- I got called nigger everyday of my life growing up.
Live in a small town.
One of the high-ups in the KKK,
son sat behind me in two classes.
So he called me nigger all the time.
Got my first car.
They spray painted "nigger we're gonna kill you" on it.
And I was weighing like 297 pounds.
So, I was just an insecure, scared kid.
But the best thing that happened to me, no one helped me.
I had to figure out I wasn't gonna be
a punk kid all my life.
So the only way I could turn it around was to suffer.
I had to build callouses in my brain,
the same way I built callouses on my hands.
So I broke the Guinness Book of World Record for pull-ups
a long time ago, but I failed at it twice.
And I did 67,000 pull-ups in trying to break this record.
So to do 4,030 pull-ups,
I had to do 67,000 for training for that.
- [Tom] Wow.
And so, what I realized is for me
to become the man I wanted to become,
I saw myself as the weakest person God ever created,
but I never blamed God for anything He did to me.
So I wanted to change
that to be the hardest man ever created.
Am I that?
I don't know.
But you had to have a goal.
And my goal when I was sitting there, not going to school,
being bullied, having no self-esteem, my goal was,
the only person that can turn this person around is me.
I was so driven, and I'm not gonna say motivated,
'cause motivation's crap.
Motivation comes and goes.
When you're driven, whatever's in front of you
will get destroyed.
We live in an external world.
Everything is, you gotta see it, touch it, it's external.
If you can for the rest of your life
live inside of yourself, stop listening to people
who are calling you fat, gay, transsexual, nigger.
Everything that is makes no sense.
All these insecure people putting their insecurities on you,
you gotta flush it out.
You gotta just be whoever the hell God,
or whoever the hell you believe in,
if you believe in nothing but yourself,
I don't care what it is.
You gotta take everything and throw it away.
You have to believe in one thing and that is yourself.
And I'm not saying don't believe in God,
or what you believe in.
But right now, for you to find greatness in yourself,
you're not gonna find it by looking in a book,
or by even hearing me.
I may give you the spark,
but you've got to go inside yourself to find it.
How?
That's the question.
How are you gonna do that?
Thicken your skin.
Become more of a human being.
Don't be afraid of the reflection in the mirror,
'cause that's all you can be afraid of.
Once you overcome the reflection in the mirror,
on the other side is greatness!
That's what people don't understand.
By me running, I am callousing my mind.
I'm not training for a race, I'm training for life.
I'm training for the time when I get that
two o'clock in the morning phone call that my mom is dead,
or something happens tragic in life,
I don't fall apart.
I'm training my mind and my body and my spirit
so it's all one, so I can handle
what life is gonna throw at me.
Because the life I've lived, it throws a whole bunch at you.
And if you're not physically and mentally prepared for that,
you're just gonna crumble,
and you're good for nobody.
In times of suffering, what we do is
we forget how hard we really are.
Okay, that's what suffering is.
Suffering is a test, it's all it is.
Suffering is the true test of life.
The beauty is remembering this young, dumb,
what people called nigger,
is now where I'm at today.
And that is, when you finally get to that point, for me
is forever lasting peace.
Greatness isn't running 200 miles at a time,
or doing 4,000 pull-ups, you're being a SEAL.
Greatness is whatever the hell
you've dreamed of in your own mind.
You gotta first see it, you gotta first create this vision
in your mind, and then that's when I come into play.
Once you create this vision in your mind,
it's how am I gonna get there now.
We are all great.
No matter if you think you're dumb,
no matter if you think you're fat,
no matter if you are fat.
No matter if you've been bullied,
or no matter if you just got back from Iraq or Afghanistan
and you have no legs or your arms are, whatever man.
We all have greatness.
You gotta find the courage.
You gotta find the courage to put your Bose headphones on
and silence the noise out of this world,
and to find it.
(majestic music)