I was weighing like 297 pounds
and I had to make a change in my life.
You know I was at an all-time low
and I wasn't going anywhere
and I was exactly what everybody said I was gonna be
which is nothing.
This man is a self-made beast
widely considered to be the toughest man on the planet
and one of the greatest endurance athletes of all time.
I was just an insecure, scared kid
and the only way I could find myself
was to put myself through the worst thing possible.
He's the only member of the US Armed Forces
to complete seal training, the US Army Ranger School
and the Air Force tactical air controller training.
He has completed the infamous destroyer of men known as Hell Week three times
including two in a single year and one that he started and finished
with multiple stress fractures and a hernia.
No one was here to help me
and the feeling I had every morning, I started shaving my hair when I was 16 years old
and the feeling I had every morning I looked in the mirror was horrible
and I didn't wanna feel like that anymore
and how I felt was a kid going nowhere, a kid that was scared
and most kids will accept that and look for help
but the best thing that happened to me, no one helped me.
He served in combat in Iraq, was the bodyguard for the Iraqi Prime Minister
he once held the Guinness World Record for most pull-ups in 24 hours at 4030
No one felt sorry for me
No one looked at me and said like this day and age
they'll, they'll take you in and they’ll tell everybody stop picking on this person
back then they didn’t care
I had to build calluses in my brain, the same way I built calluses on my hands
so I broke the Guinness World Records 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 4030 pull-ups
I had to do 67,000 for training for that.
He's run eight, eight consecutive 100-mile races over eight back-to-back weekends
he ran over 7,000 miles in a single year
and that is the equivalent of running 267 marathons.
I saw myself as the weakest person God ever created
you had to have a goal
my goal was the only person that's gonna turn this person around is me
the only way I can turn around
is put myself through the worst things possible a human being can ever endure
and that would be the only way that I can build this brain
to handle anything that comes in front of it, callusing my mind
through pain and suffering.
The only way you're ever going to get to the other side of this journey
is you have got to suffer to grow
to grow you must suffer
I'm afraid of my shadow
how can I overcome that?
Go in the military, get your... kicked
do things you hate to do
be uncomfortable every day of your life, Roger that
I'm not the smartest kid in the world
Okay, is there somebody saying
“oh, no you're smart. No, no don't say that to yourself”
I said to myself “No, I'm a dumb mother….”
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.
If you can for the rest of your life live inside of yourself
stop listening to the people who are calling you fat, gay, transsexual
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 whatever 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.
Self-talk and visualization are the two keys to my success
search your soul, search your mind, search your abilities
and you'll find it
but if you're not looking for it, you won't find it.
So you got to go start your journey
and the journey starts with you finding why the hell am I here on this planet Earth?
Why am I here?
if you don't know that you will live the rest your life searching, always asking the question why?
I use the hurt you're trying to put on me
I flip it upside down and use it
you trying use it for kryptonite
no, it's power pillars for me
I'm using it for strength
I just flip negative into positive, that's all it is
You might be called some Jewish word or some gay word, it's okay
let them call you that, what are you going to do now?
They don't own your life
How are you going to control that now?
How are you going to flip it upside down and say Roger that?
Now I'm going to harness this shit, and you’ll read about me years from now
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
because that's all you can be afraid of
once you overcome the reflection in the mirror
You've done it
It's so easy to be great nowadays
because everybody else is, most people are weak
This, this is a softened generation
so if you have any mental toughness, any, any ability you have any fraction
of self-discipline
the ability to not want to do it, but still do it.
People have a hard thing to understand, I hate to run
and what makes me so crazy, it doesn't need more-
people go “well why do you run if you hate it?”
What are you talking about?
I don't wanna take showers and eat either, I hate that too
the whole, that's life man
and it wasn't until I changed that mentality, that I became somebody.
I hated going to school, so guess what I was dumb
but if you can get through to doing things that you hate to do
on the other side is greatness
that's what people are saying.
By me running, I'm callusing 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 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.
So the accountability mirror is something that I kind of came up with in high school
like I said I started shaving my head when I was 16
and I got caught up in trying to impress so many people because no one liked me
so I developed so many different identities.
Let me sag my pants
you know, let me okay, let me pull my pants up
let me, let me talk this way or act this way or be this way or whatever the hell it may be
God, So many different things I did trying to fit in with so many different groups
That, when you look in the mirror, that's the one person you can't lie to
So every morning, I would shave my head, thank God
I reflect back on some of the lies I may have told somebody
or some of the ways I acted I ain't feel comfortable doing
and I did it to impress other normal people
The key word there is normal, everyday people
I was trying to make other people like me, how pathetic is that?
So I, this mirror would always tell me my,-like
my reflection would say “God, you are a pathetic man”
How does that feel every day to be this way
so I would just start having myself accountable, how did I attack today?
How did I attack yesterday?
and if I didn't do something I was proud of, I write down a sticky note
and I would fix it.
So then my senior year in high school
It was a totally different David Goggins
What brings me joy and happiness
Is knowing how beautiful the mind is
and I'm one of the few people
that didn't read about it
didn't experience it through some, some drug
I got to experience the beauty of true willpower
if you don't know who you are, if you don't know who you are
I can't tell you who you are.
We are all great
No matter if, 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, or whatever man
We all have greatness
it's just you got to find the courage
you got to find the courage to put your Bose headphones on
and silence the noise out of this world
and to find it, and to find it cause it is out there
but it's gonna take hard work, courage, self-discipline
it's gonna take all the non-cognitive skills
all the non-cognitive skills to be great.
You know smart is good, all that stuff is good, that's all cognitive
It's the non cognitive skills that set you apart from everybody else
and, and that's what it's all about.
Talk to me about what it takes to be on one side of a door in Iraq or anywhere
knowing on the other side of the door are people who are not afraid of you
They're ready for you to come in and you still have-
and they have guns and you still have to breach that door?
That's a great question, it...
that's a very scary situation
when you are on one side of the door and your mind is racing
because on the other side of that door
it could be no one, it could be four guys with four ak-47s
that, that door you're about to open can be booby trapped
so once you open it boom your legs are gone
so there's a thousand things you think about
when you're the first guy, the second guy, third guy
getting ready to go in a room and flood it.
And that's why I talk about the warrior mentality
and that's why so many people are lost when I start talking
you have the right
You're lucky that you don't have to think like warriors think
you're very privileged.
I chose this world to be a warrior
and I would choose it again if I came back to this world.
But the mentality of a warrior is very different than normal mentality
you must be that person on that door
getting ready to open it, thinking to yourself
if I die so be it.
The only way you can go in that door
is knowing there's a great chance you're gonna die
it's like, being a Seal you train with live ammo, you jump out of airplanes
everything, everything you do you could die.
So to be a warrior, why people don't understand me
I'm glad you don't understand me
Merry Christmas, good on you
because being a warrior takes a whole different mindset
a whole different mindset to know that there's a great chance I may not beat him
like I was in it for 21 years, I'm lucky
I'm very lucky that I'm alive, able to talk to you, able to still run.
But when you sign up on that dotted line to be like a Seal
your mentality changes, I may not live
you gotta accept that
and that's the mentality you have
and that's what makes you a warrior, if you're scared to die you're a bad warrior.
I'm also looking at the guys to my left and to my right
realizing that we're here together man
and I have to, I have to be strong for them
and they gotta be strong for me
a lot of people either you like me or don't, even in the SEAL teams
but when you get to that door or you get on that mission or you get on that Op
all that's just out the door, man
You know, you- you do it honestly
I mean people see it all the time in these movies
You, you're really out there fighting for that guy beside you and you can't be a coward
because you know what this, and I look at everything I do now in life, this sums it up
I hated jumping out of airplanes, I hated shooting guns
I hated the job as a Navy SEAL
but I did it because I wanted to change myself.
Everything I do I'm not really comfortable doing
but if you choose to go that route, to go be a Navy SEAL
You might as well be the hardest mother… in the world
Because if you're choosing to do something you have two routes
you can go there and be a little, a little weak person and get through barely
and that's your reputation
or you can go through the hardest guy you can possibly be, and that's your reputation
So my whole thing is, if you're gonna choose to open up that door in Iraq or Afghanistan
open the door and go in hard
Because they're gonna remember you
by slowly opening it and peeking in
So if you're gonna open it and you made your mind to open it
don't just crack it open, open the door and go in, that's with life
If you choose to do, if you are choose to do something, attack it
because they're gonna remember you as not attacking it
so I want to be remembered
you can hate me but one thing you can't say about me
I didn't attack it.
So that's the mentality you have
if you're gonna do something you might as well attack it
because you do it anyway
right
Who on this earth, would still be going right now?
You are
you are