When Goggins live with me.
His rule is we had to do
something every day that sucked.
That was his rule.
He's the master at that.
Yeah, tell me about it
What did he make you do?
Every day sucked.
He didn't tell me that we're
gonna do that five times a day.
That, you know,
I mean, I remember one day,
well the first thing we did was we, he came
and he wanted to see how many pull-ups
I could do so he could map out the month.
He lived with me for a month.
And I went to the pull-up bar
and I got like maybe eight pull-ups, which is,
an exaggeration, I probably got like 4 pullups.
A lot of people are listening, so I the 8.
And then he said,
I'll wait 30 seconds, go and do it again.
And I went up on the pull-up bar
and I did maybe like 3 or 4.
He said, all right, wait 30 seconds,
I want you to do it again.
And I got up on the pull-up bar and I did maybe like
one keeping
you know, getting my damn chin over the bar, barely.
And I dropped down.
I was all jacked up.
And I said, all right, well what's next?
He said, well, what's next is we're not
leaving here until you do a 100 more.
We're not leaving the gym
till you do a 100 more.
That day?
Now.
Like right now.
Right now.
So you had done 7.
I did like probably 7 or 10.
And I was like, man, Goggins, that's impossible.
And he said, you know,
I already know what your biggest problem is.
And he's like, the limitations you're putting on yourself are
are self-imposed.
Get the f*** back on the bar.
And you know, Jesus Christ, Roger that man.
And uh, I got up on the bar
and I over the course of an hour or two, I did 'em.
And that started our journey of like,
you're about to go in a place
where you've never been, m********.
I graduated mentally and physically exhausted
but felt almost nothing when I was awarded the wings
I thought would anoint me as a made man around Fort Campbell.
I was still too puzzled and irritated by Captain Connolly’s level of effort, which felt almost confrontational.
It wasn’t a lot of fun to be around him, yet I relished every second.
He made me uncomfortable because he exposed my lack of dedication
to giving my best effort each and every day.
Being around people like that forces you to try harder and be better,
and while that is a good thing, when you are inherently lazy, what you really want are some days off.
The Captain Connollys of the world don’t give you that option.
When they are in your foxhole, there are no days off.
His conditioning was clearly off the charts,
and I'm not talking about the physical aspect alone.
Being a physical specimen is one thing,
but it takes so much more energy to stay mentally prepared enough
to arrive every day at a place like Air Assault School on a mission to dominate.
The fact that he was able to do that told me it couldn’t possibly have been a one-time thing.
It had to be the result of countless lonely hours in the gym, on the trails, and in the books.
Most of his work was hidden, but it is within that unseen work that self-leaders are made.
I suspect the reason he was capable of exceeding any and all standards consistently
was because he was dedicated at a level most people cannot fathom
in order to stay ready for any and all opportunities.
Those who have not learned to self-lead show up to their lives like I did Air Assault School.
They don’t prepare or have a plan of attack.
They wait, get shotgunned into something
—a school, a job, a physical test—then wing the motherf*cker.
Think about how much information is out there on the internet.
Any place you want to build your skills, from boot camp to Harvard Business School,
from EMT certification to an engineering degree, is described online in granular detail.
You can study the prerequisites and start on the coursework before you are even admitted.
You can prepare as if you are already there so when the time comes
and you do land that opportunity, you are ready to smash it.
That’s what a self-leader does, no matter how busy their lives are.
Not because they are obsessed with being the best, but because they are striving to become their best.
Self-leaders rarely rest.
In the heat of battle, they become dolphins who sleep with one side of their brain on alert
and one eye always open so they are ready to outsmart, outswim, or battle their predators
and they are awake enough to float back to the surface and take another breath.
In order to sustain that amount of energy output,
self-leaders return again and again to the organizing ideals of their lives.
They live for something bigger than themselves,
and because of that, their lives swell and glow with an energy that others can feel.
It can also start a chain reaction that challenges and awakens people
to the untapped power coiled within themselves.
The power that they are wasting with each passing day.
Setting an example through action rather than words will always be the most potent form of leadership,
and it’s available to all of us.
You don’t have to be a great public speaker or have an advanced degree.
Those things are fine and have their place,
but the best way to lead a group is to simply live the example and show your team or classmates,
through dedication, effort, performance, and results, what is truly possible.
That’s where I’m at now. Thanks in part to the example Captain Connolly set
and because I was aware enough to recognize that he was a rare breed and humble enough to learn from him.
However, as you know, the transformation didn’t take right away.
Sadly, once Air Assault School was over and Captain Connolly was out of my life,
the spark faded, and I fell back into my old ways.
While I never stopped thinking about that ten day experience,
I didn’t have it within me to self-lead just yet.
I should have taken the lesson from those ten days and applied it to the next fifty years of my life.
I should have imagined Captain Connolly watching me each and every day.
Believe me, if you think you’re being watched, you live differently.
You’re more detailed and squared away.
That’s not how it went for me.
It would be another three years of slippage before I exhumed the Connolly files from my personal archives
and studied them to become a self-leader.
When you talk about the importance of having the right people in the foxhole with you,
how do you know who the right people are?
You know what?
That's that was something to me a lot of years to figure out,
you know, you're the right people in your foxhole
when you're waking up at three o'clock in the morning,
you're going to bed at midnight
and you're waking up at three. And no one says,
is this smart to do?
You need some time off.
You need to take a break.
When I started hearing that, well, I know what I'm doing to myself.
I was behind the power curve, man.
When everybody starts off in first grade.
I had them negative grades.
I started off in the dungeon,
but I had to dig out of the damn grave to get the first grade.
So now you're 20 years old where everybody graduated high school and all this earth, man,
I gotta make time up.
So while people think 24 hours is one day
for me, it's three, four, five days.
I gotta make up time.
I'm behind.
gotta go to summer school in my mind.
When mothef*ckers who's with me realizes this mothetrf*cker
gotta go to summer school in his mind.
He's got to make up time.
He needs 22 hours of the 24
and they just get it.
He's trying to go somewhere.
You are the right person for my foxhole.
I don't want to hear no about resting.
I can't rest right now.
I will hear what I'm doing to myself.
I know what I'm doing to myself.
Did you see how I came up?
I got to catch up now.
And that's what life is about.
Sometimes you are raised in a position where you are behind.
We have to make that time up.
I'm sorry.
It may be inhumane.
You may be unbalanced.
It may not look right to you.
I don't give a f*ck
it's the situation that life put me in and
I need people to say what I don't want to give at three in the morning.
I need motherf*cker in my life, that see me go to bed at 12 and wakes me up at 3.
Saying you need to get thingsdone.
That's the foxhole.
I don't need critiquing.
I need pushing.
I need pulling.
I need anger.
I need passion.
I need drive.
I need.
Man, those bad days.
I don't need somebody in my ear saying, man,
cause then that's all a person needs is that support can go a lot of ways, man.
Almost nothing in life is constant.
Conditions and circumstances are perpetually in flux like the winds and the tide,
which is why my mind is never fixed.
I tack and adjust, forever searching for my new 100 percent.
Age, health, and the responsibilities we carry can be limiting.
That doesn’t mean we should give in to those limitations or use them as excuses to let ourselves or our dreams go,
but we can acknowledge them, as long as we are committed to finding out what we can still do given those limits
—whether they be temporary or indefinite—and maximizing that.
Every day, thousands of people wake up to a life defined by newfound limitations that are difficult to accept.
Maybe they’ve been diagnosed with a terminal disease or suffered a spinal injury.
Could be they lost a limb or are suffering from PTSD.
More often, the shifting circumstances are not nearly so dire.
Sometimes, it’s good news that changes the equation.
Maybe you are a new parent or landed a lucrative gig that demands ten to twelve hour workdays.
Could be you recently got married, which means you have to consider more than just your own goals.
No matter the variables, your new 100 percent is out there waiting for you to find it.
The thing is, most people don’t want to.
Because whenever you’re trying to find your new anything, it means you’re not who you used to be,
and that can be depressing enough to give up the search.
Some people use their new circumstances to dial down their effort level
instead of adjusting their approach and still giving it their all to achieve their goals.
You’ve got to work with what you have.
I couldn’t run or ruck, but that didn’t mean I was out of the fight.
No matter what you are dealing with, your goal should be to maximize the resources and capabilities you do have.
If you’ve suffered a freak injury or received a diagnosis that changes everything,
what does your new maximum effort level look like?
A lot of people bide their time and wait to see what happens next, but a year or two later,
they find they are still waiting.
With every unfortunate turn in life, no matter how heavy the weight,
you have to be committed to pushing back against that pressure with effort.
No matter your age, abilities, disabilities, or responsibilities,
we must all stay committed to finding our new benchmarks.
Because not only does that keep your mind engaged and your demons at bay,
you actually might achieve things the old you never could have conceived.
No, don't take it like
go out there and run through a brick wall as many times as you can.
No, I'm not saying be me.
Don't run towards them five miles at one time.
I'm not saying do that.
I'm saying start to learn.
The mind is powerful.
It's powerful, man.
It's, it's unbelievable.
But people need, they need a thing
to get 'em going, right?
They need a thing, right?
They need a goal.
They need, they need a
sometimes the first step is the hardest.
Like, it's hard to take that 1 million step too,
but sometimes the first step is the most,
there's something about the, like, what do I do?
How do they start going over their phone?
They start calling people.
They don't get outta the house.
It's, and there's something about
procrastination.
It's like, you know, it's painful.
You know, you should be doing things,
but you just keep doing it.
You keep itching that scab.
I procrastinate like a m*******, man, every day.
I won't to do this s*****
That's what's so funny, man.
People looking like I'm some damn superhero
that came down from the gods, from the heavens of Earth.
No man, I don't wanna do this s***.
I'm looking at my shoes for 30 minutes
sometimes thinking, man, f***man.
People, people look up to you, Goggins, f*** them.
I wanna do this s***.
I'm like, I wanna do this s***, man.
But guess what?
You do it.
I'm going to do it.
As long as you do it.
And that's what I know about it, man.
That's what I stopped doing.
I'm thinking, oh man, you gonna f**** sit here?
You look at your shoes for 30, 40 minutes.
and you gonna go, you gonna think about it all day long
and you gonna do it anyway.
And sometimes you don't have the time to look at your shoes for 30 minutes.
Those are the beautiful days.
Yes.
Because you know, you just have to go.
That's right.
And so, like, there's no room for procrastination.
And that's when I, when I was in the military,
I loved my schedule
cuz I knew I to be at work at 7 o'clock
So you better get your ass up at 4 o'clock, man.
You gotta get your s*** in brother.
Cuz I had to get my s*** in before I got my s*** in.
Right.
You know?
So that was my mentality back then.
Man.
You know, like I had to get the miles
and get everything in man and get to work man.
I'm competing with the alpha males.