- He knocked my mom out at the top of the stairs.
I could see him comin' down the stairs
just dragging here.
And she was kind of lifeless, and that's when I got
off the couch scared to death,
jumped at my father and he beat the shit out of me.
We never went to school hardly at all
because we were bruised up.
He also believed in just us working
the family business so going to school
really didn't happen for me at all.
Not only did I take a back seat,
I also had a learning disability.
I'll never forget in third grade
there was this teacher that was extremely rough on me,
and at this time in my life, I did not need this.
And she believed that I needed to be in a special school
because of my learning disability.
And this is what I was talking about.
People always talk about manage your expectations.
This teacher managed my expectations.
She saw the learning disability.
She saw I was socially inable to survive in this world.
She saw I was messed up.
So she managed my expectations.
She said we need to put David Goggins
in a special school.
I came from Hell and when you come from Hell
not knowing how to fight, this is what happens to you.
What happens to you is you become a fucked up kid
that cannot survive in society.
I'll never forget one time during the basketball game,
there was this coach, Mr. Trout, he knew me
when I was a kid in that school
where I was in third grade getting set back.
Mr. Trout always loved me.
The white man loved the shit out of me.
I don't know why he did.
But he was my JV basketball coach my sophomore year.
The visiting team was at our home stadium.
It was at the end of the game and the visiting team
start chanting, I was the only black person
in the whole daggone stadium, they start chanting,
"Nigger, nigger, nigger."
That's all I remember.
At that time in my life, that's all I remember.
But now at 42 years old, I can look back
on that time with clear eyes and a clear mind
and see what Mr. Trout did for me.
He went in that locker room where I was crying and upset
and he cried with me.
This white man cried with me, but at that time,
I didn't see that.
All I saw was red.
I saw hate.
This whole town hated me.
Everybody's against me.
My mind lost it.
And for some reason I couldn't sleep on my bed.
Until this day I don't know why
the floor felt so comfortable.
And at 22, 21 years old, I went
from 175 pounds to 297 pounds.
Fat, out of shape, insecure, I was everything
everybody said I was going to be.
That's what I was.
And it makes you feel like shit.
So I got a job spraying for cockroaches at night time.
I'm saying that it's a bad job,
but I didn't want to do it.
So for about six months I went around to
local eateries spraying for cockroaches.
This one night I came home, the first thing I do
I walk in my living room, turn the TV on,
first thing I do then walk back to take a shower.
And I listen to the TV as I was trying to take a shower.
This day changed my life.
It held me accountable for what I wasn't facing in life.
They're going through Navy Seal training.
Then I sat down, I came out of the shower
and I sat down.
Something brought me back to site down
and watch these guys go through Hell.
I saw a ton of them quittin', ringin' the bell.
Ringin' the bell means you're quitting Navy Seal training.
I saw them putting their helmet down.
This went on through the whole show.
And it finally got to the very end.
There was about 15 to 20 guys at the very end.
And this one statement changed my life.
They were all sitting there in their dress whites
and the CO, this commanding officer stands up
in front of these men.
And he looks sharp and I could tell he stood for something.
And he said, "We live in a world
"where mediocrity is often rewarded.
"These men up here detest mediocrity."
When you hear a statement like that,
it forces you to think about yourself.
I wasn't even fuckin' mediocre.
I wasn't anything.
I was at the bottom of the barrel of life.
I chose the four-lane highway for my life,
the easy route.
The route that has gas stations.
The route that has fuckin' signs that say,
"20 miles to the next service stop."
All this shit.
I chose that route.
Most of us choose the four-lane highway.
When I was born, there was also a shovel over here
in the fuckin' corner.
No one wants to go to the shovel.
They want to choose the four-lane fuckin' highway.
That's the nice route.
The shovel means you're gonna fuckin' hurt.
The shovel means you're gonna suffer.
The shovel means you're gonna hit rock a lot of times.
We all know what diggin' through rock is like.
When you hit a fuckin' root, you gotta fuckin' get
some more tools out, but I had no more tools,
just a fuckin' shovel.
I was choosing the four-lane highway.
This is when I decided to pick up that fuckin' shovel
that we all decide not to take.
I had to make a change in my life.
So I said you know what?
I have to join the military.
I went on a Navy Seal training.
Became the only person I believe in history
to go through three Navy Seal Hell Weeks in one year.
I completed two of them.
Hell Week is 130 hours of continuous training.
You might get two hours of sleep.
The first few weeks gets you ready
for this hard one week of training.
I had to become obsessed.
No matter what was in front of me,
I had to figure out a way to overcome it.
So when things hit you in life
that you're afraid of or you're not good at,
the first thing you're gonna say to yourself is,
"Why am I here anyway?"
This isn't for me.
The water's too cold.
The sun's too hot.
I'm gettin' up too early.
Why am I doin' this to myself?
That's what the normal mind says.
I had to start training my mind to think
about how the fuck can I get through this.
Not giving myself a way out.
Never give myself, create a wall around
all the fucking ways out in my mind.
I just slowly start to build this fucking wall
so my mind knew this mother fucker is not going
to give himself a way out of here.
In my first Hell Week, I had a huge setback.
I was broken, my legs were broken.
I had double pneumonia.
I got rolled back to day one, week one
of Navy Seal training.
I got through that second Hell Week.
During that second Hell Week, I actually broke my knee.
I continued to limp around for a couple of weeks.
I couldn't make it anymore.
Got rolled back to day one, week one.
I'll never forget standing there
in front of Captain Bowen.
He was the CO in charge of Navy Seal training at the time.
And he had no mercy on anybody.
If you believed in managing your expectations,
I wouldn't be here today.
He challenged me again.
I was challenged my whole life
not by the mindset of managing expectations,
by exceeding expectations not by managing them.
I'm standing there with crutches.
I'm sitting in his office.
He looks at me.
He goes, "Goggin, this is your last time
"we're gonna put you through Navy Seal training.
"This will be your third Hell Week in one year.
"We're not gonna put you through a fourth,
"so this is your last time."
I'm sitting there thinking, "How am I gonna get
through this?"
I'm badly jacked up.
My legs are broken.
My knee is messed up.
And he goes, "You have a couple of months to get better."
A couple of months isn't going to do it.
I won't get healed up in a couple of months.
But I realized I'm going to get through this shit.
I'm gonna find a way to get through it
because when I put barriers in my mind.
So my third Hell Week, I went in there,
with pretty much, I would put a black sock on first.
I would get duct tape.
Then I'd duck tape my ankles all the way up
to my calf every single morning.
Then I put another black sock over it.
And what that did, that prevented me
from moving my ankle so I didn't really,
I wasn't flexing my shin as much.
And I started running with just my hip flexors.
In this Hell Week, it was a bad Hell Week,
we had a guy die on Thursday morning of Hell Week.
I went on to become a Navy Seal.
Greatness is not something that you meet once.
It's something that you meet thousands
of fuckin' times in your life, and you don't reach it
if you're not constantly in constant fuckin' pursuit
of fucking greatness.
So if my mind were to say right now I'm great, I just lost.
We're gonna grow.
We're not gonna triple down on our strengths.
We're not gonna do that crap.
We're gonna work on our weaknesses so we grow.
We need friction to do that.
Without friction there's no growth.
Without friction, there's confusion.
Confusion is David Goggins how did you become
who you are today?
I put a bunch of fuckin' friction in my life.
And I grew.
That's how I did it.
Yeah you get mentally tough.
It's a lifestyle.
It's not hittin' that fuckin' snooze button
in the fuckin' morning and not making your bed
and not cleaning your house.
You don't hit the snooze button.
You get up.
You don't want to go run?
You go run.
You don't want to go swim?
You go swim.
You don't want to make your bed?
You make your bed.
You don't want to clean your house?
You clean your house.
You don't want to study?
You fuckin' study.
That's how you start to callus your mind
'til that became my life.
If you say you're going to wake up
at four o'clock in the fucking morning to go run,
wake up at four o'clock and it's gonna suck.
It's not going to be fun.
Do something that sucks every single day of your life.
That's how you grow.
Embrace the suck.
(motivational music)