Unlock Your Fullest Potential With This Mindset Shift | David Goggins EP 839

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

0:12If you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose, and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of, I've written a new book called The Greatness Mindset, and I think you're gonna love this. Through powerful stories, science-backed strategies, and step-by-step guidance, The Greatness Mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link in the description to get your copy today. We used to live in a$7 a month place when I was growing up.

0:45In that$7 a month place, it was who I was. I was no one. I was in the sewer. My mom went there. I had nothing. And you always feel like you have nothing. I had achieved so much. I was a Navy SEAL. I've gone through ranger school. I've gone through Delta Force selection training. I'd done so much. I run 200 miles, pull-up records, everything. Learned 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 my life got real quiet. I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours until I couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.

1:25But 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. The one thing that kept me going was my training. Now you didn't have that. I didn't have anything. I 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'd done in my life. You hadn't reflected yet. I hadn't reflected. I'd done all these things, but there was no finish line.

1:59I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect. I was just going. I finished a race of life, and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I'd go on. You're like, on to the next. I get in the car, and I'd go. You wouldn't even take the medal? Gone. Don't care about it. Like, I'm not going to waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony? Most people sit around, and that's what they like. They need the ceremony if I accomplish something. The validation. I haven't done anything. Let's go. When I started figuring out life, that I was leaving so much in the tank, I call it my 40 % rule. Yeah. I was leaving so much in the tank.

2:29Once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied. And now I'm a 180-pound person who lost 106 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. And I never took time to say, my God, you came from this hell. And you're here. SEAL training became pretty hard. And a lot of guys weren't getting through it. So they designed a SEAL prep program. Like a boot camp for the boot camp. That's right. Yeah. And it was two months. In my last two years before I retired from the military, they sent me there to train these kids.

3:07Wow. To get ready for BUDS. 18, 19, 20-year-olds. Yeah, young kids. So when they get to Navy SEAL training, man, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming. I mean, they were hybrids. Wow. But they get to BUDS, and the same amount of people would quit. Why is that? 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 most of us aren't willing to talk about it I'm going to talk about my dungeon 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.

3:58So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure. And they'd look for comfort. Whenever 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.

4:38I wasn't training them to do that. I wasn't training myself to do that because at that time, I was doing what I was told. These guys need to meet a standard. Physical standard. A physical standard. The physical standard is not what they need to meet. It's a mental standard. you must meet in life. So 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. 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. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life.

5:25And in that bed, and I thought I was dying because that story is long, that sick portion of my life is long, I didn't care if I died or lived because I was for the first time in my life happy and at peace because I reflected back on where I started. It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self-respect you have. That's why I walk around the streets with a backpack just like I don't need anything else. You figure it out by going inside yourself, by callousing over the victim's mentality. You're always a victim, even if you have everything in life, until you realize what you've achieved.

6:22Thank 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 Podcast 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.

7:12Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.