ultramarathoner.
Inner Dialogue and Discipline
- Mastering Inner Dialogue: Goggins emphasizes the importance of confronting one's inner demons and maintaining a strong internal dialogue to achieve discipline and toughness.
- The Role of Willpower: The discussion highlights how willpower is developed through repeated exposure to challenges and discomfort.
Scientific Insights
- Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex: Huberman introduces the concept of this brain structure as a key player in willpower and the will to live. It grows with actions that are challenging and avoided, making it crucial for overcoming adversity.
Overcoming Adversity
- Friction and Hardship: Goggins describes how constant exposure to life's challenges, or "friction," is necessary to build resilience and strength.
- Self-Criticism and Growth: The conversation explores how self-criticism, when managed properly, can be a powerful motivator for personal growth.
Practical Applications
Building Willpower
- Focus on Hard Tasks: Engage in activities that are difficult and avoided to strengthen willpower.
- Repetition and Consistency: Regularly push boundaries to develop mental and physical resilience.
Introspection and Self-Assessment
- Daily Reflection: Spend time understanding personal weaknesses and strengths through self-reflection.
- Creating Internal Dialogue: Develop a conversation with oneself that challenges negative thoughts and reinforces positive actions.
Relationship Management
- Honest Communication: Maintain transparency in relationships to ensure personal goals are supported.
- Balancing Support: Ensure that personal growth does not compromise the support system for loved ones.
Notable Quotes
- "The biggest misunderstanding about David Goggins is that everything is easy. It's not. It takes everything for me to be who I am."
- "When you have not studied, tests come when you think you're in a great place."
Episode Timestamps
- 00:00:00 - Introduction to David Goggins
- 00:07:58 - Challenges with ADHD and Learning
- 00:20:35 - Friction, Focus, and the "Conqueror's Mindset"
- 00:37:11 - The Stick vs. Carrot Approach
- 01:09:54 - Losing Weight and Building Willpower
- 01:54:11 - Challenges and Two Internal Voices
Closing Thoughts David Goggins' journey is a testament to the power of enduring hardship and mastering one's inner dialogue. His insights into willpower and mental toughness offer valuable lessons for anyone seeking to overcome personal challenges and reach their full potential.
Sponsors
- AG1: [drinkag1.com/huberman](https://drinkag1.com/huberman)
- LMNT: [drinklmnt.com/hubermanlab](https://drinklmnt.com/hubermanlab)
- Waking Up: [wakingup.com/huberman](https://wakingup.com/huberman)
- Momentous: [livemomentous.com/huberman](https://livemomentous.com/huberman)
For more insights and resources, visit [hubermanlab.com](https://hubermanlab.com).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science -based tools for everyday life.
0:08I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is David Goggins. David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's also a highly accomplished ultra marathon runner. For those of you that don't know, ultra marathons are distances longer than 26 miles and in David's case, often longer than 200 miles. For his achievements in athletics, he has been inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame. He also held a Guinness World Record for the most pull -ups completed in 24 hours. I should mention that not only was David a decorated Navy SEAL, but he also graduated from Army Ranger School.
0:50David is also a highly successful writer, having authored two books. The first entitled Can't Hurt Me and the second entitled Never Finished, both of which are best sellers. David's books cover many topics, including his autobiographical description of what can only be described as an incredibly challenging child and young adulthood. His home was abusive, his school environment was abusive, he essentially had no positive resources directed his way. And in his 20s, he found himself to be obese. That is more than 300 pounds working a job, he despised for minimal pay. And it was at that point that David began an inner dialogue that forced him to explore the demons born out of his childhood, but also the position that he found himself in as a young man.
1:37And then began the journey to navigate that dialogue and transform himself into the Navy SEAL, the ultra marathon runner, the best -selling author, and the extraordinarily positive and influential man that he is today. A some of you may know, David has done various public lectures. He's a familiar face online because there are so many clips of him on YouTube and he has done podcasts before. However, I'm certain that you'll find today's discussion to be very different than previous podcasts that David has been featured on. The reason is that of course we get into his accomplishments. We talk about the mindset that allowed him to achieve those things.
2:15But today, David really lets us under the hood. He lets us into the form of inner dialogue that he has to embrace. Indeed, that he has to grapple with on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times throughout the day and night in order to impose the sort of self -discipline that he is so well known for. We also get into some of the scientific mechanisms underlying willpower. And we talk about David's current endeavors that include, for instance, his own exploration of science and medicine for which he has become an intense scholar and practitioner. I should mention that multiple times throughout today's discussion, you will hear curse words.
2:53Now, David and I both acknowledge that cursing isn't for everybody. And that cursing itself is different than cursing at somebody. Nonetheless, we do realize that many people, parents, perhaps especially, might not want to hear cursing. If you don't want to hear cursing, well, then this podcast episode is probably not for you. However, if you are comfortable with cursing or if you can tolerate it, I assure you today's discussion is highly worthwhile. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.
3:35In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells.
4:08Drinking Element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink Element dissolved in water, drink any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of element. They have watermelon citrus, etc. Frankly, I love them all. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement .com slash Huberman Lab to claim a free element sample pack with the purchase of any element drink mix.
4:44Again, that's drinkelement .com slash Huberman Lab to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up. Waking up is a meditation app that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga knee -dra sessions and NSDR non -sleep depressed protocols. I started using the waking up app a few years ago because even though I've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga knee -dra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app, turned out to be the waking up app, which could teach you meditations of different durations and had a lot of different types of meditations to place the bringing body into different states and that he liked it very much.
5:25So I gave the waking up app a try and I too found it to be extremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate other times I've longer to meditate and indeed I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my bringing body into lots of different kinds of states depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the waking up app has lots of different types of yoga knee -dra sessions. For those of you who don't know, yoga knee -dra is a process of lying very still, but keeping an active mind.
5:56It's very different than most meditations and there's excellent scientific data to show that yoga knee -dra and something similar to it called non -sleep deep rest or NSTR can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even with just a short 10 minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up app, you can go to wakingup .com slash huberman and access a free 30 -day trial. Again, that's wakingup .com slash huberman to access a free 30 -day trial. And now for my discussion with David Goggins. David Goggins, welcome. My man, do you see you again, man? Great to see you. It was late 2016, early 2017, I believe, when you were in my lab at Stanford.
6:35Yes, sir. We did a little work later that day down in San Jose and gosh, see you everywhere, but it's not enough, so great to have you here. Thanks for having me, all, bro. Yeah. You embody discipline and doing hard things. Right. I think she just start right off with the bull truth. Let's just go there. The bull truth. But right before we went hop mics, right, we were talking about learning. Right. Right now, you're spending some time learning and doing things that I think most people probably don't typically associate David Goggins with. Right. And why don't you tell us about that? Well, most people just look at me as the guy that runs and yells as he's running.
7:16And that's, while I do that, you know, to motivate people, but people don't understand that my day is broken up into segments. I work out, I eat, I sleep, I spend most of my time studying. So like, I'm in the medical world. I'm a, you know, paramedic in, in, I'm Canada. But I spend a lot of my time trying to nuke every single thing about it because I'm not trying to just be a paramedic. Learn about veins and arteries and how the heart pumps and stuff like that. I'm trying to learn to the point where I can say someone's life. And even though paramedics are doing that all over the world, I'm trying to be that paramedic that can really dissect exactly what's going on and figure out, you know, what medication goes where?
7:59Just trying to, you know, just trying to learn, you know, the, the algorithm of what's going on, man. So I spend a lot of time with it. I love the word algorithm because when I teach biology or try and learn anything that's related to biology, especially the human body, I need to know the nouns. But it's the verbs that matter. And that's really what you're talking about. Like, like, just saying that that sits there, that brain part there doesn't tell you how it all works together. So what is your process for studying look like? Like if we dropped a, a camera in the room, but a microphone into that into your inner dialogue.
8:34Gosh, wouldn't, wouldn't we all love that? But if we dropped a microphone into your inner dialogue, are you waking up looking at the books and going, yeah, fresh day? Right. Let's learn or is some of the same resistance that you've talked about coming up around physical work? Is that coming up from time to time? You know what? I was nervous at first. I'm going to keep the mother, I'm going to keep it real. I'm going to keep it real. So I'm not a real smart guy. And what I mean by that is I was born at 80, 80, 80, 80, oh, like my brain cannot retain information. I'm not some genetic frequent. It comes to run even it comes to lift the waist.
9:10I 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 we asked this question about what does studying look like for me? I have to go over the same page 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 actually she's, you 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, we have to write everything down every single day.
9:59I will study the same page until it's photographic memory. From writing the same thing down and then from there, I'll go back through and we learn again. So I'll learn the bulk of it. But then I'll go through and learn the small things within that. So if it's a medication, I'll learn what the medication does. I'll first, I'll learn how to even say the medication. Because these medications aren't like, you know, like outputable. No, it's very big words. So I'll go through learn how to say the name. Then I'll go through learn what the dose is. Then I'll go through and it's like every single day.
10:40It's not like, oh, I got it. Let's just go through. No, nothing is, I got it. Every single thing, so I can't wait to get in this conversation. Because everything I do in life, it sucks. Everything I do in life is sucks. That's why when I was 300 pounds and 24 years old, it wouldn't like has some big epiphany of, let's just go be a Navy seal. Let's lose some weight. No, I knew my entire life was going to be a struggle, which is why I just ignored it. And 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.
11:23But through that process, something happened to me. And I realized 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 to paint in my ass. And I don't have to do it. It's the thing about, I'm 49 years on it in my maltyme 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.
12:16But what happens, I got older, it became a way of living. So how I do every day is how I do every day. It's a discipline, it's a regiment. It's a, it was a choice I made. And the choice I made was, what are you willing to sacrifice and what are you willing to give up to find every bit of who you are as a human being. And I was willing to give everything to do that. So studying is no joke. I love that you're studying. I recall a few years ago, I heard somebody interview or podcast with you and you just throughout, like, I don't know what I'll do next. Maybe I'll be a scientist. Right. And I went, yeah.
12:54I was like, because I knew, because I know you a bit. I see your work out there, but we'd met before that if you decided that, you were going to do it. Right. And learning medicine, which is what you're doing. Right. Learning human physiology is so detailed. And people out there have to understand, when you look at a textbook and you see the veins and the capillaries, different colors in the, when the body's open, they're not different colors. Right. You know, they're not. So I mean, some things are at different color contrast, but it's not like it's all labeled when you pop it open. Exactly. And so, so the process of writing things down by hand is important for you.
13:31Do you go, so you go back and read those notes? Do you think about that stuff on your runs, too? Or are you segmenting your day like when you're done studying, are you heading out for a run and thinking about other things? Or are you still rehearsing the material in your head? So when I write it down, I write it down and I'm able to, I'm actually looking down at this table right now, because I'm back to writing. So I'm actually there right now, as I'm speaking to you. I write it down in a way that I'm memorizing page 69. So I'm writing it down so then writing it down and that page sink together in my brain.
14:06So I'm looking at the book in my brain right now. So like, that's just how it works for me. And I have to do it over and over again. So that page is stuck in my mind. So I'm literally flipping through pages as I'm taking these tests, and I'm taking these national tests to become a paramedic or become a advanced EMT or whatever. I'm literally as I'm taking that test, I'm going through and I'm like, now I'm flipping pages in my head where that page was and how I do that is just from how I, how I write it and how it's on the page. When I run, I can't recall any of it. I cannot, I cannot bring any of that because I'm running.
14:49How 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 looking, oh, it looks like he's limping, 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 of a broken body. So everything I do is a total focus on what I'm doing at that point in my life.
15:31So it seems like you've really trained away or somehow gotten away from the ADD that you mentioned. Because what you described is a deep trench, like a V -shaped trench. I'm imagining like there's a ball bearing and it's like, and it can only go forward in that trench. Right. Or back and it goes forward. It's not like sliding around at the like concave at the bottom. Right. Like attention. So it's like you've trained that up. Is there a similar feeling when you're in the full focus of running versus full focus of studying? Is it kind of feel like, oh yeah, that's the same groove, but different thing.
16:04Or is it just completely different world? It's a completely different world. Like it's just both of them for me is suffering, but suffering a whole different way. Like when I was going through school, I never forget I think I was in third grade. And back then, you know, ADD, ADHD wasn't like, you know, here's this medicine or here's this thing. They want to put you in a special school. So for me, I was so far behind in learning that their big thing was let's just put him in a special school because he'll never learn. And through that process of like, I don't want to be in a special school. I don't want to be treated any differently.
16:45It really like, I never took medication. I've never taken medication for this. That's right now. You see me looking right in your eyes. What the hell is, you know, it's true. I'm insane right now. And that's why I don't feel bad for people who have ADHD, who have learned disabilities. And some are impossible because you just can't. But a lot of them, you can. And 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, you know, I may be because that's the passion that comes out of me because that's, it takes everything for me to learn a sentence.
17:30So when I speak about David Goggins, I can't speak about David Goggins in a way that's just calm and cool. Because when I wake up, I know the journey that takes for me to find my greatness. And it's hard. Every nothing is easy. Nothing just like, oh, I wake up and I just do this or I do that or it 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 tempo 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.
18:10And 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. This is what it takes that misunderstanding of people and 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 study and everything has to be into this. Everything has to be in everywhere I am. It has to be there. Me focus where I am. That's why you're my second podcast. I've done this.
18:44This road and 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. Sounds like friction is something you're very familiar with. It's the word just as I feel like it's like cast above us right now in old phase, highlighted underline letters. Friction is friction. You're up in the morning and I imagine David Goggins going to the coffee maker, stretching out, good morning sunshine and you're telling me from eyelids open, there's friction.
19:26Yes. And that is the thing that people don't, they don't fucking get. The biggest misunderstanding about David Goggins of all time is like whether you believe in God or not, I do. He put this lab rat, which is me on this planet. It's let me fucking see what 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 stress 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.
20:14But in fact, sometimes you don't even sleep. What it requires is when I met two 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 if that drug is how I remember it. And this is every day of my fucking life. That's when I train a fighter or I train. So I'm like, you have no fucking idea how great you really are because you are using such minimal, minimal of what you have. And if people can learn to focus, this was possible. While it may not be pretty, like people who want to do a documentary on me, I go, no, I always do documentary on me because I will have normal everyday people picking me apart on his life as miserable.
21:04Who wants to live like that? He looks, it's crazy how he's, it's almost like he's sick, he's psychotic. The most frustrating thing in the world for me is when normal people judge a man like myself. I want 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, I'm gonna 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 Goggles.
21:53How 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. Callish your mind, armor your mind, the cookie jar, the account of Billy Merr, 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 the fucking book, bro.
22:37You can't put in a book, can't, you can't write about it. It has to be experienced. It has to be experienced. And you can't even, after you experience it, to write it in the book, it would seem like he needs to be locked up. This is too gory. It's too gory to make sense for a guy that everything, every second of the day, he is trying to extract more from something. He's constantly thinking, he's constantly disciplined, never going off the path. Whatever is injured on him, he figures away. It's a conqueror's mindset. And very few people, if any, can really understand what that is. I'm almost 50.
23:24And I've been this way for almost 30 years. We do for fun. You would never, these questions, I don't get them. I don't understand them. So yeah. I get asked that sometimes, when you're for fun, I start listening off all the stuff like podcast and reading, working out. But so some of that resonates. But I think what's so truly unusual about what you're describing, your process, is that from go, it's hard. And I have to ask was being 300 pounds, I'm using the words you described. You've said it before. You had a tendency at one point in your life early on. Tell lies, try and get people's approval.
24:07Why am I asked off? Crazy haircuts, attention, seeking, and yet, all of that triggered something that now is extraordinary. Do you think those hardships were necessary to flip the switch? I don't know if they were necessary, but it was something that made me feel, I didn't feel good. It was easy. The brain that I was given as a child, it was easy to go home and think about what, how do I want to be a freak today? How do I want my show up to school today and be a freak? It didn't require me going home and opening 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.
25:03Maybe that character that I created, that 300 pound insecure guy that used to fake it time, make it type of guy, 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 like, you looked at it, it looked like a foreign language. And you're sitting, where do I start?
25:48Well, who do I start? And obviously it wasn't necessary, the more I talk about it, it wasn't necessary, because what happened is I became haunted. By the mere fact that this is my existence. And you got to live with that. Now live with it for a lot of years. And so I sat back and said, okay, all right, I know what this takes. 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 a thousand dollars a month just to get there. It was like, oh my god, dude, like how the, I'm 16, 17, I can't read, I can't write.
26:36And 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 when someone came around and said, hey, man, you can do this. This is all me. Some people know where is 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. And so yeah, that had to happen for me to be haunted, to be haunted, to pull out, to extract the guy that in today. That haunting is something that's still there today.
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27:20Because no matter how much you improve and no matter how much you change who you are, it's not permanent. You just wake up and say, oh my god, man, you're, you're David Goggins, you break records, you do this, you do that. People know, how are you able to just be so hard? God 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. That's why I hate fucking social media. In 2013, people wanted me to write my book.
28:04I did it in 2018. Took five years. And the reason why I didn't do it, I said the table in Jennifer was there. This before I, I, she started working for me. I started dating or whatever. And all these people were there. And they're like, man, you gotta go on social media. And I was like, fuck you, man. Like I'm not, that's, it's poison. It's poison because I knew what I did to get where I am. And I'm gonna have these people, these normal everyday people. Fat, lazy, it's exactly who I was. Judging me. Because I know it, because I was once them. All my hard work, all my dedicated case, I'm gonna have so normal dude.
28:46Get his little brownies, little ding dong, whole, whole twinkie. Sit there with this coffee, picking me apart. Oh, he must be unhappy. He's just, you know, how hard it is to put these shoes on every day in the morning. I don't have you pick me apart. So, yeah, there's, there's, there's so much that goes into this that I was like, fuck this. I never want anything to do with it. So, anyway, I'm not a psychologist. But knowing your story from what you've written, what you've said on social media, and elsewhere podcasts, and here now, especially. It's amazing to me. And frankly, it pulls at my heartstrings a little bit.
29:31I realize that's not what you're trying to do, but that in the course of your childhood and in your young adulthood, that no one ever got between you and the world. I forget where I heard it that like, if a kid has just one person that believes in them, you know, and I had my trials and tribulations, but I had great coaches, great mentors. I attached to them. I found them if they didn't necessarily find me. But I'm realizing that your situation was no one's ever said, hey, I'm going to stand here next to you or get in front of you, put a shield up. And so, it's almost like you've got these different ver, it's all you, but there's versions of yourself that like you knew, social media, like I don't know that I have the wherewithal in 2013, 14, 15, 16, 17, to get in front of myself while doing all this, because I've already got so much going on in here.
30:21Is that about right? That is right, but I had developed a lot of anger and I still have it. And it would never go away for the normal human beings of this world. Because when you put yourself in the sewer like I was in, and please, if someone saved me, come out and announced it to the world, there's no one. There's no one. So when you know that, and then I'm sitting at the table with all these smart people who are telling me what to do and shit and guided me through my life now, when I'm 40 fucking years old, I was, I don't know, 40 something years on now, I'm 49. And I'm looking at them all and they're now trying to guide me on which right, on this poison.
31:07And so, yeah, what you say is right, but for me, it was more of, I know now. I don't need you to guide my future. I know what's good for me, it was bad for me. And for me, it took every bit of focus I could. I know social media. I saw people lovely 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 through 2016, I've teaching you what life really is for the majority of us as 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.
31:55I want 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. That's why now I told you, we can talk about it whenever you want. Because as human beings, the one, the first thing we have to learn, I also studied real bad growing up. So if you hear me study every now and then, it's because that was part of my life also. So it's funny, human beings want to show you the best side. And they want to hide the worst side. For me, I'm going to teach you how to be vulnerable. Because that's the only way you fix yourself.
32:34You don't fix yourself. I come 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 table longer than this. 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's it. Make the fucking list. Because the list that I had to live by was the very list that was to get me at this table with you.
33:15To talk to you to the normal human beings was I once was about how you can get somewhere. And how it looks looks very ugly. 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?
34:02Where 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 185 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. You're living. How do you want to live? How do you want to die? How do you want to fucking be remembered? That's it. That's it. Period. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called AG1, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs.
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36:16And then there's the stick, the thing you're trying to avoid. The way it's landing for me is it's all stick and gas pedal. There's no carrot. You're not imagining, oh, when I'm a paramedic, when the book is published, and obviously you set those goals and you make those targets. But it's all stick. All stick. No carrot. Think about that. I'm waking up right now studying like I have a test tomorrow. I already passed the fucking test. Think about that. Every day in my life, that's what I must do just to retain what I learned. Four hours plus a day, I go through and do that. There's no stick or there's only a stick.
37:03There's never been a carrot. Which is why when I speak to people, I have to figure out a way to resonate with them. Because all I want to say to them is, 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 through all these, I go to all these fucking conventions. Speak all the fucking time. I look into fucking the audience and these people sign up, sign up, sign up, fucking every year to go to convention. Thinking they're going to learn something fucking different. No, you're lazy.
37:42You know exactly what to do. Exactly what to do. Because even me, in my state of, I can't read or 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 gotta do? I gotta study the same shit that I get 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. So yeah, it's all stick. It's all stick. The only character you have is like, maybe, maybe because we never take these tests that are real hard.
38:32And back in my brain, it's like the good chance you're not going to make it, you're like, well, this ain't you, bro. This ain't you. You aren't born like this. This ain't you. The real you, bro, study all you want to. But the second that fucking computer comes on with 150 questions? This ain't you, man. And somehow comes back, I passed. I passed again, passed again. But that ruled me back here every fucking time. It's saying. That ain't you, bro. That is you. And I have to outwork that voice. When I'm taking that test and I get to a question, I don't fucking know the answer. I'm like, fuck man.
39:14And then, it says, I told you man, that ain't you. You 300 pounds, man. You said to a homie, you forgot how to do your hair. That's what you do, how to come to school with the reverse baldness when you're 16. That's you. So there is no good idea of free card. This is why I say stay hard. Because when you weren't given the gifts, the only thing you can do in life is stay hard. And I know people cannot stand me. They can't stand this talk. This is all you can do. There's no magic pill or a magic potion. All you can do is outwork the man that God created or woman in you. And what that looks like is unfund.
40:07That's why I said do not do a documentary on me. Because people will not see the truth. They will see what they want to see. I don't want to live like that. Good. Good. And you will live exactly the way you live now. Questioning who you are. Wondering what is possible. Wondering what you are capable of doing. That's how that looks. Or you can be me, which am I happy? I don't know, never thought about it. Don't really care about it. Because all I really cared about was when I looked in that fucking mirror, I saw a piece of shit. Happiness wasn't on the mirror at 16. Around 300 pounds. It wasn't like, oh my, I'm looking for happiness.
40:49No, I'm looking looking myself in the mirror and say, all right, my motherfuckin' did again today. You're a bad boy. Cause that shit sucks. I have about a couple minutes of that. Right, got the carrot. Second lay down and go to bed, the carrot's gone. Cause I'm waking up all through the night to check the work I did that day. That I get this drug right, that I get this right, that I get that right. What I do, oh my God, fuck, I'm already losing it. So stick. That stick haunting you. Honding. It's fallen you around. So no picture of Jordan on the wall. You're not listening to YouTube inspiration video.
41:31No. Those be all your voice anyway. You're not listening to your top 10 favorite songs just to get rolling and then lace the shoes, hit the books. You're, it's all in here. Oh, in there. I used to do that when I was fat. Rocky and me, that was my thing. Round 14 was my thing. And as I got older and older and older, that started to go away. And I started to create all these people that I used to watch. Rocky was one barns Elias from Platoon. Jack from a few good men. You know, he's on the stand going crazy. I saw a lot of these characters that I looked at and I was like, man, I ain't got none of that.
42:18But there were characters. After a while, I lived a life so disciplined that everybody that I once looked to, these fake characters, I built as a man. And when I was younger, I had this image in my mind of what does a man look like to me? And I got all these people who were badasses characters. And in my mind, I became that. And that's what kept me going a lot. Was I had this pipe dream of becoming a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Because when you have no parents raising you and you have no role models growing up, you, it's not daydreaming. You start to create a reality that, hmm, maybe I can be that.
43:12And after becoming this guy, that is the biggest thing I can ever do in my life is I became that guy that I once looked at all these guys, now look at myself like, God, who the fuck can do that? I can. But what it takes is a discipline that no one can ever even, they don't understand it. They don't understand it. Everybody has their abilities, do it. But they just don't want you. They want to keep asking questions and keep going to seminars. And the greatness is right in you. And that's why once again, I'll say some million times here, 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.
44:00Everybody knows the truth. This is what it looks like. And you know what, too. You know what, too. 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 got watchin' but hey, man, you guys got watch this. No, it's like, oh, God, this looks like a train wreck. It's like a nightmare. This looks like this guy got, no. So it looks like hard work. Looks horrible. It's not motivating. It's not motivating at all. Ain't like Rocky Round Four team. It gets knocked down and it goes at this to Apollo Creed. Looks like a man being stuck in a fucking dungeon.
44:32And there's no fucking way out. But you had the fucking key. But you refused to use it. And that's not motivating about that. So yes, no document on David Goggins. The real life. David Goggins is the documentary. It's all, it's already being written. You're it. Right. Yeah. I'm gonna share a little neuroscience tidbit. Love it. But I think it's one that you'll appreciate. Most people don't know this, but there's a brain structure called the anterior mid -singulate cortex as we pointed out before. That's a noun, it's a name, it doesn't mean anything. We could call it the cookie monster. But what's interesting about this brain area is there are now a lot of data in humans, that's a mouse study, showing that when people do something, they don't wanna do.
45:25Like add three hours of exercise per day or per week. Or when people who are trying to die and lose weight resist eating something. Right. When people do anything that they, and this is the important part, that they don't want to do. It's not about adding more work, it's about adding more work that you don't want to do. This brain area gets bigger. Now here's what's especially interesting about this brain area to me. And by the way, I'm only learning this recently because it's new data, but there's a lot of it. The anterior mid -singulate cortex is smaller and obese people. It gets bigger when they die.
46:04It's larger in athletes. It's especially large or grows larger in people that see themselves as challenge and overcome some challenge. And in people that live a very long time, this area keeps it size. In many ways scientists are trying to think of the enter mid -singulate cortex, not just as one of the seats of willpower, but perhaps actually the seat of the will to live. Now we're talking. And when I learned about the anterior mid -singulate cortex, I was like almost out of my seat. And I've been in the neuroscience games since I was 20. We're the same age. And I was so pumped, because I've heard of the amygdala fear, prefrontal cortex, it's planning an action.
46:51I could tell you every brain area and every, I teach neuroanatomine and magical students. But when I started seeing the data on the anterior mid -singulate cortex, I was like, whoa, this is interesting. And all the data points to the fact that we can build this area up. But that as quickly as we build it up, if we don't continue to invest in things that are hard for us, that we don't want to do, that's the part that feels so goggin -esque to me, that we don't want to do. Like if you love the ice bath, yeah, I love the ice bath, and you go from one minute to ten minutes, guess what? Your anterior mid -singulate cortex did not grow.
47:30But if you hate the cold water, if you're afraid of drowning, and you get into water and put your head under, then your anterior mids and survive, then the anterior mid -singulate cortex gets bigger. But if you don't do it the next day, or if you do it the next day and you enjoy it, because hey, I did it yesterday. Happy me, Mary Christmas is here, is that? Mary Christmas. Guess what? The anterior mid -singulate cortex shrinks again. To me, this is one of the most important discoveries that neuroscience has ever made, because it's that I don't want to do something, but do it anyway, that grows this area.
48:08And it's almost like I have a friend, he's been sober 30 years from alcohol, and he always says, you know, the amazing thing about addiction is there's a cure. The problem is it only works one day at a time. Yep. And so you have to renew it every day. That's right. So the anterior mid -singulate cortex, to me, when I learned about it, two things went off in my head. Whoa, this is super interesting. And two, I got to tell David Goggins about this. And I waited until now to tell you, because I felt like, well, for obvious reasons, I wanted to tell you and I wanted to tell you here. Well, I love that because that's how I've lived my entire life.
48:42I don't know anything about that, but people will, man, you have such a strong will. It's something that you build. Like I never forgot, I was on a podcast one time, and this dude goes, you were blessed with a strong mind.
49:00Like, the hell you talking about, it's blessed with a strong mind. You, that's something that you have to develop. You developed that over years, decades of suffering and going back into the suffer. That's why a lot of people who graduate in the Navy's sealed training, they were no, but in my, I talk about very openly all the time. A lot of guys don't go, don't wanna go back into that water. Don't wanna go back into the hard stuff. It may be not anything hard, anything hard in life. Once you get through it, it's like you become a P .O .W. Like how many P .O .W .s you know, wanna go back to P .O .W.
49:41camp? None. When something sucks so bad in life, this is on this that we're talking about now. Very few people wanna go back. They're happy they graduated. I realized I'm the same way, I don't wanna go back. I have to go back. I must go back because that is exactly where all the dollars of my life exists was back there in which you exactly were talking about. Well, I didn't know anything about this, but how I grew a will was constantly doing these things. To now, it's just life. I wake up while I still sucks, it's just life. You don't sit back and like, oh my God, like, I have days I don't wanna do it, but I know I'm gonna do it.
50:32I know from years of just doing it. So that's beautiful. This is why I came on here with you today. I'm glad that you're talking about this because human beings need to hear this. Then he stopped hearing these hacks on this and 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. The hack is gonna fucking suck. And that's what I realized. That's what I realized. That's why I wanted to come on here today.
51:18I didn't wanna 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 went how I lived. 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. No override button. It's the conversation in your fucking, in your head. So how do you do 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.
52:00It's that shit right there, man. Yeah, build your will. How do you build your will? Is that what you said, man? Is that what you said? Well, I feel like knowing the name of something anterior mid -singulate cortex doesn't fundamentally change us, but one thing I like about biology is that willpower, if somebody feels they don't have it, feels like this thing that other people have, but everybody, unless they're brain damaged, like a hole through their head, has two anterior mid -singulate cortex, one on each side of their brain. Everyone has one. They have two. So I feel like it's just a question of opening the portal and the portal, what I, again, I've said it say 10 times and forgive me is I think people go, oh, I do hard things.
52:48I do sets to failure and then I do four straps. I love training with weights. I love doing sets to failure. I even like four straps, but guess what? I like four straps, so I can, I'll tell you, they don't build my anterior mid -singulate cortex. Because I like to do it. Anything you like to do is not gonna enhance this aspect of willpower. And it seems so obvious once you hear it, you kinda go, oh, yeah, of course, but I think you really close that loop for people when you share what you're sharing today and what you've shared elsewhere before as well when you're trying to explain the friction is the critical ingredient.
53:25And I think people think, oh, if it's effort, well, then I'm getting better. That's part of it necessary, but not sufficient, as we say in science, but the suck part, the haunted, the stick, they're really unpleasant terms. It's probably the most unpleasant terms we've ever used on this podcast. Those are the, those are the levers. Those are the gears and without those, this thing that you're talking about, David Goggins, as a verb, you know, I sometimes make the joke, but it's not a joke. Goggins is a name and it's a verb. People go, I'm gonna Goggins that, right? But that's, I think, again, I'm not a psychologist, but I think that's what you're talking about.
54:09The stick, the friction being haunted, it's the suck part that grows this anterior mid -singulate cortex. So now you know why there's so many people that fail in this world to figure out their purpose in life. Where do I go? Because to grow that, well, you may not look like me, how my daily life looks, don't look fun. Don't look fun. So it's a choice that people have to make in life. But what's so funny about it is even the richest of rich, who have everything, they always ask me this question. I feel like I'm missing something. I don't feel like I'm missing shit. I don't have what you all have, but you're never in my life here, me tell you, I'm missing something, everybody is.
55:10They're missing this feeling. I found it a long time ago, I found it right there in that willpower thing. When you're nothing, nothing. And change yourself into something like me. You call it happiness, peace, wherever the fuck you wanna call it. People are missing exactly what went on with David Goggins. But once you smile, I do, I do. But I figure something out. That's why I am never, you'll never hear me say, I'm missing something. I found it years ago. You find it in the suck. You find it in the suck, and you find it repeatedly in the suck. To the point where you know exactly who you are. Most people are missing something because they don't know who they are.
56:04They never examine themselves. 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 mean, I didn't wanna say potential. I think that's where you just use out too much too. There's so much in you that God, or wherever the hell you believe in, or if you're atheist, in you, that you have not unlocked. That you walk around with this gorgeous wife or great husband and all this money. You're like, God, I feel like I'm missing something. Yeah, because it's about 75 % of you is still fucking in there.
56:47Still chained up because you just didn't wanna find your willpower, didn't wanna 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 wanna 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 wouldn'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 in this table.
57:29But 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 have a real problem. You're real problem. I can understand you misunderstand me running on 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 wanna fix it. Well, the children of wealthy people are a case study in how not having enough friction can destroy a life. True statement.
58:09I mean, I could list off prominent names in the press, but those are actually the least interesting, what's probably more interesting as an example is all the ones we don't hear about, because we never hear about them. They just dwindle and wither. Or I think there's this big category of people I'm realizing as we have this conversation today that they're not super successful, they're not struggling. They're like successful enough that they never have to, you can get to the point where you don't have to impose friction, you even set it. Your bank account is in a place where you don't really need to do all the things you do, probably not even a small fraction of them.
58:49Right, but you realize the stick and being haunted is the fuel and the engine. And you'd be truly crazy to give that up because you've internalized all that. But most people, they're good enough for them. And so they don't actually wanna be better badly enough in order to start going wrong after wrong. Well, think about when you build real power and think about how much I've built. Now that you know about this, I didn't know about this, but think about how much I've built. Everything I've ever done in my life I didn't wanna do. Everything every day, I'm a lazy piece of shit. And I want the hardest working people to ever step for those planet earth.
59:38And I'm saying that very proudly because I know what I do, not cocky. I'll tell you I'm stupid. And I also tell you the exact opposite of what I've done, it's the truth. It is the truth. So imagine how much I've developed in that timeframe. But this is the scary thing. Why most people don't wanna do that, build that real power is because of this scary. It unlocks a whole bunch of things about who you are and who you're not. And a lot of people don't wanna go down that journey to discover who they are and who they're not. Cause it's not a pretty journey. I mean, I've gone down it. It's not like I went down it once.
1:00:20I go down it all the time. And when you unlock that and you can't just turn it off. Like people say, hey, how can we haven't retired yet? I built all this real power. Do you think it's gonna let me just retire because my knees hurt? It's telling me every morning, I wake up like, man, I don't, my knees hurt 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 lay some 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 will power that I have created, it makes me do it.
1:01:10Every 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 broke, at 49 with broke down knees and broke down body. Because my body knows you still can, therefore I do. Second, you stop, the real power is gone. And that's beautiful. I'm so glad you brought that to me because I always wonder, what's this separation thing now? At 24 years old, I started building something that I didn't even know was gonna be what it is now at 49.
1:01:50And that's all it was. It was just that. This structure, interior mid -singulate cortex has inputs and outputs from a bunch of places, but you'll probably not be surprised to learn that it's strongly activated when we move our body when we don't want to move our body. I feel like it's like the David Goggle structure, right? It is. And it also has strong connections to the dopamine reward pathway. And everyone goes, yay, dopamine reward. Everyone loves dopamine. I'm partially responsible for people knowing a bit more about dopamine. But dopamine's badly understood. Everyone thinks dopamine, dopamine hits, it's about reward.
1:02:31It's about motivation and drive. And there are pain inputs to the dopamine centers of the brain. No one talks about that. Everyone's like, oh, you want the chocolate, chocolate, sex, cocaine. Yeah, that's all true. You released dopamine. Pain releases dopamine. That anti -mid -singulate cortex can trigger the release of dopamine in response to this thing that we're calling friction. And that's a learned thing. That's something that no animal or human being comes into the world. Learning we all are averse to pain and like pleasure. Like sugar fat, don't like hot surfaces. Right. But this is a structure that learns.
1:03:11It has neuroplasticity, the ability to change throughout the entire lifespan. And here's the part that I think again is just neuro nerd speak for what you already know and have done and exemplify is that it, people will say, oh, it has plasticity, you can change it. But guess what? It has plasticity in both directions. It can grow, but just as easily as it can grow, it's like silly putty, it can shrink. So it requires constant upkeep. Right. And that answer isn't one that people are going to like. Nope. They're like, give me the energy drink, give me the supplement, give me the, give me the sonopro to call.
1:03:46That's kind of big by anti -mid -singulate cortex. Like someone out there right now is going, wait, if I took transcranial magnetic stimulation and I stimuli, yeah, you'd probably, actually they've done that. They've stuck a little wire during neurosurgery into this structure. This is actually discovered by a colleague of mine, Joe Parvizzi, stimulate and the patients go, I feel like there's a storm coming and they go, oh, is it scary? And they go, no, I want to go through it. They come off the stimulation and people are like, this is the seat of what we're talking about. Right, exactly. And it learns.
1:04:20So the fact that you kept this brain structure, I'm convinced if we image your brain, it would be large and it would be larger in two years and a year. But this is the no days off rationale because it can grow and it can shrink. I know. What you're saying right now, I didn't know any of this. And I always talked to you, but I wish I could just put this on paper and you're saying it in a way that people can understand. I could never put into words on what I built. And the power that is within all of us. But you put it so like in a scientific way, most people like for me, he's just crazy. That's why I don't like talking about it, man.
1:05:06I know I'm not crazy. I know what I had to do to get where I had to go. People look at us crazy because they're people that just, if you can't imagine yourself doing something, if you can't imagine yourself doing something, the person that's doing it is crazy. Because in your mind, the logic behind it, it doesn't compute. Therefore, you have to give somebody a title. And a title for me is usually, he's crazy, he's this, he's that. No, no. For some reason, I mean, wanting to be somebody. So fucking bad in my life. I created that. And I've been trying to figure out years of my life, trying to explain to people.
1:05:49But even though you're explaining it now, this is the easy fucking part. Them listening to this shit is easy fucking part. The part that why there always be the ones of ones is because putting that practice, putting that into actual work. No, man, no, no. That's where the demons come in. That's where you like, I don't wanna be better. I don't wanna be better. This is what it takes to be better. I don't wanna be better. So everybody's, that's why there's a lot of average. And it makes me so fucking mad. Every day I walk this earth and I see average all over the fucking place. And they wanna ask me, how did you do it?
1:06:38I can't tell you how, because you're not gonna fucking, you're not gonna do it. You're not gonna do it. You're gonna continue being out, because every day you wake up, like he says, it's not like get the coffee, make the pancakes, kiss the girl, kiss the kids, you wake up, right to work. Emetit your mind is in action. No one must do that. No one, I don't blame them. But don't be mad. When you're laying there and you're fucking bad, and you're in the fucking hospital, and you're 70, 89 years old, and you're taking, I feel like I didn't fucking do something. Because you did, you didn't do it. You didn't do shit.
1:07:20You made it a great life, man, but you're always good for empty inside. I don't feel empty. So call what you want. There's not one empty bone in my fucking body, because I have figured out that really, the magic potion, at least to my life, and it's very rewarding. People like to talk about what they used to be able to do. I hear this a lot. You should have seen me in high school, I was laugh. Yep. Okay, got it. And it's not just guys, you should see me working out in high school, I was super fit. People will look back to a time where they felt like they were capable of something, and now they're not.
1:08:01And you kind of want to just grabbing away. That was you then, it's you now. But people tend to think about how the conditions that were around success must have been part of it. And you can understand why, it's like, it's very rational. I was in that situation, I was successful. I'm in this situation, I'm not. That was the past. This is the present, ergo, capable, right? You see how people get into these loops. And as you mentioned, you spend the first 20 years of your life in extremely challenged circumstances. And then you can see how people get to a point where like everything feels hard. Like when you're 300 pounds, I haven't never been 300 pounds.
1:08:41But I can't imagine it feels good to get up and move around. It's defeating. I got a friend, he's in excess of 300 pounds. We've been trying on him for years, but no win. And he's got crazy psoriasis on the back of his calves. And he actually smells bad sometimes, because he can't wash as well as he would. He's big, big. Right. And it pulls on my sympathy. Right. You know, but life is very hard for him, and getting worse. He's a young guy with a lot of medical issues now, for obvious reasons. And so I think people like that think, well, it's already hard. Why would I make it harder? Your message is a little different, and you have the life experience.
1:09:23It's a lot different. You've been there. So for me, saying, oh yeah, lose weight, you know, I was a skinny guy who got to be a less skinny guy. So I don't really have a foot to stand on. Right. What do you say to those people who are like, listen, I'm getting up in the morning, it's hard. Trying to not dissolve into a puddle of my own tears and my own misery is hard. You know, people connect with my book so well. For some reason, God put me in almost every fucked up situation on the planet earth. So when I talk to people, it's not sugar coated, because I'm not saying it from, I was a her and signify a punishment whole life.
1:10:06I don't want to say much of those people. Maybe you're a piece of shit. Maybe you're, you want to be nobody. Maybe you're happy exactly where you are in life, because obviously you are. Maybe you don't have the determination to be somebody better than who you are. And if you want to live with that, I'll support you in that. If you're good with being who you are, that every day you wake up and every day you smell like shit because you can't wash your body well, and your skin's messed up because you're so bad. And you can't put your clothes on, right? You need help with that. When I was doing it, I didn't help wiping my ass.
1:10:44That makes you feel good. Nothing to say to you. If every day you wake up with this, see, people are haunted, but they obviously like horror films, because they keep washing 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, you're 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.
1:11:32This 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 Goggins 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 20 Robins and this fucking bullshit, all this shit, do all this shit.
1:12:14If 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 to trial, David Goggins, he ain't gonna fucking help you. You have to explore, examine the insides of yourself. And what do you really want in life? Your friend and a lot of people out here just don't fucking want it. So guess what? Have fun with your life. Go from three to 350 to 400 to 450 to 500 because you don't want it. And that's the harsh reality. I can't give you shit. You can't give them shit. You can give you ideas. But in the day when I was losing the weight, I had to miserably wake up every morning in the cold because there was Indiana, November when it started.
1:13:10I 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 gonna continue to suck. And then one day you get to a special part of your life that it might get a little bit better. But to lose the weight, you have to lose my friend. Sorry, it's gonna suck every fucking day because in three and a half pounds, you're gonna go out to lose weight. You're probably gonna get injured. So then you gotta work on the injury and then you get even more depressed.
1:13:57This is what I went through. And then you're hungry because now you're depressed. It's just a vicious cycle. And if you're not strong mentally and you have no willpower, you're gonna continue falling back in this whole versus the man that sits back and goes, all right, motherfucker, this is why I cussed. This is what it's in me. This is what it took for me to be me. Sorry, it didn't take, hey, okay, we're gonna do this today. No, this fucking really sucks. This is real, dude. This is real. And every day, I'm set back. I'm set back. I'm set back. I'm set back. So this is why I would tell your boy.
1:14:35This way, exactly what I tell him. Every day you wake up, you're gonna probably be set back for the first four weeks before you lose to significant weight because of the mind is gonna be fucking with you the whole time. There's no dopamine. There's no dopamine in there. At the end of the page, 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 hit. 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.
1:15:19That's the reality. He'll see this and he'll appreciate that message. We'll see what he does. We'll see. So far, last 13 years, it's been no movement. But I've had other friends who were drug and alcohol addicts who quit after one conversation never went back. That's awesome. I mean, they want it. Yeah, just one guy, I won't out him, but walked up to me at a party in 2019, July 4th party and said, I'm a pile. And I go, what, and he goes, I'm a pile. Look at me, I'm 60 pounds overweight. I go, do you drink? He goes every day. I go, how much he goes a case. He goes, I smoke a lot of weed. But he's successful.
1:15:59Another air is his life. And so I said, well, here's what I know. Quit alcohol and weed for you. You know, I'm not telling people what to do. Don't eat until 2 p .m. Get on an exercise bike and pedal in the morning like someone's chasing you with a poison dart till you want a puke. And I was kind of half joking. Right. And then two months later, he was like, I haven't had a drink. I lost 30 pounds. He lost 60 pounds. He never went back. Now he's super fit. It's amazing. So some people flip the switch. He is very self critical by nature. That's what he's super self critical. That's what flips the switch.
1:16:40Yeah. Think about it, man. We know what to do. We don't need Angie Schuberman to tell us what to do. We know what to do. Every one of us. That's why he flipped it so fast. Cause he knew what to do. He didn't go by your exact protocol. He didn't go by the exact, no. He knew exactly what to do. And you're just saying some shit to him. It woke something up. We knew what to do. And that's the thing that people need to get that. You know what to do? Why aren't you doing it? And I'm talking about myself now, you know, those modes of just kind of passive consumption. They're so easy to wash over us. I used to have this thing and I'm fighting this now.
1:17:27Cause I knew we were going to have this conversation today where I like to start things on the hour or the half hour. Right. Worst practice in the world for me. Because if I miss that half hour, I'm like, it's 1233. I'll start at 1245. I had 1245. I'll start at one. I just lost time. Right. And then, and this is so stupid. Right. And the other day I was like, man, I got to tell David about this. Cause my new thing is I start no matter what time it is. Right. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I got a frenzy. Paints in the middle of the night. I'm like, you're an insomniac. He's like, I don't know.
1:18:03I just do it. Then sometimes he goes back to the sleep. Sometimes he doesn't. Everyone's got their thing. But I thought about this. I'm like, I'm no more am I going to say I'm starting at one. Cause I know me. Right. If I miss the one o 'clock thing and my pen's not hitting the paper. Am I not typing on the keyboard? I'm not going to do it. Right. That's a self -admitted weakness. I love it, man. Um, I had that for a lot of years. Um, I know I'm going to do it. That's the haunting part. Is that it's going to happen. It has to happen. And that's the fact. Like, there's no good audio free car, bro.
1:18:41None. Like, that is a life that I don't know. I don't have that ability or I have the ability. I don't have the, um, I'm not good enough. Smart enough. I'm not talented enough. To do that. Some people are. Some people can start at one. Some people don't have to start at all. If you lack talent, you can't sit back and say, I'm starting half an hour. I can't do that. I got to start now. And after I get back from starting, I got to start again. And then when I get them with that run or that study session, if it wasn't good enough, I got to go back again. Because repetition is what taught me everything.
1:19:30So you can honestly outwork anything. But it's that you obviously are a very talented man. Well, I have worked hard at certain things and built up some things that I've been good at most of my life. You're made. Gathering, organizing and disseminating information, something I've been doing since I was a little kid. I used to give lectures at school on Monday about stuff I learned over the weekend. See, check that out. But they took me to a psychiatrist. We're the same age. Back then, if you got sent to a psychiatrist, people thought you were crazy. I wasn't one. Exactly. Exactly. So I remember feeling like a freak.
1:20:06Also, I didn't have a start about a grunting tick. They comes back when I'm tired. And the only thing that helped that was hitting my head on something, shaking my head, which is why skateboarding was good. Because I slam and I feel like, oh, feel good. That's not healthy. That's not good. Or just work is what gets it out. It's like an RPM or high. Anyway, that's me. But yeah, I think certain things over time, I feel like talent or gifts or whatever you want to call them. But there are many things that are seedingly difficult for me. And I have learned from your example. I know that you are very, both humble and very clear that you don't have, you say, you're not going to get it by examining you.
1:20:48But I think the way you're sharing today and the way you shared on other podcasts before, there are pieces that really help people feel into the process of what you're talking about today. We're elaborating on it. I think a lot, you know, this notion being haunted and the stick. Right. I mean, of course, of course, now it makes so much sense why you don't want to talk about sleep or rest or recovery. Because that's, sure, that's important. I've heard you say, yes, you sleep. Yes, you eat. Yes, you hydrate. Yes, you will stretch your so as or whatever. But it's funny how that becomes the viral message.
1:21:23That's why I said, fuck that. But that's not the unique, that's not the unique message that you carry. Like anyone can talk about that. So do I have that right that you're acknowledging sleep is important, recovery is important? But that's not what you're about. You have to forego something. Yes. Ice baths. Saunas. Sleep. Nutrition. All this shit's so fucking important, dude. I don't have time for some of it. To get to extract or had to extract something had to give. Like you talk about you and you are younger, you would give these speeches and stuff. The same age you were giving speeches, I was trying to figure out how to say the without stuttering.
1:22:06And I realized as I got older that all these things are important. But for me to stop stuttering, I get to be a fucking confidence. And speech therapy didn't help that, nothing helped that. I have to forego a lot of shit to be as fucked up as I am to be a confidence. For me to stand in the fucking room of 10 ,000 of one person and not be like, oh, put my head down, let me look around. Let me read these paragraphs first and then before I read the paragraphs because they call me next, let me just leave the room kind of stutter. That's a miserable life. And that's one of many things I did besides lying, besides being insecure, besides being immature, besides being fat, besides being on the only black kids in my school.
1:22:57So a lot of things I had to overcome to get in confidence. And in doing so, a lot of that had to go. A lot of it. So I became the guy that became once again misunderstood. You only see four hours a day, two hours a day, sometimes you don't sleep at all. Like, what's this? And what's this? And what's this? I know it's all important. I can't, something's got to go. For me to get confidence, because confidence is the building block of where I'm trying to go. For me to gain confidence in myself, this fucked up kid has got to do a lot of fucked up shit to gain confidence. And along the way, just stutter went away and I gain confidence.
1:23:38And now my life is a little bit more, there's no balance. There's no balance. It's a little bit more what it should be for a lot of people, but there never be balance. Because confidence is something that you're constantly confidence and belief. You're building every day. And so something's got to give. And I'm wondering if we're going a lot of things to have that, because I know that is, that is, if you want to give somebody a kryptonite, take that shit away from him. So yeah, I don't sleep sometimes and sometimes I don't eat the right way and sometimes I don't do this and do that and whatever, man.
1:24:16But you put me in a room of 10 ,000 people in time of the day and I walk and they're thinking I'm with the bathroom of the fucker in here. Because I know what it took to be on this stage. And a lot of people would not do that. So that's what it takes. There's a question I've been wanting to ask you since we started. And I thought about coming in here and I've been thinking about in the weeks ahead of this. And I'm going to just come clean and say, I don't exactly know how to ask the question. Just ask you. So it's about relationships. Oh, do it, man. So I know in myself that my discipline is much higher when it's just me.
1:24:54But that's because I had certain things early on. But then I was a terrible student barely finished high school. But then when I got serious, I got serious. I did that by staying away from everybody. And anyone who's ever had a relationship of any kind, but in particular romantic relationships knows that yes, you can derive tremendous support from those. Like you got this, baby, you can go and you're like, yeah, I got this. She said, I got this. You know, feels great to finish something and share with someone. Share a meal, you know, get the hug it. But there's another side to all of that. That I'd like to learn more about from you, which is there's a warm body next to you in bed in the morning.
1:25:34You don't want to get up. They also have needs. You've got your mission that people sometimes need things from us. But also oftentimes the people that love us most, that truly love us and that want to support us don't understand this thing. And they're the first people to tell us like, listen, take a day off. And then this whole cycle at least in my head goes off like you just want a vacation. And then it's almost like a paranoia. I'm not saying anything nice about myself right now. Right. Oh, good. Former girlfriend's going to be like, yeah, like, you know, that they remember they so and so support of people close to you is critical.
1:26:14This could be friends could be romantic partners, whatever. But they're also the the knife cuts both ways. It can be the thing that can really undermine this thing that you're talking about because the people that care about us also want to see us comfortable. Right. They want to see us happy. They want to see us peaceful. They want to see us in a wake up from a great night's sleep and they want things too. Right. So how do you want to go that whole bit? Well, it's funny, man. I'm unbalanced, but I'm mostly unbalanced towards the family side. If you don't get about me, I'll start being unbalanced.
1:26:45I get all my stuff in. But what I do is I make sure that my family has everything they need. Everything they need. Those who want to be part of my family. Some don't. Some family members don't want to be part of David Goggins. I get it. I got it. That's life. Those who are part of my family. I give them everything they need so they can leave me the fucking home. I make sure you're happy as fuck because I got to go to work. And I don't mean smoke jumping. I don't mean running. I mean all of it. It takes every I can't have you in my fucking shit. Can't. So I know for me to have a family, I got to make sure that you realize I'm going to give everything a knee.
1:27:30So we start bitching at me. Younger said, look, hang on. I dedicated my life to give you everything you need. I need this time right here. For me to be the best I can be because this journey started without anybody. And I make sure everybody knows that who comes in my life. I've been left thinking about it. I was left alone at a young age to figure this shit out. I figured it out for myself. And it's been very successful for myself. No one's going to come in here and fuck with my shit. That's why I make sure I will take care of whatever you need. Whatever you need for me, you got it. Money, house, my love, my support.
1:28:10I'm going to give you everything you need. That said, I do it the highest level possible. And I'm saying that with Jennifer in the next room, so please come in and say something if it's wrong. Jennifer, I'm giving fuck. Save what you got to say. So then with the time for me to go to work, I expect you to do the same for me because it takes every bit of me to do what I have to do. So I make sure that I'm very unbalanced from my family. So I can be exactly that unbalanced for myself. And that's how I do it. I let people know right up front, I'm not what you want in a man. I guarantee that. This could be a lot of late nights, a lot of early mornings, a lot of times where I got to be by myself thinking about the process that is next in my mind.
1:29:02I can't have aggravation, can have this, can have that. There's a lot of things, but I let them know up front. I'm very vocal about that. Sometimes relationships work for me, sometimes they didn't. But that's who I am. One thing I did wrong in my life was I tried for so many years to please people. And I did it at the expense of myself. I was leaving a lot in the tank. And when you do that, you stop living. But the person in your life is happiest, fuck. Because you're giving them everything they want. They have their life as full, but you feel empty. And that's not a relationship to me. So for me, it's important that you know exactly who I am because this is what life made.
1:29:50And I'm not trying to change it because I just figured it out. So I'm not trying to compromise David Goggins. I will never, ever compromise David Goggins. That doesn't mean I won't give you what you need and what you want and what you desire. But I don't need money. I don't need fame. I don't need shit. So I give it all the way. What I do need is to make sure that that willpower is worked on every fucking day and every night for the rest of my life. Because that's the one thing that's going to keep me feeding you, keeping you where you need to be. Because once that willpower is gone, 300 pound David Goggins, he may not be looked like it, but I will walk around with it.
1:30:36So the things that are important to you in life, you must do always or you're nobody. And that's how I handle relationships. Amen to that. Something I personally work on, that upfront clear communication. Because I, it resonates that feeling of like there's something inside that's not getting worked out that I was when I'm on my own. It's, it's, it's a lot easier. But then of course, wanting relationships and family, I think that's a healthy part of being human too. Obviously, you've worked it out. So I appreciate you sharing that. I don't think I've ever heard you talk about it. No, people are scared of that man.
1:31:10People are scared of that conversation with their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend. But why are you scared of it? Why are you scared to tell a motherfucker your wife, your husband, who you are? Who you are? Exactly who you are. And that was the problem I had. That's the problem that a lot of us have in life. No one knows who you really are. No one knew who I really was. I went to a school where there were a lot of black kids. A lot of black kids don't want to be in special ops. I never talked about special ops as black kids. Why? I was wondering what, man, I'm not going to fit in. That's not what they do.
1:31:54A lot of black kids don't do that kind of shit. So whatever I wanted to do, no one really knew the real me growing up. Because I never, when anybody knows the real me, I was always afraid of what you might say or how are you going to feel or whatever. You got feelings. You have a life that you have to live. So it's important that whatever's on your mind, you let that person know. Therefore you're giving them the option to be with you or not. This is who I am. If you don't like it, that's good, man. I got it. But this is David Goggins. So that's that honest conversation is very important, man. So everybody knows where they stand.
1:32:31That person may not be for you. That's all good. This world could use a lot more of that upfront, completely honest conversation. I feel like so much of the world's problems are because everyone's dancing around the issues. It takes a lot. Recently in the news, seeing people losing their job because they won't say something publicly. You can tell they kind of want it. It's like, people just, I think deep down really craved the direct message. Like, what are you about? What are you not about? But I think now everyone's afraid of getting canceled. It's a big deal, right? Getting canceled that people think, oh, I can't work if I am who I am or if I'm not pretending to be somebody else, then silence is considered agreement.
1:33:13There's all sorts of complicated stuff. And I do feel for the generation coming up because we didn't have social media and all of that. That games just walled off from that. There's a real benefit from just not paying attention. People loved the lie. People loved the lie. I thought I was only a person. When I was growing up, I thought I was only a 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 to come out and tell me I'm lying about my fucking life.
1:33:53And for me to come where I came from and how the rest of me I have now, you're the confidence you get. How I don't care who you're going 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 Goggins, the demons of David Goggins. Therefore now you're just an open book. You look at somebody looking right in the eye, it's exactly who the fuck you are. You walk away. I'm good, bro. I know exactly what this journey took to get here. And that gives you a fire and a passion that people can call you nigger.
1:34:35They can call you if you're a lesbian or gay or a biosec. I really fuck you one. If you put yourself in the fire and you come out every fucking day like this and brush 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 truth behind them. And the truth is a starting line. When you sit in the 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 you look at that mirror.
1:35:11And 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'm not this, I can't do this. I can't do this. I'm all these insecurities. Your life finally started. And once you start that life, man, the truth comes out big time. Can you not care? So that's the problem. Most people just don't want to have that conversation. It's a point where they can go on stage with the million people and say, I'm all of this and have a good day. See you. It's empowering. It's very empowering. I feel like the way we're educated in school, but also outside of school is we're trained as human beings, these young brains to try and figure out how to get positive feedback from other people.
1:35:56Yep. It's like we're like little dogs. Yep. You have a bulldog. Right. I had a bulldog. Saw the picture of your bulldog. She's great. Charlie Dog. They're an amazing species. They are. I think of them, economy of effort. Yep. Or amazing breed. Excuse me. They're an amazing breed. Economy of effort. They don't do anything unless it's necessary. It's kind of the exact opposite of everything we're talking about. It's kind of interesting and they're kind of heedingness. Now it is true that they will, they'll die to protect you. Oh yeah. And it's an instinct. I saw that with Costello. I'm sure that.
1:36:28I saw it with Charlie. Yeah. It's an instinct. But if they're not in that position, if there's no need to exert effort, they're arrested. Yeah. So your bulldog's resting for you. Yes. Got it. Exactly. So you don't need to rest because. Active recovery Charlie. Perfect. Perfect. That's going to be your answer from now on. Active recovery Charlie. Does he sleep does he rest? No, he somehow worked it out so his bulldog does it for him. Right. But we're sort of indoctrinated into this way of being from a time that we're young. Where of course, praise feels good, right? So, and tells you, hey, I like that shirt or good job today or nicely done or for me, because I like growing up in a big packet, friends growing up, and I was never the great staff.
1:37:11It wasn't terrible. It wasn't great, et cetera, like a fist bump or like a feeling screwed up. And you're just like, yeah. But you've talked about this before in reference to the SEAL teams. We both know a lot of people in that community. And the team's component is a big part of it for a lot of people. And it's a wonderful thing. Right. But there's a danger to that dopamine hit for lack of a better way to put it from what. We only derive when it's coming from outside. You're talking about being able to either say good job, but also like just look to one's own personal history and say, I've done hard things and I can do it again and again because I do it again and again and again.
1:37:54You're talking about parenting yourself, inspiring yourself, scaring yourself, all of that from the inside. So very different than the way we're raised, which is to figure out how to get the biscuit. It's funny, man. People want to know how I'm always motivated. It's the unseen work which you just said is a true statement. Those are false dopamine hits that people are giving you, man. There's no belief in that. These are team work. Don't mean like I'm out running it to a clock in the morning, run up clock in the morning, in the gym, long sessions by myself. That's real. How am I able to just extract dopamine, the good dopamine whenever I want?
1:38:40Man, I've trained 99 % of my life alone. No one pat me on the back. I did all of those work alone. And while I'm still hard on myself, I know what I did. So whenever times get bad for people, all this, who's your career, the bolts and what? 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 live alone for so many years in this misery and you're able to get out by yourself, I can take myself to such a level of real, real passion and purpose in like, the feeling I get is something I can't even expect by myself.
1:39:33I don't need anyone. That's why people come to me to motivate them. No one can motivate me. I have a resume full of fucking motivation that whenever I'm down, I'm like, oh, hang on motherfucker. Oh, you know, you know the truth. You know that you know the darkness of the fucking dungeons and the fucking demons that fly. You know, and then from there, it's like, okay, you were there. You know this. There was no one there to pick up the rucksack, to pick up the boat, to pick up the log, to go in there. It was you. It was you. There was no pat in the fucking back at 300 at 2 .75 at 2 .50 at 2 .20.
1:40:11No, that was you. So those things that come out of me that extract from me in the darkness, people are looking for that pound of back. Where is it? Oh, I don't need it. Because what I've done is in the fucking unseen work I built Frankenstein. So whenever shit gets nasty, David Goggins goes, you had nobody anyway, motherfucker. So see, I'm talking to myself for now. That's me. That shit fires me to fuck up. That shit makes me fucking nuts. You had nobody anyway, motherfucker. Look around you. There was no fucking team. It was you. There was no weight loss programmer. Mom and dad waking you up saying you can do it.
1:40:57You can be better trying to build belief. You built belief when you had nothing. Rock bottom. You did that. So as times get hard for me, the truth comes out. And my truth is powerful as fuck. It's real. It's tangible. I feel it. It comes out of my brain as I speak about it. I'm reliving every single dark moment of my life to be here. So that is what people don't get. That is what motivates David Goggins is the unseen work. But everybody needs that pound the back. They need that training partner. They need that accountability coach. I understand that shit. And neither do they. But it's what we've trained ourselves to believe that we need.
1:41:49It's almost like there's this pill on the shelf. I'm speaking in analogy. Right. And we take it and we get jazzed up. We're like, yeah. But there's this other medicine cabinet behind there. And it's in us. It's right. The real medicine cabinet is inside. Oh, yes. When you continue to overcome, it has so many obstacles to overcome. So it's actually a benefit to me. But the benefit is not like a benefit like that. You have to have the courage and the patience to overcome and overcome before you know it, man. You have a whole medicine cabinet. But there's no medicine in the motherfucker. There's no pre -workout.
1:42:27I don't take none of that shit. All I got to do is flip my brain, put my finger in there, and say, OK, that's a good one. So all I got to do, man, I got the role of text of just like, go fuck yourself, Goggins. And oh, but you won. Let's do that one a day. There's nothing I need. And this is the thing that people don't get about David Goggins. I can't teach it in a one minute video. We all have this ability to have our own medicine cabinet. But unless you go in there and put the medicine in there, it's always going to be fucking empty. You're always going to need the pre -workout. You're always going to need the, I don't drink coffee.
1:43:12I don't do care. I don't do none of that. I don't need it. I can run for 70 hours in a hat before. No caffeine. I got all this wonderful shit that I overcame on my own, by myself, in the darkness. That man, when it's cold, I'm hot. When it's hot, I can feed myself all the time. That's why we people say, man, why aren't you missing anything? I can't explain it to you, man. Can't explain it to you. You're never understand. That's why I don't do all these podcasts, dude. I got, I love you, man. That's why you, my first book, you did a blur for me. That's why I'm here. I love what you're doing for people, man.
1:43:57But I can't explain this. I can't. I can't explain this because people don't want to do this. They don't want to do this, man. But I don't know, man. I get jazzed up even talking about it, man, because so many people think my life is just so good. His life is horrible. Don't follow him. He's crazy, really? Well, there are a good number of people, I would say. And that's an undersit. That actually do. I think what I'm hearing today, and it's really syncing in, is that a great many people either partially or completely misunderstand you. Yes. I'll put myself in the partially category. Big time. Because I thought it was about just a forward center of mass, carrot, carrot, carrot, but it's the stick.
1:44:43It's the stick. And it's being haunted. And I do have examples for my own life, which is not what today is about, about being really afraid, and then turning things around. My biggest fear is getting comfortable. I do not have as much of a stick -oriented approach, but today's conversations changing the way I think. I'm not going to step away from this and think, OK, there are 25 neural circuits that can explain 10 of the things that David's talking about. And what I'm thinking about is the fact that everybody has a brain. They have a mind. Forget the brain. The brain is just the physical structure.
1:45:17But what that manifests, what that creates, is the mind. And everybody has that. So I do believe that everyone has the capacity to do what you're talking about at some level. I also will be the first to confess that I think you are a highly unusual. Let's just say maybe even N of 1, as we say inside, is a sample size of 1. Somebody who has created this process for themselves and keeps themselves in this forward center of mass with the stick battering the back of their head all the time. Highly unusual. But this internal medicine cabinet that you're talking about building up true confidence, not needing anything from the outside, I think I like to think that people want that.
1:46:08They want to be known. They're afraid, but that they want to be known for who they really are, and that you're describing the path to do this. And I will say, I'm immensely grateful that you're talking to us this way today about things that you've talked about before, but we're hidden in a little differently. I like to think. Very different.
1:46:29Because what you're talking about is a process. It's verbs. It's all verbs. All action. And it's not about success. It's more actually about keeping that friction dial to 10. Right. And that I, no energy drink, no supplement. People often misunderstand me. They think, you know, like I'm big on people, getting sunlight in the morning, they accept their circadian rhythm and get better sleep, because they're going to et cetera. But then people always think they go straight to the supplements. What should I take? And then of course, people think I'm all about supplements. And supplements are one piece for me, but it's like tiny fraction compared to the doing, the do's and don'ts.
1:47:04That's what I didn't want to talk about that today. That's what I'm glad I was talking about this. This is it. This is it. The brain is the most powerful weapon in the world. And it's crazy how a kid that wasn't real smart. I was forced to go only internal. External had to go away. The external world had to go away and living so deep inside myself, it was me in this brain and figuring out how this thing works. And it's so many people are doing exactly that, the supplements, the this, the that. I agree it helps. But once you figure out your brain, you become unstoppable to almost anything. Yeah, you can't beat death, you can't whatever, whatever.
1:47:56Your brain is amazing. Once you feed it, the right conversation, the right mental nutrients, the right mental supplements, the right internal dialogue, at the right time, with the right hit, with the right proof of what you've done in the past, and you send that right to the right circuit, dude, you're a fucking beast, a beast. But once again, you just can't read about it. You can't sit back and be a theorist. You have to be a fucking practitioner. And in that practice is where that becomes positive, who I'm saying is like, God, like David Goggins, he's blowing my mind. What is this? He's not crazy.
1:48:46And so many people, a lot of people, have listened to me the right way, and they come back and they're like, I'm totally on board, it happened. It happened. They're like, keep going, man, if you keep doing it. But that is it, man. There's no son, there's no glory, there's no carrot, there's no victory. But there is all of it in one, I can't explain it real well to people, man. But what you get the other end is something that you're not, you're always found. You're never lost anymore. Doesn't mean the journey's easy. Doesn't get any easier, but you're always found. I love that. I just want to hover on that first set, the same way we hovered on haunted and the stick.
1:49:38I think people feel lost. I've certainly felt lost at times in my life. Many times. And yeah, there's that thing. I don't think there's a neuroscience or a psychology term for it. Someone will say put it in the comments and say, oh yeah, that's what someone so said. But like you said, we're not trying to be theoretical here. We're trying to be practical. The business of finding yourself and knowing like, but it's sort of like, I'm safe because I'm in danger and I've been in danger before and I got myself out. It always seems to come back to verbs. Again, I don't have a language for this. For once, I'm lost for words.
1:50:15There's like, it's about a process, the algorithm. And the reason, here I'm just kind of trying to make sure I'm understanding things correctly. One of the reasons why it must be uncomfortable for you to be who you are publicly is because people want us focused on the running or the swearing. And by the way, the swearing is welcome. I'll tell you, I came up through laboratories where all three people I worked for were a lot. But there was one rule I couldn't swear at people. So my graduate advisor, brilliant woman, unfortunately, she died early. They all died early. I'm the common denominator.
1:50:52I had that internalized for a long time. Anyway, she said, but if you swear at people, you're out. But you can swear as much as you want. So that's the rule I have. It's like, you can swear as much as you want. Just don't swear at people. If you swear at people, be ready to fight. Right. Right. Definitely not going to fight you. So you can swear at me, get away with it. But the fact of the matter is that it must be frustrating. That people, because I know people, it's all about supplements and ice baths. Listen, I like supplements. I love supplements and ice baths. But that's not the full picture.
1:51:20They're just a gravitational pull. It's the swearing. It's the running. It's his feet that are all messed up. It's the fact that he got a triton. Is this seal guy? Talk about that too. You know, and there's a gravitational pull for people. And they're missing like the, that's like the tip of the iceberg. It's what I'm realizing. I'm realizing that today. Thanks for the way you're phrasing things. Because the bigger vessel is all in here. And as you said, how do you put that in a book? It's impossible. Because it's highly individual. Yes. You do it your way. Yes. And you're saying everyone needs to go figure out how to do it their way for them.
1:51:55Yes. And the thing about being misunderstood is very frustrating. More than I can even imagine. I came, express how frustrating it is.
1:52:07When the cussing and everything comes from a place of, of, of real. I can't explain what I do without it. The passion comes out of me. It's almost like speaking in tongues. Because when you put that much work in people are, oh yeah, there's been this basketball player. This football player. This dude. No. No. Everything. Everything. Everything is work. Everything. And people don't, don't believe it. So when I speak. The mother fucker and the, and the fuck and, and shit. And that is what it took for me. What it takes for me. The anger, the passion. The, the, the jaw dropping. I mean, just, it takes that.
1:53:03Because I'm not that. This is how I look at it, man. What built this guy? Let's imagine being in the coldest water you can possibly take. I always go back to hell with this. I hated the water. Hated it. You're sitting in the locked arms and you're in the water all the time. And they're bringing you in the water, in the water. When you have this dialogue in your head. And these people are judging me off of freaking one minute video. And you're constantly your whole life. When you figured out 24, I got a, I just got to this fucking got to this is just going to suck. Every day is going to suck. And live like that.
1:53:47To be better. And I put this one, I'm in the water. The water is going on my head. The Pacific Ocean. You know it's freezing. February, coldest shit. Been through three hell weeks. For you to constantly win. Win. Win. 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 the real reality of David Goggins. At 24 years old. It's not a false reality. And then you had to create another voice over here. That I say 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.
1:54:41But you win. And goes from the water to the study and to the running to losing weight to how you eat. How you function as a man. Every day of your life, you're winning these battles. And then I have normal people. You only have one voice. Never created the second voice. The winning voice is the second voice. They have one voice. And that's just I'm a piece of shit. That's all they hear. And then they judge people. Like me. I'm the one who I hear trying to be better. It's something that I can never really. It's a frustrating thing for me. Because I know I know the majority of people. I know it goes on to bring out study to my more than almost more than you.
1:55:36Because I wasn't I'm a practitioner. So for you to be a piece of shit and come out of that. You don't just come out of it. You spend decades studying your mind in the human mind. On how it functions in good environments, bad environments, stressful environments, patient environment. You studied all because you had to put all this together to create the mind to become successful. So I had to look God blessed me with this brain. I had to create a mind. And so I'm doing so I figured out every piece of shit human being in the world. Cause that's what I was going off of for myself. So I know why you go on Instagram.
1:56:19I know why you because you just have the time. You have the time because you don't want to put that time into bettering oneself. So I know why I misunderstood. I misunderstood by people who have plenty of time on their hands to misunderstand me because they are exactly where I once was. Which is a low life lazy piece of shit. And it's the harsh reality of people who troll you, who go after you. They have nothing better to do it to realize it's not some after school special. It's the truth by once was that way. I know we're all comes from that's why it's frustrating me now because I'm not so frustrated the fact that I'm being trolled.
1:57:07I'm first of all affected you have the courage. The courage to try to be somebody better than which you're not. And that's the first thing part. It's interesting because earlier we were talking about relationships and you said in a very candid way and I really appreciate you sharing that. You make sure that the people close to you your family has everything they need. Right. And that they also understand that you're going to take what you need to continue to build you. Right. Period. Period. In some ways it seems you've also included the general public in that family. You're saying listen. I'm going to give you what you need.
1:57:46I'm going to give you as much of myself as I can except I'm going to stop right at the line. That's right. I'm going to help you name my cover and let me smear it. don't begin to do anything to me from continuing to build myself. And by the way this relationship only exists. Because I don't cross that line. Right. And I think as much as there are detractors out there, people that try, right? I mean, it's pretty whatever they're doing is brief feeble in my mind. I mean, it's like cap gun fire. You know, if that, you know, so many of us, men and women, old and young, hear something and feel something in your message.
1:58:26Well, like, yeah, like it seems kind of crazy. Gosh, like, doesn't you ever just relax, you know, what about a sleep, you know, like, you know, like, it's feet. He's gonna, he's gonna injure himself. I've heard, listen, I'll be very direct. I got friends who were in the team, so you just go, yeah, what's he gonna do when he can't run? And I know the answer is keep running. Right. But it's more comfortable for people, even high achievers, especially high achievers, to believe that if you took one thing away, that it would all go away, it's absolutely clear. That's not the case with you. I'm 100 % convinced.
1:58:57I just know that because what we're talking about this, many times I haven't been able to run two heart surgeries, multiple knee surgeries, and after every knee surgery, they say, now I can run again. And I'm fine with that. There's no running up here, bro. None. This was what it was all about. That's what they lost. We can't run. Give a fuck. It was never about running. Why do you think I run? It's the worst thing I hate doing it more than anything. Hence the willpower. Right. Your anterior mid -singulate cortex would be, would start to regress if you loved running. Think about it. Every day I wake up, I don't just run a mile, two miles, it's the one thing I hate the most to do, and I do it like I love it.
1:59:48250, 60, 700 miles runs at one time, no sleep in every step. When I get to think about this, I get to the fucking start line. Custening that Jennifer. Why the fuck am I here? I hate this shit. After 70 some hours of running, every fucking question I ever had is answered. Every question I had is answered. I cap success. I don't, people go, we mean you cap success. For me to be who I am. So when I go smoke jump, I'm smoke jump three to four months out of the year. Sometimes five. Could you just for those that aren't educated, just like give us a brief description of what smoke jumping entails? So basically you jump into fires, not into them, but jump by fires that people can't get to.
2:00:49So out of planes and helicopters. Right. Out of planes I saw a parachute. It's all parachuting. So you parachute airplanes and then you fight the fire. You and sometimes four other guys or maybe eight of the guys, guys and gals and you're putting a fire out. So I lose millions of dollars every summer to do this. It blows people's minds. Why the hell are you doing this? And you're breathing, set. Being set, knees are jacked up, hitting the ground, hurting whatever. Talking to normal people, they'll never get it. So I don't even explain it to them. But this is why this is why I call cap success.
2:01:25I'm talking financial success. For me to continue having that willpower. The second, I just become a speaking monkey and travel around and speaking gigs 12 months out of the year. Put camps on, do this, put on lectures, get supplement lines and do this and write more books and shit. I've ruined the exact thing I worked on my entire life. And while I didn't know it until the day, but something always told me, this is a very, very, very perishable skill. This, this willpower that you have. Because I do have a real power that I have never seen in anybody in my life. It is a haunting force that this keeps me going.
2:02:10And I know that that is my strength. If you have that, so that's worth every dime I've ever made in my life. It's the fact I can look at man in the eye finally and have real conversation without going like this. Because I'm lying or I'm a piece of shit or I know, you know how a person in so many people do this shit, they're talking to you on who they want to be. They're lying to you. And they walk away. I've done it so many times. Walk away like, God, man, my God is telling the truth. Why the hell can I just tell him the truth? No, good it feels for me now to look at you in your eye and every man, a man I see.
2:02:54Because we won't get this. Women will not get this. Man to man, that man's shit. You look another man in the eye and you know that everything you're fucking saying is real. And it comes from a real working place, something that you earned. It's the best feeling of the world. You can say that actually happened. Like I know with certainty what I'm saying actually happened. Who I am and who I say I am I am no more lies. No more skirt in the truth. No more bullshit. And that is worth every dime I've ever made in my life. And I swear to God on that every dime I've ever made in my life. Building who I built.
2:03:36So I can cap success because I know that if I ever go 12 months out of the year and no put several every day I'm going at it. But several months out of the year I go right back to ground zero. Which means I'm just fucking David Goggins. No Goggins. No carry boats fucking logs bullshit. It's just pick up that fucking pelasky and dig. Hey, get that fucking pump. Walk down a mile. Put it in the fucking water. My skewers beating. You're just David Goggins. You nobody. Because that's where my growth is. That's where my willpower comes from. And that's where it stays. That's where I talk to you now.
2:04:19And that came. I talk like this dude. People don't talk with kind of passion because it ain't there. It ain't there. They're regurgitating some shit from 30 fucking years ago. I'm regurgitating shit from an hour ago. Hour ago. Come on, man. It's just be real. And I can't be on these podcasts. I can't talk to anybody without being real. I'll go away. I'll go away. Because I can't give you what I want to give you. You said perishable skill. I think that's another word. Set of words I want to highlight. Because skill implies behavior. And when we were just talking a second ago about the deep true bedrock sense of confidence that comes from looking someone in the eye and telling somebody something that you absolutely know it's true because it happened.
2:05:11You're talking about actions. Not talking about perceptions. You're not talking about what you believe happened. You know it happened. And there's something really concrete about actions. And that's what's so interesting is we're talking about the mind, but actions are the manifestation of the mind. And the stuff that just stays in here, people die with that. It doesn't go anywhere. I long ago, somebody said, I forget what the context was. It was a neuroscientist. He said, you know, most emotions, they're just emotions. They're just in there. You don't have to do anything with them. And I think certain emotions you want to do something with.
2:05:48But I think people forget this. They feel miserable. They're going to dissolve into puddle with their own tears. No one ever died from an emotion. But they feel like they overwhelm us as if it's a tidal wave. It's going to pull us under and drown us. It's so interesting to me because I think what people, you have a gravitation called people can feel the energy. I think yes, you're either completely badly or partially understood. There's only one guy on the plant that truly understands you. I think there's one woman, Jennifer, who probably understands you as much as anyone's going to. And then the rest of us are kind of grasping, trying to figure it out.
2:06:23But you're saying go inward. So first go inward. And then it's actions, inward and actions. Now, the inward piece is something I'd like to just spend a little bit of time on because there are a couple of characters from history. People that were in concentration camps. Nelson Mandela. I mean, I'm not sure he had Instagram in there. I'm pretty sure he didn't. And I don't think there was anyone coaching him on like, Hey, you're going to get out someday. And actually, you're going to lead an entire country. I'm pretty sure that's not how it worked. He had to find it here. He had to find it between his ears.
2:06:55Right. And there are other examples. But that's an important one. So the process of going inward, does it for you? And here I will ask for suggestions. Because I think people want, there are those of us who want to build this skill. Right. But while you're self off, phone off for big portions of the day, perhaps, texting off, requests the this, the that. Anyone that knows you knows that we've communicated a few texts. But most of it comes through a filter. She's great. She knows you, you know, and she knows how to protect your time. And that hurts. But it was feelings. People get mad about it.
2:07:36Hey, God bless. God bless you, Jennifer. You know, cutting oneself off. When you're in there, you say it's just you.
2:07:51And the voices that come up are not pleasant. And then at some point, it converts to action. Okay. How much, what is the process of picking the action? That's the piece that I feel like, there's like a bridge to build here if you can, if you would. So the action means like, like, it's like what's next? Yes. So what like, when you go go to sleep at night, when that happens, you know what you're going to do the next day? It's pre -planned. Yes. Okay. Yes. It's always the same thing. You're not building it on the fly. No, nothing on the fly. Nothing. So how it works internally for me is I'm, I put it exactly how it is.
2:08:33I'm an artist. And every day I'm putting, I'm painting more Lisa every day. And that's a different one. It's not the same painting. So every day I wake up, you know, they're the same thing. It takes a different way to get there. So every day in my mind, I'm going through my mind. I'm just like, and a good painter will not just paint and easy create. You can't create the phones and everything going around you. So you got to block yourself off. You know, I do two podcasts in a year. You block yourself off and you're in your painting, this thing inside, and you're going through all these different colors of painting, everything else.
2:09:14And you can only figure out the right painting if you spend the correct amount of time in your brain. So every single day, I'm literally going through my, and I'm painting, I'm creating this, this masterpiece. And the masterpiece is always myself. And, but to do that, you cannot have any distractions. Because if you're talking to an artist and he's trying to think about the next painting, he can't. It's impossible to listen to you and listen to what your mind and body are telling you, we must do. People don't do enough of. They don't do any of it. You're, they don't have passion, they lack passion, drive determination because you haven't spent time with yourself.
2:09:56Your mind will tell you what is next. But you haven't spent the time to go, all right, let me just figure this out. You're looking for, let me Google this and let me Google that and let me, you're not going to find it there because there's billions of people in this world. And they're all supposed to be individuals. We have a pack mentality. That's where you're so fucking lost. Why am I so unique? I'm being exactly the fuck I was supposed to be. I ain't fall shit. And when I did fall shit, I was like, everybody else. The second I said, okay, man, hang on, dude, you're like this, you're like this, you're like this.
2:10:47Who are you, David Goggins? Who are you supposed to be? Miraculous. See all these things just, I couldn't even, the list of shit I had to do just why am. It's like, fuck, okay. Wow. Once you sit down with yourself and say, okay, I don't want to be like Michael Jordan or Jim Brown, the both of them are birthday. So I looked at their birthday and say, oh, maybe I can't. I'm going to be David fucking Goggins. And that looks like this. It just came everything flooded. So every single day of my life, there's a different thing that comes up that I have to do. But no one knows what to do because everybody else is following steps.
2:11:34Like the Republican Democratic parties. I'm not political, neither am I at all for this reason. Republicans are going to vote Republican. Democrats are going to vote Democrat. You're not even a human fucking being, bro. No way are you fuckers agree with all the same fucking shit. And I know I don't. So once you figure out yourself and who you are, all the answers come. So every night, a different painting is being painted. And it's a beautiful painting for myself. And I go, okay, that's, that's it. It may look the same the most motherfuckers. But the end result is very fucking different. That's why my laundry.
2:12:16If you look at what I've done in 49 years, it's more than most people are ever doing the life because they were a race car driver. And that's what they did. They drove a fucking car. It's great. I was all kind of shit because that's exactly what the painting was saying to do. For the mind was saying to do. When saying this driver car, so then that race car driver, no, what the fuck do you do? He retired, some being a race car driver and they're lost. Who, how are you still, I don't get it. Do you never going to fill your list? But you never found your list because it never was presented in front of you because your head was cluttered with shit.
2:12:59Because you never just stopped for lots of minutes. Lots of years. And they said, hi, it's me and you let it go. And this bam, it's right there. It's right there. I'm not a psychologist as I mentioned before. But I'm an adventurer hypothesis here. I think that you've mastered the process of internal dialogue. But when I say dialogue, I think most people think of the inner voice, the chatter. But that's just one half of a dialogue. A dialogue is a two way street. So I completely agree because I know from experience that when we go inward, oftentimes we hear things. If we're really honest with ourselves, it's like, I don't want to think about that or that.
2:13:50No. And then we start looking outward or we start trying to shift our attention and distract. And there are a million reasons that are handed to us excuses and seemingly good justification to be able to do that. But dialogue is a two way street. And it hit me while you were just saying what you were saying. I was paying very close attention. And I realized David Goggins is talking about the voice that comes up, including the terrible stuff that no one wants to hear about themselves from themselves. But then he's also got the dialogue down where he knows the counter voice. He goes, yeah, you're right.
2:14:27And so I'm going to do this or maybe no, remember this. You're in a dialogue, a two way dialogue in there. Not a one way chatter dialogue. There are books written by famous psychologists about chatter trying to shift your internal narrative. You're like, bring the internal narrative. That's what going inward is about. But it's not one voice. Again, there's a hypothesis. I'm not claiming to be all knowing. Lord knows I'm not all knowing. But you've mastered the dialogue. And if the three voices, strong medium and weak in there, you're like, let's all come to the table. So you've got a symphony of voices in there that are all you that you know to be you.
2:15:09And you know how to have those converse. You're not afraid to be in those conversations. And then you know what what the outcome of that committee decision is. And you put into real world action. And the world only sees the action. That's it. And only you can know your internal dialogue. And only I can know my internal dialogue. And the only way to quote unquote know it is to spend a hell of a lot of time there. That's right. Okay. A lifetime. Got it. A lifetime. Think about it. For me to be sitting here in front of you, you're not going to call 300 pound equal lab guy to come sit here. You might.
2:15:49I don't know. Maybe. Probably not. Probably not. Think about this. What we teach people is kind kindness to yourself. Do you think if I taught myself kindness and I agree with it, God, so many people, so many people take me out of context. It's ridiculous. Take it. How really fuck you want to take it? When I asked 300 pounds, we think that conversation that got me if I spoke kindness to myself, I'll take where it gets me right back to 7 -11, another box in mini chocket donuts and the chocket milkshake. That's the one voice. That's the one voice that most of us have that you're talking about. If you're never conversation in there, the other voice that you create that says, okay, how does this look?
2:16:41It looks very ugly. That kind conversation for me went away a long time ago, which is why the dialogue is now, which you see a lot of action, because most people have inaction, because there's one person talking, and that one person is always lean you down the same path, the path that makes you feel very comfortable and happy with yourself. The second you create the other voice, there's conflict, there's battles, there's wars, there's defeat. One thing I learned, I taught myself this, and people go, I don't understand what you're saying. I want to try to break it down real quick. I didn't teach myself victory first.
2:17:26I taught myself failure. I taught myself how to fail. If you go, that's so depressing, is it? When you're 300 pounds and you can't read and write and you're fucked up, there'll be times you're going to fucking fail on that process. So if you don't know how to fail, there isn't a victory. 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.
2:18:13Okay. You better teach yourself 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. 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 your 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.
2:19:04Both voices are going to be fucking telling you to go fuck yourself. You are in for hell, bro. I am. So I'm going to fail. So this is what you mean when you say that whatever anyone says, it's insignificant. It's significant as fuck. Right. It's the cap gun fire because it's just like it because the voice in your own head is far worse than I should say, sorry, one of the voices in your head. Yes. Yeah. I'm being very like detailed, almost surgical about that because I think this thing about inner dialogue, we think is one voice. Yes. You're making it clear. It's many voices. It is. And the thing about it is you have to be really, and sometimes all the voices are telling you the wrong shit, man.
2:19:48But 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 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.
2:20:44It'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 or whatever it was, 30, 25 years ago, pipe dream. And ever since then, every voice was like, you're fucking nut. But when you put that practice in every day, you lay some up. And I mean, Ron, it's just a metaphor for life. When you lace them, motherfuckers up every day pretty soon, you win pretty soon, you'll fucking win. If you have the curvers in the heart and the dedication and the minds of everybody, go fuck themselves.
2:21:30I 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's shit before you know it. I'm crazy, but I'm so fucking crazy. Why am I so successful? How that happened? I'm so misguided and mis - and fucked up and don't listen to him. Why am I the only one to do a whole bunch of shit? Why am I a troll blazer? Why? How is that possible? How can you be fucked up and also self -made the same fucking... No, no, obviously you're not looking at the truth in front of you.
2:22:20The truth in front of you is it sucks. It's painful. It's fucking my 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 the loan. All the time going out of the loan because no one's going to believe in you. And that's that. What I'm about to say is not conjecture and I can say that with confidence because I did a four episode guest series with an abri -lient psychiatrist. A guy named Paul Conti, Trenton, he's a Stanford Harvard trained guy. He's also got a lot of streetin' him.
2:22:59He's got his own real hardship. He's brilliant. And he said something that I'll never forget, which is we think that the four brain, the part of our brain that creates strategy, etc. is the super computer. He said no, no, no, no, no. It's like the super computer of the brain is the unconscious mind. It's the part of our mind that's controlling most everything. And most people unfortunately don't do the work to understand how they're unconscious is controlling them. And that's a scary thing. This idea like your mind is controlling you, you know, and I'm not gonna get into the free will debate. I believe in at least some will.
2:23:38I believe what you're describing and this internal dialogue, I think you have access to your unconscious mind. You by listening to the dialogue going inward, we know this is true in sleep, in dreams, in meditation, and just by shutting out everything else, shutting out all the external noise, which is filled with things that pull us twice. Noise makes it sound bad, but it's the gravitational pull of all the things that just allows to distract ourselves without knowing that, you know, it's the ice cream that have a cookie, the Merry Christmas. The unconscious mind, this huge piece of the iceberg underneath that Paul calls the super computer.
2:24:18He's saying that with knowledge as a neurobiologist, psychiatrist psychologist, I mean really knows that's the piece that if one does real introspection, he calls it the cupboards. You got to look in the cupboards and it's often really scary what you find in there. And most people are just like, I don't even want to know the cupboards are there, but you're pulling all the cupboard doors open. And then you're and I'm you're extremely deliberate with what gets put into action. You're not just going, oh, like I'm pissed so I'm an act pest or I'm, you know, tired, someone act tired. It's you're picking very carefully what to do.
2:24:52And that's a process that I'm guessing came to you. Does it come to you as a okay, it makes sense why running makes sense. It makes sense why smoke jumping makes sense. So it seems like a huge portion of your time is spent understanding yourself and making sense to you. And so when people don't understand you, it's got to be extra frustrated because most people don't understand themselves. So they were all running around going like, you're this and you're that because most people are just unwilling to look inward. And I'm including myself by the way. I mean, I've done a fair amount of introspection, but I'm inspired today that word inspired, but it's true, motivated to start going inward further because it is scary.
2:25:39It's like we don't know what's in those cupboards and it's terrifying. Yes, especially because we don't know. And those are the first ones to open up. And like he talked about, you got to go through those cupboards. I do spring clean every fucking day in those dark cupboards. Those dark cabinets that want to start with first. That's the real me, man. That's the real me. That's why I'm not ashamed. I don't hide. I used to hide. I don't hide anymore. He's exactly right. I don't know all the fucking science behind shit. I know what I know. That's why I'm listening to you by anymore. I don't listen to shit.
2:26:14I think most people are full of shit because I know I know the deep dark secrets of those fucking cupboards. It's ugly, man. In every day, I'm talking to him, every day I'm cleaning them. I'm cleaning them and I'm talking to the same demons that came out of those fucking cupboards as I'm cleaning them. Sometimes they go right back in them again. It's not easy. And this is why most of us just why him misunderstood. Because when it comes out of those cabinets that I'm cleaning, sometimes they see on Instagram. Sometimes they'll see it in the pocket. Sometimes they see in this one. I turn people off, open up your own cabinets and then go talk about it.
2:26:58Let me see how pretty it looks. Let me see how pretty you sound. Let me see how put together your words are. I bet you a fuck or a mother fucker comes out because for you to go back in there again to clean the same fucking cabinet that a demon came out of, take some big balls, bro. To do it every day of your life. To go back in there and spring clean every day. Not once a fucking year, once every decade, every day you know it gets dusty. And every day you don't start with the victories. You don't go, oh, this is nice. Look at my, look at my, I love me. Well, let me clean up this little dusty. No, I go right for the things that I can keep me buried.
2:27:41I go right there first, because if I don't clean those out first, the day doesn't start. So what are you saying? To me, it's truth. And like I told you many times today, I can never figure out how to explain this shit to people because I'm not neuro nothing. I'm just a guy that said, okay, we got to start in the dungeon and we got to stay here for the rest of our lives. For you to become successful, the dungeon is a place that has to be clean. And it's the scariest place to be. That's why I'm misunderstood. Because I'm speaking from the dungeon. That's why I am successful. Because I go there every day.
2:28:27And that is the truth when he says it's the exact truth. Those cabinets are fucking dusty, dirty, and scary as shit. Broken glass, fucking dark, spiders, cobwebs. But most of all, your biggest fears. The biggest things that put you in the fucked up place you are today are in there. So we all like to keep them shut, even like to lock them up, like they never happen. That's why you never grow. You never improve. You never have real conversations like we're having right now. Never, never. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, let's not, no, no, let's not go there. I've talked to so many people who tell me that.
2:29:09Let's talk about this. Because they'll tell me that they can only say it once. And they'll say it in passing. They won't get deep in the weeds with it. Like you can't just clean it. Motherfucker, you got a spit shine that motherfucker. You got to relive it. Every fucking detail of it. You can't just like, oh yeah, yeah, my dad beat me. And you know, you know, it is what it is. It is what it is, motherfucker. It's killing you. It's taking over your whole fucking life. But that's the conversation. Yeah, my dad beat it. I'm fine now, though. I'm good. Okay. All right. No, you ain't, you ain't fine.
2:29:52You ain't fine. This is, this is real talk. People don't have that. So your boys write 100 % right. Scary is shit. It's scary as shit. That makes you who you're supposed to be. And that's the test. We forget. We think we're supposed to breathe air and have kids and pay the bills and shit. What's this life about? I mean, no sense. Being tested, my friend, test come when you have not studied. Test come when you think that you're in a great place. That's the test. The test is everyday your life. And most of us fail because we don't know why we're here because we don't go inward to say, oh, you came here a lot of shit to fix, man.
2:30:43And this test sucks. But then you start. David Goggins. I don't think I could add to that. I know I can't. Thank you for sharing what you shared today. I mean, as much as your process or anyone's process can't be completely understood from the outside, you gave us a real window into this thing, this process that you was, as you said, God put it on you. I believe in God too. People can believe what they want. But I somehow your your life, God gave you these challenges early on. And then there was a point where you went internal. And like you said, you developed a skill, but it's a perishable skill.
2:31:41And you clearly live in the process of opening those coverage, reopening those covers, trying to spit shine those covers, understanding that they're never ever really done, but that you can gain ground on them. You can win day after day after day. And you really shared a lot of concrete things that I think I know people are going to be able to apply if they choose. And I agree with you. I think most people will be like, whoa, that was a lot. Yeah. Tevye, I think I want to just kind of bake myself in Netflix and checks mix instead. But there's also the reality that there are many women, boys and girls hear that and go, okay, and start cracking the the covers open.
2:32:34Right. And I just know that, you know, for myself, I'm extremely grateful that you're willing to put it all out there. You're so brutally honest, so brutally authentic. That word authenticity gets thrown around so much. And I can tell you that for me and for everybody else, like that's really what resonates. So whether or not you want to, whether or not it's the purpose behind it or not, you're lighting the path. So thank you. Respect. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with David Goggins to learn more about David and to find links to his two fantastic books can't hurt me and never finished.
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From the publisher
In this episode, my guest is David Goggins, retired Navy SEAL, highly accomplished ultramarathoner, best-selling author, and influential public speaker.
David explains how he mastered his inner dialogue to build extraordinary levels of discipline and mental and physical toughness.
He describes how confronting his early hardships, including physical and mental abuse, learning disorders, and obesity, became a practice of deep and excruciating self-reflection — eventually allowing him to transmute those experiences into a superhuman work ethic.
This conversation is a unique window into David Goggins’ process in that it focuses both on the underlying science and how David manages and directs his inner dialogue.
It’s a conversation that will inform and inspire anyone wondering how exactly to go about building discipline and confidence and reach their potential.
Note: This conversation includes profanity. Some content might not be suitable for all audiences and ages.
For show notes, including referenced articles and additional resources, please visit hubermanlab.com.
Use Ask Huberman Lab, our new AI-powered platform, for a summary, clips, and insights from this episode.
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) David Goggins
(00:03:39) Sponsors: LMNT & Waking Up
(00:07:58) Learning, Studying & Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
(00:14:59) Writing & Learning, ADHD & Focus
(00:20:35) Friction, Focus, “Conqueror’s Mindset”
(00:25:16) Early Hardships, “Haunted”
(00:30:48) Anger, Social Media; Growth & Challenges
(00:34:41) Sponsor: AG1
(00:37:11) Stick vs. Carrot, Negative Inner Dialogue, “Stay Hard”
(00:42:39) Inspiration, Characters & Self Image
(00:46:09) Willpower & Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex
(00:53:23) Friction & the “Suck”, Willpower
(00:59:14) Building Willpower, Brain & “No Days Off” Mentality
(01:09:54) Losing Weight, Challenge & Willpower
(01:18:47) Self-Criticism & Discipline; Recovery; Stutter & Building Confidence
(01:26:45) Relationships & Honest Conversations, People Pleasing
(01:34:49) Self-Reflection & Empowerment
(01:39:06) Unseen Work, Real Passion & Purpose, Medicine Cabinet Analogy
(01:46:32) Feeling Lost, Self-Reflection & Individual Process
(01:54:11) Challenges & Two Internal Voices, Misunderstood
(01:59:32) Running, Smoke Jumping; Success; Willpower & Perishable Skills
(02:07:04) Self-Reflection & Action, Distractions
(02:15:27) Inner Dialogue; Failing Properly
(02:24:59) Introspection & Unconscious Mind, Cleaning “Cupboards”
(02:35:19) Zero-Cost Support, Spotify & Apple Reviews, YouTube Feedback, Sponsors, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter
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