Cultivate the mind of the warrior transcript)

Cultivate the Mind of the Warrior [Transcript] [Vishen]: Welcome everyone Our guest today is someone whom you're going to want to listen to this over and over and over again because this is one of the most intense, awakening, like kick-in-the-butt trainings I've ever done of any guest I've ever brought onto the show David Goggins is an exceptional human being, he's one of the only people in the US Military to complete SEAL training, Ranger training, Tactical Air Control training, he's an Ultramarathon runner, his book is called Can't Hurt Me and he is a guy who got to this level, he's one of the most inspirational people on the internet right now You've probably seen him on podcasts, on shows like Impact Theory but the craziest thing about David is how he got to this level A couple of years ago, he was simply a guy killing cockroaches for a living and then he made a decision in life to something different, to peak and look at the man he could be and then to go through as much suffering and pain as he could relentlessly to become that man and his message is going to wake you up We are recording this in New York, so you're going to hear the sounds of New York around us, New York is not an easy place to record in and I also want you to know that David is one of the most real, authentic and true-to-himself human beings I've ever encountered, so he's going to speak the way he speaks unapologetically, so know that there's going to be a ton of expletives in here and just get used to it Now, let's bring on the set David Goggins So I want you guys to remember this about this training that we're having with David Goggins This man is raw This man is real This man is not going to sugar-coat what he's about to say That's why I think he's such an inspiration for so many, because it's so rare to meet someone who is so true their own soul that they don't give a fuck what you think of them And in fact, this attitude is actually one of the key hallmarks of human transformation In fact, in transformational theory there's a name for this type of attitude It's called authenticity So when you listen to David, you're going to see how one can be truly authentic to who they are, and some of this, hopefully, is going to rub off on you So let's welcome to the set David Goggins [David]: I appreciate you having me, thank you [Vishen]: Thank you, David It was, every now and then I come across a guest that I see on a different media channel, and I watched you on Impact Theory, and you blew me away In fact, a random fact is David and I are the first two ever guests on Impact Theory to come back and a second recording on Impact Theory And when I was there in Tom Bilyeu's studio to that second recording, on the table next to me in the dressing room I saw a plaque that said: Congratulations to David Goggin for hitting one million views [David]: Right [Vishen]: So I'm like, who is this guy? One million view, I got to check it out And I checked it out And, man, that is one of my favorite Impact Theory episodes of all time [David]: I appreciate it [Vishen]: So let's get started, David One of the things that is most remarkable about you, in addition to all the records that you've hit, right, is where you came from [David]: Right [Vishen]: Tell us about that Tell us about where that drive, that intensity, comes from [David]: Well it comes from a real place You know, the kind of passion that I bring to my life is something that you can't just make up It has to come from the sewer And that's how I look at my life I came from the sewer You know, I didn't have these great parents I didn't have this great education I didn't have a real loving family I can't remember how many, I can probably count on one hand how many times we say I love you in my household So my dad was a very abusive man He would wake up and start drinking He loved scotch He'd wake up in the morning time and start drinking scotch When he'd get drunk, he'd get violent And so from the time I was born to the time I was eight years old, I experienced some serious beat-downs, from, you know, and you never know when, like, it wasn't like you had to something really bad It wasn't like that Just be alive made him upset So that's how I lived for about eight years, just getting beat like that from my father, and then when that ended, I was eight years old We moved to a small town called Brazil, Indiana And that started another nightmare And what's funny about that is that we lived in Buffalo, New York, where all this started And we lived in a place called, it was 201 Paradise Road 201 Paradise Road was the name of our street And it's funny because it was nothing, I mean it was the furthest thing from paradise It was absolute hell You know, imagine waking up in the morning time as a kid and all you know is, am I going to get beat today? And the whippings weren't like, I'm going to give you like three whippings, just like three across your butt, whatever They were like serious beat-downs to the point where my mom had to write letters to school excusing me from class because I was so bruised up So that was the beginning of my life, so with that kind of foundation, to take that broken foundation, because you want to build a house on a good foundation When you have a seriously broken foundation and you go to a small town in Brazil, Indiana, where there's a lot of racism there You know, and in my book, I have a lot of pictures Like people were are, oh my God, you didn't come up like that Even people from that town didn't believe that Brazil was that bad No one wants to really see because no one's you No one's you No one hears what you hear No one sees what you see No one's living the way you're living And they assume what they want to assume because their life's a certain way And so now I'm in Brazil, coming from Buffalo, and that started a whole another hell for me And I started realizing I had a learning disability A lot of it was from toxic stress So I don't believe I so much had a disability in learning I believe that with my foundation was so broken as a young kid, all that toxic stress caused a whole bunch of issues So stuttering, patches of hair falling out, white spots on my, I mean, I still have these white spots on my skin [Vishen]: How old were you when all of this was happening? [David]: So, like I said, it was, I was born in 1975 We left in 1983, so it was about eight years old, in Buffalo, and that was nothing but beat-downs there But worse than the beat-downs, there's a lot of mental torture from my dad My dad was a great psychiatrist He was almost a shrink Even though he wasn't, he was good at getting in your head, because weak people are really good at getting in your head, because they don't want to ever see you get, like, he was really bad on my mom They never want to see you get above them A weak person wants to always keep you [Vishen]: Pull you down [David]: Yes, beneath them And I started realizing that, so as a young kid, I was takin' notes, even though I wasn't the smartest kid, because my brain didn't want to learn It was caught in this hell But I was takin' note on everything What makes this man this way? What makes this man this way? So that was up until I was eight And then when I was eight we moved to Brazil, Indiana And then from eight until I graduated, it was just a lot of hell It was one thing after another God always put another obstacle in front of me, so whenever I thought I was getting over one obstacle the next one would come up [Vishen]: And it wasn't just the bruises I remember in your book, Can't Hurt Me, you spoke about how you had to cover the bruises because the more bruises these kids in school would see, the more they'd want to beat up on you [David]: Right [Vishen]: But it was the racism I mean, you were growing up in like KKK territory [David]: Right, right [Vishen]: Tell us about that [David]: So Brazil, Indiana was about 10 minutes from a small town called Center Point, Indiana And if you look it up online, Center Point, Indiana, 1995, you'll see a great picture of Center Point, Indiana, in 1995 You'll see some pictures of people burning crosses The Klan burning crosses This is 1995 So now in that town, I'm not for sure how racist Brazil was, but Center Point was where a lot of it came from So those kids and those parents in Center Point, those kids went to my school So those kids traveled that 10 minutes, went to Brazil, Indiana, and they went to my school And they grew up in hate So all they knew was hate So they put that hate on me And if you're the black kid, so there's about five black kids that went to my high school So I was one of five I think it was about 2,000 kids in my school And you know, one time I came out of this class one day and I saw my brown Citation, and it had, "Nigger we're going to kill you," spray-painted on it So these are some things, like, I hear about bullying nowadays, and stuff like this, if it happened now, it'd be all over CNN news Back then, my mom was working three jobs By now, her fiancé, she was about to get married December, right after Christmas And it was when I was 14 years old She was about to get married And he got murdered [Vishen]: Fuck [David]: So my soon-to-be new role model in my life got murdered And so fast forward now My mom's working three jobs We just moved out of a $7 a month place, so we lived there for a about three or four years, and now we live in this decent house But it was always just a constant struggle, but I never put my fears and insecurities on my mother, because I saw her come up My dad drug her down the stairs by her hair She was constantly getting beat And so, when you're a young kid and you see this, you want to protect your mom So my instinct wasn't like to get help, tell your mom this is how your life is She never saw one report card of mine She didn't know that I was going to flunk out of school She didn't know how bad things were I never told my mom that I'm getting called nigger all the time First of all, it's not cool to be bullied, you know, so I had two different David Goggins’ I had the David Goggins that was afraid, that was very timid and afraid, and I had the David Goggins that walked around like he was cool, that nothing hurt him That was the fake guy [Vishen]: So even as a young man, you had to create this fake identity to protect you from the brutality of the world you were living in Because you had a father who was abusive [David]: Right [Vishen]: Your mom's fiancé was murdered [David]: Right [Vishen]: You were beaten up in school You were in a racist school, like, one of only five black kids in a school with 2,000 white kids, in KKK territory And you were called a nigger all your life [David]: Right, well, I have to be real clear on this What's funny about that is that I was a pretty popular kid in that school That's the thing When you look back on it, all you see is the racism You don't see the popularity and all the kids that liked you The power in being able to calm your mind down and think, that's one thing I learned in my life, is that when I was in hell I wasn't able, I wasn't able to be in hell and be calm Hell makes you anxious Hell makes you want to get out of it It's that person who has the ability to be in hell and think very calmly, very rationally about what the hell is going on What's the truth? What's the reality? Why's my dad this way? Why are these kids calling me nigger? Why? Why? Why? You have to be able to piece people apart Take it down, dissect it and see what's going on So back then I didn't have those skills I had no skills All I saw was a whole bunch of kids liked me, but I no longer saw that All I saw was the spray-painting on my car Me being called nigger That's all I saw My lens was this big It was very small, very small fucking lens, where now my lens is very, it's huge I see everybody for who they are and what they are So that's the one thing that changed in me was my reality We always paint a fucked-up reality that's not even true It's the reality of what we think is true because our lives aren't what we want it to be [Vishen]: Now you took suffering, and you made that a superpower [David]: Yes [Vishen]: And one of the things that make you David Goggins, right, is your belief in suffering in order to grow [David]: Yes [Vishen]: Tell us about that [David]: Well, I realized that God wasn't going to give me a get out of jail free card And from the time I was born until the time I was 19 years old, my life had these hurdles I constantly hit obstacles Obstacle after obstacle after obstacle And I had to figure out how to manage suffering, how to deal with it, because it'd be part of my life forever At least that's what I thought So in order to deal with it, I had to be able to conquer it, and overcome it, and deal with it, and know that in this suffering there has to be some kind of growth With every obstacle, I look at it as friction now Without friction, there is no growth You have to have friction in your life to grow So I started looking at all these different things versus the woe is me mentality, like, oh my God, look at my life My life's so fucked up I come from this fucked-up family I'm being beaten I'm being abused mentally, physically I started looking at it as the perfect trial ground So I had to flip it upside down and say, okay, I'm suffering tremendously, mentally Use this to your advantage versus your disadvantage So that's what I did Versus looking at it as, like, oh my God, woe is me, I'm never going to get out of here I looked at it as, okay, hang on a second Hang on a second If I can overcome this If I can find some power in this, some way to get through this, that right there would be the fuel for rest of my life And so I found great strength in suffering Great strength in it because why? Through all of that it started to callus my mind over the victim's mentality [Vishen]: You know, and there's interesting data on that, which is why I find what you're saying so interesting So in Salim Ismail's book Exponential Organizations, there's this quote that blew me away So he was studying all of these companies and he shares this study of Google, and Google wanted to figure out what makes their best people And at first they thought it was STEM education, science, technology, engineering, math, but then what they found, it was their best people were people who had gone through suffering [David]: Yes [Vishen]: Suffering made people more humble It made people more kind It made people more sensitive to others, more empathetic So the best people at Google were young people who had gone through some suffering at some point and they emerged out of that [David]: Right It allows me to this interview with you I mean, I used to stutter so badly I couldn't even be in, I couldn't anything I had no selfesteem at all Through suffering, but recognizing You have to recognize what you've gone through And that right there gave me pride I realized that very few people could turn upside down what I did I was able to turn upside down every negative thing in my life, everything, and use it for power [Vishen]: You said suffering is a true test of life [David]: To me it's one of the biggest tests of life [Vishen]: Now you also said that, you said, "Motivation is crap It's about drive.” "I was a scared kid, and I found drive and passion." [David]: Yes The reason why I say motivation is crap because a lot of people will listen to this And they'll be motivated They'll be fired up They'll be so fired up it's not even funny But what I realized in life is to have that motivation, motivation is just kindling It starts the fire But that kindling, once one raindrop hits that little kindling, it'll burn out That's motivation So right now I'm giving you a spark You're giving people a spark There's a whole bunch of sparks out here There has to be something that's deep down inside So motivation's like this If you're married and your wife is okay, and your bills are paid, and the kids are good, and the dog's good, if everything is good, you could find some motivation, because while your life is happy, it's that motherfucker that wakes up in the sewer every fucking day, has nothing to fucking go home to, has nothing Bills aren't paid Doesn't know where when the fucking next meal's coming, doesn't know shit, and still says fuck it, I am going to what I have to to get to where the fuck I have to go That's the difference between motivation and drive, and then soon, obsession Obsession makes a person, makes other people, like, so, when you're around someone that's obsessed, most people don't have any fucking idea what to call you So they call you crazy They call you crazy because they don't understand where you're trying to go, what the fuck you're trying to do, what you're trying to be So to the normal person, which we're all normal We're all very normal What makes people different is a flip in their fucking mindset Once they turn that mindset to a point where they no longer want to be so-called normal, that's who you start to find out that motivation is not enough It's not enough You have to be that person who, no matter what's going on, if you're a big time runner, you don't care what temperature it is Like, a whole bunch of people I run with, guess what they every morning? Every night they look to see what the fucking temperature's going to be tomorrow [Vishen]: Right [David]: What's the temperature going to be so I, am I going to run inside? Or am I going to run outside? A person that's obsessed and wants to just get there, they don't give a fuck what the temperature is They no longer care, because they know no matter what's out there, no matter if it's snowing, if it's a damn tropical storm, if it's two or 20 below, they're going to run They don't care So there's no need to waste the time to look I'm just going to go And that's how you want to get your mind It doesn't matter what the fuck's out there, what's in front of me, because a motivated person is going to look, because that weather is going to fucking change their motivation, up or down Oh, it's 70 and sunny, I'm motivated Oh, it's 30 and a blizzard Fuck that, I'm going to go inside An obsessed person doesn't care They get the fucking job done [Vishen]: Because they're obsessed with what? [David]: With being great [Vishen]: Obsessed with being great [David]: Whatever great is [Vishen]: And I love that you're sharing this because just before we started recording this, Jason Campbell, who's a host here at Mindvalley He hosts a show called Impact at Work He was telling us a funny story about watching your video So Jason just ran a fricking Spartan Race with four other people from my company in the middle of a typhoon in the Philippines And while there were travel warnings, not go to the Philippines, typhoon is about to hit, and many people backed out of that race, fricking Jason decided, fuck it, I'm going to run 23 kilometers, Spartan Race, obstacle course in the middle of a typhoon, after watching you speak about this topic [David]: The power of that, yes, I'm not saying that Not A lot of people get my words, and they twist them all up, and they get all confused Don't get confused What happened in that race for that guy? What happened? On the other end, so this whole thing about suffering Yeah it sucks really bad, really really bad But we all live on this side of suffering On this side, this nice box that's very comfortable that we know when everything is going to happen We're in it, it's good We know how everything's going to turn out It's those few people who are willing to go on this side of suffering, and once they get through that, ask him how he feels now His mind, how far he grew in that short period of time, during that typhoon, during that storm, he finished that race He grew so much more than a normal person, because we was willing to go outside himself, because on the other end of suffering is greatness It's not over here So a whole bunch of us, we put ourselves in this great box, and in that box, there's no suffering in it So what we is we shelter ourselves from greatness So for me, for instance I was 300 damn pounds at one time in my life Sprayed for cockroaches Made $1000 a month I was living in that box I would sometimes look over the box and I saw hell, suffering, storms, avalanches, tornadoes I don't want to go over there But I knew if I can get through that shit, mentally, on the other side was a 185-pound person who was a Navy SEAL, went through Ranger school, only person to this, only person to that, only person to this But that's through all of that shit All of that shit I had to go through So you peek over the box, and you go back in, and you say, oh, I'm okay being 300 pounds, making $1000 a month I'm okay over here [Vishen]: Because that hurdle is suffering [David]: Suffering [Vishen]: And when you're willing to go past suffering and see that suffering is one of the best ways you can grow, that you can overcome, because you can suffer for the long term You can suffer slowly, or you can go through pain and then experience what's on the other side [David]: Yeah, on the other side is where you start to really start your journey People think they start their journey because they're born No, there's a lot of people in graves who have lived 100 years and have never started their real journey Your real journey starts when you go outside that box and you start climbing mountains, and start climbing mountains, and you think you're at the top of the mountain You go down the other side of it thinking, I'm here, and you look up, fuck, there's another fucking mountain And it goes on And it goes on And it goes on And just when you get ready to quit, you crest that final mountain, you get down, and you look, and there you are, and it starts to make sense to you then It doesn't make sense to you until you get outside that fucking box I'll talk to so many fucking people, and what I say is not for everybody So many people don't have any clue on what the fuck I'm saying because they're in this box And it's their brain The mind's a very powerful thing It has a tactical advantage over you all the time It knows your fears It knows your insecurities It knows where you don't want to go So it will guide you away from that And that's why the mind will always win until you reprogram it It will always win until you fucking reprogram it, because the mind controls you Why is that? It's your fucking mind It's your mind Because all those things that happened to you in your life All those bad things All those things that you blame other people for They're now yours to own You got to figure out a way to reprogram your mind to get outside the box [Vishen]: And so three things folks, for those of you who are taking notes and paying attention, three things I got out of what David just said And I'm just connecting the dots between everyone else we have brought on to this show The first is that study from Google Suffering makes us better people The best performers in fricking Google were the ones, were young people who had gone through some pain in their life And when you look at life like that you see that sometimes pain can be a gift Pain makes us who we are And people who have gone through suffering, they come out of that, and they can bitch, and they can whine, or they can look back at that suffering and reflect upon what they learned And it seems that that's what you did [David]: Right [Vishen]: Right, so there is an advantage on the other side of that dark tunnel Now the second thing is that when you put yourself through suffering, it changes your self-identity When you willingly put yourself through suffering That's what Jason did when he ran that Spartan Race in the typhoon, because for the rest of his life, you know, someone could dump him He could be put down by someone else He could have self-doubts But he's the fucking guy who ran a Spartan Race in a fucking typhoon, right? [David]: That's right [Vishen]: And that identity will never leave him because it's true So when you put yourself through something like that, you're earning a badge, right? You know how when you were in the military, you would get all of these badges That's a badge And that badge, no one can ever take away from you because that's your story, and that is something you, that's something that's going to hold you up from all the other shit that you go through in life Now the third thing that I wanted to share is I was interviewing Marissa Peer She's a famous British hypnotherapist, and she works with Olympians, she works with celebrities, and she spoke about, in one of our previous episodes, she spoke about five things that make top performers top performers, and one of the things she observed is that all of these top performers, they willingly put themselves through suffering She said, now, now this was a big lesson for me, because I was one of those people where I would get up, and I knew I had to go to the gym or exercise three times a week And sometimes I'd get up and I'd make these excuses Nah, you know, I'm too busy today I don't feel like it I have a bit of the sniffles Maybe I shouldn't exacerbate that And Marissa changed me in one fricking interview She said the greatest people in the world know that you don't things always because they are fun Sometimes you will things because they are painful, because you know that that is what is going to make you who you are So great performers, they willingly, openly, consciously things which are painful because they know that that pain is going to get them to the next level That flipped my mind I never skipped a gym day again [David]: You know what's funny about that, though, about the second thing you said about the badge It's a true statement But it's also, there's a caveat to that There's a big caveat to that That badge is earned We earn the badge, we go through the typhoon, we go through the Spartan Race, we whatever we in life We earn the badge, but a lot of us never want to go back again The badge can be earned and also forgotten That's why you have to go back every single day, because the mind is a very powerful thing It doesn't want to go there It doesn't want to suffer It doesn't want to suffer So once you suffer once, or twice, or three times, you're good Do you think that sticks with you forever? It doesn't If you stop reading right now You stop running You stop going to the gym You stop mathematics, stop anything You forgot the equation You forget the equation You could be the best person in your damn math class, but you go back four or five years later, God I got an A in this What, I don't remember this It goes for everything you in life, especially suffering If you not suffer on a constant basis And I'm not saying go out there and run on broken legs Suffering's different for everybody And suffering's just being very uncomfortable a lot People want to know how did you get so mentally tough, David Goggins? How'd you get there? How'd you get there? By exactly what that hypnotherapist said There were no mental toughness tricks back then There was no training back when I grew up This whole mental toughness craves, this came around years after I became who I was It was just doing Whatever my mind said I don't want to do, I realized I must that, because what got me where I was at, 300 pounds, spraying for cockroaches, a loser, not going to school, I was doing exactly what made me feel good And it got me exactly where I was at Nowhere When I started takin' this other path over here, the path I didn't want to go on, the path of most resistance, I started realizing, my God, this sucks like hell over here It's so painful and it's scary It's dark It's lonely There's very few people over here That's when I started realizing, my God, but look at the growth I have Look what's happening to me I'm losing weight I'm smarter I have confidence I have courage, the self-discipline I have, the ability to face myself in the morning, the ability to win the war in the morning I'm winning the war every morning Every morning I get up, people think I have some special ability to get up and just workout every day No I now realize what my mind's going to I now control my mind, versus the inner dialogue you had about, I work out three days a week, I'm not going to go today I have the same dialogue But now I know it's like breathing air I must this, because I know on the other side of this, I know there's greatness over there [Vishen]: Wow, so take us through that dialogue When you're running these intense, crazy ultra marathons, right, like Badwater, or any other example, what's going through your head when you, when you're about to hit that wall [David]: So I hit a lot of walls in a 135-mile race through Death Valley in the summertime, a whole bunch of them What we just talked about, it all comes back to mindset And a lot of us talk about self-talk Self-talk is big nowadays It's big But a lot of us are self-talking lies Without having put in the fucking work When you get to the time when you need to draw on this self-talk, it's a fucking lie Mine's truth So where I go to, at mile 75 of a 135-mile race, and I'm broke down, and my feet are blistered up, and I'm all just jacked up My nutrition's messed up and I'm cramping, and I'm horrible, worst state in my life And I have to go another 65 miles more miles, 70, whatever it may be I take that time, like I talked about being calm, in calming my mind down in hell, because when you're at mile 75, in the worst shape of your fucking life, your mind spazzes It realizes, I'm going 135 miles, and at 75 I can barely fucking move I'm fucked So your mind says, we're done The end is too fucking far away So you start drawing on all these different tools The tools don't fuck work for you if you haven't put the time in So what I'm doing now, is I'm calming my mind down before I start self-talking And then I start to reflect back, on all the years I put in to making myself who I am today All the hours, all the months I put in for training for that race All the three o'clock in the morning times I woke up at three o'clock in the morning, and my feet were so fucked up, and I was so just sore from the night before that I'm sitting there just looking at my running shoes like this, and then an hour later I put them on That's what I'm thinking about, all those days, all those days to get me to this fucking moment right now at mile 75 where I'm all fucked up What the fuck are you thinking now? That's what I'm thinking I'm thinking that would not be for fucking nothing We're going to figure out a way to get through this And that's what happens But the truth comes up The reality comes up of what I did If I hadn't put the time in, if I didn't have 20 times looking at my shoes when I didn't want to go it, and I still did it, it's the doing it when you don't want to it, that is what inches you forward That is the needle mover It's doing it when you fucking don't want to it And this isn't something you can fucking visit, man There's people that want to visit my world and visit this world of, like, the everyday sufferer They visit it They get a 20 visits at a fucking gym Oh, I had a fucking 20 visits at the gym, I'm good I did a Spartan Race, I did this No, no, no, no, no, no it's every fucking day You can't visit this world You'll get nothing from it You get a little trophy on the fucking wall Good for you, man, good job [Vishen]: Every fucking day, I like that I like that [David]: You cannot visit the world [Vishen]: Now this reminds me, there's something else that you speak about, right, and, when our mutual friend Tom Bilyeu was interviewing you for Impact Theory, you spoke about being in Afghanistan, and Tom asked you, like, what you when you're asked to crash through this door, and you don't know what's on the other side of that door, four dudes with AK-47s ready to mow you down, or a trigger device that's going to blow off your legs, and you spoke about how, if you choose to something, you attack it Let's go there [David]: So it was Iraq that I was talking about, but basically, it is having a very violence of action mentality It is having very a focused mentality So imagine this, imagine that I'm about to, and this is for anybody This isn't just for a soldier with a gun War doesn't mean you have a gun You're always at war up here This is to give you an example of mentality The further you're away from something, the calmer you are The closer you get to that, whatever that thing is that you're about to attack, the more you start to ramp up So let's say the door is 20 feet away from me I'm calm But I'm single-focused on what I need to I'm not thinking about what's behind that fucking door I'm thinking about I need to open the door So I'm reading the door I'm reading that door, because if I get to the door, and I'm pushing versus pulling, because it may be a door that you have to pull, versus push, now whoever's behind that door, they know I'm coming But to even draw it back even further than that, as I'm getting closer to that door, I'm not thinking about wife, kids, family, anything As you, everything in your life has to start honing in single-focused, hyper-focused on the task at hand You can't be this person out here who is, like, nowadays we're really big on being a multitasker Sometimes in life you have to learn to focus on the single point, and that's what happens here So now my aggression's going higher My focus is getting better I'm reading the door My mind is where it needs to be It's not back at home I'm in Iraq right now Or I'm, you know, wherever I'm at This is where I'm at now Whatever's happening at home is happening at home It's all about locking in to that moment, and that's where you start to harness this strength, slowly getting closer, and closer, and closer to the object in front of you Once you've read that door, now you're thinking, okay, I read the door right Now I can't think about what's behind the door, still now, once you open the door, now it's about doing your job My job, isn't, let's say there's a bunch of people with, like, AK-47s in front of me I can't attack them My job is to clear this left corner If a guy has a AK-47 in front of me, my job is to clear my fucking corner So you have to once again retrain your brain to take care of whatever needs to be taken care of, and everything you cannot control, fuck it Fuck it I can't control my wife at home right now, my kids at home right now I can't control that All I can control is the 20 feet between me and this door Now the 20 feet's collapsed Now I can control the door Now I can control my corner There's a lot of things in life we try to control that we can't control, and it takes us away from our fucking focus [Vishen]: Man, you're right [David]: And that's the whole thing about this imagery here In Iraq I cannot control what's happening back in Nashville, Tennessee It's out of my control So why is your fucking mind there? Why is your mind there? That's what gets people in that situation killed, but in life itself it pulls us away from the task at fucking hand We worry about all this meaningless bullshit Like when I was in Brazil In those few kids, at that time was everybody, all 10,000 people in fucking Brazil called me a nigger It wasn't It was a handful of racist kids But my reality wasn't there I didn't see the picture I see now, and that's what all this is about is seeing the real picture in front of you What can you truly control? Control that and move forward [Vishen]: And you can control living life with a sense of discipline [David]: Period [Vishen]: And focus, and let's go back to this other key idea that you brought up, which is powerful message, guys I want you to write this down "If you can things you hate to do, on the other side is greatness." Right, you quoted that in one of your interviews [David]: 100% [Vishen]: Let's talk about that for a moment I think you referred to it as the warrior mindset [David]: So, a lot of us are familiar with Navy SEALs I was a Navy SEAL for 15 years I was a polarizing person in the SEAL teams, either you really liked me, or you fucking hated me I started realizing why that is, and that goes for, I'm that way with everybody And this is why I believe in the warrior mindset Is that person, so for instance, guys go through Navy SEAL training, arguably some of the hardest training in the world They get that trident They kick the shit out of you during training They make you not even want to go back to the water They make you semi, like not so much afraid, they make you really respect the cold, to the point where you only it if you have to it That's the kind of mindset right there that I don't have I it because I have to it every day, not because the job is making me it That's the warrior mindset The warrior mindset is that person that is doing things that they don't want to every single day And it always goes back to that A lot of people earn, like for instance, the Spartan Race Good for you, man What are you doing today? That's the warrior mindset A warrior crosses a finish line and continues to run, in his mind There is no finish line There is no finish line There is no true accomplishment yet A lot of times we live in this fucking accomplishment world Like let's say I did Badwater I won the 135-mile race I'm going to enjoy this for a while No, no, I'm not saying don't enjoy it What are you going to fucking tomorrow? This day is over A warrior realizes this accomplishment is over It's over [Vishen]: Embrace it… [David]: And move on [Vishen]: Be happy about it, but move on and the next thing [David]: Exactly So I became a Navy SEAL, and I became this, and I became this, and I became this Do not live in that moment Get out of it as fast as you can, because it will suck you in, and that will become who you are, just that moment [Vishen]: Now this is a good time to talk about the cookie jar versus the jar of fuck [David]: Right [Vishen]: Tell us about that [David]: So the cookie jar is something I invented I invented a whole mess of shit to get me through life I'm big on visualization big on self-talk, but as I've talked about before, it has to be real So the cookie jar is something I invented because I realized at a young age I was a pussy And I had to develop an indestructible mental tool box to get through my life, because I didn't like what I saw in the fucking mirror A lot of us are able to look in the mirror on a daily basis I was a big liar growing up And I can say that now because I overcame myself I was a liar because I wanted everybody to like me So I would tell you whatever the fuck you wanted to hear, because in my mind, I wasn't a very liked kid In my mind So I wanted the cool kid in my mind Like I said, you start to create these things So to get through all these different things, I started developing these tactics, these different tools, these different tricks And one was the cookie jar And right now, like I talked about the race, the Spartan Race You're going to forget that Trust me When time, like when your life gets fucking hard, and life is coming at you, you will panic and you will forget who the fuck you are Trust me Me, I've been through, I've been in three Navy SEAL Hell Weeks, I've been through 60 ultra races, pull up records, tons of failures, all this shit In that moment where life comes at you the fucking hardest, you think you sit back and think about a fucking Spartan Race? No You should That's what the cookie far is for This mental cookie jar You know how your mom would buy these cookies and have this big old fucking jar, and she just liked to just start dumping shit in there And then when that got empty, she put some Oreos in there, and then, the next month, maybe some Chips Ahoy, whatever You don't know what kind of fucking cookie you're going to get out of that thing So for me, we grew up kind of poor, so those cookies I savored, so that's why I talk about the cookie jar So for me, it's like a fortune cookie now When times get real fucking bad for me in life, and I start to start going down that fucking rabbit hole of shit man, my life sucks I'm not strong any more The strongest person become weak I go back to the mental cookie jar, and I say, hang on for a second, man Before you become a total bitch, let's take a second and think about this, man Is this that difficult, that's in front of you? I go back in the mental cookie jar, pull out a cookie, open up this fortune cookie that says, you went through three Hell Weeks You endured Brazil Your stepfather got murdered You were the, pretty much you learned all of high school in six months, because you cheated all through school, just to get in the military You start to remind yourself of who the fuck you are, because in the worst of times, when life is its worst, you don't remember how badass you are All you know is right now life is kicking my fucking ass And no one's coming to save you There's not like you call your shrink on the fucking phone, hey, you know, who am I? No, sorry You have yourself, and that's the thing I realized I developed all these different tools because in the worst of fucking times, you are alone You must get your fucking self out of the fucking sewer No one's coming in that fucking sewer to get you It's dark, it's nasty, there's rats down there It's your brain You are the only person that can pull yourself out So the cookie jar is a tool to remind you of who the fuck you really are in a bad time [Vishen]: Wow, I like that Now you also mention this concept called the jar of fuck [David]: That's life Life is a jar of fuck, and that's why I believe that you must win the war every morning Win the war every morning is this There's a lot of things in life that we can control, but we choose not to An example, let's say tomorrow you now set in your mind you're getting at fucking six o'clock in the morning, okay? That alarm clock goes off at six o'clock in the morning, but you went to bed at one o'clock Your first instinct is whatever I said yesterday, I was comfortable It was a nice day yesterday I made this fucking plan at eight o'clock at night watching TV with my fucking girlfriend and drinking a fucking milkshake Now it's six o'clock in the fucking morning I'm tired That's that motivation shit at eight o'clock That motivation's gone You hit that snooze button, you've now lost the war The one thing you can control, you've lost, already lost So then you snooze Let's say you get up at 6:45 now because you snooze a couple times, a few times You go in the shower, and now your day's all late, you're started, so now you feel a little guilty now, you fucking missed your workout You go in the shower; you're running late for work now So now, all these things you can control, now once you open that door of your apartment or your house, you're now in the real fucking world And guess what the real world's going to do? It's going to fuck you up You'll get to work The boss may not like you that day He may be fucking mad So the whole thing about the jar of fuck, you must win the war in the morning, so then when you go into life, that you cannot control, you've already mentally won so many battles early in the fucking morning, so you're going into fucking war, having already won something, so you're not going to war defeated You're going to war knowing, I did my pushups, I did my sit ups, I read, I meditated, whatever the fuck you You're prepared for what the fuck life is going to bring you But most of us, we walk into war with no fucking weapon And the weapon is this The weapon is this We haven't sharpened it If you go into a fire, and you don't sharpen that fucking blade I'm a wildland firefighter We use a tool called a Pulaski If you don't sharpen the fucking point of that fucking Pulaski, and you start digging in fucking rock, it's going to be a hard-ass dig If you keep that fucker nice and sharp, like your mind, every war you go into, you get a better chance of survival But we fuck up in the morning We don't win what we can win We leave our house a mess We leave our life a mess And that's how our life becomes A fucking mess [Vishen]: So get those victories straight up in the morning [David]: There's so many morning victories that we have that we just fucking fail to take advantage of [Vishen]: Could I ask, what you in the morning? [David]: Every single morning, first thing I is I get up in the morning time and I run The one thing I hate the fucking most is running So if I'm attacking the thing I hate the most, I go home, I put a fucking chip right in the jar, in the mental jar I fucking won already motherfucker I've already won I've already beat myself So the only person that you're fighting every day is yourself It's not your boss It's not this or that Yeah, those are all obstacles A lot of them you cannot, control, those obstacles But you can control yourself You can control how you start your fucking day But we, a lot of us choose not to that [Vishen]: Now it sounds like you're talking about, really, embracing the dark side, right? [David]: Yes [Vishen]: What you say to critics who say, look, your lifestyle is never going to make someone happy [David]: So a lot of people read my face, and they say, you're stoic, you're not happy, you're not this, you're not that You talk so much darkness What people don't understand is that enlightenment, peace, you first, you first must go through hell You first must go through suffering to find that great peace we're all looking for A lot of us want to have, there's a lot of books out there about this five-steps, this, this, this, get there No, man, it's not that easy To find real permanent peace and enlightenment, you must go into the dark side of who you are I could have easily just shoved my whole life under a rug and went straight to peace Are you happy there? You overcame nothing You've jumped hell You skipped hell for, you forego this part of your life, you skip it and go right to peace So you always have this thing back here that's haunting you, and that's that darkness You must go into the darkness to truly find that light that you're looking for, because that's what's on the other side of that People get it all wrong, man You have to face suffering You have to face this dark side, this darkness And there's a lot of energy in there There's a lot of goodness in there that you can use to find greatness But you cannot find your peace you're looking for in yourself until you've overcome yourself We all, like this whole Instagram world We love showing people this world that we have, this fake world We show everybody the good side of us I don't that shit I want to show you how fucked up I am so you can fucking learn I'm not going to learn from your great big house and your trips you go on, and your beautiful shoes We all love to see what people have, their nice shit Show me your ugly shit That's where I'm going to learn I'm going to learn from the dark, nasty shit that we all have, that we're all want to just scoot under a fucking rug and say that it doesn't exist We all have it This is just my story We all have it, so the only way to fucking overcome it is to face it Deal with it Overcome it [Vishen]: Now you said this: "I created Goggins, "the guy who can take everything "I'm comfortable being very un-fucking-comfortable." Tell us about that [David]: So, like I talk about a lot, when I came up, I was born David Goggins David Goggins was a young man, a young kid, that didn't really know true reality, was a kid that wasn't able to handle a lot of things Me knowing that, me knowing that my foundation was broken, I had to rebuild a whole foundation I had to pick up this fucking crooked-ass house that was me, pick it up with one hand, get all this fucking concrete, I had to fucking lay this fucking land nice and flat, get all this shit out, and rebuild this foundation, and lay this fucking house back on a nice foundation That foundation now is Goggins I had to recreate myself to a man that I wanted to be, not what the world made me, not what life made me Life made me a scared, timid, insecure, afraid kid And when you're a man, and you look at that mirror every fucking day of your life, and you not like the reflection in it, if you choose to live in that, that is your fault We have the ability to recreate ourselves, and I decided to recreate myself in the form of Goggins And that is a person that said, I'm not going to be this, this guy that's insecure and afraid, all that sort of stuff I want to be this guy I want to be my own hero I want to a guy that I look up to I want to see me and be proud of me I want to look in that reflection and be proud of me But the only way I'm going to that is all of that big sack full of shit, that big satchel of shit that my life had I had to start emptying it And David Goggins couldn't that That's much too frightening, man Goggins had to go back there and say, I got this shit Let's go Let's man the fuck up So that's where Goggins comes from It's a person I had to create to start handling how to fix David Goggins [Vishen]: And that's the important thing, right, you're not saying celebrate yourself, or embrace your authenticity, and none of that garbage You're saying, look, we have shit we're have to deal with [David]: Yes [Vishen]: We got to figure out who we want to be We got to make sure that the foundation of that house is stable [David]: That's right [Vishen]: And then we got to move in that direction, through the suffering [David]: I'm not saying go in your own ass and kiss it, by any means That's not it I am saying love yourself Be proud of yourself, but you have to be able to go back and fix your life No one's going to help you out No one Like, I believe, there's a lot of theorists out there There's theorists that go into a library, take a lot of classes, read a lot of books on the mind They read about the mind They know how it's supposed to work in situations I became a practitioner And a practitioner is a person that doesn't read about it, actually does it, and then studies it while he's in it So my knowledge doesn't come from reading a book that someone wrote that says this is how it's supposed to be, someone that never even lived it, but they read about it somewhere And they took that theory and made another theory, and another theory, and another theory I'm the practitioner, who say, you know what, I'm going to go in hell with my notebook and my pen, and I'm going to sit in this motherfucker, and I'm going to see what my mind does here, how my mind processes But instead of leaving hell, because you can't get any data that way There's no data when you leave The real fucking answers come when you stay, so I have to say here to get the answers to what's going on up here So everything I talk about is not something that I read, it's something that I lived And I got the chance to go back through my mind and see how my mind operated in hell And that's how I got these answers I'd say, oh, man, when it was hour 72 of Hell Week, and I had another fucking two days to go, and my body was broken, and all wanted to was leave, what made me stay? Well how did you stay? So I figured out what the mind was doing It starts to ask you all these questions, and a lot of theorists don't understand that A lot of theorists don't really know what the mind is doing in there They've read about it, but I'll tell you what it does, because I became a practitioner I know what the mind does in hell I know how to process all those questions your mind's answering It's asking you tons of questions Why are you here? It's cold It's miserable Go home to your wife Get a good meal Do this, that If you cannot answer those questions that your mind is throwing at you at rapid fucking pace, you will quit A theorist will not tell you that A practitioner will say, yes it will that, but I will give you the answers to every fucking question your mind is giving you in hell If you have the answers, you stay You stay right where you're at, and you graduate, and you succeed No answers, you always quit [Vishen]: Now it sounds, it sounds like there's almost two minds within you [David]: Yes [Vishen]: There's the normal human mind - That we all have Which is trying to avoid pain, right, and then there's this other Goggins character [David]: Yes [Vishen]: Who's a fucking badass, who overrides that natural human mind Now where's that coming from? Is it your athletic training? Is it the military? Is it your fucked-up childhood? Where did that ability of yours come from? [David]: So I always had this voice in my head, from a young kid We all have a voice I'm a spiritual guy I don't go to church, but I believe in something much bigger than David Goggins And I believe that voice is God And a lot of us listen to it, a lot of us don't And that voice in me was saying to myself, you're better than this But I didn't want to go there Didn't want to deal with that Didn't want to answer those questions right now Wasn't ready for that And there are two Davids There are two, there's David Goggins and there's Goggins And everybody has, most of us have this one person And that one person guides us in the direction of least resistance So we never grow In building Goggins, I had to have someone pull me from that person that quits when times get hard I had to form another person alongside that voice, because that voice wasn't strong enough for me I had to formulate someone that had the reality, the real reality, of at the other end of this, there's a big reward But you cannot see that unless you push past all of that And David Goggins didn't have that So I realized that I want to see what's on the other side of this fucking mountain How can I that? So I was sitting back, I couldn't just read a book All these theories weren't going to make me that Like I said, once again, it's easy to read a book and get confidence But once you're in hell, that confidence is gone, because now it's you and you So I had to build me up I had to be my own person that had all the answers to all these questions, because I didn't have them David Goggins didn't have them All I had was, oh my God, this is getting bad When I was growing up they called me nigger That's, no, I'm not good enough Oh, this isn't, when I was raised, my dad beat the hell out of me, he said I wasn't going to be anybody That's where I used to go When times get hard, it's called surface training It's called surface training My last two years in the military, they have this program called BUD/S Prep A lot of guys weren't getting through Navy SEALs training, so they designed a program to get you ready for Navy SEAL training So, I was called upon to go there for my last two years in the military before I retired And we were training these fucking hybrids, guys that could fucking run, and fucking jump, and swim fast as shit They were smoking the hell out of all the shit that prepared you for Navy SEAL training Hybrids, but the numbers never changed The same numbers were the, so I went back to my head, and I said, what's going on here? We were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters Why is that? Because so many people are afraid to go to the one spot that truly changes your life [Vishen]: And what spot is that? [David]: It's not this It's this We weren't training this We were training this, the pushups, the pull-ups, the swimming We weren't training mentality We weren't getting to the root cause of the quitter The root cause of the quitter isn't that you can't 100 fucking pushups You can train anybody to that The root cause of the quitter is when you get in hell you can't process it It's too much to process, because your mind starts going back to the real reality of, like, I'm not ready I'm not good enough It's not trained So I started training this, realizing that the only thing that makes me quit is not the muscle fatigue It's the mental fatigue that makes me quit everything in life So I became a practitioner of the mind [Vishen]: Wow, now, now, [David]: And that's where Goggins comes up [Vishen]: Now you said, so it's almost as if you mind eats suffering and turns it into fuel [David]: It has to It has to, because I realized that without it there was no success I wasn't succeeding I wasn't succeeding There was no success And people will take what I say totally fucking wrong, and that's fine You don't have to fucking like me, because I finally like myself The thing about it, I challenge people to go out there and find it The feeling you have is endless [Vishen]: And you said this, "I was not guided by something "on this Earth "I was guided by something even more powerful "I lived the life of a monk." [David]: Yes A lot of us are very surface, nowadays, especially nowadays We are so obsessed with computers and phones and everything Our minds are the most powerful fucking weapon on the fucking earth I started realizing this at a young age But most of us go so far away from it because we're stuck on how many likes did I get? How many this, how many that? We're stuck here, so our mind's unable to fucking work I realized for me to find myself, I had to live my life No, I'm not a monk I'm not a monk But I live my discipline, my self-discipline of my life is very monk-like, because I'm trying to leave this Earth Have you ever, like, you use a washcloth when you bathe, or you just use soap? [Vishen]: Soap [David]: You use soap Some of us use washcloths So imagine this, visualize this Visualize you took a shower You lathered that washcloth all up You took a shower, nice shower, and now you're done You let the water hit that washcloth to get that suds out, right Now you want to wring that fucker out, right, nice an tight so that it doesn't drip on the floor That rag that you just fucking were wringing out I want that to be my soul, my mind I want there to be nothing left of David Goggins when I'm done So most of us, I believe, die at 40% That's all that we've given, and we believe it's our 100% That's why my in book, in the back of it I describe the 40% rule, something I invented And I believe that I talk about in something much bigger than David Goggins A lot of people don't I And I think that when you die, this is my own mindset, that you arrive in line It helps me to get past a lot of things You arrive in line And let's say you're in front Let's say you die right before me And you're in line And God's sitting there with a clipboard, okay, sitting there with a clipboard like me and you are sitting right now He's looking at you, and he says, "Hey, you made it to heaven "Good job." Okay, and then he shows you the clipboard of what your life should have been So you lived this life that you thought that you pushed so hard Then you look at the clipboard Let say myself This is now me, I'm talking about myself now Let's say I got to heaven weighing 300 pounds I was a guy that worked for Ecolab, which is a guy that kills cockroaches for a living, which is fine It's a job But then I look at this, and that's how I died I look at this and it says on here where I should have been, because God's all-knowing right? I look at this, and it says you should have been 185 pounds You should have broken the Guinness Book of World's Record You should have been a Navy SEAL You should have been this You should have been that You should have lived this great life You should have been an inspiration You should have inspired millions And then you give the clipboard back to God Let's say you lived 80 years on Earth, and now you realize that you lived here being a shell of who the fuck you should have been So now you're in heaven But are you really in heaven? Because now you see how much you fucking left down there on Earth So now your mind, your fucking mind now knows, because I was afraid to suffer, because I was afraid to go there I could easily right now, you could ever know who the fuck David Goggins is right now You could never know me I could be back in Brazil, Indiana, Indianapolis, Indiana, spraying for cockroaches at the fucking local restaurant You should never fucking know me if I chose the route most of us choose There'd be no fucking story It'd be a normal story What's your son doing, Jackie? Ah, he's 43 He's been working for Ecolab for 20 years How is he, he's doing good? He's doing good He has wife and kid Never fucking knowing I could be right the fuck here right now with a fucking book coming out about what I accomplished But I had a decision to make at 24 years old [Vishen]: Wow, that metaphor of heaven is one of the most powerful things I've heard in the last couple of months That's thought-changing, David [David]: Well, it's truth [Vishen]: The final thing I want to ask you is, one thing I notice about you is you are unapologetically you You are David Goggins, right, and you don't give a fuck about how anyone else thinks of you or judges you, or how other people show up One of my favorite quotes of you is, "Do you "I let you you, and I don't judge people "And I'm all about doing you, "because I'm fucking going to me, "and I'm going to me 'til I'm fucking dead "'because I earned that right." [David]: That's right [Vishen]: Let's talk about that for a moment How we become so authentic, so real our ourself, right, and we spoke about transformational theorists? Transformational theorists define authenticity as this It's a decrease in our need for other people to validate us It is an increase in our self-worth, and it's having a clearer personal vision Now you embody all of that But where is that coming from? What would be your advice for other people to embody that? [David]: My biggest kryptonite I ever had in my life was caring about what the fuck anybody thinks about me Biggest kryptonite, it kept me fucking shackled in my mind It kept me so fucking shackled because I cared, oh my God, like, for instance, I guarantee you I'm going to hear a ton of shit about he cusses so much Can you say your message without fucking cussing? If my life coming up was better, I would I would It would give me a different tone It would give me a different reality about what life is But it wasn't that way It's what the fuck it was It sucked It was hard It was difficult I overcame it The strength I get from truly, like you said, the theorists I love theorists, talk about being unapologetic, being authentic, most theorists, I guarantee you man, it's a word they're saying They go home and wish they could be what the fuck they say When you lie a lot growing up, you start to develop a very false reality I wanted that false reality to be real I wanted to really not give a fuck about people I always said it, I don't give a fuck You know, that's the tough guy coming out I don't give a fuck what people think about me I wanted to really be there Because at the end of the day, this is how I look at it What are people doing for you? Are they paying your bills? No You're going to whatever you have to to succeed They need to them You need to you And the worst thing you could ever do, what makes person shackled, is worrying about, if I sat here and worried right now, during this interview, every word I would say would be thought about I would say, oh man, I can't say that because I'm going to offend them, and I don't want to offend them And I don't want to offend them And I don't want to offend them You can see it in people They're robots They're programmed to say things that are just right here When you've lived a hard life A life that you suffered, a life that you overcame No one helped me in this shit No one came and fucking helped me out, so why the fuck I care what you think about me? No one handed me shit I had to fucking invent a way to succeed so I sit in this fucking right now and watch what the fuck I say, because someone's fucking offended What the fuck did I really live for? What did I live? I'm giving them all the fucking credit No, I created David fucking Goggins Yes, God helped me But no one else came to fucking save me, so why am I going to fucking watch what the fuck I say, and care how I fucking say it [Vishen]: Love that, love that, David Thank you so much for joining us on Mindvalley [David]: Appreciate it [Vishen]: This is some, by the way, love your passion Love your intensity I hope you guys enjoyed this I was riveted And you speak with such passion, it's exemplary, really [David]: I appreciate you, man Thanks for having me [Vishen]: David's book, Can't Hurt Me I just read the opening chapter As we're recording this, the book hasn't been published yet, but I can tell you, it's a powerful fricking book You want to look up this book You want to follow this man on Instagram You want to google David Goggins and read and listen to all the stuff out there, because this guy is a kick in the butt to help you become who you really are And remember that heaven question What would you on the day you die, when you reach heaven, and you see that list of the man or woman you could be, and you find that you are only 40% there? And I can tell you, as David said, that ain't going to be heaven no more So watch this guy's stuff, and let's jack up that 40% Thanks, David [David]: Appreciate it, thank you ... have to it That's the kind of mindset right there that I don't have I it because I have to it every day, not because the job is making me it That's the warrior mindset The warrior mindset is that... out what the mind was doing It starts to ask you all these questions, and a lot of theorists don't understand that A lot of theorists don't really know what the mind is doing in there They've... in the warrior mindset Is that person, so for instance, guys go through Navy SEAL training, arguably some of the hardest training in the world They get that trident They kick the shit out of