REPROGRAMMING Your Mind for Success with THE 40% RULE | David Goggins

28:29Is that happy spot? No. What gives you confidence, what gave me confidence, was spending years at a kitchen table trying to learn how to read and write on my own, realizing I can't learn the way you learn. I can't, but I can learn. what gives you confidence is not being afraid is overcoming the fear. I used to stutter severely bad. So right now, I don't know how many people are going to watch this. You know what gives me confidence? It's knowing I no longer care if I see or start stuttering at you. That's what gives me confidence is facing these things, overcoming them. And maybe not overcoming them every day, but facing them and facing them and facing them pretty soon like this.

29:13You know what, man? This is where it's at. It's not in that comfort zone. It's in the discomfort zone is where my confidence is getting built. That's where it's getting built. They want an easier answer. There has to be an easier way. There's not. I'm sorry. I searched for it my entire life. You cheated. You lied. I lied. I did everything. And I still felt empty. I coach a lot of people nowadays, billionaires, who call me on the phone and say, man, I'm still missing something. it's because they did what they were good at and they had this beautiful family two three houses cars everything has everything to work on the outside looking in like my god man how can you be unhappy i walk around with the backpack with all my stuff in here no car right and i walk around happiest person in the world have nothing happiest it's because i found out the whole key to life It's not in all that.

30:15You have to face yourself. So many people live to be 100 years old and they die miserable having everything because they never examined. I call it my live autopsy. You never examine this. Happiness, peace, enlightenment, it's all up here, man. It's all up here. And when I start talking like this, people go, man, you know, I don't know. It's the truth, man. Yeah, it is true. It's all up here. You just got to be willing to go and face it. And that's the hard part. What'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? The last one I had was probably still me.

31:00Me. We used to live in a$7 a month place when I was growing up. Is this in Buffalo or is this in... This is in Indiana. Yeah. So, like, we had a lot of money in Buffalo. And when my mom left my dad, we went to nothing. for a period of time before she got on her feet. And that$7 a month place used to be, it was who I was. I was no one. I was in the sewer. My mom wasn't there. I had nothing. And you always feel like you have nothing. I had achieved so much. I was a Navy SEAL. I'd 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.

31:41learned 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 i got real sick and i was about 38 years old i'm 43 now 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's wrong with me but once again it was the best thing that ever happened to me why's that 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 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 thought I hadn't taken time to think about what I'd done in my life.

32:40You hadn't reflected yet. I hadn't reflected. I'd done 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'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.

33:08Let's go. Let's go. You're just getting started. I'm just getting started. That's right. 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. Once 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. Mm-hmm. 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. So those insecurities, and this is how I explain it the best way.

33:45SEAL 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. And it was two months. In my last two years before I retired from the military, they sent me there to train these kids. Wow. To get ready for buds. 18, 19, 20-year-olds. Young kids. So when they'd get to Navy SEAL training, man, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming. I mean, they were hybrids. Wow. But they'd get to buds, and the same amount of people would quit. Why is that? This is why. We were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.

34:26Hmm. It's not about. Not the mind. It's right. 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. So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure.

35:09And they 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 hell. I wasn't training them to do that. Why weren't you training them? I wasn't training myself to do that because at that time, I would do what I was told.

35:51These 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. Wow. I had come 8 ,000 miles from where I started. But if you never know that, you're still in the$7 a month place. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life. And in that bed, when 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.

36:42Wow. Because I was, for the first time in my life, happy and at peace. I reflected back on where it started. You said, wow, I have come a long way. That's right. And no one saved me. 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 and 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 you have to first realize what you've achieved and my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father but she hasn't done that one step really?

37:30she doesn't acknowledge it and reflect back she continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life and live in that space and live in that space versus live in the space that she's in now and reflecting back on my god this is what I've done with my life so Have you talked to her about this? We talk about it all the time. And you have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing to really go there. Not surface. I don't live on the surface of anything. Surface is what got me where I was at. It got me from 175 pounds to 300 pounds. Telling everybody I'm good. I don't give a damn. I'm good.

38:08No, they're hollow words. A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore. Everything that comes in my mouth has substance. It's real. And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls. I act on mine. A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose a path that leads resistance, so we go a different route. I'm afraid of something that's telling me you must do that. You must do that. Yeah. You have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality. we go left and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives is because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out and how i look at is i i talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four-lane highway that has road maps and all this other stuff on it man tells you where to go gas stations the next 10 miles up you're gonna see a mcdonald's a crackle barrel yeah it's the easy route very few of us want to go to the right side that cracker barrel is that midwest life that's right that's right i'm from ohio it's all about it man indiana cracker everywhere dude that's amazing bringing back memories this is powerful because i've been telling people this i've been living that way unknowingly my whole life of like whatever the thing is i'm afraid of when i was in high school i started doing those things right and it's just like I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid.

39:38Right. So I need to do the things that scare me the most. That's right. You know, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Tiffany's heard me share these stories, but I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of like singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I want to do this. I'm going to give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away. That's right. And I feel like that's what more of us should be doing. I'm hearing that that's how you live your life. That's all it is, man.

40:05And it helps me feel so much more confident. When you overcome that fear of saying, this doesn't have control over me anymore. That's right. It's like you can be at such more peace in your life. Most of, like for instance, I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL. It's until you open-mindedness creates that. We all shut down our minds. Like for instance, when I broke the pull-up record, everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was 4 ,020 pull-ups. That's the first thing they did. Oh my God. 4 ,024 hours? Yeah, it's 4 ,020 pull-ups in a 24-hour period. Yeah, yeah. The first thing I did versus closing my mind to like, oh, my God, that's crazy.

40:45I went and got a pinning. How many is that every minute? Exactly. Every hour, every second. Instead of taking life and making it out to be this grandiose thing, start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box. And we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. outside that box is all these possibilities of life. What we do is we shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. This is all I'm good at. And we take away the possibilities of you could be this, you could be that, you could be all these things. And I never thought at 300 pounds I could be a Navy SEAL.

41:27Wow. So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book. Right. There'd be no book. Right. there'd be nothing so what people understand is that they live for themselves not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives yeah by facing life by facing yourself and through that i would die never knowing that i had the power to change millions of lives and what haunts me the most people ask me what haunts you the most what haunts me the most is that if i were to die at 300 pounds let's say i was 75 years old I got to heaven and God has a chart like that on everybody's life God knows all let's say that I don't care what you believe in doesn't matter I'm not judging anybody but let's say my thing is God you get to heaven I'm 300 pounds I sit down I was a cockroach Terminator my whole life and we're sitting down just like this you're God and I'm David and he gives me that chart and he says look at this and look at this chart and on the chart it has all these different things, but my name's on it.

42:36But these things aren't me. I was going to change the world. I was going to, I was going to set records. I was going to be a Navy SEAL. I was going to be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're going to get the VFW award. You could be honored here, honored there. And I'm like, God, I was, this isn't me. Like it says, David Goggins. I was an Ecolab guy. I spray for cockroaches and I'm 300 pounds. It said here, I'm 185. It says here I got a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things. And God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be. Wow. My biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world and there's a final judgment and you talk to something much bigger than you.

43:22I don't want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says you're in heaven this is what you should have been on earth and are you really in heaven now are you in hell thinking about how much I left on a table for fear for not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall so in my mind I believe that and God knows all at least I believe that I want God to be up there right now as we're speaking writing stuff down saying my God he exceeded even my expectations that's how I live my life I now know that there is no cap on the human mind there's no cap we cap it ourselves is there a cap on the human body is there one I I don't believe so.

44:22Because one thing I found out was I didn't, for several years I gave myself a way out. When you were 300 pounds? When I was 300 pounds, when I was, all the way up until I was 24 years old, I would climb a mountain, I'd fall back down. I'd start climbing, I'd fall back down for the first 24 years of my life. I went to my first hell week, my second hell week, and then my third whole week came in SEAL training and the CO, Captain Bowen, looked at me. I'm on crutches. I'm all jacked up. He says, hey, this is your last time you're going to go through, buds. This is it. I had several stress fractures.

45:00I had double pneumonia. I was jacked up and he gave me a few months to heal. He said, this is your last time going through. I shouldn't even let you go back through. Wow. I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures. stress fractures that's hard to finish starting the hardest training the hardest training in the world with stress fractures and this is when I started to not put a cap on the body if the mind is there every morning I would wake up at 3.30 in the morning, 4 o 'clock in the morning go to my dive cage go in there before anybody saw me I'd get duct tape and I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the mid of my calf and I would put two black socks on.

45:43And so I ran not using the pivot. Oh, my gosh. And I ran my hip flexors. So for the first 45 minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain. But what motivated me through that whole process was the fact that this kid came from that. I'm in the hardest training in the world in the worst shape of my entire life. what if I can graduate amongst these studs? Wow. All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions. They're gladiators in my class. They're all healthy. Most of them. They're not broken like this. They may have some, you know, everybody's sick going through that training. But if I can graduate, it would change everything for me.

46:32If I can start the hardest training in the world, broken, and graduate. So my mind fed off of that. you are now from the weakest man you are now the hardest man to ever live if you can do this if you can do this life is one big mind game and you're playing it with yourself is it true i don't care it got me through the hardest training starting out broken where most people quit i had just started wow and when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around that's what made me powerful and my body followed and three months later my stress fractures were healed by running on them just calcifying it just like i never had them since i'm 43 years old wow i ran 7 000 miles in 2007 haven't had a stress fracture since and i'm not saying to do that I'm just saying that when the mind and the body connect and you don't give yourself a way out the only way out for me at that time was death wow I'm going to be a navy seal or I'm going to die or I'm going to die trying yeah period and my body said roger that we're going to get you through this so when the mind gives it no way out your body says okay okay I believe you now I have to heal.

48:02I'm going to figure this out with you. Yes. We're going to do this. It's going to be the worst part of your life, but you're going to survive. We're going to survive. Wow. And as you hear in that 100-mile race I did, I started figuring out more and more and more and more about at the other end of suffering is a life that no one – and I'm not talking about go out there and kill yourself. Don't take these words and flip them and say, oh, my God. No. It can just be uncomfortable. I call it suffering. Don't physically injure yourself. Yes. Not saying that. And then be out for six months. That's right.

48:36That's no good. I'm not saying do what I did. I was in a spot that life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you. I had choices. I chose this path. And you're still choosing it. And I'm still choosing it. You can go back to that guy at any moment. Because I found out. I found out something with those stress fractures. I found out something through facing all these things. I found out a whole nother world, which is why I walk around with all my stuff in a black backpack. Wow. I found out a whole nother way, a whole nother way of, no matter how far you get in life, you have to be able to go back to scratch in your mind at a moment's notice.

49:22You can never get so far beyond scratch. What that means is when you accomplish something in life, if you're willing to go back to scratch and go back to that$7 a month place where I once lived and visit that place for a long period of time, if you were here, when you went back to scratch, you would now be here. Scratch is what makes you better. Scratch, friction, obstacles create growth. There's no friction when you're this far up in the game anymore. You think there is. When you achieve. That's right. When you change so much, the friction is minor. Because why? I'm sore. I'm going to get a massage today.

50:02I'm hungry. I'm going to eat today. The refrigerator is always full. So your comforts are now, so your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the$7 a month place. So you have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you're at now. I'm not saying stay there and stay there. visit visit it and then you raise your level take a day trip that's right yeah always take day trips yeah don't stay there that's right but take a day trip take a day trip so when you complete some massive obstacle and challenge whatever the adversity that you force upon yourself because these are all curated experiences for yourself right you're scratching constantly what happens now since this was five years ago you would just leave you want to take the metal you would just go on to the next.

50:54What happens now? Do you take a day to reflect, a moment, 10 minutes? Like how does the process work? And then how do you get back to visiting the$7 place you lived in? Now I don't have to go back and visit it. I don't have to think about it. It lives with me now. Every day of my life, that feeling that I had to go back and think about, I found a way to just have it. how did you it's constantly there i have a self-talk i have a self-talk it's called my cookie jar it's a constant reminder of david guy every day of my life i believe in quiet there's no growth outside of quiet the world's too noisy your mind needs quiet for you to find who you are people ask what's my purpose why am i here you're not going to find it nowadays unless you lock yourself in a quiet room in your mind and find it.

51:51It's too noisy. For me, I could be in a busy street in New York City, horns honking, and I'm walking around with like nothing. It's me and myself in a quiet spot. And when you are constantly reflecting on who you are, where you've been, the journey you've gone through, the journey you can continue going through, the feeling's always there. You don't allow the world to pull you so fast that you forget. You don't allow yourself to pull you so fast that you forget. It's not about staying in that moment. It's about you want to get to the point where that feeling follows you like breathing. Because it's part of your life, part of your DNA.

52:37But it's made. Like these calluses on my hands right now, they're made. They are now on my brain. This is now a part of me. It's a daily process, a part of me. And how I go back to a$7 a month place all the time is now I go out and I dig fire line. I'm a wildland firefighter. I don't need to do it. I'm a 43-year-old man. I work with 27-year-old kids. I'm a rookie. Every day I'm a rookie, it feels like. Why do you do it? That's why I do it, man. There's a story I'm going to tell you about why I do it. I have a good living now for me, where I'm at in my life. I was out on a fire in Colorado, and we were digging fire line on this, like 50%, like it was like on the side of a daggone mountain.

53:26Yeah. And we're trying to keep the fire from moving, and we're digging this fire line 14 inches, or my fault, 18 inches wide, three miles long, 12 of us digging. And it is the hardest work. You make$12 an hour. Wow. Okay? Nothing. and you set up your shop. Like when you're done digging, you just pretty much lay down, you go to sleep and you get up and you dig some more. Really? This happens for two weeks long. What are you digging? It's like a hole. You're digging a line. So you're trying to get down to a mineral source. So you're trying to get down to the earth. So that if that fire is moving, it can't burn dirt.

53:59Really? So you're removing fuels. Got it. So not only are you digging, you're cutting down trees. It's hard work. But the moral of the story is I'm 43. Don't need to do it at all. This is why I do it. You're making money. I'm making my, I have a good life. I don't need to do it. And everybody asked me why I do it. This is why. This 21-year-old kid was out there, and he wanted a pair of running shoes. So all he wanted was a pair of running shoes. 60, 70, 100 bucks, whatever, you know, easy for us, running shoes. He looked up at the mountain that we had been on for days, digging this fire line. and he said that would take me five or six hours of work to buy those shoes.

54:43He said I'm not going to buy them. It's the perspective of life. That perspective of life right there, that is the value that we lose. When things start to come so easy in life, it's the perspective that 21-year-old had. He looked at that mountain and thought, he looked at his hands, he looked at the amount of hours of pulling that Pulaski, that tool, and raking that ground and then cutting those trees and moving them. And that hours of work, he looked at his feet and said, these old shoes would do. It's that perspective in life that we lose. And that story to most people may not mean anything.

55:22It's that story I always want to have in my life. You cannot lose perspective of where you've come in life. Yeah. So true. We were in Guatemala, was it this year or last year? last year we were in guatemala last year we we support a charity called pencil promise that builds schools for kids who live in poverty and all around the world and every year i take a trip to just see where our efforts are being felt and being and being made these are the poorest places in guatemala laos and ghana places like they have nothing there's no schools they're little villages They live on dirt, huts, everything, right?

56:02And we go and we build these schools. We actually, the villages build them themselves. We just fund the experience and we empower them to do it so that they take ownership of it. Right. But I'll be there for a few days and watch these kids so happy with just like a pencil. Right. Just so happy to just like have their family around. And they'll go and they'll show us their huts and like they're just so happy to have community. and then I'll fly back and go through Beverly Hills right over here and I'll see like these mansions. You know, I live right next to it. And I'm just like, it gives me so much perspective of like, you don't need to have all these things to find peace and joy and connection and intimacy and all these other things that we want.

56:46You don't need these big mansions and to live in this nice place. You know, I like living here, but it's not like, it's perspective for me is what keeps me motivated as well to keep doing the right things to keep showing up keep working hard and i think it's right most of us miss that perspective in life we get so far away from reality so far and the reality is man when i was seven years old eight years old all i wanted was a 99 cent quarter pounder from hardy's i know right and that made me happy as some curly fries that's it man that's it yeah the thing is a lot of us have been um conditioned or some of us grew up with wealth or grew up with comfort right so we're conditioned that way and we're grew up expecting now that things should come a lot easier right that's a shame and we get frustrated when we don't get it right that's right quickly quickly yeah and i'm always talking about delayed gratification like the longer i can wait to receive gratification the more fulfilled I am.

57:45I'm a person. So when I got sick like I did, I actually had to quit this race called Badwater. Yeah. 135 miles? Yep, through Death Valley. It was 2014 when I got real, real bad. I pulled out of the race at mile 50. I went to the emergency room, and the docs were like, you know, we can't find this, we can't find that, we know what's wrong with you. When I got in that bed, so this is the crazy thing about gratification. Long term. I'm able to watch grass grow by finding out this. I sat there, couldn't run a quarter mile, couldn't get out of bed. The only thought I had in my mind, I pulled out of that race.

58:25I told myself, I'm going to go back to Badwater one day and rent it. I'm going to win the race. Haven't been back since. Haven't been back since. 2019, I'm not saying I'm going to win it. I'm just now in the shape to go back. Wow. I haven't run a 100-mile race since 2014. Wow. Because I've been that sick. I'm just now. Imagine the gratification I'm going to get by getting to the start line of that race. And what if I can win it? It'd be pretty sweet. Pretty sweet. Four or five years, yeah. It'd be pretty sweet. Imagine that, of having that kind of self-discipline that every day I wake up and having these setbacks where I can't even run a mile.

59:03Wow. But I'm thinking about running 135. 135. I can't run one mile, but I'm thinking about running 135. And with that process, guess what happens? Sooner or later, you can run 10 miles. It may take a year, but it gives you more and more hope that it's possible. And I'm at the point now where, guess what? It's right around the corner. Wow. Most people in that timeframe, in that mindset, I can't run anymore. it's over. No. It's just going to take a little bit longer. You have to turn the negative into a positive. Because at the end of it all, if you can sit back and wait, if you can wait 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 years, when you get to that point, when you finish, that's the feeling for 12 years.

59:52Let's just say 12 years to get there. That's what keeps you going is you got to feel, So I'm doing it for one second.

1:00:03Years of pain. For one second. One second. Think about it. You cross the finish line, it's over. One second. Most people do that, and the one second isn't what they thought it would be, and then they're pissed and upset, and they keep going on to the next because they never reflect back on what they did. It's not the one second. It's the 12 years. Yeah. It's the 12 years that I want. It's not the race. It's the 12 years why you did it. It's not the winning. It's not the winning. It's not what place you got. No. But most of us focus on, oh, I got to win this. That's right. If I don't, I'm going to be upset.

1:00:46I would achieve all my athletic goals for years and then 10 minutes later be the angriest person in the world. So angry and frustrated. I'm nasty with people. And I would delay my gratification for years to achieve what I wanted. That's right. And I never understood that either. Being a perfectionist is the worst thing that can happen to a person. When I lost that 106 pounds in like two and a half months, whatever it took me, that was the biggest trophy of my entire life. I didn't care if I graduated Navy SEAL training. I didn't care. What I just accomplished in that time frame is massive. Yeah.

1:01:20There was no, like, and what's funny about this, we talk about mental toughness nowadays. It's like the biggest crave. When I grew up, it was just suck it up. Yeah. It was just make it happen. Yeah. You had to figure out. It was called figure it out, man. And all these nuggets that I gained along the way, that's what it was about. It went about the trident. It went about all those daggone medals. It wasn't about any of that. And that's why I hate even talking about being a SEAL, you know. I miss the stories. What I talk about, it didn't define me. The journey getting there was harder than going through it.

1:01:57So that's the whole thing about life, man. It's that journey that makes you who you are. Yeah, and as opposed to focusing on did I win or not, what did I gain from the last 12 years? Right, exactly. And so when you finish now, what do you think about? How long do you reflect back on the effort it took to accomplish that race? A long time. What's it? A long time. Weeks, years. years. You'll reflect on it. I reflect back now. There's times now where I will reflect back on my first 100-mile race. It's still today. And it'll give me the same exact feeling. Because what I did in that first race, when I was under-trained, I did it on four days' notice.

1:02:39I hadn't run more than, I think, 20 miles the whole year. And I did it to raise money for this foundation, to try to get in the bad water. What I had to pull out of myself, on that last, that's where that book, Living with the Seal, kind of originated. Jesse Isler saw me at this race. He was racing too. Yeah, but he did it as a team. Right, you did it alone. I did it alone. Yeah, right. And that's what I talk with people about, man. I spent so much time, people always like, why do you run so much? You know, you try to get in shape. No, the things I do in life, most of life, you're alone. You may have a whole support crew around you, but up here, you're alone.

1:03:20Most of the stuff I do, I'm training for that one, those moments. Those moments when I was at mile 70 and I had 30 more miles to go and I had, I crapped up my back and peed and blood down my leg and I had 30 miles to go. There's only so much someone cheering and can do for you. Right. When you start to dive back in the cellar of your mind and you're pulling out all these, all these tactics, all these mental tactics to get through this 30 miles when you're in the worst shape of your life and no one's coming to save you and you get through that. I want to go back there. Like when I got doing that race, I laid in the tub and my ex-wife helped me get up the stairs and I'm laying in this tub and Coca-Cola is coming out of me.

1:04:03Just looks like dirt. You know, she's a nurse and she's like, she's freaking out and she puts the shower on me and I'm looking at her and all I want to do is call the race director up of Bawar and say, I qualify for the race. And she's thinking, we got to go to the hospital. So she's calling my mom and my mom has a doctor friend of hers who's over and they're freaking out. And I said, everybody, just shut up. Wow. Shut up. I'm in the worst pain of my entire life. And no one would ever understand this. No one. When you've gone that deep inside yourself and all those feelings of pain that I had, I was in the worst pain of my life.

1:04:40Ever. And some people think, man, you're just crazy. No, when you've done that and you figured out so much on your own and all that pain and discomfort I had in that tub laying there, passing out, everything was confirmation of what I just figured out. I just figured out the code. I figured out a code, a code that many people aren't looking for. And I didn't want it to be numb. I want that feeling. This was confirmation. This was like a scientist's notes. The notes were here. The notes were all this feeling. It was a confirmation. And no one at that time could understand what I'd just done. I cracked the code to human potential in myself.

1:05:32And I was still like, oh my God, this is unbelievable what I just did. so it's that quiet place it's that place by yourself it's those hours and years and decades by yourself in the grip of life when life has you by the throat and choking you out and you're sitting there calm because you're trying to figure it out you're not panicking you're not quitting you're not throwing in the towel you're saying there's a way around this and when you figure it out, when life has you gripped in advice and you can figure that out, that's when you overcome. That's when you overcome. And that's why that one moment for me in that tub, I didn't want anyone to take away from it.

1:06:18Wow. This is called the three truths. I ask this question to everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. Imagine it is your last day and you get to pick the day whenever you want. You get to live as long as you want. You pick the day, but it's time for your body to go, right? You've created everything you want to create. You've been at 99 percentile of potential for as long as you can live. You've done it all. You've checked off the list that everything that God says that you were supposed to do, it's happened. Right. Written the books, done everything you want to do, done. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your written word and videos and audio stuff that's out in the world, you've got to take it with you.

1:07:01but you get to write down on a piece of paper the three things you know to be true about all of your experiences and this is what you would leave behind. The three lessons or what I like to call the three truths. What would you say are your three truths? The first one is you are your own hero. You are your own leader. You are your own master. And that is a big one because we idolize so many people and we want to be them. We want to be someone else. And in doing that, you lose all the potential of who you are. You mimic. You be them. You are them. You become them. And you lose you. And we look up to so many people in this world who will let us down.

1:07:46We're humans. I'm going to let you down. You're going to let somebody down. If you put them on a pedestal, you then lose time when that person comes up and lets you down. You must hold yourself accountable and being your own hero, That's what that does. You make yourself so totally accountable for who you are. You focus on you and only on you to become the best person you could be for others. Because we leave a lot on the table not searching who we are. And then therefore, you die not knowing your greatest potential. That's one. The next one I would say is the biggest one I would say is never pick the easy road.

1:08:31Never. Never. And it always goes back to kind of the hero mentality. Never pick the easy road. Ever in your life. That is the one road that is doom. It is doom. If you want something like six minute abs, all these different things, if you want it so fast, you may achieve what you wanted. But you want the permanent fix the permanent fix comes from the hard road the hard road gives you permanent results the easy road gives you the quick fix you will go back to where you started on the easy route that hard route is so permanent that it ends up callusing you everywhere everywhere you keep a six-pack forever you keep it because you know the work that goes into it yeah and the last one is when you get to where you want to go in life when you finally get there you finally reach that point and you're there and you're happiest realize this you're not there yet when you get that feeling that you arrived be afraid Right.

1:09:51Be truly afraid because now you start to do this. Slowly die. Slowly die. Either you're getting better or you're getting worse. You're not staying the same. Yeah. So when you get to where you think the journey has ended and you're sitting back and you're like, I arrived. I'm on Mount Everest. I climbed 29, 0, 29. Yeah. The best thing to do is fall back down that damn mountain as fast as you can and start climbing. Find the next climb. Find the next climb. Yeah. Oh, man. I've got to sign up for another event. That's it? Sign up for another endurance event. That's it. Just kidding. Where can we connect with you online?

1:10:33Where do you like to, when you spend five minutes a month, where is that space? My social media, whether it be Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, it's all, it's just David Goggins, at David Goggins. Cool. David Goggins. Your videos on Instagram are great. You should post more. or have someone on your team post more because they're awesome. Well, they're all me. They're all you. Yeah, so I have no team. It's me and my fiance. There is no team. She'll be in the car. She'll be on a mountaintop. She'll be somewhere. It's all my material. It's all who I am. That's why I post once a week. Once a week right now?

1:11:07Once a week. Every Monday, you'll get a post. There you go. That's it. It's some video that's going to inspire you to be like, okay, I need to do at least five more minutes of working out, something at least. That's it. Well, I want to acknowledge you, David, for your intensity, your work ethic, your passion, and also your pure, real heart. Because just meeting you for the first time, walking together, just like I can tell how real you are. And you're just a no BS type of guy. The adversity that you've overcome is crazy. Obviously, people have overcome more than you, me, and lots of people in the world.

1:11:46but what you had to overcome physically and psychologically and emotionally is unbelievable. And to see that you weren't a statistic, and instead you chose every single day to make a decision to be more than that is really inspiring. And I know this is gonna impact and inspire a lot of people. So I acknowledge you for your heart and for inspiring me. I thought I worked out hard, but this is like, I feel like I'm doing nothing with my life. So you're gonna inspire me to continue to make bigger commitments and longer commitments moving forward now. So I appreciate everything you do, man. And I'm excited about getting this out there.

1:12:20You're welcome. My final question is, what's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is this. It's not a definition, it's an example. This is greatness, true greatness. Let's say that I'm the greatest tennis player of all time. Okay, let's say that. I hate tennis. I must say I'm the greatest tennis player of all time. And I did 22 years. I've run all the Grand Slams. I have all the – I beat Roger Federer. I am the best ever. And we're having an interview, and you're talking about my greatness, what I achieved. Now I'm retired. Don't play tennis anymore. Haven't touched a racket in years.

1:13:06And you're making me go back through my life. You're kissing my butt about how great I am. And I'm answering your questions. Every question I'm answering it. I'm with you. But in the back of my mind, all I'm thinking about is all the times I could have won those matches that I lost by not bringing my best mindset. You're haunted by all the opportunities that you missed by not bringing your best at that time. When you could have won, but you didn't win because you allowed life to interfere with that one shot. When you're sitting there getting ready to serve for the match and your mind is not thinking about where that ball place needs to be, but thinking about your family this or this at work or that at work.

1:13:54That's greatness. Greatness is your recall on every single shot that you missed throughout a 20-some year career. Every shot. You can go back and say, I was here. This person was in the red shirt there. Greatness is being so aware of the time of life in the second that went by, and you can recall like it was yesterday. Greatness is being able to go back there, not making that same mistake again and being haunted by it. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links.

1:14:36And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

1:15:14And if no one has told you today, I wanna remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.