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Home » David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner Strength (Transcript)

David Goggins: How to Build Immense Inner Strength (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of retired Navy SEAL David Goggins’ interview on Huberman Lab Podcast titled “How to Build Immense Inner Strength”. Jan 1, 2024.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is David Goggins. David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also a highly accomplished ultramarathon runner.

For those of you that don’t know, ultramarathons are distances longer than twenty-six miles. And in David’s case, often longer than two hundred miles. For his achievements in athletics, he has been inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame. He also held a Guinness World Record for the most pull-ups completed in twenty-four hours. I should mention that not only was David a decorated Navy SEAL, but he also graduated from Army Ranger School.

David is also a highly successful writer, having authored two books, the first entitled “Can’t Hurt Me” and the second entitled “Never Finished,” both of which are bestsellers. David’s books cover many topics, including his autobiographical description of what can only be described as an incredibly challenging childhood and young adulthood. His home was abusive. His school environment was abusive. He essentially had no positive resources directed his way.

And in his twenties, he found himself to be obese. That is more than three hundred pounds working a job he despised for minimal pay. And it was at that point that David began an inner dialogue that forced him to explore the demons born out of his childhood, but also the position that he found himself in as a young man. And then began the journey to navigate that dialogue and transform himself into the Navy SEAL, the ultramarathon runner, the bestselling author, and the extraordinarily positive and influential man that he is today.

As some of you may know, David has done various public lectures. He’s a familiar face online because there are so many clips of him on YouTube, and he has done podcasts before. However, I’m certain that you’ll find today’s discussion to be very different than previous podcasts that David has been featured on. The reason is that, of course, we get into his accomplishments. We talk about the mindset that allowed him to achieve those things. But today, David really lets us under the hood.

He lets us into the form of inner dialogue that he has to embrace, indeed that he has to grapple with on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times throughout the day and night, in order to impose the sort of self-discipline that he is so well known for. We also get into some of the scientific mechanisms underlying willpower, and we talk about David’s current endeavors that include, for instance, his own exploration of science and medicine for which he has become an intense scholar and practitioner.

I should mention that multiple times throughout today’s discussion, you will hear curse words. Now David and I both acknowledge that cursing isn’t for everybody and that cursing itself is different than cursing at somebody. Nonetheless, we do realize that many people, parents perhaps especially, might not want to hear cursing. If you don’t want to hear cursing, well, then this podcast episode is probably not for you. However, if you are comfortable with cursing or if you can tolerate it, I assure you today’s discussion is highly worthwhile.

The Interview

ANDREW HUBERMAN: David Goggins, welcome. My man. Good to see you again.

DAVID GOGGINS: Great to see you. It was late 2016, early 2017, I believe, when you were in my lab at Stanford.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yes, sir. We did a little work later that day down in San Jose. And, gosh, see you everywhere, but it’s not enough. So great to have you here.

DAVID GOGGINS: Thanks for having me on, bro.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You embody discipline and doing hard things. Right. I think we should just start right off with the bold truth. But right before we went hot mics, we were talking about learning. Right now, you’re spending some time learning and doing things that I think most people probably don’t typically associate David Goggins with. Why don’t you tell us about that?

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, most people just look at me as the guy that runs and yells as he’s running. And that’s, while I do that, you know, to motivate people, but people don’t understand that my day is broken up into segments. I work out. I eat. I sleep, but I spend most of my time studying. So, like, I’m in the medical world. I’m a, you know, paramedic in Canada, but I spend a lot of my time trying to nuke every single thing about it because I’m not trying to just be a paramedic, learn about veins and arteries and how the heart pumps and stuff like that. I’m trying to learn to the point where I can save someone’s life.

And even though paramedics are doing that all over the world, I’m trying to be that paramedic that can really dissect exactly what’s going on and figure out, you know, what medication goes where. Just trying to, you know, just trying to learn, you know, the algorithm of what’s going on, man. So I spend a lot of time with it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love the word algorithm because when I teach biology or try and learn anything that’s related to biology and especially the human body, I need to know the nouns, but it’s the verbs that matter, and that’s really what you’re talking about. Like, just saying that that sits there, that brain part there doesn’t tell you how it all works together. So what is your process for studying look like? Like, if we dropped a camera in the room, but a microphone into that into your inner dialogue. Wouldn’t we all love that?