When you quit, your mind does this
because you're out.
Once you say, I'm not going to quit,
this is the 40%.
When you quit, your mind says, we're done.
So it doesn't expand.
There's no expansion when you quit.
When you say, f*ck you,
uh uh, this sucks.
I'm drowning.
I'm miserable.
I'm suffering.
I'm broken,
but I'm not going anywhere.
What happens to your mind is it does this.
It says, f*ck, he's not leaving.
So we got to expand.
We got to grow.
We got to figure this f*cking thing out.
So then these compartments in your brain.
They have to work.
And then you start to engage
parts of your mind that you never engaged before.
Small minds and weak people kill big dreams.
You might have clear goals and be working on yourself every day,
but if you have the wrong folks around you,
there’s a good chance they could be sucking the life right out of you and making sure that you go nowhere.
When I select my crew, I’m not looking for elite runners to pace me.
I look for individuals with a foxhole mentality.
Of the four men who joined Kish and me in Moab,
only one had ever done an ultra before,
and two others barely ran twenty miles a week,
but I didn’t choose them for their running ability; they all understood me.
They appreciated my mindset, knew how far I was willing to go,
and were ready to do whatever it took to get me there.
My success in this race was their only priority.
When I told them I was heading back out to finish the job, nobody was surprised.
They had been with me all day, knew I was feeling better, and, most importantly, know who the f*ck I am.
They expected me to try and finish.
When I knocked on their doors at four in the morning,
they were damn near packed for the trail already,
with a look on their faces that said, “What took you so damn long?”
In military speak, the foxhole is a fighting position.
In life, it’s your inner circle. These are the people you surround yourself with.
They know your history and are aware of your future goals and past limitations.
But because it’s a fighting position, a foxhole can just as easily become your grave.
Therefore, it is crucial that you be careful about who you invite in.
Whether you are at war, competing in a game, or striving in life,
you never want someone in your foxhole who lacks faith or will try to steer you away
from your full potential by giving you permission to pack it in or wave the white flag when sh*t looks bleak.
You want the husband or wife who,
when you snooze that alarm on a freezing mid winter morning before dawn,
shakes you the f*ck awake so you don’t miss your training run.
When you’re dieting and whine about being bored of eating the same bland foods every day,
they remind you of all the progress you have made, of all the hard work you have put in,
and happily eat the same bland foods alongside you.
When you say you’re tired from all the late night studying, they stay up late with you to help you study.
You want the type of race crew who, when you’re suffering on the trail,
are inspired by bearing witness to your struggle.
They know it is proof of your effort.
In turn, their refusal to give up on you can only inspire you to tap the reserves
you’d forgotten were there and give more.
They know the only time to shut down and walk away is after all options have been exhausted.
Even if that means yet another sleepless night or a last minute change of schedule.
When those are the motherf*ckers in your foxhole, how can you not stay in the fight?
Most people don’t have a selection process for their foxhole.
They invite all the old cronies and close relatives in by default.
As if growing up with someone is the top qualification for foxhole membership.
Old friends are great and shared history is to be respected,
but not every person who has been in your life a long time is looking out for your best interests.
Some of them are threatened by your growth because of how it impacts them.
Some are looking for a friend to keep them company in their half ass lives.
In order to populate your foxhole with the right people,
you must first know who you are as an individual.
That means shaking off old belief systems—creaky concepts of the world and your place in it
—that no longer serve you and the habits and lifestyle that you’ve outgrown.
Any ideas or interests that were impressed upon you by others,
whether they be your family, peers, or culture, must be examined consciously
so you can see through all of them and discover your own unique individuality.
For most people, this is a slow, organic process that can take years,
if it happens at all, but if you bring intentionality to it,
individuation can be accelerated.
Once you find out who the f*ck you are,
the world will start delivering you care packages filled with opportunities that will fuel your quest.
Do things you hate to do.
Be uncomfortable every f*cking day of your life.
Roger that.
I'm not the smartest kid in the world.
Okay.
It says somebody saying, Oh no, you're smart.
No, no, no.
Don't say that to yourself.
I said to myself, no, I'm a dumb.
Okay.
Roger that.
How do you get smarter?
Educate yourself.
So the things that we run from,
we're running from the truth.
We're running from the truth, man.
So the only way I became successful...
Was going towards the truth as painful and
as brutal as it is
it changed me
It allowed me to become in my own right who I am today.
In addition to power eating and spraying cockroaches,
I did a lot of searching after I left the Air Force at twenty four years old.
I was looking for my place in the world and tried on different personas and subcultures.
I explored becoming a wrestler.
I got into powerlifting and thought about competing in that sport,
but those weren’t honest choices.
I didn’t burn with a desire to wrestle or lift heavy on stage.
All I knew was that I didn’t want to be David Goggins anymore.
I wanted to be the hardest motherf*cker ever to live.
The problem was I didn’t know what the f*ck that looked like.
It was terrifying to admit that to anyone, including myself,
because at the time, I was out of shape, working a low wage job, and living well beyond my means.
How the f*ck do you go from that to hard motherf*cker?
I had no clue and wondered if I was delusional.
Who the f*ck gave me the right to have such an audacious dream?
Even I thought I sounded ridiculous.
But as absurd as it may have seemed, I didn’t let go of that dream.
I let it linger in the back of my brain.
Then one day, a care package arrived in the form of a Navy SEAL documentary.
And there it was. I finally found a place to start that might just lead to hard motherf*cker territory.
My dream no longer felt delusional. It felt possible.
My evolution had begun, but as my Navy SEAL future crystallized over the next several months,
I learned that when you change, not everyone in your life will be on board.
You will get some serious resistance, and it will be a pain in your ass.
Everywhere I turned, I found family members, friends, and coworkers resistant to my evolution
because they loved the Ecolab spraying, chocolate shake slurping fat ass.
At three hundred pounds, I made them feel much better about themselves,
which is another way of saying, they were holding me back.
Years later, I learned how common that kind of thing is.
Most of the men I recruited into the SEALs confided that their wives, girlfriends, or parents
were dead set against something they wanted more than anything in the world.
That can be extremely stressful.
When you are striving to be you
—especially when it involves pushing your limits of pain and suffering or sacrificing life and limb
—you do not need to deal with trying to make everybody happy at the same time.
When you are conflicted like that, your internal dialogue becomes counterproductive,
and when those moments of truth arrive and the quitting mind gets loud,
that inner conflict might be the very thing that convinces you to give up.
When I first made the decision to try to become a Navy SEAL,
the only person in my foxhole was my mom.
She knew what it entailed and was immediately on board.
I didn’t see any fear in her eyes. While she was worried about me,
she believed in what I was doing even more, and that allowed me to train and fight with a clear head and maximum focus.
Years later, when I ran Badwater, she was in my crew.
I walked one hundred of those 135 miles,
and when horseflies were all over me and I was suffering in the heat,
she got out of the support vehicle, sobbing.
Not because I was in pain, but because she was proud of me.
Because I was pushing through it all like a f*cking warrior.
I have people now So when I was in the worst part of my life
Those people want to bring you back in
those people's like like you can see who you hang out with
Like when you're in your worst
and when you're trying to get better with
what makes it hard to get better
is that you are hanging around people who like
let's say you are an alcoholic
you hang around people who drink
And I say you want to stop drinking
Those people want to bring you back in
like I used to be this guy this guy
who was you know who wasn't worth anything
Now those people who are still there
They're 16 17 18 30 years ago.
They're trying to get you back there
So the hardest part
you got to see who you're hanging out with man
Not all friends and loved ones react that way when you change and become committed to perpetual growth.
Some are genuinely offended, and you don’t need or want their voices in your head.
Which is a nice way of saying you may be required to sh*tcan some motherf*ckers along the way.
Who you hang around and speak to on the daily matters.
That’s why it is not a successful formula for people in drug and alcohol
recovery to continue to hang out with the people they used to party with if they want to stay sober.
When you evolve, your inner circle must evolve with you.
Otherwise, you may subconsciously halt your own growth
to avoid outpacing and losing contact with the people who mean a lot to you but may not be able to hang with you.
When there is no one around you who believes in or understands your quest,
you must turn your foxhole into a one man fighting position. That’s okay.
It is always better to fight alone until you can find people strong enough to fight the good fight with you.
There is no time to waste trying to pull deadweight up a hill.
I’ve been there many times, and you must hold out until reinforcements arrive, even if it takes years.
Loneliness can be difficult and depleting,
but I’d much rather you stay lonely than crawl out of your foxhole
and trek back through known territory into the arms of the very people who loved the old you
and were never comfortable with your transformation.
Does this mean you have to end all relationships or burn all bridges? No, not necessarily.
But doubters must be kept at arm’s length,
and anyone in your inner circle must accept you for who you are and who you want to become.
This may require an adjustment period, and that is understandable.
But within a reasonable amount of time, the men and women in your foxhole must,
in their words and actions, give you permission to be you.
In 2018, right before I received my VFW award,
I realized how much I couldn’t stand being retired.
I spent hours calling old friends and new contacts in the military, looking for a way back in.
I considered reenlisting in Pararescue,
but remembering how much I loved Ranger School and Delta Selection,
I thought the Army might be a better fit,
so I dropped word that I was interested in enlisting as a forty four year old grunt.
It didn’t take long for a recruiter to reach out.
He was convinced he could make it happen,
but it meant moving to some backwoods Army base for training.
Kish was not thrilled.
She’d worked hard and kicked ass in the corporate world for twenty years,
and she did not expect to be living on or around an Army base at that point in her life.
She damn sure didn’t expect me to turn down dozens of lucrative
speaking gigs to prepare for a third stint in the military.
By then, I was already earning more money for an hour or two of public speaking than I’d earn in a year as a grunt.
I found myself walking on eggshells, wondering if the woman I loved would want to stay with me.
At the same time, I knew living someone else’s idea of my life is a recipe for misery.
In the end, for a number of reasons, I didn’t reenlist. I got into wildland firefighting instead.
My mission hadn’t changed.
I was, and still am, trying to become the hardest motherf*cker to ever live.
That’s not an ego trip. It’s a way of life.
It may be far fetched and even unachievable,
but I remain in service of that vision.
Fast forward a few years, and Kish is most definitely foxhole qualified.
Now, she is the one who blocks off the fire season entirely and turns down every speaking inquiry that comes in
for those months without even asking me because she understands exactly who I am and what I am about.
She knows what my priorities are and fully supports them without question.
She admires that I am fulfilled by doing things that most people shy away from
and that the lure of money and fame do absolutely nothing for me but leave me feeling empty.
She wants me to find my very best.
I’m wired the same way.
When Kish confided in me that she wanted to run a sub 3:25 marathon,
I helped her train and strategize, and she accomplished her goal with a time of 3:21 in Philadelphia.
When she mentioned possibly applying to law school,
she received a package of LSAT books at the door the very next day.
Don’t ever tell me you want to run a marathon because I will sign you up for a race, monitor your daily training,
and run that sh*t with you.
If you tell me you want to be a doctor,
I’ll be the motherf*cker who enrolls you in med school while you’re sleeping,
and you’ll wake up to a class first thing in the morning.
Most people can’t handle that level of intensity.
But that’s the kind of backing I want.
The type that comes with an expectation of effort and demands hours, weeks, and even years of hard work.
Because that is exactly what it takes to fulfill lofty ambitions and,
more important than that, find out what you are truly capable of.
Who’s in your foxhole? Tag them and tell them why!