This video challenges conventional wisdom on motivation and the pursuit of personal excellence, referencing motivational speaker David Goggins' ideology. It is argued that many people rely on temporary motivation to drive them towards success, but true achievement requires discipline and meticulous organization of one's mental "garage." The ability to perform without direct motivation separates successful individuals from the rest, as personal pride should be a sufficient motivator.

Additionally, Goggins shares his personal experiences and explains how overcoming past traumas has strengthened his resolve. By facing fears and adversities head-on, one develops resilience. Such resilience is vital for maintaining discipline and achieving higher levels of personal performance. Approaching life's challenges without purpose initially may be daunting, but the ultimate purpose revolves around self-betterment, internal pride, and acknowledging obstacles as essential growth opportunities.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. motivation [ˌmoʊtɪˈveɪʃən] - (noun) - A state or condition of having a strong reason to act or accomplish something. - Synonyms: (inspiration, drive, incentive)

They think, I need to have this motivation to work out, to study, to be better.

2. discipline [ˈdɪsəplɪn] - (noun) - The practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience. - Synonyms: (control, regulation, order)

Jocko said the exact same thing. He said that discipline eats motivation for breakfast.

3. compartmentalize [kəmˌpɑːrtˈmentəˌlaɪz] - (verb) - To divide into sections or categories. - Synonyms: (categorize, segregate, separate)

You don't have it compartmentalized and organized in these nice shelves like you look in the garage.

4. vindicated [ˈvɪndɪˌkeɪtɪd] - (verb) - To show or prove to be right, reasonable, or justified. - Synonyms: (justified, proved, validated)

It would make me feel vindicated.

5. indictment [ɪnˈdaɪtmənt] - (noun) - A formal accusation that someone has committed a crime. - Synonyms: (accusation, charge, allegation)

And like how I studied that Navy SEAL talking shit and lion, I got it from this part right here in the book.

6. autopsy ['ɔːtɒpsi] - (noun) - A postmortem examination to discover the cause of death or the extent of disease. - Synonyms: (postmortem, necropsy, dissection)

But we never do live autopsy to figure out why we're dying while we are alive.

7. resonate [ˈrezəˌneɪt] - (verb) - To produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound. - Synonyms: (echo, reverberate, resound)

Let's say that there's someone listening who resonates with what you're talking about.

8. vulnerable [ˈvʌlnərəbl] - (adjective) - Exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally. - Synonyms: (exposed, defenseless, susceptible)

You know, wonder, how did you become this? How you become so vulnerable? How you

9. affirmations [ˌæfərˈmeɪʃənz] - (noun) - Emotional support or encouragement. - Synonyms: (confirmation, assertion, declaration)

You don't become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof.

10. delusion [dɪˈluːʒən] - (noun) - A belief that is maintained despite being contradicted by reality. - Synonyms: (misconception, deception, hallucination)

And that's just delusion. That's fantasy, right.

How To Build EXTREME Mental Toughness - David Goggins

Nothing is permanent. Nothing is permanent. And a lot of times you have to learn to perform without motivation. You have to learn to perform without purpose. You have to learn to perform a lot of different things. And that's what people think. They think, I need to have this motivation to work out, to study, to be better. So if they don't have it, they just don't fucking do it. And that's where you fail. You have to learn to train your mind well beyond motivation. If you have motivation, that's great. That's some kindling to the fire. All it takes is a little bit of fucking spark. You can burn a whole forest up. But motivation, you have to learn to exist without it. You have to learn to be. You have to be your best self and your least motivated. And that's the tricky part about all that shit. motivation is just a word. You have to have these different things in your mind on where you want to go, and know that motivation is not going to get me there, because I'm not going to always be motivated.

Jocko said the exact same thing. He said that discipline eats motivation for breakfast. And discipline is good, too, but without a clear headspace, there's no discipline. What you mean? So let's say we have a circuit breaker, okay? And I'm loading everything up to one fucking circuit. Just load it up. It's gonna fucking blow. And once that thing blows, man, the circuits all fucked up. You got to have each thing plugged into the right spot. Like a fucking crowded garage. You can't put anything in it once your brain is crowded. discipline is great. motivation is great. But if you can't fit shit in your brain because it's all fucking cluttered with shit, there's no discipline. You may have it sometimes when it fits in that crowded garage of your mind, but you don't have the consistency that you need to have with that discipline.

So what are you talking about here? Are you saying doing self work and reflecting on you as an individual? Are you doing therapy? I call it my. I call it mental zones. I don't get into much because it would be here all day, but basically is you're organizing your mind so you can put that discipline. So a lot of people talk about discipline. Okay, great. Why do you fall off the fucking wagon? Why can't I continue with this routine? Going to the gym, being better, waking up early, eating the right foods. It's because maybe it's your kids, maybe it's your wife, maybe it's your job, and it's all just stuffed in your fucking brain, you don't have it compartmentalized and organized in these nice shelves like you look in the garage. It's all fucking a. Nice organized militant garage. Hey, where are my dumbbells? Right there a lot of people whose brain, hey, where's my dumbest? Let me look. They're fucking throwing shit, they're looking through. Totes. They're all fucked up. So where am I gonna put discipline in that mind if I can't find other shit?

You gotta be able to find all these different things in your mind. Oh, I can put discipline right there. I can put consistency right there. I can put all these things right there in that spot. So that's what I'm talking about. If your life is not organized and your life being everything around you, because it takes one little fucked up piece of outside interference to clutter your whole mind, your mind has to always be clear. That's why I meditate 2 hours every single night, because I refresh, I reorganize the garage, which is my mind every night. So then discipline's in there, organization, everything is in this right spot. So when I wake up, I'm ready to go.

What does a morning look like for you at the moment? Have you got a routine of some kind? Yes, I run every single morning. So that time, are you up when you waking up? I'm up about 5530. So every morning it starts with a run. And that's because that's the one thing I hate to do more than anything in the world. So that's like my cup of coffee. And I'm all about armoring yourself. So the second you leave your house and the second you open your phone, the second you do any of that shit, you are now letting them poison in cancer. So I make sure a lot of things you can't avoid. So as I get up, I start to armor plate my mind and body like a person's going to war. You put your body armor on. That's what I'm doing on that run. I'm waking up and I'm giving myself all this armor. So when I come out in the world, now look at that phone, I'm ready.

I'm not waking up late, I'm not rushing around, I'm not disorganized because I know I'm gonna get hit in the fucking mouth. There's a, there's an art to getting hit in the fucking mouth. And that is why these things are important. You have to wake up and you have to give yourself belief, you have to give yourself? Confidence. It starts with that run. So after the run, I come home, I eat something small. How long's the run? Typically at the moment, nowhere under 12 miles. So 12 miles is the minimum. And what are you getting that done in how long? It depends. Right now I'm running heart rate, so I'm doing like eight fifteen s, eight thirties. Cause I'm retraining right now because.

What's that? Is that zone two for you? Zone two? Yep. Because of the leg surgery I had. So I'm going back starting from scratch. So anywhere from about an hour, 30 to 2 hours. I run every day. Mm hmm. So you're fasted on the morning. Straight out? Straight out. 90 minutes to 2 hours of running back. Eat, eat. And I'm in the gym, so. And then after that to whatever's on the plan for the day. That's how that works every day.

Given all of this trauma that you go through, why would you choose to go back and see this tyrant of a father for one last time? It was the only way for me to move forward. So like a lot of times, if your back is hurting, it may not be your fucking back. It may be something else in your body that's making your back hurt. For me, I'm like, man, why can't I get past this fucking hurdle? It's like I said, I'm always examining myself every day. What is it? What is it? Well, there's only one thing you haven't examined yet. And it's going back to the beast, going back to the demon.

So when I went back to him, I realized that that was the unsolved mystery, was I had to look that man in the eye one more time. Like how I studied that Navy SEAL talking shit and lion, I got it from this part right here in the book. I went and I didn't see him anymore as this beast. I started doing research on him. Found out that his dad used to beat him really bad. So his dad would have put him in front of a furnace, open the furnace up with the flames coming out and put him right in front of it, have him bare butt naked. And he would whip the shit out of him. And the whole idea of that is, if you move, you're gonna get burned. So stay right here and take your fucking beating.

So what happened with him? Those demons from his father went to my father and he tried to transfer him over to me. I had to understand who my father was, understand where he came from, understand why were you so fucking brutal to us? I got my answers took those answers and made myself better from the answers about him. And so that's why it was necessary for me to go back, not I was looking for an apology. So then maybe I could just go be a loser and understand that you fucked me up. Why would the apology make you a loser? It would make. No, it would make me feel vindicated. Justified. Yes.

Like, man, you. You did this to me. I can go be a loser now. My failings are okay. This. Yep. Because you did this. So I was looking for that. And when I went there, I realized because his voice and he was saying, it's not your dad's fault now, like, nah, man. Because this voice over here always said, it's your dad's fault. This other voice started tuning in, was loud, started getting louder the more I drove to Buffalo. Was saying, you get to face a lot of shit, young man. You got a long journey ahead of you. You're gonna find out that while your dad did a lot of shit to you, you're gonna have to fucking make it on your own.

And the voice got louder and louder and louder. And by the time I got to that door, and by the time I was leaving that house, instead of me feeling sorry for myself, I started to do live autopsy. A lot of people, when you die, they figure out why you died. They figure out how you died in the autopsy. But we never do live autopsy to figure out why we're dying while we are alive. And I was dying, I was living every day, but I was really dead. And so I figured it out. And once I figured it out, I was able to reborn. I was able to be reborn.

Let's say you have no races, let's say you have no classes, no nothing. You have. There's no purpose in your life. You know, people need to have purpose to get up, they need purpose to perform. You need to get to a point in your life where there's nothing on the docket, there's no five k, there's no. There's no, I'm going to get into school to be this or that and still perform to the highest level. Because what people don't get is one day that thing is going to come up and if you're not constantly performing without purpose, you're not going to be ready when the time comes. It's this magical thing, purpose, that we're all looking for.

But what's funny about it all is that we need these things to perform, but we don't take a second to realize the purpose is always there. The purpose never leaves us, because the very purpose is you. You are always the purpose. There may be another purpose, like being a seal or going to college or whatever, but the main purpose in life is you. So if you wake up in the morning and you don't want to do something, you don't care enough about yourself, and that's what you need to really research, is. Man, why am I not doing this for myself? Because that is. That is the number one purpose in life, is to better oneself. So that's the only purpose I fucking need.

So the reason I get up every day, even though there's no race or there's no school, there's nothing in front of me, is because I have pride in myself. But where do you go to? You wake up on the morning, it's cold, I cold, it's wet, it's dark, you've got no cartilage in your knee, you've got shitty shorts. Whatever it is, that's the issue today. Keep talking. You've got these problems, right? I need you to keep talking about what you were just saying. It's warm on the couch. Your misses say stay in bed. It's comfy, it's cozy, you've got work later on. You had an argument last night, you're slightly hungover. I know every motherfucker ain't gonna do what I'm gonna do. So this is how you level up. That's how you level up.

I know there's a whole bunch of people with that right there that fires me up, that makes me fucking happy. What you just said, that brings joy to my life right there. Why? Cause I know there's so many people that have the ability and just refuse to get off that couch, refuse to study a few more hours, refuse to go deeper, to go further. And that's where I gained the advantage. It's so easy to be great nowadays, my friend, because most people are weak. Most people don't want to go to that extra mile. Most people don't want to find that extra because it sucks, it's miserable, it's lonely.

You talk about that. You were kind of, you know, lonely by yourself. I was the same way. And that used to hurt me growing up. Now I fucked. Can thrive in that shit. That's the only place to be. I mean, I think that comes from overcoming a lot of people. You know, wonder, how did you become this? How you become so vulnerable? How you. How are you doing a podcast now? When you were this kid, you overcame things, you fought them, and now this is what happens. To.

This is on the other side of overcoming. It becomes, you become very, very powerful when you overcome yourself. All those things you once cowered from, you were afraid of when you face them eye to eye every day. You now become a person who has a great podcast. Let's say that there's someone listening who resonates with what you're talking about. You know, they've been through trauma, they've been through hard times, but they keep breaking promises to themselves and they're struggling to get off the couch and they're having a pity party.

How can they stop feeling sorry for themselves? That's a difficult one because you have to want it. You have to want to be better. And it starts off with, you have to have pride in yourself. You have to have pride in yourself. You have to have, there's something about you, whether it's your last name, whether it's just the smallest thing, you have to be proud of yourself. And if you have no pride in yourself, I can't give it to you because you're always going to compromise, you're always going to fold. Always. I'm very proud of myself. That's why when people said, you know what you can do better than can't hurt me, roger that. We'll fucking see. It's that pride that wakes you up.

Now, I'm not talking about bad pride. I'm a the attention to detail for the human being. I want to do. I call this thing like, I want to be the standard. I want to be that guy. Like every place I went in the military, there was this ethos about how this place is how we're going to live, how we're going to represent ourselves. And I walked around and I saw that most people didn't live up to that ethos. Like, if you go to whatever, whatever company they have this mission statement on how we want to run our company, I made one for myself on how I want to be.

And that is why if people can make up a mission statement, an ethos in which they want to live by, and every morning you wake up, you hold yourself accountable to that mission, not accompanies your own make up, your own mission statement, what do you want to be in life? And once you do that, now you can work with somebody to get better, you can work with yourself to get better. But until you know what you want to stand for, you will always just be sitting down. You'll never stand for anything.

I'm trying to build people up. I'm trying to armor their mind. I'm trying to get them to belief, because this world we live in is tough. It's tough. It will beat you down. The world in the life that we live in, is the ultimate competitor. It will try to take you out. It will. It will find your weakness, and it will fucking just hammer you. It's like a personal curse. Hundred percent. So, if I can help you build belief, build confidence to the point where nothing can hurt you, because you know exactly who you are. You've faced your demons. You've. You've been able to go on an audiobook.

In your mind, maybe you didn't write a book, but in your mind, you were able to hear all your past traumas. You were able to listen to them. You're able to fucking say, okay, now I can now talk to people about what I went through. I'm no longer embarrassed. I'm no longer ashamed. Being ashamed is one of the biggest things that kill people nowadays in their minds. Kill them from moving forward. I'm ashamed of myself. Don't ever be ashamed of anything you've done in your life. Face it, fix it, make it better. We are humans. But then again, if you always think that we're humans, you will always just be a human and always make the same fucking mistakes.

You must tell this knowledge that you learn from all this shit is knowledge. So I'm just trying to give people that strength to go in the archives of your life, because while you're probably fucked up, it's probably something happened to you in your life. Go through the archives, dig it up, study it, and then use it for yourself. That's. That's the main purpose for me right now.

There's this quote from one of my friends, Alex Hormozi, that says, you don't become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. Outwork yourself. Doubt? Yes, that's nailed. Nailed. Completely nailed. Yes. Because a lot of people will. And some of these motivational people out here, the funniest thing in the world to me, they'll go and say, when you wake up in the morning, pound your chest, you know, fucking look at yourself in the mirror and do all this fucking bullshit. I hope it works.

What works for me is that everyday resume the things I know I've accomplished, the things I know I've done real hard work, the real calluses on my mind, the real calluses on my hands, that's. That's it. You don't need to pound your chest in the mirrorless fuck anymore. If you have that, it seems like, especially with confidence, right, or self esteem, there's a relationship between confidence and competence. So what you're looking to do is try and have what you believe that you can do, be ahead of what you can do. Now, you're not looking for it to be delusional. You don't want it to be able to believe that you can do something like fly, right? But you need to have a relationship between the two.

But what people are asking for is for their confidence to be so far ahead of their competence that without having even been competent to anything in the beginning. And that's just delusion. That's fantasy, right. Well, I believe that you. To build belief. Belief is like, there's an after school special belief where the mom says, believe in yourself. And that's all great, but there's also a built belief. And the built belief is one where you are constantly. Like, for me, I came from a bad place. How I build belief is through the daunting tasks I put myself through. So that's proof positive that I can.

So it correlates. And that's how this piece of shit kid, I once thought I was, built belief by saying, hmm, I was in three hell weeks. I went to Ranger school. I tried out for delta selection. Undeniable stack of proof. That is proof, motherfucker. So whenever you think. Whenever you think you can't, confidence comes from the thing that you built. You must build belief. You must build confidence. It can't be like, hey, I'm gonna knock that shit out. You gotta look over here and say, I can knock that shit out. It's belief, and it's built on what you put in to yourself.

Nietzsche said, I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and impossible. The fact that something seems impossible shouldn't be a reason to not pursue it. That's exactly what makes it worth pursuing. Where would the courage and greatness be if success was certain and there was no risk? The only true failure is shrinking away from life's challenges. Nailed that one also. Two for two. Nailed that one also, man.

Yeah, it's that, um. It's that dealing with laziness and self doubt thing, I think. And I do wonder how many people use the look in the mirror, pound the chest, stare into your eyes, say your affirmations, don't get the results, and then lose confidence. Well, that's part of it. A lot of it is limited horizons. Limited horizons are like, I use me as an example, always. I came from a small town in Indiana where there was a handful of black families and a lot of people in that town. When you come from a town of 8000 people, it's like we had a local plant, great Dane. You're like, you know what? I want to work at great Dane and get a house next to my mom.

That's what. You know, so many of us come from these small places in our mind that we're not willing to think outside of only what we've seen. Our mind works in such a small compartment. And one thing I was able to do was to dream many people. But don't make dreams your fucking master. But I was able to dream outside those fucking four walls of that small town. And until you're able to really put yourself into that dream, but don't make dreams your master, that's where you truly become what you're destined to become.

What you mean don't make dreams your master. A lot of people sit back and they dream about being a sports figure or dream about being a seal, or dream about being an astronaut. And all it is is a motherfucking dream. They don't put the work behind the dream. That dream has become their fucking master. When you become the master of your fucking dream is when you say, I want to go be a Navy Seal. And you say, okay, I'm gonna lose 106 pounds in less than three fucking months.

The dream was the one thing I thought about and the dream was now gone. Now what comes in the dream goes away. And the fucking laundry list of fucking details and tasks come up. Gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. That's when you become the master of your dream. So a lot of people out there dreaming, Ryan Holiday says, talking about the thing and doing the thing vie for the same resources, allocate yours appropriately. That's it. That's it. That's the way it works as well. That's the way that the brain works. You can actually get these kicks of dopamine by telling your friends about, I'm gonna be a Navy SeAl. I'm gonna start my training next week. It's gonna be great.

I'm gonna feel like this feels good. It feels good to talk about that shit, man. It actually makes you feel good, makes you feel proud, all that shit. But guess what happens? That alarm clock goes off at 04:00 a.m. to train. I don't want to be a seal today. I don't want to be whatever today I'll start tomorrow. And that's the usual pattern of people's lives. That's why I talk about clearing out the mind. Until you really want to do something, you're always gonna be a talker. You always get run your fucking mouth. We all think about quitting and shit's hard.

But what you have to do in that 1 second is hard to process information, information during pain, because that pain takes over and you can't think rationally. You're thinking about fight or flight, save yourself. That's not a rational thought. It's not a thought that's going to get you through hard times. Most people fail that 1 second. So what happens? What I do in that 1 second is, and there's a bigger process to all this, but in that 1 second, I physically stayed in that water. Because if I get out of the water, I quit. So I physically stay in the water, but mentally I'm on the fucking beach with the fucking instructors and the instructors.

It's cold outside, so they got these parkers on, they got their cup of fucking joe, and they're warm because they've already been through it. So now it's your turn to go through it. So merely I get back with this them. I'm still in the water physically, but mainly I'm back with them, chilling. I got my parker on and now I'm thinking logically because I'm warm now, mentally I'm warm. I've taken that 1 second. Let's not quit yet, guys. Let's fucking think about your options. Where are you going to end up if you quit this shit? Where are you going to go? Where are you going to say to yourself, because you know you're going to get warm the second you get out of this water, you could take a shower and you could be warm, and you could be.

In five days you could be out. So I start thinking logically, I calm my brain down because your brain just wants to get the fuck out, ring the bell, push your helmet down, get warm, and then you're really fucked. And these are the things you have to think about, the 1 second decision. So that's what that's all about. It's about gaining control of your mind, putting things back in the proper perspective, and then saying, I really do want to be here. And I'm going to have a bunch of these one seconds through this 130 hours journey. And I have to learn to control these. Because if I fail one of these one seconds, I will not be a seal, I will not be a doctor, I will not be a lawyer. I will not be whatever the fuck it is.

So that's how important that 1 second decision is. It's all about your mind, takes control of you. You have to say, fuck you. I run this motherfucker. And that's what that's all about.

I would always, like, half ass my work and sergeant jacket always say, you know what? You're gonna get it. You're gonna do it until it's done right. So I got tired of continuously trying to get this white wall, this tiny little white wall on this black tire completely done. And then when I started realizing I'm wasting my time, just fucking get it done, or I'm gonna be out here in this fucking garage all day and night into the next day and night, and I say, you know what? Then I started doing it the right time. You know, first time, every time. Sergeant Jack never gave me, like, a good job. He never said that.

But I started feeling. I started knowing that I was doing good work because I wasn't doing it 20 times, I was doing it once, and then I started like, my God, this feels fucking good. It feels fucking good to fucking get a job, have a task, and put my all into that task, and then be able to move on to the next task, because I completed that task to the fullest and the greatest of my ability. And then that feeling just stuck with me, and I was like, okay, this is what I need every day of my life. I don't need someone to say, good job, David. I don't need a fucking pat on the back. Everything became internal. I started feeling this feeling I never had before.

You know, like, I thought I was a boring loser, and just cleaning a tire and cleaning the car to the best of your ability changed everything. Raking a yard and not leaving one fucking leaf, not one leaf. And then one would fall, and I would get that one leaf. It just became something that was like, okay, I see dirt. Don't pass the dirt. Clean the dirt. It just started absorbing before, you know, man, it just morphed into a man that was like, we got to get it done. Regardless.

What led to the creation of the Goggins alter ego? Well, discipline was huge, but then we always fall back on what's on, what's comfortable to us. What's comfortable for me was, if it's easy for me, you know, I'm going to do it. And so when I was going through peer rescue training, I ran up against an obstacle that I didn't think I was gonna run up, and it was the water I fucking hated the water, and. But I tried hard to get over that. And I would go to the pool and I would try and I would try, but my mind wasn't strong enough.

David Goggins, even with all the discipline, I didn't have that next fucking level. When you're truly committed to something, not like, where you like, you know, I want to be a doctor, but when I run into this roadblock, I don't want to be a doctor. No, I'm going to be a doctor. Come hell and high water. I need that kind of commitment. And David Goggins didn't know about that commitment. I knew how to wash a car. I knew how to clean a house. I knew how to, you know, do all these manual labor jobs. Jobs. But when it came down to true suffering, to the highest of suffering, I didn't have that next level of all right, motherfucker, we have this next level.

David Goggins wasn't enough. So I went into my mental lab and realized, but I want to be great, but I don't have greatness in me. So I had to create a motherfucker that was great. And in my mind, I'm really big on visualization, and people may think it's all kind of bullshit. Believe what the fuck you want. I don't give a shit. This is a true shit right here, man. I went in my mind, I said, okay, I want to look like this. I want to feel like this. And I want to have a mind that is fucking cast iron steel, that is fucking never dull, that is always fucking sharp.

That was the biggest, biggest thing I wanted. I wanted to hit obstacles that fucked most people up, including myself. But I didn't waver. I didn't fear. I didn't run away. I just stayed and marinated in the fucking fear, in the suffering. And through that building, Goggins, I will become goggins when necessary. And I started to do these things on my own. I had my own training ground. I built a training ground. It wasn't Navy Seals. If you go to Navy SeaL training not prepared, you're going to quit.

So I built this training ground on my own. And I started doing these horrific things that David Goggins couldn't handle. But Goggins started slowly coming up. I started putting that visualization of the guy I wanted to create a. And in that water, when things got hard, when I was training on my own, Goggins would appear. Goggins would appear. When David Goggins would come up, Goggins would smack him the fuck down and say, no, motherfucker, we're going to drag you through this. And that's kind of how it happened. Over a period of time, this man evolved.

Goggins became the guy that can withstand all kind of torture and pain and keep coming after you. Nothing's permanent. Nothing's permanent. That's why I'm always big on you have to keep what you want to be in the front of your mind because you're going to always lose it within the suffering. And suffering people always hear me say suffering. It's not just physical, man. There's so many forms of suffering out here, it's not even funny. And most of them are not physical. Most of them are psychological.

So I'm going through this race, I get to mile 200 of my second moab, and I'm doing well, but I'm in extreme pain, man. My fucking ass is raw. My damn feet are broken. I have six layers of tape on my. It's this. I'm Jack, man. I have 40 miles to go. I'm having this. Woe is me. Why the fuck am I out here? I'm at high elevation. I can't breathe real well. Everything's wrong. So I'm with my pacer, his name is Mike. And I see this Porta potty of sorts, and I'm like, I just need to get off the fucking course.

So I lie to Mike. I'm like, hey, man, I gotta go to the bathroom. And I go in this outdoor house. There's a bathroom in it. So I went in there, and I'm in there, and I'm thinking. I'm like, God, man, I just wish I would fall into this fucking toilet. You know, like, big sinkholes. As soon as I fall in there, man, and maybe I'll break my leg, or maybe something would happen where I can't finish the race. And as I'm talking to myself like this, out of nowhere, goggins appears in my mind.

He's like, man, are you really fucking talking like this, bro? Imagine if you were to fucking be able to have people hear your dialogue right now, man. You came out here in 2019, and this course kicked your ass. And all you wanted to do was come back here. You trained on fucked up knees. You put so many miles in. You visualized all this. You. You've run this course a million times, and now you're in a fucking porta potty like a little fucking bitch, whining and crying to yourself, lying to your pacer that she got a shit. So basically, what happened was Goggins got a hold of me and knifed David Goggins and stuffed him in that Porta potty. And Goggins came out.

And when Goggins came out with 40 miles to go, over 240 miles run, it was the most epic ending of any race I can remember. That last 40 miles was something that I can't even describe. But what I will tell you is, once again, it shows you what the determined mind can do. There's no David Goggins goggins. There's just David fucking goggins. And that's what people don't get, man. David Goggins just changed his fucking mindset in that porta potty. My feet still hurt, my back was still aching. The pack was still heavy. Everything was the same. The only thing that changed was how I approached the situation. I no longer wanted to be a victim of that race.

A victim in my mind. I wanted to dominate when most people would refuse to dominate, I wanted to dominate under the most harsh environment. I'm not teaching good side of life, so I had to figure out a way, when I came on in 2016, of teaching you what life really is for the majority of us as hell. And so while people love to show you the cars and the house and the vacations and shit, all that's good, all that's happy, I'm going to show you the side that I know most you're going through. And people hide very well. I don't want to hide anymore.

I hid for 24 fucking years. That's why now, I told you, we can talk about whatever you want. Because as human beings, the one, the first thing we have to learn, I also stuttered real bad growing up. So if you hear me stutter every now and then, it's because that was part of my life also. So it's funny, human beings want to show you the best side, and they want to hide the worst side. For me, I'm going to teach you how to be vulnerable, because that's the only way you fix yourself. You don't fix yourself by coming out here and me selling you some fucking books. That's why I don't have them. I forgot them.

I'm glad people got something from the book. I want you to learn that the only way you grow is how to look at yourself and say, okay, like, I did table longer than this. What the fuck I have to do to get some? There was nothing good on there. Nothing. Yeah, I love playing basketball. I left that out. That's something I love to do, I don't care about that. That didn't make the fucking list because the list that I had to live by was, it was the very list that was to get me at this table with you, to talk to you, to the normal human beings was I once was about how you can get somewhere and how it looks.

It looks very ugly. There's no fucking passion. There's no fucking motivation. There's no, oh, my God, man. I fucking, this is no, it's every day of your life just doing a, doing. No passion, no discipline, no motivation. All these words, I hate people. I hate that. So many people fucking use these words now because it's watered. It's someone sitting in a room by themselves, and they figure themselves out and say, God, this is gonna fucking suck. Where's passion when you're 300 pounds? Where's the motivation when you can't read and write? Where is it? So how did this happen? I just fucking did.

I just did. I said, maybe at the end of this journey there'll be something there for me. If not, I can read. If not, I'm 185 fucking pounds. There was not, there's no magic potion. There's no, oh, let me wake up and look at some shit. No, all those words are overused. They're bullshit. It's all bullshit. Just do, you're living. How do you want to live? How do you want to die? How do you want to fucking be remembered? That's. That's it.

That's it, period. The word haunted. Mm hmm. Is ringing in my head. Yep. I think it's such a powerful word. Yep. Because I was about to say it seems like a huge part of your process, maybe the entire process is it's all stick, no carrot. You know, you talk about the carrot, the positive thing, and then there's the stick, the thing you're trying to avoid. Yep. I feel like it's, the way it's landing for me is it's all stick and gas pedal. That's it. There's no carrot. You're not imagining, oh, when I'm a paramedic, when the book is published, and obviously you set those goals and you make those targets, but it's all stick.

All stick. No carrot. Think about that. I'm waking up right now studying like I have a test tomorrow. I already passed the fucking test. Think about that. Every day of my life. That's what I must do just to retain what I learned. 4 hours plus a day, I go through and do that. There's no stick, or there's only a stick. There's never been a carrot.

Which is why when I speak to people, I have to figure out a way to resonate with them. Because all I want to say to them is, let me teach you the real life, how it really is, the reason why you're a loser, the reason why you're not fucking making it, and the reason why you're trying to go to all these. I go to all these fucking conventions, speak all the fucking time. I look in the fucking audience and these people sign up, sign up, sign up, fucking every year to go to convention thinking they're gonna learn something fucking different. No, you're lazy. You know exactly what to do. Exactly what to do.

Cause even me, in my state of, I can't read and write. I knew exactly what to do. It just sucks doing it. It sucks to do it. It sucks to wake up every morning of your life and say, God, man, I'm not smart. So guess what I gotta do? I gotta study the same shit that I got one of the highest scores in the nation on and do it again. Do it again. Do it again. It's not just there. It's not just there permanently for me. So, yeah, it's all stick.

It's all stick. The only care that you have is like, maybe. Maybe. Cause whenever I take these tests that are real hard in the back of my brain, it's like, the good chance you're not gonna make it. Goggins, this ain't you, bro. This ain't you. You weren't born like this. This ain't you. The real you, bro. Study all you want to. But the second that fucking computer comes on with 150 questions, this ain't you, man.

And somehow comes back, I passed, passed again, passed again. But that ruled me back here every fucking time is saying, that ain't you, bro. That ain't you. And I have to outwork that voice. When I'm taking that test and I get to a question, I don't fucking know the answer. I'm like, fuck, man. And then say, I told you, man. That ain't you. You 300 pounds, man. You sit at home, you figure out how to do your hair. That's what you do. How to come to school with the reverse baldness when you're 16. That's you.

So there is no get out of jail free cardinal. This is why I say stay hard. Because when you weren't given the gifts, the only thing you can do in life is stay hard. And I know people cannot stand me. They can't stand this talk. This is all you can do. There's no magic pill or a magic potion. All you can do is out work man, that God created, or woman in you. And what that looks like is unfun. That's why I said, do not do a documentary on me. Because people will not see the truth.

They will see. What they want to see is, I don't want to live like that. Good. Good. And you will live exactly the way you live now. Questioning who you are, wondering what is possible, wondering what you are capable of doing. That's how that looks. Or you can be me. Which am I happy? I don't know. Never thought about it. Don't really care about it. Because all I really cared about was when I looked in that fucking mirror. I saw a piece of shit. Happiness wasn't on the mirror. At 16, around 300 pounds. It wasn't like, oh, my, I'm looking for happiness. No, I'm looking at myself in the mirror and say, all right, motherfucker, you did it again today. You a bad boy. Cause that shit sucks.

Motivation, Discipline, Overcoming Adversity, Inspiration, Self-Improvement, Leadership, Success Chasers