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