Building High Value Relationships | David Goggins

28:22The mind has capabilities that are so unknown. I found that through suffering. And there's a whole nother world on the other end of that. You know what drains your energy faster than a bad networking event? An overpriced phone bill. The big wireless companies love taking your money. They count on you not switching. Right now, Mint Mobile is running their best deal of the year. 50 % off all unlimited plans. That's$15 a month for unlimited. $15, that's less than most people spend on coffee in a week. You get high-speed data, unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. Bring your current phone, keep your number, no contracts.

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31:38But most of us try to avoid even getting close to the governor. Right. I call that my 40 % rule where like a car has a governor on it. It can go 130. You know, the governor's only going to go 91. Right. And the whole thing about that, it's a true statement, you know, like what you said, our mind wants to protect us. The mind is like, honestly, it has a tactical advantage over us. It knows our deepest, darkest fears or insecurities. It knows where we start to feel, we start getting that doubt creeping. It says, hey, man, you know what, man, maybe this isn't good. Let's go back home to the wife.

32:14Let's go back home to the kids. This is not comfortable. So in that moment, the mind directs us. It's a protective mechanism. It saves us for doing bodily harm or it really saves us from discovering that the mind's like, I want to be in charge of you. I don't want you to be in charge of me. So it tells you, let's just stop right here. But once you start breaking through that barrier and start breaking down that governor, the governor that you've put in your mind, because we forget we are in control of our mind. We believe it's the other way around. No, we put in our minds what we should do. But we believe our mind is telling us, it's giving us all this feedback.

33:00We have to reprogram it and tell us, no, no, no, we're good. We're good. This sucks, but it's okay. And I think one of the remarkable things about the transformation in the beginning was, you know, here after completing over 60 ultra marathons, it seems like you're genetically gifted. Miles are no problem. But at the start, getting just over a mile was a struggle. Yeah. And quit was at the forefront of your mind the entire time. So for our listeners who are like, man, I can't run that. I can't do this physical stuff. Like that's great mental toughness, but I'm not even meant for the physical side of things.

33:37Talk a little bit to us about that mile marker one, mile marker two, to now looking for unlimited miles. Right. Well, the first big thing is, once again, it goes back to open-mindedness. If you walk into any kind of event, whether it be physical or mental, if you walk in with already putting that block on your mind, if, man, this ain't going to happen. People go, how did you run 135 miles to death value? How did you run 100 miles with no training? Because I went into it not thinking, I can't do this, man. I went into it with a strategy. I had an open-mindedness. So until your mind is open to the possibilities that I can do this, you would never be able to do it.

34:25Once the mind starts to believe it can be achieved, it then only then does it start to break down tactically how we can do this until then you're going to always lose one of the things that we keep hearing recurring and something that we've practiced and we've talked about in our classrooms and on this show a lot is the most successful people are have a very good relationship with the worst parts of themselves where they can have that conversation and they're not hiding from that person. They're going to work with that person or to get around that person, to get that person out of the way, rather than pretending that it doesn't exist.

35:09And something else to this is I would think at least from my own experience, there's always these rationalizations to get you to quit. Right? So we have first you're going out there. It's the quarter mile. That's failure. Then we're getting to a mile. Then we're getting, that there's got to be another conversation with the other side of you that says, listen, you went from a 300-pound guy to doing this. We're good. We showed a lot of people. And there's another conversation of, we ain't even begun to finish up what we're doing here. Right. And how many of those conversations, it's like on a daily basis, you have to cast that person aside.

35:51Look out. You're done here. You've done enough damage. It's my turn. Well, it's funny how you say that because it is a true thing. I have so many conversations in my mind because so many times I want to quit. Sure. But this is what it is. This is what I figured out. I was so afraid of myself that I had to figure out I became a master of my mind. People, when you're afraid of something, you have to master it. That's how you start to overcome it. So what I realized, when I get to that point where I want to quit, everybody, they get to the point where they want to quit. This is what happens. The mind tells you, let's go home.

36:29Let's take a warm shower. Let's get some food. This is not right. This is that. If you cannot answer the questions at that moment, because your mind's going to start giving you all these questions, all these questions. And if you can't answer them, you're going to quit. What I realized when I was going through Bud's, Ranger School, all this 100 mile race, 200 mile races, pull-up records, my mind would come creeping in. Like when I was doing 4 ,030 pull-ups at 2 ,000 pull-ups and my hands were ripped open, my mind said, look, brother, we've done all these other things. You've proven yourself. You're good.

37:07If I didn't have the answer to respond to my mind and say, why I'm here, why I'm doing this, you will always lose that fight. You have to have the response to what your mind is going to tell you. And another thing about that is self-talk. A lot of people have like these big four on mental toughness. All that shit is crap about self-talk, visualization. It's true. But the thing about self-talk and all these things, they asked me, what do you think about when you're on mile 100 of a 205 mile run? What are you thinking about when you realize you've run for 24 hours and you have 24 more hours to run and you have another 105 miles, what goes through your mind?

37:50What do you say to yourself? I want to know. A lot of people think self-talk works. It does, but it doesn't work without the suffering before your mind starts saying we need self-talk. So what I tell myself is I go back to the months and years of preparation to get to that day. and I'm telling myself the 3 30 in the morning and I'm looking at my shoes and I want to go out there and run 30 miles I have to in that second in that moment of this self-talk my mind saying you got to find more you got to find more I once again calm down go back into my mind in my cookie jar I call it and I have to reflect back on the shit I did to get here and that becomes my self-talk Self-talk does not work unless it is real.

38:39Most of us lie to ourselves in the self-talk. It doesn't work. It has to be real. It has to be something that you've done to make it really work. Now, obviously, gaining that much weight doesn't happen overnight. Right. Bad habits had to form around eating, your interactions with food, obviously, your lack of exercise. Right. How did you start to break those old habits so that you didn't revert back to yourself on the couch, right? It's easy to set a challenge. I want to reach this goal. I want to get through hell week. Most of us, even with diet and exercise, can start, get to a point, and then we tend to revert back to those old habits.

39:16Right. The reason why we go back to old habits is because our goals are too lofty. We're not achieving our goals fast enough. So what happens is, you know what? Oh, man, we're very impatient nowadays. For me, it was good. I didn't have a phone. I was out of this world by myself. It was a race against David Goggins. It wasn't a race against, God, I want to look good for this person or that person. It was me. I got to change myself. So for me, if I lost five pounds in a week, I got a feeling. I allowed myself to feel proud of that. I didn't look at it. I got to lose 106 pounds. I'm like, man, I went from 297.

39:59Now I'm 292. In one week, man, I'm killing it. We're not proud of ourselves for the small accomplishments. What we need is we need this monstrosity of the thing to happen and say, ah, I did it. No. There's a process that you have to go through, and patience is the process. And if we don't have patience, after a week, I haven't lost 30 pounds, man, I'm done. I'm over it. So that's why I found out with people, man, they're not patient enough to realize and to enjoy the moment, not live in it, just enjoy it. There's no finish line in life, but enjoy that moment. Roger that, man, I lost five. Let me go 10 next week.

40:40So that's the whole thing about it. That's how people lose it. You know, something you said there where you said that you were in this race with yourself and that you didn't have a phone and you weren't connected to anything else and you didn't have anything to deal with except that other person staring back at you and talking shit. and you went to war against that person. Right. And we were just talking about this and about how important it is. In order for you to find yourself, absolutely there's certainly about suffering or pushing limits as one aspect of it, but also a detachment from all these other influences that keep you from dealing with yourself.

41:22And obviously we're living in this world today with all this technology that supposedly keeps us connected, but also sort of keeps us separated as well. It's a crazy place. And how are you going to build a relationship with yourself if you're completely distracted all the time? You know what? Being accepted is one thing that killed me. And you have to learn what do you want in your life? We have so much influence coming at us that we are so lost. We don't know what we want to do because we don't spend enough time with ourselves. You have to learn to shut off a phone, shut off a computer, shut off a TV.

42:04And it's okay to sit in a room by yourself in a chair and just think about you, where I want to be. Where do I see myself tomorrow, the next year, the next year from that? And it takes a lot of self-discipline to be able to do that nowadays because you want to be so attached to everything. You want to be so caught up with the world. The world's moving too fast. The world's moving so fast that you're trying to keep up to the point where you lose yourself in the world. So you have to take that time and go to that dark place in your mind and discover who you are. Was there a time in your past where you realized that you've overcome your old self and really truly felt transformed?

42:47Or do you feel like it's an endless process that you're still building towards? It's an endless process. Endless process. All that shit that I went through in my life to get here today, it is tattooed. It is tattooed in my brain. Every day I wake up, I am constantly battling that person that is like, man, you know, back in the day, this happened to you, man. You know, like you got called nigger so many times and your dad beat the shit out of you, man. and you couldn't read in this daggone junior year. All these things start to creep up, even now where you're at today. Every day you're having to constantly battle.

43:29It's not as bad as it used to be by any means, but that person's still there. That person always lives. And that's the point about you have to continue to always challenge yourself every day. And celebrating those small wins along the way, right? Those small incremental steps also are that fuel. So you have the suffering, you have the past that you're running from, and you have these small moments where, hey, I went 1.3 miles today. Two days ago, I was sitting on the couch and not even putting on shoes to go out. What are those small victories for you today? Sitting the other side here, right?

44:08because now the feats of strength and physical are just incredible. They're literally, the listeners are going to be going on YouTube, watching this to see it for themselves. Well, now there are really no small victories now for me because what happens is once you transform yourself, and even though I'm still, I'm not running from myself, I'm constantly facing myself. I'm constantly battling myself. I'm not running from them anymore. I used to. But now I'm constantly battling them. So now what happens is once you get to a point in your life where you're able to be on a podcast or be on a TV show and tell everybody how fucked up you are, I will answer any question you want about me.

44:50Anything I did, anything bad, good, ugly, I will tell you. When you get to that point in your life, that's where your real journey begins. And you no longer have to have a small victory to keep you going. You now realize what your purpose in life is. And you realize all this shit's just part of it. but at first you need all these different tactics to keep you going because you haven't figured it out yet. Once you figure out that you're in a race amongst billions of people that live in this world, you're in a race by yourself. You have a purpose and it's your purpose, not everybody else's purpose.

45:25It is your purpose and only your purpose and it's your race. So then you're like, hey man, I'm doing my thing. I'm doing the best of my ability. What's next? There's no longer these small increments to get through life. Because once you figure out why you're here, it just becomes a process. It goes with something. AJ and I were talking about this earlier. And it was someone, there was a video of you getting the award from the VFW was posted. And obviously it choked me up. I'm sure it choked AJ up. And there was something that you said in there that I just, I loved. And I just don't – obviously, we don't see enough of it anymore.

46:07And what it was was that there's a – to paraphrase it, a lot of people who live in this world who don't know what they're doing in life, what's going on, their ass from their elbow, and they got nothing and they're confused. Right. And they don't know what it's about. But it's about doing it for the guy next to them. Right. And with so much of all this other influence, it just seems that people are, their values aren't being held up to any sort of standards. And so now they've become wishy-washy on even what they stand for as people. Well, of course we have anxiety going through the roof and suicides going through the roof because if you don't have any sort of foundation to stand on, then of course you're going to be sitting through anxiety.

47:06And something as simple as do it for the man next to you. Do it for mankind. Do it for humankind. Right. It's fantastic. I mean, would you be able to speak a bit about that? Yeah, that was a moment for me, the VFW, where I got the Americanism Award. And what you saw there for me, it shocked me also. I got choked up, teared up. I was trying to thank my mom. And what happened was all this stuff that you all have heard about my life growing up, it's at the surface. That's just real, you know. and at that moment it flashed through my head about the journey I had to go through to get to that point to do that and along that journey I feel you know I I figured out myself and the biggest trophy I'll ever get in my entire life like I turned on a book deal which we'll talk about soon the biggest trophy that I ever got my entire life was me was really figuring out me And when I was up on that stage, I realized that.

48:09I realized it's not about money. It's not about fame. It's not about being accepted by your peers and everybody else. It's about figuring out who I am and being happy with who the fuck I am. Even though I'm going to be judged for all these things, being able to put a middle finger up to everybody and say, this is David Goggins. And to get to that point, it felt great. And that was all about, honestly, we have to give back. we have to be able to go through our journeys in life, figure out who we are and help the person beside you. Figure that shit out. Figure out how they can do that themselves.

48:46Well, let's go get into that a bit. So I believe you're my 44? 43. 43. All the records, everything that you've been through, all the physical feats, and now we're on a new chapter of the book. Of course, you're now, you know, you could probably say that you're the new it guy on the internet. Everyone wants to, we were thrilled when you wanted to come on the show, and everyone wants some of your time, and everyone wants to get something from you, perhaps a little bit of you can rub off on us, that sort of thing. and with good reason. And so we're in this new world and these new feats for yourself.

49:39So if you'd like to talk about what brought you to write the book and to go in this direction now at this time. Well, as you know, I'm a serious introvert and very afraid of people. I got judged so much growing up that this is uncomfortable for me. All these podcasts, that's why I post once a week. I don't, you know, people are ugly, people are nasty, they make me want to choke the shit out of them. And they're just nasty people. So I stay away from them. But the one thing I realized why I wrote the book is honestly, I have a story to tell as we all have a story to tell. And what I realized on my journey was a lot of us don't believe that we can achieve the impossible.

50:30And along my journey, I started realizing, man, I got to fucking tell some people about this shit, man. Like I discovered something that some people have, but they don't even fucking know. All of us have it. But along this way, I wasn't, like I said, I wasn't a theorist. I became a practitioner. And I was like, my God, I'm busting down so many barriers of like, I have a learning disability. Okay. But I'm catching up with everybody. I figured that out. I figured out all these negative things in my life that were keeping me in this hole. I'm like, I got to tell people, man, that hang on a second, man, you can fucking achieve the absolute impossible.

51:08You don't need great parents. You don't need like a private school. You don't need to have this humongous GPA and all this other shit. What you need is the one thing I talk about in my book, which is straight up brutal work ethic. You have to be willing to outwork everybody in the world. And that's the hard part. That's the hard part. This isn't like some five-step process where if you do these five fucking steps, you're going to end up with this magical world. No, I'm basically teaching you how to callous over your victim's mentality. I'm teaching you how to, like I did 67 ,000 pull-ups in training for the pull-up record.

51:52I was seriously calloused in my hands to protect them. What I'm trying to do with people is teach them how to find more of themselves to where they empower themselves. I'm all about the underdog. So that's what the book's all about, man. It's all about having that step process, and I had to share this with people. Well, I also feel, and personally struggling with social anxiety and introversion myself, the hardest part of all of it is being vulnerable enough to admit the abuse, admit the past. Most of us don't want other people to know that. And that's the hardest part to open up and be that vulnerable.

52:24Right. When did that start to bubble to the surface for you and you start to see vulnerability as a strength? Well, where it started to make me, I had to stop giving a fuck about people. That was the biggest thing. I had to stop caring what people thought about me. I realized that everybody's fucked up. That's the one thing I realized. I walked around and I put these people on a fucking pedestal. Everybody was better than me. So I can't tell you anything about me because you're going to judge me and I'm going to feel even worse than what I am. What I realized, once I calmed my mind down and sat back and looked at how jacked up this world is, once you realize that you are not alone, everybody that's talking to you about how jacked up you are, only thing they've done better than you is they've hidden their fucked up world better than you have.

53:13That's all they've done. So once I realized that, if you want to sit back, like, for instance, there's all these things that are on TV, and we have all these news people judging people who fuck up in life. Yeah, they made big mistakes. But that person who was judging you on TV, I guarantee you, that news person is saying, I'm glad that my shit didn't come out, but I'm going to judge the hell out of you. I know that about people. So if you want to sit back and judge how jacked up I was and how messed up my life was, Merry Christmas. Go for it. Have a good time. But I'm smiling at you right now, knowing you have a secret that you're not willing to share.

53:50It gives you a lot of power when you're able to go on a podcast this big and say, hey, tell me, I'll tell you anything you want to know because I no longer care. And that is a lot of power in that, to be able to put your life on a billboard for the whole world to see and say, judge it, man. Judge it. Like just me talking about it makes me feel good. And that's another thing about it. When you are willing to talk about how jacked up you are, the strength, that big rock that you carry, it just starts to come off you. It just starts to come off. That's why I do it so often. I'm like, hey, man, I'll tell you anything you want to know.

54:26I'm tired of being afraid. I'm tired of not telling you shit. I'm tired of lying about how good I'm not. You know? And in prepping for this interview, I was hanging out with my girlfriend, Amy, listening to part of the Joe Rogan episode. And what was so remarkable to both of us is most people who get into the motivational coaching space, they just want to celebrate their victories and show how awesome and amazing they are and paint themselves as the best. Right. And you unabashedly admit that you're not the best long distance runner. I'm not the best guy at pull-ups, but I'm going to push myself beyond what I deem is the best.

55:05Right. And through that process, come out the other side and earn everyone's respect. The motivation when people are losing, all these people who come out here and talk about how great they are, and I see it all the time, it makes me sick, man. Get real with yourself. People cannot relate to you, man. You are un-fucking-relatable. When you come out here and say, hey, man, I'm the baddest motherfucker to ever live. Okay, great. Well, what am I gonna learn from you? You learn from people who are willing to tell you, this is where I started from. This is how much I fell on my fucking ass. This is how bad I used to really be.

55:42I still have those moments because why? You're human. We're all jacked up, man. We're all jacked up. And that's what makes my story relatable. I'm willing to let you in to see I'm decently successful now. But I didn't come out like this, man. I didn't come out. That's the story is you have to give people just a little bit of hope. There's no hope when they just see greatness in you everywhere. You have to be able to get yourself down to a level of check it out, man. There's hope for you. That's all I'm trying to give you. Just a little bit. And obviously the pain you went through, the suffering, and these feats of physical strength, this idea that the body can always heal and the mind can always heal.

56:31These calluses can be built. So whether it's 200 plus miles, whether it's your hands or dog meat from doing the pull-ups, your hands are healed. That's right. Your mind is healed. That's right. And we have this ability inside of us. Most of us go through life never even scratching the surface of it. Right. What was the physical healing process like after that first real physical bout for you where you went through, whether it was Hell Week, I don't know what on the scale of what you've done to this point, going through the list. Well, I thought it was my third hell week that I went through. When I got through with that first hundred mile race that I did around that one mile track that I didn't prepare for, and I was considerably, it was horrible.

57:20And I'll never forget, I found such peace and beauty. And I got there. I was in the worst pain of my fucking life. and I got done and my wife pulled the car up on the, my ex-wife pulled the car up on this little lawn and I got in the back of it and I got up the stairs. I'm not gonna go through the whole story, but I remember laying in the tub and she put the shower on me and I ran 101 miles in like 19 hours and I was like peeing dirt out of me. And I'm sitting there and I'm jackhammering and my body is just the most broken it's ever been, even to this day. and this feeling came over me. Call it crazy if you want, but very few people, I guarantee you, have ever felt this before to push themselves so far outside of what they thought was even possible, even for me.

58:09I laid in that tub and I didn't want it to go away. I had drained myself of every bit of strength, energy I had and it was the best feeling I had in my life. All that pain, it was... It was confirmation. It was confirmation that I had gone through a crucible and I had figured out another level of David Goggins, a level that I thought was humanly impossible for anybody to do. When I was at mile 70 and shit and pissed all over myself and had 30 more miles to go, and I was damn near dead. And I was able to go 31 more miles. In that process of that next 31 more miles, I found out more about myself in that 31 miles than I ever had in my entire life.

59:02The conversations, the mental blocks, the roadblocks, everything horrible, it was just feeding at me like light speed. Get the fuck out of here, man. But I was able to figure out different tactics. And when I finally got done with that, and I laid in that tub and it was over, the feeling of, my God, man, you just really discovered a whole new world, a whole new part of the brain that guaranteed very few people have. So it's a, it's a feeling I can't even describe. And with the success of Jesse's book, Living with the Seal, obviously fame came knocking at your door. Everyone wanted your story. Publishers came to you.

59:44Okay. When can we write your book? You chose a different path to self-publish. Well, on that, on that thing right there, it didn't do much for me. So the book, Living with the Seal, my name wasn't in it. And I didn't even know really, I knew it was being written, but I had nothing to do with the book. So all that came to me much later. But yeah. Yeah, that's how you appeared on the map. Once we figured out that you were the seal and people wanted to hear your story, obviously everything you do is well thought out. There's a plan in place. There's a strategy behind it. You've now chose the path to self-publish this book.

1:00:22We got a copy of the manuscript we've been digging in, enjoying the backstory that we haven't heard on some of these other shows because everyone wants to talk about the physical side of things. What made you decide to go that route in sharing your story? Well, I sat back and I had the top five people come at me, top five publishing houses. It was down to the last two, and they're offering$300 ,000. I'm a first-time author, and I decided to go with one of them. and$300 ,000 for a guy like me, I'm sitting back, you know what, that's pretty good money. So a few days before I was going to sign the contract, I sat back, talked to my fiance, my family, and everybody's like, you know, hey, you know, this is good.

1:01:04This is great, whatever.

1:01:08But I started thinking about my life. I started thinking about everything that I've gone through my life, everything I had gone through and had a chance to reflect. And that's one thing I never did in my life long enough is have time to reflect. I was always, what's next? What's next? What's next? What's next? What's next? Now that I'm retired and you have a lot of time to look back on what you've done, where you started, where you're at now. And I said, you know what? This shit's not for sale. $300 ,000 isn't even a fraction of enough money to sell this. So I I decided not to sign it. And I self-published.

1:01:46I pissed a lot of people off. I bet. And I said, I'm not signing this. I'm going to self-publish. And that's kind of how it came to be. I took that time to reflect. And I'd rather not make a fucking dime. I wrote this book, and that's honest to God's truth. I am fine with the trophy I have in my mind. And who is this book for? Who listening is going to be the most impacted by this book? I'm all about, it's not about the underdog so much. I think we're all an underdog. I think the top CEO on the planet Earth still has that doubt. I don't give a fuck where you're from. Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, the best on the planet.

1:02:25We're all underdogs. Whether you're an underdog because you put yourself there to be hungry or you're just a real-life underdog. We're all an underdog. And so this is about the mind and people discovering the mind, their own mind. and one thing I know is we all have an equation. We all have an equation. Like, you know, I'll talk about 3.14 is pi. There's different equations to figure out different kind of, you know, mathematical problems. We as human beings are mathematical problems. I cannot give you a book for every fucking body in this world. That's why my book, even though it's one book, it's tailored to the individual.

1:03:09It's not like you do these five steps, you're good. No I'm helping you figure out Your fucking equation Because it's different My equation is different From your equation What's going to make you tick What's going to make you Go the distance What's going to make you Go to that spot in hell And say I love this spot It's okay That's what this book does It helps you figure out Your 3.14 Helps you figure out Your fucking mathematical equation And say oh Because once you figure out The equation In any math problem You no longer fail man You got it figured out. So in coming out here, which you have a big publicity run.

1:03:48Right. The book's coming out. You got a bunch of podcasts to go on. Thank you for coming on ours. With that comes a lot of new things. It's for such a no-nonsense guy to have to deal with social media now. And I was having a vision of you having to deal with it. But we talk about its detriment and how it is just nonsense and noise. But, of course, you want to reach as many people as you can with this book and everything that's going on. So I was kind of curious of dealing with social media. I know that you're on it. We talked about this earlier. Do you have a discipline of like, okay, well, for two hours every night, I guess I'll get on, deal with this stupid thing and talk to these people who have reached out?

1:04:36or what is your approach to that? Well, my approach is every Monday, you're going to get one post from me a week. And I take about maybe an hour to hour and a half after. So I'll post it. I'll do it. And then I get away from it. I'm gone. Here's your post. And I'll make sure that every single post is not about me. So this shit ain't about me, man. I'm about you figuring out you. Some people take it personal. Some people get you a little butt hurt. this is about you figuring out your self-talk has to change the most important conversation you ever have is the one you have with your fucking self you walk around with it all day you act on it pretty soon good or bad I want you to change who you are so let you look at it after about an hour or two I'll come back and start answering a few of these you know questions let's people say hey how you do this how you do that maybe an hour and a half two hours I'll answer it and I'm done I'm off because why?

1:05:32I'm still chipping away at David Goggins every single day. If I spend so much time being occupied by that, I cannot chip away at what's important. What's important is I'm still figuring out different things. I got the equation figured out, but now the real journey has begun. So I'm still chipping away at life, still chipping away at life. Johnny and I have started to really throw ourselves into the training for the race and really pushing ourselves physically. For a large chunk of my life, the physical was not that important. I was average at everything, not really concerned about hitting the gym, certainly didn't care about what other people thought about the way that I looked physically because I was average.

1:06:21I've now come out the other side, and we talk about this all the time, that adorphin rush after completing the run, that feeling you get after crushing your PR in the gym, pushing yourself beyond that mental governor that we all have. What are your thoughts on people who are unsure about their own physical strength? Do you feel that everyone should push themselves physically, and that's a really important part of making you who you were? I think pushing yourself physically is the number one factor of life. That is the true spot where you can really dive deep into life's about self-discipline. It's about self-discipline.

1:07:03We tend to do the things that are easy. And that is, it builds no mental toughness. It builds no mental hardening. It builds nothing. When you work out, working out is where you can build that. the fastest because it's a constant. It gives you instant feedback. Yeah, you may not lose the weight you want to real fast, but the discipline it takes, it transfers over to all aspects of your life. It's not people, man, why are you always working out? Stop looking at it that way. This is the foundation of life. When you look in the mirror, every morning we all look in the mirror to get ready to go to work, to go anywhere.

1:07:44The first thing you see is your reflection. If you don't like what you see in the morning, you lost the war already. It's not even liking what you see. It's about looking in the mirror and you may start, man, I feel different. That reflection may be not, that reflection is not everything. It's a feeling you're supposed to get. So you have to, in life, once you leave your house, the war begins. In your house, you have some control. And that reflection in that mirror, you have to control that reflection in the mirror. That's how you start your day. If you leave your house feeling like, okay, I can fight.

1:08:16I've established the mentality to fight. And all that comes from working out. It's not just from, you know, you can't find that in the office. And what we've discovered and chatted about on the show with a lot of our guests is morning and nighttime rituals to prepare yourself mentally for the day for that war outside the door. Right. Obviously, you're controlling your environment in the morning. And same with night. I think especially when it comes to feats of strength and physical ability, you got to recharge. You got to recover. Right. So how you wind down at night and getting a full night's rest scientifically has proven to change everything physically, mentally, emotionally.

1:08:54What are those habits you built up around your morning and nighttime routine? Well, my morning routine is every day I get up and run every single day because why I hate that the most. So that is where I share that feeling. Yes, I hate that the most. So you have to do something that sucks every day. Because why? Once you overcome the suck, oh, now you're powerful. You've overcome yourself already. So now you're ready to battle. I go to the gym about four times a week. But my biggest thing I do is my nighttime routine. I stretch out anywhere from two to four hours every night for the last five. It used to be a lot longer than that.

1:09:32and I talk about it in my book, why I started doing this thing. But I had, through my whole life, as you see, I was using my fight or flight muscle. I was under severe stress as a child, growing up, my job, whatever. A lot of stress. Just sitting down right now, we're all using our psoas muscle, your hip flexor muscle. And I'll give you a two second on that. That muscle attaches to your T12s. And about five or six years ago, I got really, really sick. Doctors give me all kinds of hormones. Take this, take this, take this. And it's in the book real good, so I won't go deep into it now. But I laid back and I literally said, you know what?

1:10:10I'm dying. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong with me. My blood tests were coming back fine. I decided I can't even run a block. I ran from around 205 miles. I can't run a block. I'm in my bed sitting there. And I started realizing I had these humongous knots on my hip flexors. And back in my head. And I said, I'm just done. So I started slowly stretching out. I couldn't do anything. Over a period of a couple of years, I got off this medication, that medication. I was on like 15, I was on several medications. Now I'm on one. And honestly, what I believe, no doctor has said, this is what happened to you.

1:10:49I was literally so tight, I was cutting off blood supply in different places in my organs. The more it opened up my body. So now I went from running 830 mile on a training run to now running a 715 to 7 minute mile on a training run. It's the same heart rate. And it's not because I'm trained any different. It's just because my body, my body's opened up and it's a lot more blood flow. So every night I stretch out and it's truly, I used to be wound so fucking tight. Like I couldn't sit in this chair for this long. I'd be like, I could get out of here, man. We got to go. It's totally changed my whole perspective of life.

1:11:24It's changed everything. So stretching out, yoga, all those things has put me in a whole different state of mind. And I'm the healthiest I've been in my entire life, mentally and physically. With everything that you've accomplished and you still have a lifetime to go. Right. Is there something that you want to be known for? The one thing that you want to stand out through all of these accomplishments and be remembered for? Honestly, I honestly want to be considered one of the hardest men to walk the planet Earth in the history of the world. and what I mean by hard, I'm not talking about the guy who does the most pull-ups, the most sit-ups, runs the most.

1:12:02Just the person who's able to overcome any adversity in front of them to figure out a way. Hardness isn't about all this physical shit, man. Yeah, it helped me get to where I'm at, but all I was doing in the whole process, the process wouldn't be ripped. It wouldn't walk around with my shirt off. That wasn't it. I knew through the physical challenges through the physical suffering, my mind was getting stronger. I was literally doing that for a reason. I had a weak mind. All the rest just happened to come with it. I was trying to strengthen the mind to handle all the judgment that's passed on me, perceived and not.

1:12:45Sometimes you make it up in your own head. You know, I just want to be able to handle all of that, Everything, physical, mental. I want to be perceived as that, like an old school barbarian, an old school guy that's like, God, dog, man. Nothing can hurt the guy, which is why the book is titled Can't Hurt Me. I want people to have that mantra in their life. Take that with you. Take it everywhere you go in life. And if you believe that and you work towards that, callus in your mind, strengthen yourself, can't hurt me is strong. Now, in any situation, like when I was in Bud's, they beat the shit out of you.

1:13:22I'd be the first one to get up and say, can't hurt me, motherfucker. And they were beating the hell out of me. But you say that enough to you. False motivation becomes fucking real motivation after a while. What's the next big challenge for you? What's the next thing you're tackling? Honestly, the next big challenge right now is what I'm doing right now. like I've when I was in sixth grade I uh stuttered real bad severely bad fifth sixth grade fourth grade horrible had like my hair would fall out white splotches over my skin horrible horrible anxiety so me talking about myself as much as I am on stage on podcast I'm still overcoming You're still battling because it's comfortable for me to say, I'm off a soda meet.

1:14:12Don't talk to me. I'm good. Go back to being my hermit. This is very uncomfortable. So I'm constantly coming outside my comfort zones and doing this stuff. Now sharing my story with people as much as I can. And do you do any coaching of clients in terms of physical or mental? Obviously, motivational speaking opens up these opportunities to take on one-on-one or group coaching clients. So I do take on clients, but a select few. Because what I realized is I'm not a cookie cutter type of guy. I'm not here to take your money. I'm here to help you. If you're coming in to work with a guy like me, who knows that you have to have thick skin to get better, you have to call yourself out.

1:14:54If you're fat and you're fucked up, I want to hear that. I don't want to hear you tap dancing around shit. So I don't take on many clients because when you work with me, we're going to get to the root of the fucking problem. and a lot of people don't want to go there. They don't want to talk about their childhood. They don't want to talk about their past. They don't want to get to root the problems and then they go, why am I not getting better? Because there's a lot of shit in there you haven't dealt with, brother. You know, people go to the gym, like for instance, going through any kind of special operations school.

1:15:24These people go to the gym, they get big, they get jacked, they can run fast, all that shit. But the only thing they're doing is they're coding over the mind. All you're doing is building a bigger, stronger quitter. Your mind hasn't gotten any stronger because you haven't gone back in there and dealt with shit. So the second adversity comes, like, my God, I'm so fucking fit. What's wrong? Your mind is still soft. So I work on the mind. What's the application process like to work with you? Well, speaking - That sounds like hell week. Speaking on that application process. so you know Jesse's been out there his book and we know from his perspective of seeing you and him thinking of how and he's given his story of how you guys met and what he was thinking when he had saw you but we don't know your side of it of what Jesse coming up to you and talk to you and asking I don't even know if that was the plan at first but what you must have been thinking with this crazy guy who's out there with the circus running around this ring The Seuss, the chair, the trainers.

1:16:32Well, that's the one big thing right there is, and I don't answer your question, but what you said, you know, I lived with this guy for a couple, you know, a few weeks. Yeah. This is a lifestyle. You can't temporarily dive into it, sprinkle it around, sample it out, and roll out. This is something, man, that you have to acquire as a part of your everyday grind. but when Jesse came up to me after this race I was so like back then I was very like don't talk to me motherfucker type of person it was very weird you know because my life especially then I didn't know when he's soft and I looked at everything in his life as very like you can't get hard man it's impossible why because you have your refrigerator in your mind it's so full You've arrived.

1:17:26It's hard to take a person that's arrived, take him in the fucking, bring him down to the fucking sewer with me and say, okay, now we're going to live. Now we're going to figure out. So imagine that guy who has, you know, maids, drivers, masseuses, chefs. And I'm taking this guy and say, okay, man, we're not going to live in hell. It was very, it's tough. Yeah. And the difference being he knew, counting down the days. 23, 22 days and I'm back to living life. And see, it's hard for me, and this is no cut on anybody. I had to mature a lot. Not everybody's David Goggins. It's hard for me to respect people who are able to come in to that world and leave.

1:18:12Sure. This is a fucking lifestyle, man. Like, and people wonder, why am I not achieving more? It's because once you, all of us, once we achieve something, we celebrate for a long years fucking time. And we wonder, why don't I have drive anymore? Where's it all at? If you don't develop a routine of suffering, and suffering is not like go out and kill yourself every day. It's being uncomfortable. That keeps you hungry every day. If you live in your victories for so long and say, I'm going to go challenge myself for 30 days or for two weeks or run this one marathon. And it ends, I did one marathon.

1:18:55Okay? That's why it leaves you. It leaves you because you haven't set up the next obstacle. Obstacles is how you grow. You must continue to have friction. Friction is where growth is at. With no friction, there's no growth. I love that. No growth. So where can we find the book? Where can we pick up a copy and apply for this coaching? Those listeners who feel they have it in them. Well, everything with Can't Hurt Me, the book, the audio, everything for Can't Hurt Me is on Amazon. So you go to Amazon. It's just a book about the mind. Bettering yourself, finding that 3.14, finding your percentage, finding your equation.

1:19:39And removing the theory. Removing the theory. Talking about the practical. And bringing in the practice. theory we cannot listen to theorists so what theorists do is they take uh a hundred people and they study the normal people of the world they're all studies there's a whole bunch of people outside the normal they haven't done studies on they haven't done studies on the people who are seriously great who are seriously great they take studies off of normal people You cannot live in that normal mindset. You must be your best on your worst days. And how you do that is you cannot think of a normal mindset.

1:20:25You cannot have a normal mindset. I love it. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's been a fantastic conversation. I appreciate you taking on this challenge because sharing this stuff and this viewpoint, right? It's easy to get the trophies these days. It's easy to be coddled. There's not enough people speaking the real truth. that you suck and you got to do shit that sucks to get better. Right. And that message we're happy to spread. And it has impacted both of us. It's why we took on the challenges that we continue to take on half marathon. We're going to shoot for marathon next and let's keep moving because what else is there to do in life?

1:20:59That's it, man. There's nothing else to do. Life is one big head game. It's one big mind game. And it's only one person playing it, yourself. So you got to learn to win the mind game. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Fantastic.

1:21:17today's shout out goes to jack jack is an engineer who had limiting beliefs that kept him seeking comfort for most of his life he chose paths that were easy and that his family wanted him to choose well jack had realized that the safe road led him to a place of feeling unfulfilled uninspired and isolated jack's work then became repetitive and his career began to stagnate so jack took the plunge, invested in himself, and joined the Art of Charm X Factor Accelerator. Together, we deconstructed Jack's beliefs about himself and his place in the world, oriented him to a new purpose, goals, and laid out a plan of action that he was excited about.

1:21:55Jack began the process of changing his mindsets and beliefs through a new lens and direct action. Easy, small steps every day compounding into a new story about Jack. This gave Jack the courage to move from his job and into a new role with another company that he was really excited about. So Jack now looks forward to his new job, new social circle and peer group, and skills. Like a lot of X Factor Accelerator members, Jack wished he had started this process sooner. I know the feeling, Jack. Are you stuck at work or in life? Do you feel life passing you by too quickly becoming redundant and absurd?

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1:23:43Apply today at unlockyourxfactor.com. All right, before we head out, could you do us a quick favor? If you enjoyed this podcast, click subscribe in your favorite player and rate the show. It helps us tremendously, and we appreciate your support more than you know. A huge thank you to our producers, Michael Harold and Eric Montgomery. We hope you all have an epic week. Yeah, I remember you You were the bad boy You threw your love away Like it was just a toy And you sold the world You're a song of the tragedy Cause you had your taste Of black only yesterday Yeah, but I remember you Oh yeah, I remember you

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