The Key to UNBREAKABLE Mental Resilience | David Goggins EP 521

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:53What's your biggest insecurity today? Not to be arrogant, I don't have one. What was the last one you had and when was that? We used to live in a$7 a month place when I was growing up. and when my mom left my dad we went to nothing for a period of time before she got on her feet right in that seven dollar a month place it was who i was i was no one i was in the sewer my mom there i had nothing and you always feel like you have nothing i achieved so much i was a navy seal i've gone through ranger school i've gone through delta force selection training i i've done so much I run 200 miles, pull up records, everything.

1:34Learned to read and write, became pretty intelligent. And I still was like, man, what is wrong with me? It wasn't until I got real sick, and I talked about in the last chapter of that book, and I was about 38 years old. And my life got real quiet. I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours to I couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. but once again it was the best thing that ever happened to me. In that moment when my whole life changed I went from a guy who worked out every day, trained every day, to a guy who couldn't get out of bed. My life was taken from me.

2:10The one thing that kept me going was my training. Now you didn't have that. I didn't have anything. Now you just had to sit alone. Alone. And not train. And that's what changed me and that's when I realized I hadn't taken time to think about what I've done in my life I did all these things but there was no finish line I still believe that but you must have time to reflect yeah I was just going I finished a race of life and I wouldn't even receive my medal I go on you're like on to the next I get in the car and I go you wouldn't even take the medal gone don't care about I'm not gonna waste an hour not around this ceremony most people sit around and that's what they like they they need to ceremony if I accomplished some validation I haven't done anything let's go let's go let's go just getting started I'm just getting started right when I started figuring out life and once I realized my god man I was just dumb fat kid being bullied and now I'm a hundred eighty pound personal lost a hundred and six pounds in less than three months learn to read learn to do this learn to do that I was like I need more I was fueling my mind with everything I never took time to say my god you came from this hell and you're here so those insecurities and this is how i explain it the best way seal training became pretty hard and a lot of guys weren't getting through it so they designed a seal prep program and it was two months in my last two years before i retired from the military they sent me there to train these kids so when they get to navy seal training man they were physical studs they were running swimming i mean they were they were hybrids wow but they get the buds and the same amount of people would quit.

3:48Why is that? This is why. We were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters. We weren't diving into the sewer. Everybody's got a story. We don't share it on social media. We share our nice life on social media. We all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine. I wasn't getting into the dungeon of these guys' minds. I wasn't building that so-called mental toughness. Mental toughness isn't something that you sample. It's something that you live in every day. So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure. And they look for comfort.

4:31Whenever hardness comes, and you don't know what it is. It may be different for you than it is for me. But you go back to your insecurities. And then when you go back to your insecurities, you then look for comfort. within those insecurities. And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to give you when you were sad, when you were sick. We look for our wife or our husband. We look for comfort. It's in those moments. You must retrain your mind to think differently in health. I wasn't training them to do that. The physical standard is not what they need to meet. It's a mental standard you must meet in life.

5:09So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards. I wasn't meeting the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come. Wow. I had come 8 ,000 miles from where I started. But if you never know that, you're still in a$7 a month place.

5:39Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:30Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.