Tom: Hey everybody, you are about to watch
an amazing episode of Impact Theory with David Goggins. I love this episode more than I can tell you. I absolutely am blown away by David Goggins
himself, but I want to give a full disclaimer. First of all, this man swears a lot, and when
I say that, you know it's an issue, so if you have kids around you, now would be the
time to get them out, also his world view is ultra hardcore. I'm not recommending that everybody do what
he does, which is pretty extreme, but I just wanted to give everybody a full warning ahead
of time, but I think this man in incredible, but let it be said, you have been warned,
and now, welcome to Impact Theory with David Goggins. Hey everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. You are here, my friends, because you believe
that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not
that same as actually doing something with it, so our goal with this show, and company,
is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your
dreams. All right, today's guest is wildly considered
to be the toughest man on the planet, and one of the greatest endurance athletes of
all time, but if you're tempted to dismiss him as the product of amazing genetics, great
parenting, or even performance enhancing drugs, think again. He grew up in an abusive household, spent
his high school years as one of only a small number of black kids in a tiny Indiana town,
roughly 20 miles from where the KKK was founded, he had to endure relentless bullying, and
he barely managed to graduate with a 1.6 GPA. He struggled with obesity twice in his life,
weighing in at over 300 pounds, had severe allergies, sickle cell trait, and a congenital
heart disease that left him with a hole in his heart the size of a poker chip. He grew up feeling soft and weak, with no
self esteem, but despite all of that, one day he decided he was going to stop saying,
"Woe is me," and start kicking some ass. That set him on a path to transforming himself
into the hardest man alive. Did he do it? Well, he's the only member of the US Armed
forces to complete SEAL training, the US Army Ranger's school, and the Air Force Tactical
Air Controller Training. He's completed the infamous destroyer of men,
known as Hell Week, three times, including two in a single year, and one that he started
and finished with multiple stress fractures and a hernia. He served in combat in Iraq, was the body
guard for the Iraqi Prime Minister, he once held the Guinness World Record for most pull-ups
in 24 hours, at 4,030, he's run eight consecutive 100 mile races, over eight back to back weekends. He ran over 7,000 miles in a single year,
and that is the equivalent of running 267 marathons. I think it is abundantly clear that this man
is a self-made beast, so please help me in welcoming the man who once ran an ultra-marathon
with pneumonia, the king of no excuses, David Goggins. Thank you so much for coming on. David: Thanks for having me. Tom: My pleasure, I assure you. The things you've done are absolutely incredible,
but what I find fascinating is, if you just read your litany of things that you've accomplished,
you do just assume, oh you must be really gifted. You're shredded, you're in great shape, but
when you see the before picture it's pretty startling. David: Right. Tom: So what was that moment like, looking
in the mirror the day you decide, "Wait, enough is enough." David: Well it was pretty crazy for me. It took a while to get to that point, where
enough was enough. What happened, I came home one night from
work, spraying for cockroaches, and long story short I turned on the Discovery Channel, I
saw some guys going through Navy SEAL training, and they're going through Hell Week, and they're
getting their ass just beat. In and out of the water, guys ringing the
bell, they're suffering, and I was weighing like 297 pounds, and I had to make a change
in my life. I was at an all time low, and I wasn't going
anywhere, and I was exactly what everybody said I was gonna be, which was nothing, so
I had to make a change. Tom: What was it about suffering that ... That's
really interesting, and I actually get it, but I want to hear you explain it, why suffering
was the thing that triggered that thought. David: For me, growing up, I came from a horrible
background, I got called "nigger" every day of my life growing up, lived in a small town. The Klan Headquarters, at that time, was about
20 minutes from where I lived. One of the high-ups in the KKK's son sat behind
me in two classes, so he called me "nigger" all the time. Got my first car, they spray paint "nigger
we're gonna kill you" on it. So I was just an insecure, scared kid, and
the only way I could find myself was through putting myself through the worst thing possible. Tom: How'd you have the insight though? Like that's so counterintuitive, like most
people, that's precisely what they're trying to get away from. David: Right. Tom: So what was it in you, at that moment,
you're overweight, you've been bullied essentially your entire life up to that point, what makes
you go, "All right motherfucker," like, "That's what I've got to do?" David: Well, no one was helping me out, so
my Dad made my Mom kind of irregular, so she worked three jobs, went to college full time,
so she was never around. One time this person drew a picture of me
and said, "We're gonna kill you nigger," on my Spanish notebook, and I took it to my principal,
and my principal said, "They spelled 'nigger' 'niger'." That was the best advice they could give me,
so long story short, what I realized was no one was here to help me. The feeling I had every morning, I started
shaving my head when I was 16 years old, and the feeling I had every morning, I looked
in the mirror, was horrible, and I didn't want to feel like that anymore. And how I felt was like a kid going nowhere,
a kid that was scared, and most kids will accept that and look for help, but the best
thing that happened to me, no one helped me, no one felt sorry for me, no one looked at
me and, like this day and age, they'll tell everybody, "Stop picking on this person,"
back then they didn't care. The KKK marched in our Fourth of July parades. They had to stay 100 yards back, but they
marched in it. Tom: Wow. David: That's how this town was, and my Mom
cared about me, but my Dad took our soul. She did the best she could. I had to figure out, I wasn't gonna be a punk
kid all my life, so the only way I could turn around was to suffer. I had to build calluses in my brain the same
way I built calluses on my hands, so I broke the Guinness World Record for most pull-ups
a long time ago, but I failed at it twice, and I did 67,000 pull-ups in trying to break
this record, so to do 4,030 pull-ups, I had to do 67,000 for training for that. Tom: Wow. David: So what I realized is, for me to become
the man I wanted to become, I saw myself as the weakest person God ever created, but I
never blamed God for anything he did to me, so I wanted to change that to be the hardest
man ever created. Am I that? I don't know, but you had to have a goal,
and my goal, when I was sitting there, not going to school, being bullied, having no
self esteem, my goal was, the only person that's gonna turn this person around is me. The only way I can turn it around is put myself
through the worst things possible a human being can ever endure, and that would be the
only way that I can build this brain to handle anything that comes in front of it. Callusing my mind through pain and suffering. Tom: That's so powerful. It's such an amazing insight. Obviously listening to some of the stuff that
you're talking about, and one thing that you say often is, it's hard to stay hard, or get
hard when you're living in, you even said at one point, in a big mansion in Beverly
Hills, right? I was sitting there thinking you're absolutely
right, but what I find so interesting is how we, as a species, run from pain, we run from
suffering, and one of the reasons I've talked about this before, but one of the reasons
my wife and I don't have kids is I firmly believe that you need something that is brutal,
is difficult, is hardship, it knocks you off center, it makes you feel bad, because in
the process of rebuilding, and clawing back from that, climbing up, then you can become
something. But unless you've been tested, unless you've
gone thought the ringer, you've got no hope, so how do you take somebody that you love
and force them through that? And I think that what you've done is maybe
the ultimate expression of that, which is how do you put yourself through it? You didn't have to do any of that. So, in the end, what would your advice be
to that 16 year old kid, who's staring in the mirror, does not like what he sees, but
is still running from adversity? David: My biggest advice to him is that, first
of all, he won't like what I say to him, because I'm gonna say the exact opposite of what the
world, today's world, is saying. So we read a bunch of books nowadays, as humans
we want to find out how to be someone else. What we don't do is we don't go inside, so
literally turn yourself inside out, read the book that's in ...
Like we're writing a book every day of our lives, but we never read that book, so what
I would challenge this young man, or young woman to do is you have to look inside of
yourself to see what you really want. What are you passionate about? We use these words, and these little phrases
of, "Only the strong survive," and all this other crap. They're all just fucking words. I get so tired of hearing people just talking. Like right now, someone may think, "Goggins
just talking," you don't know me, so when I speak, I speak from passion, I speak from
experience, I speak from suffering. I have to tel this young man or woman that
the only way, I believe, and this is my experience in life, the only way you're ever going to
get to the other side of this journey is you have got to suffer to grow. To grow you must suffer. Some people get it and some people don't,
but they have to see what their journey is to start their journey. Several people live to be 100 years old, they
have great lives, and they have great kids, their kids go to college, and all sorts of
other stuff, but somewhere in their life there was a point where they had a decision to make,
they can go left or right on this path. Left was the easy route, right was the hard
route, a lot of people take the easy route, and they had a good life that way, but the
better life was going to the right side. And you may have 20 years of pain and suffering
to get past it, but a lot of us die, never truly starting our journey, and I would tell
this young person, "You gotta start your journey. It may suck, but it will come out the other
side [we are coasting 00:11:24]." Tom: I want to go back to what you were saying
about we write our own book every day, but we actually don't take the time to read it. As you were saying that here's what I was
thinking, tell me if this is where you were going, that basically you're writing down
these things that are becoming your identity, about being weak, about avoiding suffering,
about being soft essentially, all the things by default that are in that camp, and as you
were saying that I was imagining you taking that pen and beginning to write your own story,
and writing things that you knew, looking back on, that you would be proud of. David: Right. Tom: Like going through the military and doing
the hardest training, some of the ultra-endurance stuff that you've done, on broken feet, which
is so crazy, in fact ... One, is that what you meant by writing the story? David: What I meant by that is like every
day we're seeing who we are as people. When I was growing up I lied for people to
accept me, because I didn't accept myself, so I would make up stories so that you would
accept me into your world. Everything that I did was for someone else
to like me. It wasn't until I started reading my own book
about how pathetic I was as a human being, I could blame my Dad, I could blame kids at
school, I could blame having health issues, ADD, my Mom not being around, great mom, but
she was doing her thing. I could blame a lot of people, and that's
the book I was reading, and I put it off on everybody else. It wasn't until I said, "You know what, for
me to fix this, I gotta read what the fuck is wrong with David Goggins," not blame anybody,
read my book, and say, "Okay, I'm afraid of my shadow, how can I overcome that? Go in the military, get your ass kicked, do
things you hate to do, be uncomfortable every fucking day of your life, roger that." "I'm not the smartest kid in the world, okay." Instead of somebody saying, "Oh, no, you're
smart. Don't say that to yourself." I said to myself, "No, I'm a dumb motherfucker. Okay, roger that. How do you get smarter? Educate yourself." So the things that we run from, we running
from the truth. We're running from the truth man, so the only
way I became successful was going toward the truth. As painful, and as brutal as it is, it changed
me. It allowed me to become, in my own right,
who I am today. Tom: One of the most powerful things I think
anybody can do ... I used to struggle with self esteem, and my thing was I focused on
being smart and I just wasn't that smart, I focused on being right and I was wrong a
lot, and so it created this weird thing in my life where I would constantly try to put
myself around people who were less and less intelligent so that I could feel good about
myself, and the bad news is that's a really good strategy for that. Being around people that were less intelligent
than me really made me feel good. I felt good about myself, but I literally
referred to myself at the time as the kind of remedial jobs because those were the only
obs that I could really shine at. David: Right. Tom: And it wasn't until I realized I can
actually change what I build my self esteem around, and I can start building myself around,
instead of being right or being smart, I can build myself around being a learner, and being
willing to admit when I'm wrong, and so the thing that I began to build my self esteem
around was being willing and able to stare at my inadequacies. What you said, I fully understand ... This
interview is gonna be, you warned me ahead of time, this interview is gonna be bifurcating,
people are gonna love it, and some people are gonna hate it, but dude, I so believe
in the notion of looking at yourself, and if you are pathetic, owning it, and saying
... 'Cause my thing is that you can change it, right? Which you have proven in no uncertain terms. David: That's it. Tom: But if you don't admit it, you're never
gonna be on the path to changing it. David: Exactly. Tom: Walk us through, because this is one
of those crazy stories, I can't imagine how you pulled this off, your first ultra-marathon,
which you got into like really fast, and why you did it, 'cause I think that's incredible. David: The first ultra-marathon wasn't smart
at all, at all. Basically, what happened was, I was at military
Free Fall School with Morgan Lutrell. Marcus lutrell, if you guys don't know, was
the lone survivor, was the guy, was in a bad OP that went bad, he was the only Navy SEAL
that lived, long story short, gotta get the book "Lone Survivor," great story. Morgan is Marcus Lutrell's twin brother, and
I was there with Marcus. What happened was, myself and Morgan were
in Free Fall School, at the same exact time, Marcus was in the worst incident in SEAL history,
so I knew that Marcus might be dead. He wasn't dead, everybody else was dead, so
I actually told Morgan, "Hey man, your brother was in a bad incident. I don't know if he's alive, I don't know what's
going on." Long story short, Marcus is alive and I go
on to want to raise money for families. All these guys died, they all had kids, I
want to raise money for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. It's a foundation where 100% tuition goes
to these kids to go to college, full tuition, whatever. So I found this great foundation, I'm gonna
raise money for it, so I say, "You know what? I have to Google something that's evil, something
very hard." I knew nothing about ultra-marathons, I hadn't
even run a marathon. I knew nothing about this world. So I Googled the top ten hardest races in
the world, and what comes up is a Badwater 135. It's 135 mile race through Death Valley in
the summertime. I thought it was a stage race. I thought it was a race where you run like
20 miles, set up camp, barbecue outside, and then go run some more the next day, so I called
the race director up at the race and said, "Hey Chris," his name is Chris Kostman, "I
want to do your race." So we had a long conversation, I was much
heavier then, and I hadn't put running shoes on in over a year. Tom: How heavy are you at this point? David: I'm around between 240 to 270. Tom: Whoa. David: I'm in there, I'm in that range. My weight has varied a lot through the SEAL
teams, and out of the SEAL team, so I was a heavy guy, but the long and short of it
all was I hadn't put running shoes on in over a year. I was a big time power lifter, I lifted weights
heavy, that's what I did. I got back home from Iraq, went straight to
Free Fall School, and then this happened, so I call Chris Kostman up on a Wednesday,
he says, "Look man, the only way you can qualify for my race is to run 100 miles at one time,
in 24 hours or less." There happened to be a race that Saturday,
so four days later, and he said, "If you qualify, by running 100 miles or less in 24 hours,
I will consider you in my race." I'm gonna cut to the chase, I signed up for
this race, it was called the San Diego 1 Day, where you run around a one mile track for
24 hours to see how many miles you can get. My goal was 100 miles. I got to mile 70 and I cleared 70 miles in
like 12, 13 hours, pretty quickly, but I was done. My feet were broken, I was stress fractures,
shin splints, muscles were tearing, I was in bad shape. I was eating Ritz crackers and drinking Myoplex,
that's all I had, no water, didn't know what the hell I was doing out there, had on some
tube socks, it was just ridiculous, it was a clown show. I sat down at mile 70, and at this time I
was married, and I look at my wife, and I was like, "I'm messed up bad." I literally start to turn white, and when
a black guy turns white you're pretty fucked up. So here I am, I'm all fucked up in this chair,
I'm at mile 70, they got 30 fucking miles to go, I'm jacked up, I gotta go to the bathroom,
and the bathroom's like 20 feet from me, it's a port-a-potty, I can't get out of the fucking
chair, so I'm peeing blood down my leg, pooping up my fucking back, and I got 30 miles to
go, and I can't stand up 'cause my blood pressure's all messed up, I had been in three Hell Weeks,
Ranger School, overcome so many obstacles in my life, this last 30 miles of this race
is when I realized a human being is not so human anymore. We have the ability to go in such a space,
if you're willing to suffer, and I mean suffer, your brain and your body, once connected together,
can do anything, and this 30 miles was the life changing moment. I was out of it, I was in the worst pain in
my entire life, I was, to me, on the brink of death, and I was able to chunk this 30
damn miles into small pieces. I was so driven, I'm not gonna say motivated
'cause motivation's crap, motivation comes and goes, when you're driven, whatever's in
front of you will get destroyed. So I sat in this chair, and I was so driven
to succeed in this race, and at this time, everybody goes, "Were you thinking about the
guys that died," and I'm not gonna lie to you, I wasn't. This became a personal thing. This became me against this race, me against
the kids that called me nigger, me against me. It just became something that I took so violently
personal, and I broke this thing down into small pieces, I said, "Okay, I gotta get nutrition,
I gotta be able to stand up before I can get off this curb and get off this chair and be
able to go 30 miles." So I went through all these small steps and
I was able to stand up, and then from standing up I was literally walking around with my
wife at the time, and she goes, "You're not gonna make the time." She goes, "I mean you're walking like 30 some
minute miles." I got to my 81, and the second she said that
I'm not gonna make the time, I ran the last 19 miles, nonstop, and I could show you right
now, when we get done with this, matter of fact, I'm want to show you right now, this
was years ago, and I had to put compression tape on my ankle. Tom: Whoa. David: So this was years ago. I had literally the size of half dollars,
I had to get compression tape, and I taped up my ankles, and I taped up my feet, and
that's how I got through that race. Tom: Was it like a hematoma, I mean what was
happening? David: What had happened was, my shins hurt
so bad from having stress fractures, that the only way I could continue on was I taped
it so I wasn't doing the flexor motion that activates your shins, so I taped my ankles,
and my shins up, and I got that because of my third Hell Week, they weren't gonna let
me go back through training anymore, so I literally went through all the BUDs, my last
SEAL training, with stress fractures and shin splints, and how I did it was I would tape
my ankles all the way up to my calf every morning, so for the first hour the pain was
excruciating, but what happened is my feet would go numb. I did that every single day for six months. Tom: Whoa! David: And that's how I got through my third
Hell Week, 'cause I was so broken from the first two that the commander said, "Hey, the
CO said this is your last time we're sending you through," so that's how I got the idea
to do that, and people may listen to this and say, "This guy is sadistic, he's crazy." No, if you know how I came up, you realize
I was just a scared kid that found drive and passion to be something much better than what
he thought he was. That's all it is. Tom: God, I'm gonna ask the question, I don't
know if you have a good answer for this, I don't know if there is a good answer for this,
but even I want to know, how do you find and cultivate that drive? Like there is a kid right now watching this
man, and they feel like you felt, they feel lost, alone, broken, stupid, lazy, like they're
never going to amount to anything, and what you're talking about is the closest thing
to a fucking superpower that this kid has ever heard, and right now he is on the edge
of his seat. How does he like force himself to take that
first step? David: I'm very fortunate that I grew up in
a time when there was no phones, and there was no social media, and I suggest, yes I'm
on social media on a very limited basis, because I have a story to tell, and it's a great platform,
use it as a platform, don't use it as your life. My biggest advice to get everybody in the
world is, like I say, we live in an external world, everything is, you gotta see it, touch
it, it's external, if you can, for the rest of your life, live inside of yourself, stop
listening to people who are calling you fat, gay, transsexual, nigger, everything that
is makes no sense, all these insecure people putting their insecurities on you, you gotta
flush it out. You gotta just be whoever the hell God, or
whoever the hell you believe in, if you believe in nothing but yourself, I don't care what
it is, you gotta take everything and throw it away. You have to believe in one thing, and that
is yourself. I'm not saying don't believe in God, or what
you believe in, but right now, for you to find greatness in yourself, you're not gonna
find it by looking in a book, or by even hearing me. I may give you the spark, but you've got to
go inside yourself to find it, and that means you gotta be quiet. Shut the fuck up, go in a room, stop talking,
search your soul, search your mind, search your abilities and you'll find it. But if you're not looking for it you won't
find it, so you gotta go start your journey, and the journey starts with you finding why
the hell am I here on this planet Earth? Why am I here? If you don't know that you will live the rest
of your life searching, always asking the question "why." Tom: On that last 19 miles? David: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Tom: Feet are broken, ankles are taped, shin
splints, stress fractures, what are the words that are going through your mind? Are you in the cookie jar? David: I'm deep in the cookie jar, and the
cookie jar is something that I've made up of all the failures of my life, all the things
that I failed and I went back, I failed and I went back, and I finally succeeded, all
the things that kicked my ass, I put them all in the cookie jar, 'cause at times of
hell, even the hardest men, in times of suffering what we do is we forget how hard we really
are, 'cause that's what suffering is, suffering's a test, that's all it is. Suffering is the true test of life, and so
that cookie jar travels in my brain, so whenever I get put in a situation where I have poopy
pants, the woe is me mentality of, "Oh my God, life sucks," I take the one second decision,
I step out of my life for one second, go in the cookie jar, pull up, "Oh, motherfucker
you were in three Hell Weeks and finished two. One of those Hell Weeks a guy died because
it was so bad. Oh, you are a motherfucking badass. You are!" I put it back in the cookie jar and I remember
who the fuck I really am. I'm not the kid that was called nigger, I'm
to the scared kid, this is who I am. It's a reminder of who your truly are at the
core of yourself. But what I was saying to myself the whole
time on that track, and this is what I say to myself, self talk and visualization are
two keys to my success, I believed, for that last 19 miles, I was indestructible, 'cause
I took my self in that chair, crapping up my back, peeing blood down my leg, shin splints,
stress fractures, I used all that for motivation versus negativity, I used it for motivation. I said to myself, "Who on this fucking Earth
would still be going right now? You are. You are. You gotta be the hardest motherfucker on the
planet." Is it true? I don't give a fuck. At that time it got me to the finish line
of that fucking race. I believed it. I believe it today. I believed it enough to where my body said,
"He's not gonna stop." I took all the negative things, "I need to
go to the hospital, this, and that," and I used it. "Who the hell could even get out of that chair? You did. Who the hell would even think about taping
stress fractures up? You did." All those things I used for motivation. Tom: I'm gonna use them for motivation. I mean that's so fucking powerful. Talk to me about the dark side. It's something that I'm sure you take a lot
of heat for, it's something that I think a lot about, I believe people should intentionally
be motivated by beauty and rage, and so many people are afraid of the negative. What power have you found in the darkness? David: First off, before I answer that question
I want to say everybody listening to this, I'm the happiest man on the planet, so people
may take this as so many people do, we live in a very weakened society, so when they hear
a throw back guy like me, from back in the ancient days of Granimals, they often think,
"This guy is just whatever," so if you think that I'm some unhappy guy, you're wrong. Having lived the life I've lived, and seeing
the other side, not being afraid to attack what was in front of me has made me happy. Tom: Say that again. In fact, let me make sure I understood it. Getting to the point where you're not afraid
to face the thing on the other side of the door that wants to attack you has made you
happy. David: Right. Tom: That's really powerful, I hope people
heard that. David: Right. It made me very happy. So basically, I just don't walk around with
a doggone smile on my face all the damn time, so Merry Christmas. But basically, what the dark side is, is we
all have a cookie jar, and we all have a jar of fuck. Tom: That's it's official name. David: It's a jar of fuck man, where shit
just ain't going right. In Hell Week, what they do in Hell Week, okay,
this is where I really went to the dark side. What they do in Hell Week is they design Hell
Week to find your flaws, and they do a really good job of that. It's 130 hours of continuous training, you
may get two hours of sleep, and they beat the shit out of you, and find everything wrong
with your mentality, and then they start Hell Week, and that's the beauty of it. For me, I'm not some [naturally 00:30:24]
God given guy, I don't have a great bit of talent in anything, so what got me through
horrible times was the dark side. My name is David Goggins, I created Goggins,
Goggins is the guy that can take anything that you put in front of him. You want to break my motherfucking legs so
be it. I have a way of going to a place, like I did
in that race, where all the pain and suffering that they put on top of me in Hell Week, I
will reverse that pain and suffering and I will take your soul. So ever instructor that put me through BUDs,
my job, what drove me was I wanted you to go home that night, after you beat the living
shit out of me, and I smiled in your face, and I wanted you to feel worse than I did,
and you were going home to a nice, warm bed, with your wife, or your kids, and a nice meal,
and I was still out there in the grip, suffering for another 100 hours. I wanted you to think about me, knowing that
I'm comfortable being very un-fucking-comfortable. And I want you to think about when you went
through fucking Hell Week, how uncomfortable you were, and how bad you wanted to quit,
knowing I'm not thinking that fucking way. So the dark side is something that I designed,
it's an evil place I can go that very few things can hurt me. I use the hurt you're trying to put on me,
I flip it upside down, and use it, you trying to use it for kryptonite, no, it's power pillage
for me, I'm using it for strength. I just flip negative into positive, that's
all it is. Tom: I heard you doing an interview one time,
and the person was trying to see the sort of empowerment, or the beauty in that, and
you were like, "No, no, no, it's darkness." I'm like utterly fascinated with comic books,
and one of the reasons that I'm so intrigued by Batman is he literally uses the darkness,
the sickness that he has over what happened to him and his family to propel him forward
for decades to keep driving, and most people are broken by the bad things that happen to
them, but every now and then there's a Goggins, there's somebody who knows how to use that
power to ... Understands how, as a human being, it fucking
drives you. Revenge is powerful, like to be able to tap
into that, in a way that's controlled. David: That's right. Tom: But to be able to bring it in, to use
it, to feel the energy, there is an intoxication to rage, and I don't think people are honest
about it when they talk about it. There's a fucking intoxication to that, and
if you can tap into it, and leverage it, not get lost to it, which is why I know you always
caveat it saying, "Look, I'm a fucking happy guy, like that's not what we're talking about
right now, but I'm a happy guy," so you can't get overtaken by it, but it's there, and it
is so fucking powerful. David: It's real. That's why when you said, before this whole
things started, you said I can be me. The second you said I could cuss and be me,
and cussing, people say, "You cuss all the fucking time, why?" Well, I hate to say it, the best way for me
to get how I feel across. I can't sit here and say, "You know, yeah,
I went through Hell Week and it was really hard." No. That motherfucker takes your damn soul, rips
it inside out, and then they say, now we're going to fucking start. It allows me to express where I was at, at
a point in my life. If I don't give you all of me, why the hell
am I here? Why? How will you learn from me, people take so
much offense to me, you will never learn from people if we always tap dance around the truth. Tom: Oh God, I love that. David: We tap dance around the truth by finding
the right words so I don't hurt you 'cause you have thin skin. No. Tighten up people, it's okay, trust me, it's
okay. You might be called nigger one day, it's okay. You might be called some Jewish word, or some
faggot or gay word, it's okay, let them call you that. What are you gonna do now? They don't own your life. How are you gonna control that now? How are you gonna flip it upside down and
say, "Roger that. Now I'm gonna harness this shit, and you'll
read about me years from now." How? That's the question, how are you gonna do
that? Thicken your skin, become more of a human
being, don't be afraid of the reflection in the mirror, 'cause that's all you can be afraid
of, once you overcome that reflection in the mirror, you've done it. Tom: I love that man. You once said that if you were growing up
in this generation, that you would have a field day, because you would take their souls. What did you mean by that? David: The younger generation quits, not everybody,
people get their butt hurt, so not everybody, most of this generation quits the second they
get talked to. "You did this wrong, or you did this wrong,"
or they get yelled at. It's so easy to be great nowadays, 'cause
everybody else, most people are weak. This is a softened generation, so if you have
any mental toughness, any ability, if you have any fraction of self discipline, the
ability to not want to do it but still do it. People have a hard thing to understand. I hate to run, and what makes me so crazy,
it doesn't anymore, people go, "Well why do you run if you hate it?" What are you talking about? I don't want to take showers and eat either,
I hate that too, that's life man, and it wasn't until I changed that mentality that I became
somebody. I hated going to school, so guess what, I
was dumb as shit. One plus one is two. But if you can get through to doing things
that you hate to do, on the other side is greatness. That's what people don't understand. By me running, I'm callusing my mind. I'm not training for a race, I'm training
for life. I'm training for that time when I get that
two 'o clock in the morning cal that my Mom is dead, or something happens tragic in life,
I don't fall apart. I'm training my mind, and my body, and my
spirit so it's all one, so I can handle what life is gonna throw at me, because the life
I've lived, it throws a whole bunch at you, and if you're not physically and mentally
prepared for that you're just gonna crumble, and you're good for nobody. Tom: Talk to me about what it takes to be
on one side of a door in Iraq, or anywhere, knowing that people who are not afraid of
you, they're ready for you to come in, and they have guns, and you still have to breech
that door? David: That's a great question. That's a very scary situation. When you are on one side of the door, and
your mind is racing, because on the other side of that door it could be no one, it could
be four guys with four AK-47s, that door your about to open could be booby-trapped, so once
you open it, boom, your legs are gone, so there's a thousand things you think about
when you're the first guy, second guy, third guy getting ready to go in a room and flood
it, and that's why I talk about the warrior mentality, and that's why so many people are
lost when I start talking. You have the right, you're lucky that you
don't have to think like warriors think. You're very privileged. I chose this world, to be a warrior, and I
would choose it again if I came back to this world, but the mentality of a warrior is very
different than a normal mentality. You must be that person on that door, getting
ready to open it, thinking to yourself, "If I die, so be it." The only way you can go in that door is knowing
there's a great chance you're gonna die. Like being a SEAL, you train with live ammo,
you jump out of airplanes, everything you do you could die, so to be a warrior, why
people don't understand me, I'm glad you don't understand me, Merry Christmas, good on you,
because being a warrior takes a whole different mindset. A whole different mindset to know that there's
a great chance I may not be ... Like I was in for 21 years. I'm lucky. I'm very lucky that I'm alive, able to talk
to you, able to still run, but when you sign up on that dotted line to be like a SEAL,
your mentality changes. I may not live. You gotta accept that. And that's the mentality we have. And that's what makes you a warrior. If you're scared to die you're a bad warrior. Tom: What do you use to push through? Is that a Goggins moment, is that a finding
the darkness, I'm going through hell, I'll find the devil if I have to, like what is
that moment? What are you pulling up inside? David: I'm pulling up a lot of the dark side
of me, but I'm also looking at the guys to my left and to my right realizing that we're
here together man, and I have to be strong for them, and they gotta be strong for me. A lot of people, either you like me or you
don't, even in the SEAL teams, but when you get to that door, or you get on that mission,
or you get in that OP, all that shit's out the door man. You do it honesty, you see it all the time
in these movies and shit, you really out there fighting for that guy beside you, and you
can't be a coward, 'cause you know what, and this is how I look at everything I do now
in life, and this sums it up, I hated jumping out of airplanes, I hated shooting guns, I
hated the job as a Navy SEAL, but I did it because I wanted to change myself. Everything I do I'm not really comfortable
doing, but if you chose to go that route, to go be a Navy SEAL, you may as well go be
the hardest motherfucker in the world, 'cause if you're choosing to do something ... You
have two routes, you can be a little, weak person, and get through barely, and that's
your reputation, or you can go through the hardest guy you can possibly be and that's
your reputation, so my whole thing is if you're gonna choose to open that fucking door in
Iraq or Afghanistan, open the motherfucker and go in hard, because they're gonna remember
you by slowly opening it and peeking in. If you're gonna open it, and you made the
mind to open it, don't crack it open, open the fucking door and go in, that's with life. If you're choosing to do something, attack
it, because they're gonna remember you as not attacking it. I want to be remembered, you can hate me,
but there's one thing you can't say about me, I didn't attack it, so that's the mentality
to have. If you're gonna do something you might as
well attack it, 'cause you're gonna do it anyway. Tom: Right. Do you use that in civilian life, like do
you still employ the "I'm gonna attack it. I'm gonna take their souls," Like how does
that play out in a non-combat zone? David: It still works for me in life, as far
as attacking things, because no matter what avenue I choose, I want to be the very best. And the very best might not be, "I'm number
one," the very best is, "Did I leave everything inside of me out there?" So attacking is not like, "Oh, I want to win
this, or win that, or be the best," the best is, "I'm running against myself in everything
I do, and that's why I attack. I attack myself. I'm always questioning myself. I'm always holding myself accountable. Tom: Talk to me about the accountability mirror. David: So that accountability mirror is something
that I kinda came up with in high school. Like said, I started shaving my head when
I was 16, and I got caught up in trying to impress so many people, because no one liked
me, so I developed so many different identities. Let me sag my pants. Okay, let me pull my pants up. Let me talk this way, or act this way, or
be this way, or whatever the hell it may be. God, there were so many different things I
did to try to fit in with so many different groups that, when you look in the mirror,
that's the one person you can't lie to. So every morning I would shave my head thanking
God, I would reflect back on some of the lies I may have told somebody, or some of the ways
I acted that I didn't feel comfortable doing, and I did it to impress other, normal people. The keyword there is normal, everyday people. I was trying to make other people like me. How pathetic is that? So this mirror would always tell me, I'd look
at my reflection and say, "God, you are a pathetic man." How's that feel every day to be this way? So I would just start holding myself accountable. "How did I attack today? How did I attack yesterday?" And if I didn't do something I was proud of
I write down on a sticky note, and I would fix it, so then, my senior year in high school,
it was a totally different David Goggins. Tom: Can you give an example with something
that you wrote down and fixed? David: All right, there was a lunch table,
I wanted to sit at the cool guy lunch table, you know, everybody was always calling me
nigger all the time, I wanted to try to act like somebody I wasn't so I could fit in,
and I sold my soul to the devil trying to act like ... No, I'm David fucking Goggins,
that's who I am, and so I wrote down on a piece of paper, "Fuck the table, sit by your
fucking self." And that's what I did, and guess what happened? My table became a table people started sitting
at, 'cause a whole bunch of people in that lunchroom felt exactly like I did. I had a laundry list of things that I just
would write down and then fix, so I'd write it down and fix it. Tom: Were there things that you look to for
role models, people that you were like taking ideas form, like why pull your pants up, if
that's the popular style. Either you are the single most insightful
person I've ever met, which by the way is entirely possible having listened to enough
of your material, or like you had a treasure trove of people that gave you great ideas. Even if they were like fictional, or movie,
or athletes, or whatever, but ... David: It was funny, one movie I watched all
the time was Rocky. Tom: Great choice. David: Rocky I, and I related to Rocky a lot,
because, you know, one of the smart guys, tried real hard, and the one scene that I
related a lot of my life to, still to this day, was Rocky I, round 14, and this is where
I got taking souls from. If you look at round 14 of Rocky I, Apollo
is beating the shit out of Rocky, Rocky falls down in his corner, Mickey's saying, "Stay
down, stay down," Rocky didn't hear a fucking soul. Apollo, after he knocked him down, turns around,
hands in the air, like, "I finally knocked down this animal." Tom: Right. David: Apollo doesn't know it, but Rocky's
getting up. Apollo turns around the second Rocky gets
up, and Apollo looks at Rocky, Apollo looks at him with a look of like Rocky just took
his soul. Apollo shakes his head, and Rocky has his
gloves, and he motions towards Apollo, "Come on motherfucker, I'm still here," and this
song comes on, that I played ... So when I broke the Guinness Book of World Records,
it took me 17 hours to do 4,030 pull-ups. I listened to one song for 17 hours. Two minutes and 17 seconds. (sings). I listened to that song for 17 hours non-stop,
on repeat, so the image in my mind of a man was not one that had earrings, sagging pants,
I had this image in my head and I was going to fulfill that, and I didn't do any trends,
I stopped trending, I stopped being this guy, whoever was new, fuck it, that's not what
I believe in, I'm doing this, this is what I want to be, this is what I'm gonna be. Tom: It's incredible. How do you experience beauty and joy in your
life? What situations do you put yourself in? What makes you laugh? What's the fun stuff for you? David: It's funny you say that. I just retired from the military November
of 2015, and I was going, and going, and going, and going, and I never really ... I was a
happy guy, but I'm never in the moment of like sitting back and I want to travel here
to have fun, or do this, or do that, I've never been that person, but the first time
I really got a chance to experience true happiness, and true peace was, I was ... Like so what
I did to myself to become who I am today, it takes a great toll of your body, so I believe
God gave me time to rest, and he took me out of commission. Not even the mind of Goggins could get me
back up, so I had about a good six, seven months that I was out, and when I was out
I had time to reflect on all I'd accomplished, and that was the first time in my life where
I sat back and said, "Wow." 'Cause only I, I may be telling you some of
the story, I know the exact truth of how brutal my life was, and how I shouldn't be on this
show today, and how the mind, and how beautiful it is. So what brings me joy and happiness is knowing
how beautiful the mind is, and I'm one of the few people that didn't read about it,
didn't experience it through some drug, I got to experience the beauty of true, fucking
willpower. True, fuck you, I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna
fucking fail, I'm gonna fucking fail, I'm gonna fucking fail, and I will succeed. Just me talking about that gives me a feeling,
I know what I did, and I don't need to travel somewhere, or to have this, have that, I have
it all here in my mind. The beauty is remembering this young, dumb,
what people called nigger, is now where I'm at today, and that is, when you finally get
to that point, for me, it's forever lasting peace. I could die right now on this show and I'm
gonna be a happy man. That's my happiness is my reflection on the
suffering of my journey, knowing I never quit, or was I guided by anybody on this Earth,
I was guided by something more powerful, and I listened, and I chose the path of most resistance. Talent not required. Tom: I love that. You said you live the life of a monk. David: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Tom: What does that mean? What does that look like? Why do you do that? David: So I stretch out every day for at east
two hours, I don't drink, I don't go out, my regimen is I wake up, have oatmeal, run,
come back, hit the weights, I'm a big sports guy, I don't leave the house at all, but to
do stuff like this, and I stretch out at nighttime. I find people that I trust, which is a very
small group of people, people who are honest and true to me, people who would die for me,
and I would die for them, which is a fucking small, and everybody else man, you know, do
you, and I stay to myself, and I let you do you, I don't judge people, I criticize you,
you want to be a douche bag and be an ass and not love this country, whatever you're
gonna do, I don't care man. I fought for this country for you to do you,
and I am all about you doing you 'cause I want to fucking do me, and I'm gonna do me
til I'm fucking dead, and I believe I earned the right. A lot of people haven't earned the right,
just 'cause you live in this country doesn't mean you earned the right, you gotta live
a little bit, live, and then have something to say, or shut the fuck up. Tom: So if you had, this may be impossible
to answer, but if you had that same kid form earlier, and he wants to take that first step,
you want him to go experience some life, what one specific thing would you tell him to go
do? David: I would first ask the kid, "Who are
you, at the core of your soul?" And if he can't answer that question our conversation's
over, 'cause I can't say shit to him. If you don't know who you are, if you don't
know who you are I can't tell you who you are. Tom: What's the next phase of your life look
like? You can't imagine how intrigued I am to watch
you over the next five to ten years. David: Well, honestly, I'm blessed enough
to have survived the life I lived, and to come out the other side with a bunch of knowledge,
so hopefully I can help people that believe that they're much less than they truly are,
help them find greatness in themselves, and greatness isn't running 200 miles at a time,
or doing 4,000 push-ups, or being a SEAL. Greatness is whatever the hell you dreamed
of in your own mind. You gotta first see it, you gotta first create
this vision in your mind, and then that's when I come in to play. Once you create this vision in your mind,
it's how am I gonna get there now? And that's when I come in to play, but first
you gotta create your own vision, and it's not external, the vision created is inside
of you, so until you create that I'm nobody to you. Tom: Are you writing a book? David: I'm slowly writing a book right now,
it's taken me four or five years 'cause I have so many things to talk about, it's gonna
be probably several books, but the first book will be probably about my life story, how
I came up and a few lessons learned along the way, but I have so much to talk about,
and so much to say just to give people a lot more than hope. Tom: All right, before my last question, where
can these guys find you online? David: Davidgoggins.com, Instagram is David
Goggins, Facebook's David Goggins, @DavidGoggins, you'll find me, go on there, look for David
Goggins, Google me. Tom: They will find you. There is so much amazing stuff on you. All right, so, last question, what is the
impact that you want to have on the world? David: The impact I want to have on the world
is ... That's a great question man, and it's a question I've been asked a million times,
and I have several answers for it, but the biggest one is we are all great. No matter if you think you're dumb, if you
think you're fat, no matter if you are fat, no matter if you've been bullied, or no matter
if you just got back from Iraq or Afghanistan, and you have no legs, or your arms, or whatever,
we all have greatness. You gotta find the courage to put your Bose
headphones on and silence the noise out of this world and to find it 'cause it's out
there, but it's gonna take hard work, courage, self discipline, it's gonna take all the non-cognitive
skills, all the non-cognitive skills to be great. Smart is good, all this stuff is good, that's
all cognitive. It's the non-cognitive skills that set you
apart from everybody else, and that's what it's all about. Tom: David, thank you so much for coming on
the show man, that was incredible. Guys, this is one of those times where, as
I was researching him I literally felt like I should be doing this is a bucket of ice
water or something, and I'm actually only mean that sort of tongue in cheek, I fasted
through most of my prep because it felt right to put myself in a more difficult situation
while I was doing that, it really makes me want to find more ways to go through hardship,
and that's one of the things I really hope you guys take away from him is how you can
totally create yourself, and I experienced him in reverse. I saw all of the amazing things that he had
done, all of the races that he had won, going through Hell Week three times, the succeeding
in three different branches of the military, nobody every doing that before, the pull-up
record, all of it, and then found out that he had struggled through everything, and you
realize how insidiously, and how quietly the idea that somebody is just better than you,
they're more genetically gifted than you slips into your mind, as a way of letting you off
the hook. Not as a way of making them more extraordinary,
but you make them extraordinary as a way of letting you off the hook, and so hearing all
the things that he had to go through, and one thing that didn't even come up in the
show, he did most of the amazing endurance stuff before he had his heart fixed, so his
heart was literally existing at 60% capacity, he still did all of that. This is a man who peed blood and got up and
kept running for 30 more miles. If that kind of thing doesn't inspire you
to look inward, and to really take control of your own story, to realize that you can
sculpt yourself into anything you want, it doesn't have to be Goggins, but to see in
that the power of both beauty and rage, to see in that the malleability of the human
spirit, to see in that the power of the human spirit to turn you into anyone that you want
to become, that is this man's story, and I hope that you guys heard it, there were so
many incredible things, so many times that I got the chills, so many times that I saw
another tool that I could take and use in my own life, and I hope you guys got that
much out of it as I did. If you haven't already be sure to subscribe,
and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. Hey everybody, thanks so much for joining
us for another episode of Impact Theory. If this content is adding value to your life
our one ask is that you go to iTunes, and Stitcher, and Rate and Review, not only does
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this community, and until next time, be legendary my friends.
Title sounds like some clickbait, but this is one of the most authentic interviews I've ever seen. Interviewer is slightly annoying.
Goggins is the shit, love seeing his posts on instagram, him and Mario are my favorites
David talks about the struggles he faced as a child [6:08] David discusses the importance of introspection [9:44] David discusses a belief in suffering in order to grow [10:30] David talks about self discovery and truth [13:35] David shares his experience of qualifying for his first ultra marathon [19:50] David talks about the impact of his childhood [23:04] David shares the excruciating pain he dealt with during his race [27:46] David talks about the dark side [30:43] David talks about cultivating a warrior’s mindset [38:05] David talks about his experience as a U.S. Navy Seal [40:25] David discusses being true to yourself [43:00] David shares his sentiments of gratitude for his life thus far [48:55] David talks about authenticity [51:05] David explains non-cognitive skills required for success [54:52]
I love how Goggins is a no bullshit kind of dude. As someone who has gone through similar things in the past (I.e: Making up stories for people to like me, being constantly bullied by classmates and teachers, watching my mother pass away at 8 years old, severe insecurity), I would also like to add that you can either A) take these hardships presented to you and crawl in a corner, cry, and blame the big bad meanies outside. Or B) take these hardships presented to you and turn them into your rock and never be afraid because you know that most of the people talking down on you wouldn't dare to walk a mile in your shoes. Ok that's enough of my personnel shit, where's my Jack and steak.
Goggins is a fucking machine. Wish I had 10% of his mental toughness.
This was life changing.
Met this bad motherfucker a few years ago at a Team NeverQuit event and I didn't even realize who he was until I saw him up on the stage after talking to everyone.
What's this dude's rep in the Teams?
Go listen to both of the Team Never Quit podcasts that he's on. He's inspirational as fuck, and has more mental toughness than anybody I know