Overcoming Adversity: The Power of Self-Transformation

David Goggins overcame childhood trauma by embracing suffering, finding drive in insecurities, and striving to outwork his potential.

### David Goggins: Embracing Suffering and Overcoming Adversity
* Goggins created an "**accountability mirror**" where he faced his true self and accepted his **flaws and weaknesses**.
* 🎯 He believes that to change, you must first accept the truth about yourself, as "**you have to accept it first before you can fix it**".
* 💪 Goggins used his past struggles, including being bullied, abused, and having a learning disability, as fuel to **transform himself**.
* 🧠 According to Goggins, most people only operate at about **40% of their capabilities**, as "the mind has a **tactical advantage over you at all times**."
* 🛣 To push past the mind's limits, he introduced the "**40% rule**," where you must take control of your brain when it tells you to stop.
* Goggins created an alter ego, also named Goggins, to face his fears and insecurities, as "**you have to create someone else who walks out of that dark room to face who you are**".
* 📝 He suggests making a list of all the things working against you, accepting them, and then **addressing each issue one by one**.

### David Goggins: Overcoming Yourself to Unlock Your Full Potential
* 📚 David Goggins shares his learning strategy of writing each page of a thousand-page dive manual 10 times to memorize it, emphasizing the **importance of strategizing and breaking down life's problems**.
* 🎯 Goggins stresses the need to **detest mediocrity**, as many people settle for being the best among average individuals and **lose their edge once they reach the top**.
* 🏃 After achieving a goal, Goggins doesn't rest on his laurels but immediately sets out to conquer the next challenge, believing that **true growth comes from constantly pushing oneself**.
* 🧠 Goggins listens to the person who is always **challenging themselves and gaining knowledge through suffering**, as he believes that on the other side of suffering lies a world where one finds their **true self**.
* 💪 Goggins recommends finding strength in the **suffering, pain, and insecurities within oneself**, as that is where the **energy and fuel for transformation** lie.
* Goggins asserts that the **most important conversation a person will ever have** is with themselves, and he believes in **facing and accepting who you truly are**.
* 🌍 Goggins aims to have an impact on the world by encouraging everyone to **face and accept who they are**, **stop tolerating mediocrity**, and **become masters of suffering**.
* 📖 "Can't Hurt Me" by David Goggins is described as an **extraordinary manual for changing one's life**, helping readers find their **unique equation for growth and transformation**.

i worked myself so hard that i turned a person this [ __ ] up into this [ __ ] right here. Not off of reading a [ __ ] book off a theorist, off of going to work on myself and saying, I don't know how to do this, but I know that to get over there, that [ __ ] side, I gotta grind myself into a [ __ ] fine power. And I did it. Hey, everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. 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 widely recognized as the toughest man alive, the only member of the U.S. armed forces to complete SEAL training, the U.S. Army Ranger School, where he graduated as enlisted honor man, and the Air Force Tactical Air Controller training. He entered BUD/S Hell Week three times in one year, completing it twice despite a seriously damaged knee, multiple stress fractures, and a hernia. He served in

combat in Iraq was the bodyguard for the Iraqi Prime Minister. Completed an ultra marathon with pneumonia and once held the Guinness World Record for most pull-ups in 24 hours with 4030. All in all, he's completed over 60 endurance and ultra-endurance events, often winning or at least placing in the top five. And when he was asked how he's been able to accomplish so much, he says simply that he hated what he saw in the mirror enough to make a change. Having grown up bullied and abused both physically and mentally, by the time he graduated high school, he was, by his own admission, broken and weak. But instead of accepting that, he turned inward, stopped saying woe is me, and got to work becoming the man he wanted to be. To do that, he learned to embrace suffering and leverage pain as a way to toughen his mind. And the resulting man that he has become and his indomitable spirit has so inspired the world that he has become

the one that be driven among us hang on their mirrors, as a reminder of just how much is possible. As iconic NFL coach Pete Carroll said, in my pursuit to understand and learn from the greatest competitors in the world, he is the one that sets the standard. So please help me in welcoming the man who once ran 205 miles in 39 hours without stopping, the author of Can't Hurt Me, the legend himself, David Goggins. Welcome back, thank you, thank you. So I am beyond excited to be doing the second go-round with you. The first one for me was utterly transformational. Just researching you and the way that your mind works, I'm really, I mean as evidenced by the shirt that I'm wearing, I really am that guy that like put your picture up and it was just became this reminder of what we can all do if we're willing to push past that pain and all of that, right? But speaking of pain, I want to know why is the book called Can't Hurt Me?

there's some, I guess, some inside [__] used to people in there, but it's an overall message to people that we're all, you know, a lot of us are going through a hard time in life. Some people have been bullied, some people are just stressed out, some people are insecure, some people are fat and overweight, and the world puts a lot of this [__] in your mind. It's not just you. Yeah, you help it, and my whole thing is about. I had to develop a mindset, a mindset that was indestructible. I had to armor plate my mind. And it's about what you're saying to yourself, but it also comes at work. So whenever I was getting beat down physically, mentally, spiritually, whatever I was going through, just saying, you know, I would put, you know, You can't hurt me, can't hurt me, just became a message I, you know, I would say to myself. And that's just kind of where it comes from. What I find so interesting is your concept of the governor that basically

out of the chills that an expert is somebody who's going to tell you what your limits are, rather than the person that's out there practicing getting you beyond the limit. So what is the governor and how do we strip it out of our lives? I believe that most human beings are only living at about 40% of their capability. So the

find something more comfortable. And there's something about the mind. The mind has the tactical advantage over you at all times. At all times of your life, the mind has a tactical advantage over you. Why is that? It knows what you're afraid of. It knows your insecurities. It knows your deep dark lies. And it starts to push you away from that. It pushes you in a direction that is comfortable. The mind controls everything. So what I realized was that when I was growing up and I was 300 pounds and I got all fat and I got all insecure, I realized that my mind kept taking me in this direction. When things got uncomfortable for me, when I was facing my insecurities, I was facing my fears, my mind said, Oh no, we have the tactical advantage. We need to get you separate you from this feeling. This feeling over your life's all about feelings. We want the happy feeling. We don't want that feeling of this sucks. Why am I here? And you don't have any

so you can't answer those questions so you leave. I started realizing that if in that moment you can answer those [__] up questions and you are now in charge of your brain versus your brain ruling you, that's where all that stuff comes from. So, the 40 rule is all of that. You get to 40, your brain says we're done, let's roll, man. This is starting to get painful, this is uncomfortable. So, you sit down, you have to figure out ways, and everybody's different. That's how the book kind of talks about, like we all have these things about, you know, five steps to this and four steps to this. It's a lot more than that, that's all [__]. It's a practice that you have to, it's a habit. So, if you know that at 40, I'm still, you know, I'm feeling pain at 40, I'm feeling pain, that's where the 40 rule kicks in. Now it starts, okay, I'm feeling pain, my

mind's saying all this [ __ ] to me is saying get out of here run flee the fight or flight kicks in. Okay, we're done. We're not good enough. It starts telling you all these things. You start to believe it because the mind controls all. This is the time where you have to gain control back of your mind. It's okay. Let me see if I can go 45. And once you start giving yourself more and more hope and start realizing, okay, the mind starts to be okay, what are you doing? We're supposed to be going right and you're going left. You start then controlling your mind, start finding more in you know in yourself. And it goes from 40 to a lot further than that, but that's the start of it though. Get to get to the spot where your mind is saying stop, wherever that is, gotta get there first. And then that [ __ ] starts to work for you. You gotta control yourself in that moment, dude. We're gonna try to thread a really

powerful needle right now. So, your response to all of that has been so incredible. So, all right, mind has a governor. It starts to kick in when you hit pain. You're looking for areas of comfort. Most people then live their entire lives there. They never try to get out of it. But you had such a fascinating response. You said two things which I think need to be explored. One is that you created this alter ego, Goggins, which I think is insanely powerful. And it reminds me of Eminem talked about the same thing with creating Slim Shady. Once he had the persona, he could face his fears and he could get up. And then the other thing was you said you need to shut the [ __ ] up and listen. But talking about just to yourself. Like not to try to get a distraction. Not social media, not TV, nothing like. Go in a room by yourself and really listen. How do those two things, the creation of the alter ego and that listening to the sort of dark, hateful things that

you're probably saying to yourself, how do those work together? So a lot of people can live with themselves. That's the first thing. A lot of people can live with themselves. Look in the mirror and say, I'm okay with being afraid. I'm okay with going on this easy highway over here. The easy highway has all these [ __ ] signs and [ __ ] directions how to get somewhere. And you have to first be uncomfortable with how you feel about yourself. With that voice that a lot of us like to run away from. We all have it. We all have that voice to say, Hey man, you know you're kind of wimping out right now. You're kind of being a little punk right now. But a lot of us say, Okay, that's okay. It's okay to tell these little white lies to ourselves. So we first have to face the real you. The real me is David Goggins. The real me is a guy looking at you right now saying, I don't want to [ __ ] be on this show.

right now because i used to stutter as a kid, and I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid that here in a second I'm gonna start stammering and stuttering, and the whole world's gonna know that I have all these issues. But that's when I see right now, okay, Goggins, you gotta go on this show. That's Goggins. Goggins is saying, Okay, David Goggins, you're a punk. Life made you this way. We can't live like this. We can't live in fear. We can't live in judgment. We can't be afraid of what the people right now are looking at me saying about me. We cannot be afraid of that. That's Goggins. Goggins saying all of you who don't like me, who don't want to and that person then comes in, but you have to be David Goggins and say, Man, I'm afraid of this. I'm up.

here life made me this way. Here I stutter. I have these issues with reading and writing. I'm fat and I'm insecure. You have to face that in that dark room. In that dark room is who you are. But in that dark room is where you have to create another human being that walks out of that dark room to face who you are. That's the only way you're going to get over all those things. You have to create someone else. Not like you have two different personalities. It is you but you have to find strength and that visualization of almost me cracking out. Goggins like almost like that superman cape. Like I'm coming out a different person. A person that doesn't give a [ __ ] about anything. Who doesn't care about being judged. Who knows I'm weak. Who knows I'm afraid. Who says whatever you think about me take it. Whatever I'm here. That's Goggins in the dark room. You face yourself. You realize you want to be better.

realize you don't want to be this weak insecure person in the world who has all these problems that we all have. We all have social media is a great platform to tell you who we want to be not who we are so that's where that dark room is. I didn't know if you were going to be able to surprise me today because I know you so well from sitting across from you from researching you as much as I have but I just really got emotional as you were going through that because it's so tempting to make you extraordinary as a way to not have to live up to your standard like even now and I don't do it on purpose because I know better than that and I want to be extraordinary myself but even I like I find myself getting caught up in that and hearing you just now talk about still being nervous that you're gonna start stammering like if if people really hear that you're the way that you are now not because you pretend like you don't have

those things, but because you face them so fully and that you're able to like look at that, be accountable, and talk so raw to yourself like dude, that's when like again I have the [ __ ] chills because when you think about what you're what any of us are going to be able to achieve in our lives, it's because we finally get willing to look in the mirror and say you're dumb, you're fat. And I know right now people are freaking out when they hear me say that, but talk to me about raw talk, talk to me about how you started talking to yourself in the mirror because if they get this, David, like this is the transformational moment. So in my book, I talk about a lot is my junior year in high school, and I fell back a lot. I fell back in this [ __ ] whole of life. The second you think that you've overcome it, you climbed Everest, you're on that last hold, and life will say not today [ __ ].

and it'll push you down. And my junior year in high school, I, uh, missed a whole bunch of school. I was lying to my mom, had like a one point something GPA. I was just jacked up. I mean, it was, I was in one, one of the worst spots in my life. And my mom was going with a lot of [ __ ] too, and she didn't have time to sit back and baby me. And it was me against me. My parents were down to my knees. I was just, I was not whatever was going on. I wasn't in bad shape. So, I went to the bathroom and I had this weird haircut because I wanted attention. I was an attention getter. I went to all white school, pretty much. Some of the kids liked me, a lot of them didn't like me, whatever didn't [ __ ] matter. I was looking for something. So, I was dressed differently, crazy haircuts. And I went to the mirror and the reflection in it revealed a lot of bad things, a lot of things that I was hiding behind.

the saggy pants, and I'm looking at myself in the mirror going like, God dawg, dude, you gotta, you are something else, man. Like, you have created a character. I want to be the cool guy, table, and whatever I could do to get attention, I did. It wasn't me. It wasn't who I was inside, but I was scared for anybody to know who I was inside. So, in that accountability mirror, I call it, I got real with myself. I said, 'You have a third-grade reading level,' which is hard to admit when you're a junior in high school. That you copied on every single thing you did because of fear. They're gonna put me in a special school. We all know what special means. I'm gonna have a title on myself the rest of my life. And being cool, you don't have a title on yourself. So, I started cheating. I was dumb. And people say, 'Oh, you know, you're a learning disability out of learning disability.' But I realized I was lazy. So, um, I called myself out there.

i called myself out every which way possible. i didn't call myself, i was just honest. i was honest. look at yourself, man. look at yourself. and it was that day, in a couple of days after that, i just got real with myself. and every day i came home, i called the accountability mirror. what am i going to do today to change what i see in this mirror? what am i going to do today? and a lot of it was, i stopped sitting with the cool guys. i actually took my shirt and went to school looking like, hey man, this is how i'm gonna look. if you don't like it, so be it. i had to really wear this layer of skin. i had to develop a really callous skin on me to take whatever you're gonna call me. you're gonna call me whatever. i'm going to be, you know, i want a geek, but whoever i am, you're going to see me. you're going to see me for who i am, because i need to change who i'm not. and that accountability just became raw.

and I became fat over the years because I fell back in the hole. I called myself fat because I was fat. And people don't want to do that. They want to say, Oh, don't call yourself fat. Don't call yourself dumb if you're not real and wrong with who the [ __ ] you are. Nothing's going to change. And in this nice new world that we live in, we want to hear, You're just a little big. No, man. You might be fat. And it's okay to hear that from yourself, in fairness. So that's where it started at. And it's raw. It gets ugly sometimes with me in that mirror. But I'm also proud of myself to be able to tell myself that and then fix what's in that mirror. That's what hits me. And that's what I really want people to hear, is that you can say those things, a, because they're true, and b, because you can fix them, right? And your whole life has been about addressing those things. So walk us through how in the book.

do you help people start addressing it because that's what i think so powerful about your book. So the first thing about it is once you realize it, and you have to realize you got to call yourself out. Addressing it is very small. It's like it doesn't go from like one morning, um, this way next time I wake up and presto, the, you know, five steps to greatness. No, it ain't that brother. You read my book, this is hard work. It's every day. Like right now, I had to be honest with you, man. I'm even shaking right now being on this show. I'm a big time introvert. How you address it is you face it. You face it every day. You face it every single day of your life where you say, okay, like if you're fat, you need to lose weight. It's patience. It's patience in this fact of accepting who you are right now. I'm fat. I don't like myself except in fact if you lose three or four pounds, that's a huge accomplishment. You have to live in your own [ __ ].

world you cannot judge yourself. That's why social media, all these things are horrible. You can't judge yourself off of the so-called competition that we have made up in our mind. The things that how people look, how people act, how smart someone is. This is a race that you run completely alone and you're all by yourself. I had tons of sticky notes all over my mirror. It wasn't like be better than John or be as fast as whoever. Okay, David, yesterday you did this. Today, our next goal for the week is this. So I had a year goal, weekly goals, daily goals, hourly goals. And the big goal was I lied a lot growing up. I wanted to be accepted. One goal was let's go one day without lying. Let's go one day. And then when I would lie to somebody, I would say, Hey man, now go. I had to go back now and apologize. Hey man, I lied to you. You know how hard it is to go back somebody say, I lied to you. Hey man, you know what, back there, I lied.

to you dude, I was really jacked up. So, I figured out these ways of total total accountability. Like right now, I had to run this morning before I talk to you because why? That's what I'm about. I'm about mind, mad body fitness. A lot of folks talk so much [ __ ] about, Hey, I'm gonna change your life. I'm gonna do so, I'm gonna do that. Are you accountable for what you're doing? Are you accountable? And I mean to the T for what you're saying. I am, and that's where it started. It started with that total total accountability of, let's not lie today, let's tell people the truth about who you are. And when you can get on and tell someone like I'm doing right now, exactly how [ __ ] up you are, that's the goal in life. To put your life on a billboard on the busiest road in the busiest highway in the world and say, This is how [ __ ] up I used to be.

take it or leave it. The first time we talked, I didn't really understand why being called a nigger on your book, and you said that was one of the best things that ever happened to me because the principal told me, Oh, they're just ignorant. And you said that in that moment, I realized nobody was coming to save me, and it hit me right. I didn't really understand until I read the book, and in reading the book, really understanding how one thing after another from the abuse from your father to fleeing that to your mom being m.i.a. and then thinking she's finally found love and then the [ __ ] guy gets murdered the day after Christmas. I was like, Did that really no one came to save you? No. And seeing that now and hearing you tell these stories, I realize like that's the crux of the power. But how did you stop feeling sorry for yourself when you really sit back at your life and you in that dark room and you're looking at where you started?

from and you tell yourself, God dawg man, my mom is this way, my stepdad got murdered, my dad beat the [ __ ] out of me. I can't read and write. To say my [ __ ] soul, I've lied about it to everybody. I've cheated on all these tests. My god man. And then you put a goal in your mind. How are you gonna feel man when you accomplish this goal coming from that [ __ ] coming from the [ __ ] hell you came from. A lot of people start from a good starting point. They have a good foundation. What if you can surpass all these [ __ ] we have. Everybody who was [ __ ] way up here started up here. And you had, you started with no legs. You had to grow [ __ ] legs to even start walking. And then crawling. And then running. And then you start passing people. And all that's given to them. I had to use all this negative [ __ ] that

was making me weak and horrible as a person. I had to use this as the power that now fueled me. Had to flip it on his head and say, Hold up, this might be exactly what I need. The darkness is exactly what I need. It's how you look at your situation. And I was looking at it all [ __ ] up in the book. You tell people to make a list of everything working against them. Every real valid excuse, right? Why do you have them do that? There's a lot of power in that list. So, in that list of who you are, what makes you [ __ ] up? All these other things. It goes back to, once again, accepting. You have to first accept it before you can fix it. A lot of people walk around, Oh man, I'm good. I'm good. No, you're not. You have to accept what you're not. You have to. And people don't want to do that. And that's the only way you can fix it. You have to accept it first before you

can go on the journey. A lot of folks never even start the journey, man. They never start to join because they live in this fake life that who they want to be. They act like they are, but they're not because they haven't fixed all this stuff yet. You got to fix this first before we can start our journey in life. So that's why I haven't make this list. You fix these problems. Now your journey can begin because you no longer care about how people are judging you. When you care more about how someone's judging you, you're going to stay right there. There's no forward momentum. So that's that's the thing about that list. All right, speaking of making that list, accepting where you're at so that you can address it. In the book, you talk about like what the things are that you're going to be doing. You're going to be putting the list together. How do people go about using? I don't know if it's the accountability mirror. How do they go about addressing each of those issues, okay?

so let's say the first one is you're not the smartest person in school. I had that issue. So my big thing was how I addressed that problem was I had to sit down. Each thing that is wrong with you has to be a focal point. You can't look at this gigantic list and say, I gotta change all this [ __ ] my god, this is crazy. No, you take off the first one. I want to be smarter. For me, that was my thing. I have to become more intelligent. I have such a severe learning disability. I can't retain [ __ ]. I had to now get that one thing and then strategize in that one problem. How can I do this? I'm not gonna learn like you. I'm not gonna learn like anybody else. How am I gonna figure this out? So I then figured out, okay, where are my strengths here? Where my weaknesses in learning? All right, man, how am I going to do this? And I figured out a way to do it.

but it's strategizing. So, how I learn to this day. If I have a big manual to study, I will have to get a bunch of spiral notebooks from the daggone store. And each page, I have to write each page out maybe 10 times. So, there was a thousand-page dive manual that I got 18 months before I went to dive school. Most people, I'm not smart, I'm gonna go see if I can pass this test. I realized, hang on a second, I'm not smart. How can I get past this? How can I get through this obstacle? I need to get, I need to acquire this book 18 months in advance because it could take me 18 months to write down each page over and over again to then put it to memory. So, when the question came up, I had written that question so many times down in that, in on, you know, on paper, that I can recall, Okay, page 71 was where I remember seeing this, and I can recall it that way. And that's how I did it. So, you got to strategize on.

each problem you have in life slowly break down that problem. Don't think about all the problems you have, just one at a time, and before you know it, you fix all these problems. But you cannot focus on all of them, just on the one thing at a time. There's a concept in your book that permeates the whole book, and I think really is one of the most important things for people to understand in their own life, certainly to understand you, and it's the notion of detesting mediocrity. Talk to me about that. How did you instill it in your life? How can other people instill it in theirs? It's one of the biggest things in the world. A lot of us, mediocrity is everywhere right now, and we're all trying to find an easy way out, and we're judging ourselves. Let's say there's 10 people in this room, and we're all mediocre, but I'm the best of the mediocre people. I now think I'm great. I'm great. We surround ourselves around

people that make us feel great they tell us what we want to hear. The second we put ourselves amongst the uncommon people we don't like that feeling that challenge and feeling that of of that person's breakup at 3 30 in the morning. Hey push your [ ] on we're going for a run. We don't like that challenge we like that person who says hey you know what man i don't feel good today man and they say oh it's okay brother we'll take a day off maybe we'll get a pizza and [ ] watch the game. We like that we we love that feeling why because you understand man we're good bro. We don't want that [ ] like this hey man no bro get your [ ] [ ] on man stop being a punk. We don't want that in our lives we don't want that person who's constantly challenging our weaknesses we want that process constantly you know making us feel nice and good and secure.

in ours, that's the mediocrity of life. We want to be the best amongst the average people. People wonder, how do you stay hungry all the time? Because after I accomplish something, I don't sit back like a lot of guys who graduate, buzz graduate, this, graduate that. They get comfortable. They wonder, why I'm getting weak, man. I don't know, I lost my edge. What's going on? Because once you hit the top of the [__] mountain, guess what happened? I'm good, I'm good. So you wonder why you're falling down now. Because once you be top of the mountain, you gotta build a [__] another one. That's mediocrity. There's a lot of people in mediocrity who have a nice resume, but they're one-timers, man. They hit, they hit a one-time deal. They busted it open, got a lot of money, but they're good. You're mediocre now, man. What are you [__] doing today, tomorrow, the next [__] day? That's why.

i'm listening to theorists. i don't listen all that [__]. i listen to a [__] who's like, this man, what's wrong man? i'm [__] tired dude. why are you tired? because tomorrow i gotta do the [__] [__] again man, whatever the [__] is that made me [__] nauseous and sick to my stomach, it made me hurt. there's no ending. and that's the person i listen to. that's the person who's gained knowledge. you gain knowledge through suffering. and on the other end of suffering is a world that very few, very few have ever seen. it's a beautiful world, because that's where you find yourself. you don't find yourself in over here, you find yourself on the other end, like the 100 mile race i was on. i ran it for 24 hours, i found myself on the other end of that [__] race, that 19 hours, i found, wow, there's a.

whole nother [__] world out here that never even saw that. The world is in your mind and that's what all that mediocrity is about. Mediocre is contagious. Talk to me about not getting civilized, not giving civilized. It's about having a savage mentality. Civilized is something where people, um, it's a comfortable world. A lot of us say, you know, like for instance, I see these athletes right now who retire. You know, I'm 38, you know, I'm 39. I did 20 years at the top of my game and I'm chilling out now. You see them a year later and how they look. What the hell just happened to you, dude? What the hell? You're one of the greatest athletes of all time. Kids looked up to you, women, men of all ages looked up to you, and they hit the pinnacle where it's time to retire and their mind says, I'm civilized. The worst thing that could ever happen to any human being is they become civilized. It's that total accountability. Like even when you retire.

there's a [ __ ] looking at me and judging me right now. Man, I'm I was the baddest person to ever live. It doesn't go away, man. You gotta wake up. Even though you retired, you're never retired. You're setting the example every single day of your life, and being civilized feels so good. I'm sorry, man. Once you get to the top, you may retire, but you ain't never coming back home, man, because now you're judged. People see you falling off. You want to be that guy who knows, I may be retired from the sport or forever I did, but I'd be damned if you ever see me looking like [ __ ], feeling like [ __ ], not arriving. People, I've arrived. I've arrived mentality. You're always setting the example. Civilization feels so good. These comfortable feelings are what people want. They want retirement. They want that. They need that. They, it's a, it's a yearning feeling. I want it too. People love putting a label on me about

my god man you're just wired different not [__] wired different dude. I'm thinking right now after I got past my stuttering thing. Now I'm on a roll, I'm good now. You know what I'm thinking about right now? I gotta [__] wake up tomorrow and do the same [__] again. I gotta leave this [__] interview and go stretch out for two and a half hours. I hate that [__], but guess what it does though? I'm constantly callousing over my victim's mentality that I once had growing up. Every day you have to do this [__] because why when you stop doing it you don't just maintain it. If you stop shooting a gun, you're not gonna be a great shot if you pick a gun up a year from now. The only way to keep from getting rusty is to constantly owe that [__] machine. The machine is this, you got to keep challenging it every day.

the way that i think about that is very, very similar. And I've got to imagine this is one of the things that makes you one of the most misunderstood humans on the planet. Is to me driving that hard, being that hungry, pushing long after everybody stops has nothing to do with anybody but myself. And what my drug of choice is how I feel about myself when I'm by myself. Like nobody knows how hard I work, and nobody's ever going to know. Not even my wife is up enough to see how much I really work, right? But it doesn't matter because the way that it makes me feel like in this moment right now where I get to say, ah, the world doesn't know. I could be lying, but I would know. And the way that I feel right now because I know how true it is that nobody's outworking me. [Music] That to me is the juice. And when people understand that what you're fighting to build, the reason that I'm wearing a shirt that says, what would Goggins do.

the reason that i chant goggins like the crowd before he started rolling. The camera was chanting goggins the reason that's so resonant is because they want to do something for themselves. They want to feel some kind of way about themselves [Music]. Now that you've become like this big ass speaker what do people come up to you and ask you the most. How do i do it how am i able to do what i do on a daily basis you know how do i fight the demons because they hear me speak and i'm very raw and real. How do you fight my insecurities all these things and uh they're there every day the day every day like you said. I'm in a search for a feeling i'm not in the search for a trophy i'm not in search for love not so much for more followers on instagram or social media. When i started this journey years ago and i realized that i'm going to be somebody and i'm searching for a feeling a feeling of true victory for myself

only myself the second I shut out the whole world and realize that one thing that I am in this world alone. I'm fighting in this race by myself. Yeah, I'm all about people. I'm all about team. I'm all about that [__], but I'm really all about right now and in my life. Just like you said, no one knows the real truth about me, how hard I really go. I don't care if anybody knows. I don't want anybody to know. I'm an introvert. I live an introverted life, and I love that about me. It that right there is my fuel. Is I know that there's really no one out there grinding like me, and if they are, so be it. If I know about you, I'll make sure that up my gang. That's what the mentality is all about. My whole thing is a mentality thing. Like I told you the last times on the show, I viewed myself as the weakest person on the planet Earth. My goal in life was to, in my mind, believe I'm the hardest man.

alive, and that's why the whole thing is can't hurt me. That's what it's about. It's about whatever you think you are, you have to make that dream a reality. But that's where the hard part is, is making that dream reality. That's where the hard work comes, that's where people know, how do you keep grinding every day? You have to make those insecurities, those fears. Like when I was 300 pounds, I didn't have any drive. I'm going to be a Navy SEAL. What kind of stupid [ __ ] is that? 300 pounds, there wasn't like a drive to go be a Navy SEAL. I was an insecure, lying kid, afraid. I had to look in my insecurities and in my fear and find drive in that. We're all looking for passion. Passion's all around you. You have a whole, a whole [ __ ] stack of it all around you. It's your insecurities, all that [ __ ], you gotta dive deep in that [ __ ]. All this, it's all

in there all the energy and fuel you need is right in yourself. It's all there. You got a lot of stuff to do to overcome and you know that's where I found it. I found it right there among insecurities. I found drive in my own insecurities and that's, that's the most powerful thing in the world when you can find drive in your own doubt, fear, insecurities. You become very unstoppable. You may have just changed me at a deep and fundamental level. I've never thought about it like that. So the number one question I get asked is how do I find my passion to which the answer is very rudimentary and maybe ultimately not as true and powerful as what you just said which is there's another thing I need to tie this to that you talk about in the book which is people have lost touch with their bodies and you always tell people if you want to change go do something physically demanding like go find yourself in the suffering and in the pain of

doing something with your body. Yes, it is utterly fascinating to me. It's just hitting me now. I'd never heard you say that before, so I'll reserve final judgment for round three when we come back together. But the thought of you feel lost, you feel insecure, you don't have a passion, you don't know what to do, you're reaching out to somebody, you need that help, you know you could do more, be more. And the answer is you. In the last interview we did, you called it the bag of [__]. If I remember right, yes, you reach into the bag of [__] and start changing those one by one. That may be the most extraordinary piece of advice I've ever heard. In fact, I will say the way it's hitting me right now, that's the single most extraordinary piece of advice for self-transformation I've ever heard. It's the truth. Who is sitting here right now today? This is the real me, obviously, but um, I'm gonna go kind of. I'm a very

philosophical person and I'm gonna go there with you real quick. I believe in a higher power. I don't know the name, don't know where it's coming from, don't know anything like that. But I believe that this power, and visualizing real quick, let's say it's a man up there or a woman, whatever, and they have a chart. And when you're born, they say, David Goggins born February 17, 1975 at 6:00 am. They write the chart down because they can see everything. They know exactly what you're supposed to be. They know what you're supposed to be. You die, you go to so-called heaven. You arrive at heaven. I'm 300 pounds. I retired as an eco-lab guy, which is okay, just a job, whatever. I go up there and God looks at me and he shows me my chart. And my chart on there says, You were supposed to be a Navy SEAL. You're supposed to weigh 185 pounds. You're supposed to be one of the

smartest people on the planet. This, this, all this, you see this, and now you're in heaven. You made it to heaven, but you're like, God, I was supposed to live that life. I was supposed to live that life. And then you find out that the reason why, because we all think that if we pray on it, if we do this, if we do that, whatever, if we don't work, we just whatever, it could magically happen for us. No, I believe that when I'm all said and done with my whole job is to outwork the chart. Whatever the [__] chart says about me, the all-knowing power up there, I want to get up there and say him, Look at me, and say, I know everything. I didn't [__] see this. I didn't [__] see this. I want to feel that. I want to get to the other end of this [__] world and however I'm being judged, whoever's judging me to look at me and

say, I did not know I had you at 185. Had you did this, but all this other I was riding as you were living it. I want to, I want to find more, all I can, and in that sack of you have to dive in that to find more because if you're not willing to go in there and face yourself, you're not gonna find anything. You're gonna live right here on the surface, man, right here on the surface. So there is an ending to this world, and there is somewhere to go, and there's a judgment. You're going to get there, and you might see a chart, and that chart may tell you who the you should have been, and now you get to rest your life to think about that, man. I could have lived a much better life if I just would have just suffered a little bit more, if I just would have went in that and realized I had so much more, but

fear in the 40 and living here versus living here being afraid stop me so that's i. I'm a big guy in visualizing. I'm a big guy in making a world. It may not exist to me. It does to me it does and I'm overpowering myself every day. And you got to find tools to do that. That's the tool that I use. So that's what it's all about. God damn you said in the book that the only thing to fear is the man staring back at you in the mirror. I thought that was insanely powerful and seems tied to this. Is there something else to that or is that what you're talking about. That's all I'm talking about like your your biggest enemy your biggest the most important conversation you will ever have in your [ __ ] life is the one you have with yourself. You wake up with it. You walk around with it. You go to bed with it. Eventually you're going to act on it whether you're good or bad. You have to. That's why the whole thing

about this book, I have it's about you. It is about you. It's strictly about you finding who you are. So many people die, live a hundred years, never [ __ ] know who they are, never know who they are. You have to look in that mirror and know this. There's so much more in here, man, because I can literally right now be a 300-pound guy spraying for cockroaches still to this day if I did not look in that mirror and say there has to be more to this. This can't be it and then willing to go into it, dive deep into it, and give all I have to find it. So that's what is that's what all that's about and all that you've done and all that you've been through help me understand when you were given the you did not have a happy childhood. I think that would be very fair to say when you were given the VFW award recently and you were listening to people that had impacted you and you got to your mom you couldn't even speak.

yeah, uh, it almost chokes me up now. Um, so I got the VFW award for the Americanism award for military service and giving back. I'm as human as human can be. That's why what you see is what you get. Um, at that moment when I was giving my speech and I thank my uncle for being there and I got to my mom. It wasn't just about her. It was, I, I, I know what she went through. I know what I went through. And we got knocked down so much. I had a moment in front of all these great American heroes where I had a chance. It was like so fast. It went through me like lightning of. I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe I'm getting an award like this. That kid who was in the fetal position the majority of his life and so much. The fact that my body, my hip flexors are tight to this day. That even though I was standing erect, my mind was in the fetal position. And when I looked out amongst all those

people, it was a sense of pride that I can't even, I can't even explain. It's the moments of three hell weeks. It's the moments of in that room by myself, studying for hours and hours, and I was trying to catch up with all the kids who are above me. It's just those moments, like the real raw moments of life, that was like boom, hit me and we're gone, but I was like I did that, I overcame that, you know? It's like this is power behind all that, and that's the feeling I was looking for in my life. I found it. It wasn't money, it wasn't fame, it wasn't awards. It was that feeling I have right now, that feels I'm about to break down, but it's not of like oh my god, I'm upset, it's like I worked myself so hard that I turned a person this messed up into this right here, not off of reading a book, off a

theorist off of going to work on myself and saying I don't know how to do this, but I know that to get over there, that [__] side, I gotta grind myself into a [__] fine power. And I did it. I did it all for sure will, and very few people will know how that feels, very few. I love that more than you could possibly know. Before I ask my last question, tell these guys where they can find the book. So the book right now is called Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins, and it's on Amazon right now. It's a raw, real book. It's not a five-step book. It's a real book about developing habits on how to overcome yourself. And I believe all of us humans have an equation. Like, you know, pi is 3.14. That's how you solve for that equation. Every human being has a different equation, and there's not like some cookie-cutter book of, Hey, read this book and you'll be.

fixed no you gotta figure out your own personal equation and once you figure out that equation you now become a mathematical [__] genius about yourself and that's what this book does. It makes you a [__] genius about who the [__] you are. And then from there, once you realize 3.14 is pi, you can solve any [__] equation in the world. That's what it's about. I love that. All right, my last question. What's the impact that you want to have on the world? The impact I want to have in the world is for everybody to be able to face who they are. I want to have that kind of impact where you can go on TV, you can put your life on a billboard. You're not ashamed of who the [__] you are. You're not ashamed of what life made you, what you helped life make you. All that [__], all that bad [__] that's now in this big pot that's

stirring. You're no longer ashamed of it. You realize we're all [__] up. Stop judging yourself against other [__] up people who have hidden it better than you. That's all they've done. They've mastered [__] better than you have, and now they're flipping it back on you and saying you're [__] up. I want you to realize that this world, life, is one big head game. And once you learn to play the [__] head game, it's no longer a game anymore at all. You can start living your life. I love that, David. Thank you so much. [Applause] Buy this book. I read it. It is extraordinary. It is one of the most amazing manuals for how to change your life ever. And just this interview, I think, could be transformative for some people. And the book goes into so much more detail and really reaches into you and shows you how to do it in your own life. He helps you find that 3.14 for you so that you

can go out and do the things that you need to do. But the things that I hope that you take away from him: be honest with yourself, be raw, but understand that you can fix it. Stop tolerating mediocrity. You have to detest mediocrity in your life, and you have to understand the only way you're going to meet yourself is through pain and suffering. And if you can become a master of suffering, the things that you can do with your life are truly unlimited. You can truly break free of all of the limiting beliefs that you've put on yourself, your circumstances put on you, your family has put on you, experts have put on you, whoever it is. You can get rid of all of that and completely blow your own mind with what you're capable of. And one day you will have a shirt that instead of saying, What would Goggins do? you'll be asking, What would I do? because you're the right person to ask. And when you get to that point, nothing will ever be the same.

get the book. All right, guys. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care, David. That was so good. Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.

This Keeps Men Pathetic, Lazy & Poor - Embrace Suffering To Escape Mediocrity | David Goggins

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Overcoming Adversity and Mental Toughness

David Goggins, a former Navy SEAL, shares his inspiring journey of overcoming extreme physical and mental challenges.

Goggins' book, "Can't Hurt Me," emphasizes the development of an indestructible mindset to push past pain and adversity.

He introduces the concept of the "40% rule," suggesting that the mind's tactical advantage limits individuals to only operating at 40% of their capability, and overcoming this limit is crucial for personal growth.

Overcoming Mental Obstacles: Gaining Control of Your Mind

Facing the discomfort of self-reflection is crucial in gaining control of the mind.

Creating an alter ego can empower individuals to confront their fears and insecurities.

Raw and accountable self-talk in front of the mirror is transformational in overcoming mental obstacles and achieving personal growth.

Overcoming Personal Struggles Through Self-Accountability

A high schooler, struggling with academic performance and seeking attention, transformed his life through self-accountability.

He emphasizes the importance of facing the truth, setting small goals, and being brutally honest with oneself as the key to personal transformation.

The journey of total self-accountability and honesty has the power to change one's life and is a fundamental aspect of personal growth.

Overcoming Adversity and Embracing Personal Growth

Facing a series of hardships, from abuse to family tragedies, the speaker realized that no one was coming to save them, leading to a mindset shift.

By making a list of all the challenges and accepting them, one can start the journey of self-improvement.

The key is to address each issue one by one, strategizing and breaking them down slowly, instead of feeling overwhelmed.

The concept of detesting mediocrity is emphasized as a crucial factor in driving personal growth and avoiding complacency.

Embracing Challenge and Avoiding Mediocrity

Seeking comfort and reassurance from others leads to a mediocre life, while embracing challenges leads to growth and self-discovery.

Many people strive for comfort and retirement, but true fulfillment comes from constantly challenging oneself.

Avoiding a "civilized" mindset and embracing discomfort is key to maintaining success and growth in life.

Pushing oneself to the limit, regardless of external recognition, is the key to self-fulfillment.

The real drive comes from within, using insecurities and fears as a source of motivation.

Finding passion and overcoming doubt is achieved by delving deep into one's own insecurities.

A higher power is believed to have a predetermined plan for each person's life.

The idea is to surpass the potential outlined by this higher power through hard work and self-reflection.

Despite a difficult childhood, the speaker's journey to receiving an award for military service is a testament to overcoming obstacles and fulfilling his potential.

Overcoming Challenges and Finding Personal Power

The speaker found a sense of pride and power through overcoming extreme challenges and hard work.

The impact he wants to have on the world is for people to face who they are, be unashamed of their past, and stop comparing themselves to others.

The book "Can't Hurt Me" by David Goggins is recommended for its raw and real approach to developing habits and overcoming oneself.