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

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? But if we dropped a microphone into your inner dialogue, are you waking up looking at the books and going, “Yeah. Fresh day. Let’s learn.” Or is some of the same resistance that you’ve talked about coming up around physical work. Is that coming up from time to time?

DAVID GOGGINS: You know what? I was nervous at first. I’m going to keep it real. So I’m not a real smart guy. And what I mean by that is I was born with ADD, ADHD. Oh, like, my brain cannot retain information. I’m not some genetic freak when it comes to running, when it comes to lifting weights. I am absolutely the bottom of the barrel, and people will never believe me. And they can just, you know, whatever. Believe what you want to believe.

So when you ask me this question about what does studying look like for me, I have to go over the same page over and over and over and over again while Jennifer can look at that page, while she’s, you know, quizzing me, she’ll learn it right then as she’s chilling on anything about it. She will quiz herself or quiz me and learn it as she’s quizzing me. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world how my brain works.

So what I do is I literally sit there with a pen and paper, and I have my books, and I go through and have to write everything down every single day. I will study the same page until it’s photographic memory from writing the same thing down. And then from there, I’ll go back through and relearn again. So I’ll learn the bulk of it, but then I’ll go through and learn the small things within that. So if it’s a medication, I’ll learn what the medication does.

I’ll first, I’ll learn how to even say the medication because these medications aren’t like, you know, like albuterol. No. It’s very big words, so I’ll go through, learn how to say the name. Then I’ll go through, learn what the dose is. Then I’ll go through and this is, like, every single day. It’s not like, oh, I got it. Let’s just go through. No. Nothing is I got it. Every single thing that’s so I can’t wait to get in this conversation because everything I do in life, it sucks.

Overcoming Challenges

DAVID GOGGINS: Everything I do in life, it sucks. That’s why when I was 300 pounds and 24 years old, it wasn’t like I had some big epiphany of let’s just go be a Navy SEAL, and let’s lose some weight. No. I knew my entire life was going to be a struggle, which is why I just ignored it.

And I said, I’m not even trying to jump off into this and learn how to read, how to write, how to memorize, how to become something I am not. But through that process, something happened to me, and I realized that’s why I feel sorry for no one. In this podcast, they’re going to really not like me because people are going to think that I am maybe lying or maybe fibbing or exaggerating. No. I am literally – I was the lowest form on earth.

No talent, no ability to learn, and I literally know what it is to be rock bottom and to build that up. So that question about learning, it’s a pain in my ass, and I don’t have to do it. So think about it. I’m 49 years old and I’m a multimillionaire. I don’t have to do anything.

So all I thought about when I was growing up is, man, I can’t wait till one day get to the point where I no longer have to do this stuff. But what happens, I got older, it became a way of living. So how I do every day is how I do every day. It’s a discipline. It’s a regimen. It’s a choice I made. And the choice I made was, what are you willing to sacrifice, and what are you willing to give up to find every bit of who you are as a human being? And I was willing to give everything to do that. So studying is no joke.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love that you’re studying. I recall a few years ago, I heard some interview or podcast with you, and you just threw out, like, “I don’t know what I’ll do next. Maybe I’ll be a scientist.” Right? And I went, “Yeah.” I was like, because I knew because I know you a bit. Right. And I see your work out there, but we’d met before that if you decided that you were going to do it. Right. And learning medicine, which is what you’re doing. Right. Learning human physiology is so detailed.

DAVID GOGGINS: Very.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And people out there have to understand. When you look at a textbook and you see the veins and the capillaries different colors in the when the body is open, they’re not different colors. Right?

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. So, I mean, some things have different color contrast, but it’s not like it’s all labeled when you pop it open.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Exactly. And so the process of writing things down by hand is important for you. Do you go back and read those notes? Do you think about that stuff on your runs too? Are you segmenting your day? Like, when you’re done studying, are you heading out for a run and thinking about other things, or are you still rehearsing the material in your head?

Learning Process

DAVID GOGGINS: So when I write it down, I write it down, and I’m able to – I’m actually looking down at this table right now because I’m back to write so I’m actually there right now as I’m speaking to you. I write it down in a way that I’m memorizing page 69. So I’m writing it down so then writing it down and that page synced together in my brain. So I’m looking at the book in my brain right now.

So, like, that’s just how it works for me, and I have to do it over and over again. So that page is stuck in my mind. So I’m literally flipping through pages as I’m taking these tests, and I’m taking these national tests to become a paramedic or become an advanced EMT or whatever. I’m literally as I’m taking that test, I’m going through, and I’m like and I’m flipping pages in my head where that page was, and how I do that is just from how I write it and how it’s on the page.

When I run, I can’t recall any of it. I cannot bring any of that because I’m running. How my mind is wired now is that everything I do is what I do. Because the focus it takes for me to like, right now, I’m running. I’m not like a great runner. I’m not like injury free. So, like, my first 20 minutes of the run, I’m limping. I’m literally limping because I’ve had several knee surgeries, and my body was twisted. And so now it’s untwisting. So people look at me, oh, it looks like he’s limping when he runs. I am limping when I run.

My body’s jacked up, so I’m focusing on how to get the best out of a broken body. So everything I do is a total focus on what I’m doing at that point in my life.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So it seems like you’ve really trained away or somehow gotten away from the ADD that you mentioned. Because what you described is a deep trench. It’s like a V-shaped trench. I’m imagining, like, there’s a ball bearing. It’s like, and it can only go forward in that trench or back, and it goes forward. It’s not, like, sliding around at the concave at the bottom. Like, attention. So it’s like you’ve trained that up. Is there a similar feeling when you’re in the full focus of running versus full focus of studying? Is it kind of feel like, “Oh, yeah. That’s the same groove but different thing,” or is it just completely different world?

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s a completely different world. Complete like, it’s just both of them for me is suffering, but suffering a whole different way. Like, when I was going through school, I’ll never forget. I think I was in third grade. And back then, you know, ADD, ADHD wasn’t like, you know, here’s this medicine. Here’s this thing. They want to put you in a special school. So for me, I was so far behind in learning that their big thing was, let’s just put him in a special school because he’ll never learn. And through that process of, like, I don’t want to be in a special school. I don’t want to be treated any differently.

It really like, I never took medication. I’ve never taken medication for this. That’s why right now you see me looking right in your eyes. What the hell is human insane right now? And that’s why I don’t feel bad for people who have ADHD, who have learning disabilities. And some are impossible because you just can’t. But a lot of them, you can. And but people don’t want to go through the process of focus, of teaching yourself how to truly focus.

The Passion Behind the Message

This is where my message gets lost. It gets lost because I may say, you know, some curse words. Where you know? I may be because that’s the passion that comes out of me because that’s it takes everything for me to learn a sentence. So when I speak about David Goggins, I can’t speak about David Goggins in a way that’s just calm and cool.

Because when I wake up, I know the journey that it takes for me to find my greatness, and it’s hard. Every nothing is easy. Nothing just like, oh, I wake up and I just do this or I do that or it just you know, I watch people every day go through life and it’s so easy. For me to be where I’m at today, it takes every bit of me. So when I speak about it and as I get going here, you’ll start seeing me, the tempo will rise. The passion will come out because I’m back there. I’m doing what I do every day to become a human being.

And so nothing is easy. Like, running is running. It sucks, but you have a choice to make. Do you want to sit down and go back to that guy you once were? No. So this is what it takes. This it takes that misunderstanding of people, and they’ll never get it because they were never David Goggins. So that is what it takes for me to do what I do.

It may take you something differently. So for me, everything has to be in the study. Everything has to be into this. Everything has to be and everywhere I am, it has to be there. Me, focus where I am. That’s why you’re my second podcast I’ve done since Rogan since the book came out. I don’t have time for that. Because if I want to be great, I’m not trying to maximize money or maximize people knowing me. I do these things because maybe someone out there will understand me and get it and say I can grow from this guy, and others just won’t.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Sounds like friction is something you’re very familiar with. I just it’s a word just as I feel like it’s, like cast above us right now in bold face, highlighted, underlined letters. It’s just like “Friction is growing.” Friction. Yes. Like, you’re up in the morning, and I imagine David Goggins going to the coffee maker, stretching out, good morning, sunshine. And you’re telling me from eyelids open there’s friction.

The Reality of Friction

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes. And that is the thing that people don’t they don’t get. The biggest misunderstanding about David Goggins of all time, it’s like whether you believe in God or not, I do. He put this lab rat, which is me, on this planet. And so let me see what a beat up, abused kid who has who can barely learn, barely learn, who has a twisted body, messed up genetics, sickle cell this and that. Let me give him everything that pretty much disqualifies you from the military. But back then, it wasn’t extras. And and let’s put them in this and see what comes out of it.

So to do that, friction. You don’t wake up in the morning time and go to the coffee maker. Matter of fact, sometimes you don’t even sleep. What it requires is when I’m at two o’clock in the it’s two o’clock in the morning, and my brain is thinking about a drug. And I gotta get up and look in my book to see if that drug is how I remember it. And this is every day of my life. That’s why I’m not trained a fighter or I train someone. I’m like, you have no idea how great you really are because you are using such minimal, minimal of what you have. And if people can learn to focus, this is what’s possible.

While it may not be pretty, like, people want to do a documentary on me. I go, no. I don’t want you to do documentary on me because I will have normal everyday people picking me apart. Oh, his life is miserable. Who wants to live like that? He looks it’s crazy how he it’s almost like he’s sick. He’s psychotic. The most frustrating thing in the world for me is when normal people judge a man like myself on what it really takes to extract greatness from nothing. It takes every bit of who you are if you choose that route. If you don’t, merry Christmas. Do what you gotta do.

But, yeah, all these things for me, like like I told you, man, I’m going to keep it real. I’m not coming here to talk about, like, you know, perform without purpose. Because I go through when I write these books, I go through and try to dumb down David Goggins. How can I give normal people and I’m normal, but I found something that most don’t want to find? How can I speak to people and give them something from this crazy psychotic brain that I’ve developed? How can I give them that?

So I sit down with Jennifer for years and write down perform without purpose, callus your mind, armor your mind, the cookie jar, the accountability mirror, stuff that people can use in their lives. No. No. I’m glad it helps you, but the barbaric life that I live, that you have to live, the almost obsession that you must have to be great, you can’t put that in a book, bro. You can’t put in a book. You can’t. You can’t write about it. Has to be experienced.

The Reality of Personal Growth

DAVID GOGGINS: It has to be experienced. And you can’t even after you experience it, to write it in the book, it would seem like he needs to be locked up. This way too gory. It’s too gory. It doesn’t make sense for a guy that everything every second of the day, he is trying to extract more from something.

He’s constantly thinking he’s constantly disciplined, never going off the path. Whatever is injured on him, he figures a way. It’s a conqueror’s mindset, and very few people, if any, can really understand what that is. Like, I’m almost 50, and I’ve been this way for almost 30 years. Like, we do for fun. You would never – I don’t get them. I don’t understand them. I don’t.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So yeah. I get asked that sometimes when you, for fun, start listing off all this stuff like podcast and reading. Or working out. Right. But so some of that resonates, but I think what’s so truly unusual about what you’re describing, your process is that, you know, from go, it’s hard. And I have to ask, was being 300 pounds having a – I’m using the words you’ve described. You’ve said it before. You had a tendency at one point in your life early on, tell lies. Try and get people’s approval.

DAVID GOGGINS: My ass off. Crazy haircuts, attention seeking, and and yet all of that triggered something that now is, you know, is extraordinary.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right. Do you think those hardships were necessary to flip the switch?

DAVID GOGGINS: I don’t know if they were necessary, but it was something that made me feel I didn’t feel good. It was easy. The brain that I was given as a child, it was easy to go home and think about what how do I want to be a freak today? How do I want to show up to school today and be a freak?

It didn’t require me going home and open a book up saying, it’s going to take me all year to learn this page. So instead of learning that page, I learned how to become a character. And maybe that character that I created, that 300 pound insecure guy that used to fake fake it till I make it type of guy, you know, let me, become your friend. Let me lie to you until you like me type of guy. When you have any kind of any manhood, womanhood, a human being, a soul, a spirit, any I had no I had I must had this much pride because that’s exactly what opened the door for me.

Because every day you were a character, every day you were a clown, every day you open that Spanish book or that science book or English book, and you, like, you looked at it. It was like it looked like a foreign language. And you’re saying, where do I start? Where who do I start? And, obviously, it was necessary.

The more I talk about it, it was necessary because what happened is I became haunted by the mere fact that this is my existence, and you gotta live with that. I lived there for a lot of years. And so I sat back and said, okay. Alright. I know what this takes.

The Struggle to Overcome

And when you sit back as messed up as I was, and I had a laundry list, a table like this of what I have to do to become just a human being that can make ends meet, that can make a thousand dollars a month just to get there. I was like, oh my god, dude. Like, how did I’m 16, 17. I can’t read. I can’t write.

And I oh my god, I’m so behind the power curve, and my brain is about being depressed. And my dad beat my mom’s not home, and kids are calling me names at school. And I’m like, oh my god, man. What do I do? And it wasn’t like someone came around and said, hey, man. You can do this. This is all me. Some people know where is this cold man come from. I’m not trying to be cold. It’s the reality of my life.

It’s the reality of a lot of people’s lives. And so, yeah, it that had to happen for me to be haunted, to be haunted, to pull out, to extract the guy there today. That haunting is something that’s still there today because no matter how much you improve, no matter how much you change who you are, it’s not permanent. You’ll just wake up and say, oh my god, man. You’re David Goggins. You break records. You do this. You do that. People don’t know how are you how are you able to just be so hard that I never turn the thing off? Because once it turns off, I go right back to the David Goggins that is.

And that’s the guy that I’m constantly fighting every day. And it’s a choice. And that choice makes you misunderstood. It makes you crazy. That’s why I hate social media.

The Journey to Writing and Social Media

In 2013, people wanted me to write my book. I did it in 2018. Took five years. And the reason why I didn’t do it, I set a table and Jennifer was there. This is before I she started working for me. I started dating or whatever. And all these people were there, and they’re like, man, you gotta go on social media. And I was like, no, man. Like, I’m not that that’s it’s poison. It’s poison because I knew what I did to get where I am, and I’m going to have these people, these normal everyday people, fat, lazy, is exactly who I was judging me because I know it because I was once them.

All my hard work, all my dedication, I’m going to have some normal dude get his little brownies, little ding dong, ho ho twinkie, sit there with his coffee, picking me apart. Oh, he must be unhappy. He’s just do you know how hard it is to put these shoes on every damn morning? I don’t have you pick me apart. So, yeah, there’s there’s, there’s so much that goes into this that I was like, forget this. I never want anything to do with it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So, anyway I’m not a psychologist. But knowing your story from what you’ve written, what you’ve said on social media and elsewhere podcast and here now, especially. It’s amazing to me. And frankly, it pulls pulls in my heartstrings a little bit. I realize that’s not what you’re trying to do, but that in the course of your childhood and in your young adulthood that no one ever got between you and the world.

I forget where I heard it that, like, if a kid has just one person that believes in them. You know, and I had my trials and tribulations, but I had great coaches, great mentors. Right. I attached to them. I found them if they didn’t necessarily find me. But I’m realizing that your situation was no one’s ever said, hey. I’m going to stand here next to you or get in front of you. Put a shield up. And so it’s almost like you’ve got these different it’s all you, but there’s versions of yourself that, like, you knew social media. Like, I don’t know that I have the wherewithal in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 to get in front of myself while doing all this because I’ve already got so much going on in here. Is that about right?

Dealing with Anger and Self-Reliance

DAVID GOGGINS: That is right, but I had developed a lot of anger, and I still have it. It will never go away for the normal human beings of this world. Because when you put yourself in the sewer like I was in and, please, if someone saved me, come out and announce it to the world. There’s no one. There’s no one. So when you know that, and then I’m sitting at a table with all these smart people who are telling me what to do and guiding me through my life now, when I’m 40 years old. You know, it’s two I was, I don’t know, 40 something years old. Now I’m 49.

And I’m looking at them all, and they’re and they’re now trying to guide me on what’s right on this poison. And so, yeah, what you say is right, but for me, it was more of I know now. I don’t need you to guide my future. I know what’s good for me and what’s bad for me. And for me, it took every bit of focus I could.

And I know social media that’s why people love to go on there because they want to show you the good side of life. I’m not teaching good side of life. So I had to figure out a way when I came on 2016 of teaching you what life really is for the majority of us as hell. And so while people love to show you the cars and the house and the vacations and stuff, all that’s good. All that’s happy.

I want to show you the side that I know most you’re going through. And people hide very well. I don’t want to hide anymore. I hid it for 24 years. That’s why now I told you, we can talk about any whatever you want. Because as human beings, the one we the first thing we have to learn, also studied real bad growing up. So if you hear me stutter every now and then, it’s because that was part of my life also. So it’s funny. Human beings want to show you the best side, and they want to hide the worst side. For me, I’m going to teach you how to be vulnerable because that’s the only way you fix yourself.

You don’t fix yourself by coming out here and me selling you some books. That’s why I don’t have them. I forgot them. I’m glad people got something from the book. I want you to learn that the only way you grow is how to look at yourself and say, okay. Like, I did. Table longer than this. What do I have to do to get somewhere? There was nothing good on there. Nothing.

Yeah. I love playing basketball. I left that out. That’s something I love to do. I don’t care about that. That that’s it make the list. Because the list that I had to live by was it was the very list that was to get me at this table with you to talk to you, to the normal human beings which I once was, about how you can get somewhere and how it looks. Looks very ugly. There’s no passion. There’s no motivation.

There’s no, oh my god, man. I this is no. It’s every day of your life just doing. No passion. No discipline. No motivation. Yeah. All these words, I hate people. I hate that so many people use these words now because it it’s watered. It’s someone sitting in a room by themselves, and they figure themselves out and say, god, this is going to suck.

Where’s passion when you’re 300 pounds? Where’s the motivation when you can’t read and write? Where is it? So how did this happen? I just did. I just did. I said, maybe at the end of this journey, there’ll be something there for me. If not, I can read. If not, I’m 185 pounds. There’s no there’s there’s no magic potion. There’s no, oh, let me wake up and look at some stuff. No. All those words are overused. They’re nonsense. It’s all nonsense.

Just do. You’re living. How do you want to live? How do you want to die? How do you want to be remembered? That’s that’s it. That’s it. Period.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: The word haunted is ringing in my head. I think it’s such a powerful word because I was about to say seems like a huge part of your process, maybe the entire process is it’s all stick, no carrot. You know, you talk about the carrot, the positive thing, and then there’s the stick, the thing you’re trying to avoid. Feel like it’s the way it’s landing for me is it’s all stick and gas pedal. Is it?

The Absence of Carrots

ANDREW HUBERMAN: There’s no carrot. You’re not imagining, oh, when I’m a paramedic, when the book is published. And, obviously, you set those goals and you make those targets. But it’s all stick.

DAVID GOGGINS: All stick. No carrot. Think about that. I’m waking up right now studying. Like, I have a test tomorrow. I already passed the test. Think about that. Every day of my life, that’s what I must do just to retain what I learned. Four hours plus a day, I go through and do that. There’s no stick or there’s only a stick.

There’s never been a carrot, which is why when I speak to people, I have to figure out a way to resonate with them. Because all I want to say to them is let me teach you the real life, how it really is. The reason why you’re a loser and the reason why you’re not making it and the reason why you’re trying to go through all these – I go to all these conventions. Speak all the time. I look in the audience, and these people sign up sign up sign up every year to go to convention thinking they’re going to learn something different.

No. You’re lazy. You know exactly what to do. Exactly what to do. Because even me, in my state of I can’t read or write, I knew exactly what to do. It just sucks doing it. It sucks to do it. It sucks to wake up every morning of your life and say, god, man, I’m not smart. So guess what I gotta do? I gotta study the same stuff that I got one of the highest scores in the nation on and do it again. Do it again. Do it again. It’s not just there. It’s not just there permanently for me. So, yeah, it’s all stick.

It’s all stick. The only care that you have is, like, maybe. Maybe. Because whenever I take these tests that are real hard, in the back of my brain, it’s like, the good chance you’re not going to make it, Goggins. This ain’t you, bro. This ain’t you. You weren’t born like this. This ain’t you. The real you, bro. Study all you want to, but the second that computer comes on with 150 questions, this ain’t you, man.

Somehow comes back. I passed. I passed again. Passed again. But that ruled me back here every time. It’s saying, that ain’t you, bro. That ain’t you. And I have to outwork that voice. When I’m taking that test and I get to a question, I don’t know the answer. I’m like, man. And then, says, I told you, man. That ain’t you. You’re 300 pounds, man. You sit at home and figure out how to do your hair. That’s what you do, how to come to school with the reverse baldness when you’re 16.

That’s that’s you. So there is no get out of jail free card. This is why I say stay hard. Because when you weren’t given the gifts, the only thing you can do in life is stay hard. And I know people cannot stand me. They can’t stand this talk. This is all you can do. There’s no magic pill or a magic potion. All you can do is outwork the man that God created or woman in you. And what that looks like is unfun.

That’s why I said do not do a documentary on me because people will not see the truth. They will see what they want to see. I don’t want to live like that. Good. Good. And you will live exactly the way you live now, questioning who you are, wondering what is possible, wondering what you are capable of doing. That’s how that looks. Or you can be me, which am I happy? I don’t know. Never really thought about it. Don’t really care about it. Because all I really cared about was when I looked in that mirror, I saw a piece of shit. Happiness wasn’t on the mirror at 16 or around 300 pounds. It wasn’t like, oh my I’m looking for happiness. No.

I’m looking myself in the mirror and say, alright. You did it again today. You’re a bad boy because that stuff sucks. I have about a couple minutes of that where I got the carrot. Second, I lay down and go to bed, the carrot’s gone because I’m waking up all through the night to check the work I did that day. Did I get this drug right? Did I get this right? Did I get that right? What did I do? Oh my god. I’m already losing it. It’s a stick. That stick is haunting you. Haunting.

The Power of Self-Motivation

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It’s following you around. So no picture of Jordan on the wall. You’re not listening to YouTube inspiration video.

DAVID GOGGINS: No. That would be all your voice anyway. You’re not, listening to your top ten favorite songs just to get rolling and then lace the shoes, hit the books. You’re it’s all in here.

All in there. I used to do that when I was fat. Rocky, I mean, if you know what, that that was my thing. Round 14 was my thing. And as I got older and older and older, that started to go away. And I started to create I had all these people that I used to watch. Rocky was one, Barnes, Elias from Platoon, Jack from A Few Good Men. You know, he’s on the stand going crazy. I saw a lot of these characters that I looked at, and I was like, man, I ain’t got none of that. But they were characters.

After a while, I lived a life so disciplined that everybody that I once looked to, these fake characters, I built that as a man. And when I was younger, I had this image in my mind of what does a man look like to me. And I got all these people who are badasses, characters. And in my mind, I became that. And that’s what kept me going a lot, was I had this pipe dream of becoming a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Because when you have no parents raising you and you have no role models growing up, you it’s not daydreaming. You start to create a reality that maybe I can be that.

And after becoming this guy, that is the biggest thing I can ever do in my life is I became that guy. That I once looked at all these guys, now look at myself like, god. Who can do that? I can’t. But what it takes is a discipline that no one can ever even they they just don’t they don’t understand it. They don’t understand. Everybody has the ability to do it, but they just don’t want to. They want to keep asking questions and keep going to seminars. And the greatness is right in you, and that’s why, once again, I say this a million times here. I do not feel sorry for you.

I will not sugarcoat what I’m going to say to you because all of you know what I’m saying is the truth. Everybody knows the truth. This is what it looks like, and you know it too. You know it too. This is what if if you ain’t got nothing, I hate to tell you, but it looks like it’s ugly. It’s not a documentary. It’s not a HBO special. You ain’t go watch it, but, hey, man. You guys gotta watch this. No. It’s like, oh god. This looks like a train wreck. It’s like a nightmare. This looks like this guy got no. That’s what it looks like.

Hard work looks horrible. It’s not motivating. It’s not motivating at all. It ain’t like Rocky round 14. He gets knocked down. He goes at this to Apollo Creed. Looks like a man being stuck in a dungeon, and there’s no way out. But you had the key, but you refused to use it. And that’s not motivating about that. So, yes, no documentary on David Goggins. The real life. The real life. David Goggins is the is the documentary. It’s all it’s already being written. You’re it.

The Neuroscience of Willpower

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right. Yeah. I’m going to share a little neuroscience tidbit. But I think it’s one that you’ll appreciate. Most people don’t know this, but there’s a brain structure called the anterior midcingulate cortex. As we pointed out before, that’s a noun. It’s a name. It doesn’t mean anything. We could call it the cookie monster. But what’s interesting about this brain area is there are now a lot of data in humans, not some mouse study, showing that when people do something they don’t want to do. Like add three hours of exercise per day or per week or when people who are trying to diet and lose weight resist eating something. When people do anything that they and this is the important part, that they don’t want to do. It’s not about adding more work. It’s about adding more work that you don’t want to do.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: This brain area gets bigger. Now here’s what’s especially interesting about this brain area to me. And by the way, I’m only learning this recently because it’s new data, but there’s a lot of it. The anterior midcingulate cortex is smaller in obese people. It gets bigger when they diet. It’s larger in athletes. It’s especially large or grows larger in people that see themselves as challenged and overcome some challenge. And in people that live a very long time this area keeps its size.

In many ways, scientists are starting to think of the anterior midcingulate cortex not just as one of the seats of willpower but perhaps actually the seat of the will to live. And when I learned about the anterior midcingulate cortex, I was, like, almost out of my seat. And I’ve been in the neuroscience game since I was 20. We’re the same age. And I was so pumped because I’ve heard of the amygdala, fear, prefrontal cortex, it’s planning and action. I could tell you every brain area and every I teach neuroanatomy to medical students. But when I started seeing the data on the anterior mid cingulate cortex, I was like, woah. This is interesting.

And all the data points to the fact that we can build this area up. But that as quickly as we build it up, if we don’t continue to invest in things that are hard for us, that we don’t want to do, that’s the part that feels so Goganesque to me that we don’t want to do. Like, if you love the ice bath yeah. I love the ice bath. You go from one minute to ten minutes. Guess what? Your anterior mid singulate cortex did not grow. None. But if you hate the cold water, if you’re afraid of drowning and you get into water and put your head under then your anterior mid and survive, then the anterior mid singulate cortex gets bigger. But if you don’t do it the next day or if you do it the next day and you enjoy it, because, hey. Hey. I did it yesterday. Woo hoo. Happy me. Merry Christmas, as you would say. Merry Christmas. Guess what? The anterior midcingulate cortex shrinks again.

To me, this is one of the most important discoveries that neuroscience has ever made. Because it’s that I don’t want to do something, but do it anyway that grows this area. And it’s almost like I have a friend. He’s been sober 30 years from alcohol. And he always says, you know, the amazing thing about addiction is there’s a cure. The problem is it only works one day at a time. And so you have to renew it every day. So the anterior midcingulate cortex to me, when I learned about it, two things went off in my head. Woah. This is super interesting. And two, I gotta tell David Goggins about this. And I waited until now to tell you because I felt like I well, for obvious reasons, I wanted to tell you, and I wanted to tell you here.

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, I love that because that’s how I’ve lived my entire life. I don’t know anything about that, but people go, man, you have such a strong will. It’s something that you build. Like, I never forgot. I was on a podcast one time, and this dude goes, you were blessed with a strong mind. Like, the hell you talking about? I was blessed with a strong mind. You that’s something that you have to develop. You developed that over years, decades of suffering and going back into the suffer. That’s why a lot of people who graduate Navy SEAL training, they want to know like, in my I talk about it very openly all the time. A lot of guys don’t go don’t want to go back into that water.

The Necessity of Discomfort

DAVID GOGGINS: They want to go back into the hard stuff. And maybe not in anything hard. Anything hard in life. Once you get through it, it’s like you become a POW. Like, how many POWs you know want to go back to POW camp?

None. When something sucks so bad in life, this is on this that we’re talking about now, very few people want to go back. They’re happy they graduated. I realized I’m the same way. I don’t want to go back. I have to go back. I must go back because that is exactly where all the knowledge of my life exists was back there in which you’re exactly what you’re talking about.

Well, I didn’t know anything about this, but how I grew a will was constantly doing these things to now, it’s just life. I wake up. While it still sucks, it’s just life. You don’t sit back and, like, oh my god. Like, I have days I don’t want to do, but I know I’m going to do it. I know from years of just doing it. So, that’s beautiful, and this is why I came on here with you today. And I’m glad that you’re talking about this because human beings need to hear this.

They need to stop hearing these hacks on this and that. There’s no hack, bro. There’s no hack. Yeah. You may this and that and saunas and the all this stuff that they yeah. It’s great. There is no life hack. To grow that thing, how do you grow it? Do it and do it and do it and do it. That’s the hack. The hack is going to suck. And that’s what I realized. That’s what I realized.

Life that’s why I wanted to come on here today. I didn’t want to come on here and talk about no passion and purpose and how to get out of bed and how to hit an alarm clock and all this catchphrase nonsense because that wasn’t how I lived. That wasn’t how I lived. I lived. I woke up like every human being does and goes, man. I’m a piece of crap today. How the hell is this going to work out for me?

And you fight that. And you fight that. You don’t override it. Don’t override button. It’s the conversation in your like, in your head. So how do you do that? We don’t have enough of these conversations about the real conversation that every human being is having, and they have no idea how to get out of it, but they do. It’s that stuff right there, man. Yeah. Build your will. How do you build your will? Exactly what you said, man. Exactly what you said.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, I feel like knowing the name of something, anterior midcingulate cortex doesn’t fundamentally change us. But one thing I like about biology is that willpower, if somebody feels they don’t have it feels like this thing that other people have, but everybody, unless they’re brain damaged, like, a hole through their head has two anterior midcingulate cortex, one on each side of their brain. Everyone has one. They have two.

So I feel like it’s just a question of opening the portal. And the portal, what I again, I’ve been saying this ten times and forgive me is I think people go, oh, I do hard things. I do sets to failure, and then I do four steps. I love training with weights. I love doing sets to failure. I even like four steps. But guess what? I like four steps. So I I’ll tell you, they don’t build my anterior midcingulate cortex.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. Because I like to do it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That’s right. Anything you like to do is not going to enhance this aspect of willpower. And it seems so obvious once you hear it, you kind of go, oh, yeah. Of course. But I think you really close that loop for people when you share what you’re sharing today and what you’ve shared elsewhere before as well when you’re trying to explain the friction is the critical ingredient. And I think people think, oh, if it’s effort, well, then I’m getting better. That’s part of it. Necessary, but not sufficient as we say in science. But the suck part, the haunt being haunted, the stick – they’re really unpleasant terms.

DAVID GOGGINS: Very.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It’s are probably the most unpleasant terms we’ve ever used on this podcast.

DAVID GOGGINS: Very.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Those are the those are the levers. Those are the gears. And without those, this thing that you’re talking about, David Goggins as a verb. Right. You know, I sometimes make the joke, but it’s not a joke. Right. Goggins is a name and it’s a verb. People go, I’m going to Goggins that. Right? But that’s I think again, I’m not a psychologist, but I think that’s what you’re talking about. The stick, the friction being haunted. It’s the suck part that grows this anterior midcingulate cortex.

The Missing Piece

DAVID GOGGINS: So now you know why there’s so many people that have failed in this world to figure out their purpose their purpose in life. Where do I go? Because to grow that, now you may not look like me, how my daily life looks. It don’t look fun. Don’t look fun. So it’s a choice that people have to make in life.

But what’s so funny about it is even the richest of rich who have everything, they always ask me this question. I feel like I’m missing something. I don’t feel like I’m missing stuff. I don’t have what you all have, but you’ll never in my life hear me tell you I’m missing something. Everybody is. They’re missing this feeling. I found it long time ago. I found it right there in that willpower thing. When you’re nothing, nothing. And change yourself into something like me.

You call it happiness, peace, whatever you want to call it. People are missing exactly what went on with David Goggins. Why don’t you smile? I do. I do. But I figure something out. That’s why I am never you’ll never hear me say I’m missing something. I found it years ago. You find it in the suck. You find it in the suck, and you find it repeatedly in the suck to the point where you know exactly who you are.

Most people are missing something because they don’t know who they are. They never examine themselves. They they’ve never done this experiment on themselves. The lab rat. We’re all lab rats, but you’re also the scientist. You create your own self.

Most people are missing something because there’s so much trapped in there. I want I don’t want to say potential. I think that’s where it’s used out too much too. There’s so much in you that God or wherever the hell you believe in or if you’re atheist in you that you have not unlocked, that you walk around with this gorgeous wife or or great husband and all this money. You’re like, god. I feel like I’m missing something. Yeah. Because it’s about 75% of you is still in there, still chained up because you just didn’t want to find your willpower. Didn’t want to find your soul, your will, your heart, your determination, your guts, your courage.

And what that looks like, it looks scary. Like, your little scary lab I went in. Scary to wake up every day and say, I’m stupid, but I want to figure out a way to be smarter versus saying, man, I just can’t do that. So you limit this box. So your box becomes so small of things you can do. My box wasn’t even a box. It was a little, like, little pinhole. And then through examining myself, getting some willpower, some courage, it became bigger than this table. But that’s what we all do. That’s why I wanted to come here today and talk to you about real stuff.

Not no hacks. There’s no hacks, bro. It’s you against you. You against you. And if you misunderstand that, you have a real problem. Real problem. I can understand you misunderstand me running on the street, shirt off. No. Yeah. I can I can get it? I get it. If you misunderstand what I’m saying right now today, the problem is you, and you don’t want to fix it.

The Importance of Friction

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, the children of wealthy people are a case study in how not having enough friction can destroy a life.

DAVID GOGGINS: True statement.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I mean, I could list off prominent names in the press, but those are actually the least interesting. What’s probably more interesting as an example is all the ones we don’t hear about because we never hear about them. Right. They just dwindle and wither. Or I think there’s this big category of people I’m realizing as we have this conversation today that they’re not super successful. They’re not struggling. They’re, like, successful enough that they never have to you can get to the point where you don’t have to impose friction. You even said it. Right. Your bank account is in a place where you don’t really need to do all the things you do, probably not even a small fraction of them.

DAVID GOGGINS: Nothing.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right. But you realize the stick and being haunted is the, the fuel in the engine. Right. And you’d be a you’d be truly crazy to give that up because you you’ve internalized all that. Right. But most people, they’re they’re good enough for them. And so they don’t actually want to be better badly enough in order to start going wrong after wrong.

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, think about when you build willpower and think about how much I’ve built. Now that you know about this, just I didn’t know about this, but think about how much I’ve built. Everything I’ve ever done in my life, I didn’t want to do. Everything. Every day. I’m a lazy piece of crap, and I’m one of the hardest working people that ever stepped foot on this planet Earth. And I’m saying that very proudly because I know what I do. It’s not cocky. I’ll tell you I’m stupid, and I’ll also tell you the exact opposite of what I’ve done. It’s the truth. It is the truth.

So imagine how much I’ve developed in that time frame. But this is the scary thing. Why most people don’t want to do that, build that willpower, is because of this scary. It unlocks a whole bunch of things about who you are and who you’re not. And a lot of people don’t want to go down that journey to discover who they are and who they’re not because it’s it’s not a pretty journey. I mean, I’ve gone down it. It’s not like I went down at once. I go down it all the time. And when you unlock that and you you can’t just turn it off.

Like, people say, hey. Well, how come you haven’t retired yet? I built all this willpower. Do you think it’s going to let me just retire because my knees hurt? It’s telling me every morning I wake up like, man, I don’t my knees hurt. My legs hurt. My body hurts. But you can still run. So why aren’t you running? If you can still run, there’ll be a time when you can’t lace them up anymore, but you can still run. So I still run. When the time comes I can’t run, the body will say, you just can’t run. But if I can still do something, that will power that I have created, it makes me do it every day.

And that’s what they don’t get. What builds a human being is you start with the small building blocks. And before you know it, man, you become something that you it doesn’t even make sense to most people because it’s just who you are now. That’s why I can still run at 50 with broke with at 49 with broke down knees and broke down body because my body knows you still can. Therefore, I do.

Second, you stop, the willpower is gone. And that’s beautiful. I’m so glad you brought that to me because I always wonder, what’s this separation thing now? At 24 years old, I started building something that I didn’t even know was going to be what it is now at 49, And that’s all it was. It was just that.

The Neuroscience of Willpower

ANDREW HUBERMAN: This structure, anterior midcingulate cortex, has inputs and outputs from a bunch of places, but you’ll probably not be surprised to learn that it’s strongly activated when we move our body when we don’t want to move our body. I feel like it’s like the David Goggins structure. Right?

DAVID GOGGINS: It really is.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it also has strong connections to the dopamine reward pathway, and everyone goes, yay. Dopamine reward. Everyone loves dopamine. I’m partially responsible for people knowing a bit more about dopamine. But dopamine’s badly understood. Everyone thinks dopamine, dopamine hits. It’s about reward. It’s about motivation and drive. And there are pain inputs to the dopamine centers of the brain. No one talks about that. Everyone’s like, oh, you want the chocolate, you know, chocolate sex, cocaine, all the yeah. That’s all true. You release dopamine. Pain releases dopamine.

The anterior midcingulate cortex can trigger the release of dopamine in response to this thing that we’re calling friction. And that’s a learned thing. That’s something that no animal or human being comes into the world learning. We all are averse to pain and like pleasure. Like sugar fat, don’t like hot surfaces. Right. But this is a structure that learns. It has neuroplasticity, the ability to change throughout the entire lifespan.

And here’s the part that I think, again, is just neuro nerd speak for what you already know and have done and exemplify is that it people say, oh, it has plasticity. You can change it. But guess what? It has plasticity in both directions. It can grow, but just as easily as it can grow, it’s like silly putty. It can shrink. Right. So it requires constant upkeep. And that answer isn’t one that people are going to like.

DAVID GOGGINS: Nope.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: They’re like, give me the energy drink. Give me the supplement. Give me the Yes. Give me the sauna protocol that’s going to make my anterior mid singlet cortex. There’s someone out there right now is going, wait. If I took transcranial magnetic stimulation and I stimulate, yeah, you’d probably actually, they’ve done that. They stuck a little wire during neurosurgery into this structure. This is actually discovered by a colleague of mine, Joe Parvizi. Stimulate and the patients go, I feel like there’s a storm coming. And then they go, oh, is it scary? And they go, no. I want to go through it. They come off the stimulation, and people are like, this is the seat of what we’re talking about. Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: Exactly.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it learns. So the fact that you kept this brain structure, I’m convinced if we image your brain, it’d be large, and it would be larger in two years, in a year. But this is the no days off rationale because it can grow and it can shrink.

The Science Behind the Mindset

DAVID GOGGINS: I know. What you’re saying right now, I didn’t know any of this. And I never and I always talk to people. I wish I could just put this on paper, and and you’re saying it in a way that people can understand. I can never put into words on what I built and the power that is within all of us. But you put it so, like, in in a scientific way. Most people, like, for me, he’s just crazy. That’s why I don’t like talking about it, man.

I know I’m not crazy. I know what I had to do to get where I had to go. People look at it as crazy because there are people that just if you can’t imagine yourself doing something if you can’t imagine yourself doing something, the person that’s doing it is crazy. Because in your mind, the logic behind it, it doesn’t compute. Therefore, you have to give somebody a title. And the title for me is usually, he’s crazy. He’s this. He’s that. No. No.

For some reason, me wanting to be somebody so bad in my life. I created that, and I’ve been trying to figure out years of my life trying to explain to people. But even though you’re explaining it now, this is the easy part. Them listening to this is the easy part. The part that why there always be the ones of ones is because putting that practice put putting that into actual work no, man. No. No. That’s where the demons come in. That’s where you’re like, I don’t want to be better. I don’t want to be this is what it takes to be better. I don’t want to be better.

So everybody’s that’s why there’s a lot of average, and it makes me so mad. Every day I walk this earth, and I see average all over the place. And they want to ask me, how did you do it? I can’t tell you how because you’re not going to you’re not going to do it.

You’re not going to do it. You’re just going to you you’re going to continue being out because every day you wake up, like he says, like, get the coffee, make the make the pancakes, kiss the girl, kiss the kids. You wake up right to work. Immediately, your mind is in action. No one wants to do that. No one. And I don’t blame them. But don’t be mad when you’re laying there in your bed and you’re in the hospital and you’re 70, 80, 90 years old, and you’re thinking, man, I feel like I didn’t do something. Because you did. You didn’t do it. You didn’t do anything. You may live the great life, man, but you’re always going to feel empty inside. I don’t feel empty. So call me what you want. There’s not one empty bone in my body because I have figured out that really the magic potion, at least to my life, and it’s very rewarding.

The Challenge of Change

ANDREW HUBERMAN: People like to talk about what they used to be able to do. I hear this a lot. You know, you should have seen me in high school. I always laugh. Like, yeah. Okay. Got it. And it’s not just guys. You should see me working out in high school. I was super fit. People will look back to a time where they felt like they were capable of something and now they’re not. And you kind of want to just grab me and wait. That was you then. It’s you now. And but people tend to think about how the conditions that were around success must have been part of it. And you can understand why.

It’s, like, it’s very rational. I was in that situation. I was successful. I’m in this situation. I’m not. That was the past. This is the present. Ergo capable. Right? You see how people get into these loops. And as you mentioned, you spent the first 20 years of your life in extremely challenged circumstances. And then you can see how people get to a point where, like, everything feels hard. Like, when you’re 300 pounds, I haven’t never been 300 pounds, but I can’t imagine it feels good to get up and move around.

Just defeating. I got a friend. He’s in excess of 300 pounds. We’ve been trying on him for years, but no no wind. And he’s got crazy psoriasis on the back of his calves, and he he actually smells bad sometimes because he he, can’t wash as well as he would. He’s big big. Right. And, it pulls all my sympathy. Right. You know? But life is very hard for him and getting worse. He’s a young guy with a lot of medical issues now for obvious reasons. And so I think people like that think, well, it’s already hard. Why would I make it harder? Your message is a little different, and you have the life experience.

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s a lot different. You’ve been there. So for me, saying, oh, yeah. Lose weight. You know? I was a skinny guy who got to be a less skinny guy, so I don’t really have a foot to stand on. What do you say to those people who are like, listen, I’m getting up in the morning is hard. Trying to not dissolve into a puddle of my own tears and my own misery is hard. Do you know how people connect with my book so well?

For some reason, God put me in almost every messed up situation on the planet Earth. So when I talk to people, it’s not sugarcoated because I I’m not saying it from I was 175 pounds my whole life. I don’t say much to those people. Maybe you’re a piece of crap. Maybe you’re you want to be nobody. Maybe you’re happy exactly where you are in life because, obviously, you are. Maybe you don’t have the determination to be somebody better than who you are. And if you want to live with that, I’ll support you in that. If you’re good with being who you are, that every day you wake up and every day you smell like crap because you can’t wash your body well, and your skin’s messed up because your health’s so bad, and you can’t put your clothes on. Right?

You need help with they need help, like when I was doing a I need help wiping my butt. That makes you feel good? Nothing I can say to you. If every day you wake up with this see, people are haunted, but they obviously like horror films because they keep watching the same movie. I don’t like horror films. A lot of people like horror films. So I don’t say much to them. I say exactly what I said to you right there because I was once you. I didn’t like horror films, so I changed it. Some people are just they become like you said, it gets real small when you’re lazy and you’re fat.

Their will is so small that they don’t have any, and you can’t give it to them. There has to be some this is this is what I’m talking about now because this isn’t a hack. This has to be in you. Something in you has to wake up. And usually, the only person that can wake it up is you. Sometimes you can read a David Goggins book because I was all this crap and then a lot more of messed up. But if you don’t have a little flame, you know, just that just barely you’re done. I can’t I can’t light it for you. And that’s the harsh reality of this life that I want to get across so bad.

You can watch me. You can watch you. You can watch Rogan and Cameron Haines, all these guys. You can go to Tony Robbins’ stuff, do all this stuff, and do all this stuff. If you, you could keep going back and keep spending money and spending money and spending money with no results, you can wonder, wow.

The Harsh Reality of Change

DAVID GOGGINS: Maybe then they go try out David Goggins. He ain’t going to help you. You have to explore, examine the insides of yourself, And what do you really want out of life? Your friend and a lot of people out here just don’t want it. So guess what?

Have fun with your life. Go from 300 to 350 to 400 to 450 to 500 because you don’t want it. And that’s the harsh reality. I can’t give you anything. You can’t give them anything. We can give you ideas. But in the day, when I was losing the weight, I had to miserably wake up every morning in the cold because it was Indiana, November when it started. I was miserable. This is your new life. Take it or leave it.

There’s no happiness about it. There’s no peace behind it. It sucks. It just sucks. And that’s the one thing if I could teach anybody anything, it just sucks. And it’s going to continue to suck. And then one day you get to a special part in your life that it might get a little bit better. But to lose the weight you had to lose, my friend, sorry. It’s going to suck every day. Because then when you’re 300 pounds, you’re going to go out to lose weight, you could probably get injured.

So then you gotta work on the injury, and then you get even more depressed. This is what I went through. And then you’re hungry because now you’re depressed. It’s just a vicious cycle. And if you’re not strong mentally and you have no willpower, you’re going to continue falling back in this hole versus the man that sits back and goes, alright. This is why I cussed. This is what is in me. This is this is what it took for me to be me. Sorry. It didn’t take hey. Okay. We’re going to do this today. No. This really sucks. This is real, dude.

This is real. And every day, I’m setback. I’m setback. I’m setback. I’m setback. So this is what I would tell your boy. This is what exactly I tell him. Every day you wake up, you’re going to probably be setback for the first four weeks before you lose to significant weight because of the mind is going to be messing with you the whole time. There’s no dopamine. There’s no dopamine in there at 300 pounds.

You you got nothing. Your hormones are shot. You have to envision something that is more powerful than you. Something has to get you out of bed, and you have to create it. It has to be false because you’re not it. You’re a fat piece of crap, and that’s the reality of it. So you have to create a false reality to live in that just to get to work on yourself. That’s the reality.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: He’ll he’ll see this, and he’ll appreciate that message. We’ll see what he does.

DAVID GOGGINS: We’ll see. So so far, last 13 years, it’s been no movement. But I’ve had other friends who, who were drug and alcohol addicts who quit after one conversation, never went back.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That’s awesome.

DAVID GOGGINS: That that means they they want it.

The Power of Self-Criticism

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah. Just one one guy, I won’t out him, but walked up to me at a party in 2019, July 4th party and said, “I’m a pile.” And I go, “What?” And he goes, “I’m a pile. Look at me. I’m 60 pounds overweight.” I go, “Do you drink?” He goes, “Every day.” I go, “How much?” He goes, “A case.” He goes, “I smoke a lot of weed.” But he’s successful in other areas of his life. And so I said, “Well, here’s what I know. Quit alcohol and weed for you. You know, I’m not telling people what to do. Don’t eat until 2 PM. Get on a exercise bike and pedal in the morning like someone’s chasing you with a poison dart till you want to puke.” And I was kind of half joking. Right. And then, two months later, he’s, like, “I haven’t had a drink. I lost 30 pounds.” He lost that 60 pounds. He never went back. Now he’s he’s super fit. It’s amazing.

So some people flip the switch. He is very self critical by nature. That’s what flips the switch. Super self critical.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep. That’s what flips the switch. Yeah. Think about it, man. We know what to do. We don’t need Andrew Huberman to tell us what to do. We know what to do. Every one of us. That’s why he flipped it so fast because he knew what to do. He didn’t go by your exact protocol. He didn’t go by the exact no. He knew exactly what to do. And you just saying some stuff to him and woke something up, but he knew what to do. And that’s the thing that people need to get that. You know what to do. Why aren’t you doing it? And I’m talking about myself now.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You know, those modes of just kind of passive consumption, they’re so easy to wash over us. I used to have this thing, and I’m fighting this now because I knew we were going to have this conversation today where I like to start things on the hour or the half hour. Right. Worst practice in the world for me. Because if I miss that half hour, I’m like, it’s 12:33. I’ll start at 12:45. Right. It’s 12:45. I’ll start at 1. I just lost time.

Right. And then and so this is so stupid. Right? And the other day, I was like, man, I gotta tell David about this because my new thing is I start no matter what time it is. Right. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I got a friend who paints in the middle of the night. I’m like, “You’re an insomniac.” He’s like, “I don’t know. I just do it.” Then sometimes he goes back to sleep, sometimes he doesn’t. Everyone’s got their thing, but I thought about this. I’m like, I’m no more am I going to say I’m starting at 1 because I I know me. Right. If I miss the 1 o’clock, ding. Right. And then my pen’s not hitting the paper, am I not typing the on the keyboard, I’m not going to do it. Right. Like, that that’s a self admitted weakness.

DAVID GOGGINS: I love it, man. I had that for a lot of years. I know I’m going to do it. That’s the haunting part is that it’s going to happen. It has to happen, and that’s a fact. Like, there’s no get out of jail free card, bro. None. Like, that is a life that I don’t know. I don’t I don’t have that ability or I have the ability. I don’t have the, I’m not good enough, smart enough. I’m not talented enough to do that. Some people are. Some people can start at 1. Some people don’t have to start at all. If you lack talent, you can’t sit back and say, I’ll start in half an hour. I can’t do that.

I gotta start now. And after I get back from starting, I gotta start again. And then when I get done with that run or that study session, if it weren’t good enough, I gotta go back again. Because repetition is what is is is what taught me everything. So you can honestly outwork anything, but it’s that you obviously are a very talented man.

The Power of Hard Work and Repetition

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, I I have worked hard at certain things and built up some things that I’ve been good at most of my life.

DAVID GOGGINS: You’re amazing.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Truly. Gathering, organizing and disseminating information is something I’ve been doing since I was a little kid. I used to give lectures at school on Monday about stuff I learned over the weekend.

DAVID GOGGINS: See, check that out.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But they they took me to a psychiatrist. We’re the same age. Back then, if we got sent to a psychiatrist, it meant people thought you were crazy.

DAVID GOGGINS: I wasn’t one of them.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah. Exactly.

DAVID GOGGINS: I was one.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Exactly. So so I remember feeling like a freak. I also I didn’t have a stutter, but I had a grunting tick. It comes back when I’m tired. And the only thing that helped that was hitting my head on something, shaking my head, which is why skateboarding was good because I’d slam and I’d feel like, feel good. That’s not healthy. You know, that’s not good. Or just work work is what gets it out. It’s like an it’s like a RPM or high. You know? Anyway, that’s me. The but, yeah, I think certain things over time, I feel like talent or gifts or whatever you want to call them, but there are many things that are exceedingly difficult for me.

And I and I have learned from your example. I know that you you are very both humble and very clear that, like, you don’t have. You say I don’t you’re not going to get it by examining you. But I think the way you’re sharing today and the way you shared on other podcasts before, there are pieces that really help people feel into the process of what you’re talking about today. We’re elaborating on it, I think, a lot.

You know, this notion being haunted in the stick. Right. I mean, of course, of course, now it makes so much sense why you don’t want to talk about sleep or rest or recovery because that’s sure. That’s important. I’ve heard you say, yes. You sleep. Yes. You eat. Yes. You hydrate. Yes. You you will stretch your psoas or what but it’s funny how that becomes the viral message. That’s why I said forget that to you. Not the unique that’s not the the unique message that you carry. Like, anyone can talk about that.

So do I have that right that you’re acknowledging sleep is important, recovery is important, but that’s not what you’re about?

DAVID GOGGINS: You have to forego something. Yes. Ice baths, saunas, sleep, nutrition. All this stuff is so important, dude. I don’t have time for some of it. To get to extract or I had to extract, something had to give. Like, you talk about you when you were younger. You would you would give these speeches and stuff. The same age you were giving speeches, I was trying to figure out how to say the without stuttering.

And I realized as I got older that all these things are important. But for me to stop stuttering, I gotta build confidence. And speech therapy didn’t help that. Nothing helped that. I have to forego a lot of stuff to be as messed up as I am to build confidence.

For me to stand in a room of 10,000 of one person and not and be like, oh, put my head down. Let me look around. Let me, read these paragraphs first. And then before I read the paragraphs, because they call me next, let me just leave the room, kind of stutter. That’s a miserable life.

And that’s one of many things I did besides lying, besides being insecure, besides being immature, besides being fat, besides being one of the only black kids in my school. There’s a lot of things I had to overcome to gain confidence. And in doing so, a lot of that had to go. A lot of it. So I became the guy that became once again misunderstood.

You only sleep four hours a day, two hours a day. Sometimes you don’t sleep at all. Like, what’s this and what’s this and what’s this? I know it’s all important. I can’t something’s gotta go for me to get confidence. Because confidence is the building block of where I’m trying to go. For me to gain confidence in myself, this messed up kid has got to do a lot of messed up stuff to gain confidence. And along the way, the stutter went away and I gained confidence. And now my life is a little bit more there’s just no balance. There’s no balance.

It’s a little bit more what it should be for a lot of people, but there’ll never be balance because confidence is something that you’re constantly confidence and belief you’re building every day. And so something’s gotta give. And I’m willing to forego a lot of things to have that because I know that is that is if you want to give somebody kryptonite, take that away from me.

So, yeah, I I don’t sleep sometimes, and sometimes I don’t eat the right way. Sometimes I don’t do this and do that and whatever, man.

Confidence and Self-Belief

DAVID GOGGINS: But you put me in a room with 10,000 people anytime of the day, and I walk in there thinking I’m the best person in here because I know what it took to be on this stage. And a lot of people will not do that. So that’s what it takes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: There’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you since we started, and I thought about coming in here, and I’ve been thinking about in the weeks ahead of this. And I’m going to just come clean and say, I don’t exactly know how to ask the question.

DAVID GOGGINS: Just ask it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So it’s about relationships.

DAVID GOGGINS: Do it, man.

Balancing Discipline and Relationships

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So I know in myself that my discipline is much higher when it’s just me, but that’s because I had certain things early on, but then I had I was a terrible student, barely finished high school. But then when I got serious, I got serious, but I did that by staying away from everybody. And anyone who’s ever had a relationship of any kind, but in particular romantic relationships knows that, yes, you can derive tremendous support from those. Like, “You got this, baby. You can go in here.” Like, yeah. I got this. She said I got this. You know? Right. Feels great to finish something and share with someone. Share a meal. You know? Get the hug.

But there’s another side to all of that that I’d like to learn more about from you, which is there’s a warm body next to you in bed in the morning. You don’t want to get up. They also have needs. You’ve got your mission. That people sometimes need things from us. But, also, oftentimes, the people that love us most, that truly love us and that want to support us don’t understand this thing. And they’re the first people to tell us, like, listen. Take a day off. And then this whole cycle, at least in my head, goes off. Like, you just want a vacation, and then it’s almost like a paranoia. I’m not saying anything nice about myself right now.

Former girlfriends are going to be like, yeah. Like, you know, that they remember. They so and and so support of people close to you is critical. This could be friends, could be romantic partners, whatever. But they’re also the the knife cuts both ways. It can be the thing that can really undermine this thing that you’re talking about. Because the people that care about us also want to see us comfortable. They want to see us happy. They want to see us peaceful. They want to see us in a wake up from a great night’s sleep, and they want things too. So how do you untangle that whole bit?

Prioritizing Family and Personal Growth

DAVID GOGGINS: Well, it’s funny, man. I’m unbalanced, but I’m mostly unbalanced towards the family side. If you don’t get about me. I’ll stop being unbalanced. I get all my stuff in. But what I do is I make sure that my family has everything they need. Everything they need.

Those who want to be part of my family. Some don’t. Some family members don’t want to be part of David Goggins. I get it. I got it. That’s life. Those who are part of my family, I give them everything they need so they can leave me alone. I make sure you’re happy as hell because I gotta go to work. And I don’t mean smoke jumping. I don’t mean running. I mean all of it. It takes every I can’t have you in my stuff. Can’t. So I know for me to have a family, I gotta make sure that you realize I’m going to give you everything you need so we start complaining at me. I’m going to say, look.

Hang on. I dedicated my life to give you everything you need. I need this time right here. For me to be the best I can be because this journey started without anybody. And I make sure everybody knows that because of my life. I’ve been left think about it. I was left alone as long at at at a young age to figure this out. I figured it out for myself. It had been very successful for myself. No one’s going to come in here and mess with my stuff.

That’s why I make sure I will take care of whatever you need. Whatever you need from me, you got it. Money, house, my love, my support, I’m going to give you everything you need. That said, I do it the highest level possible. And I’m saying it with Jennifer in the next room. So please come here and say something if it’s wrong, Jennifer. I don’t give a damn. Say what you gotta say.

So then when it’s time for me to go to work, I expect you to do the same for me because it takes every bit of me to do what I have to do. So I make sure that I’m very unbalanced for my family so I can be exactly that unbalanced for myself.

And that’s how I do it. I let people know right up front, I’m not what you want in a man. I guarantee that. There’s going to be a lot of late nights, a lot of early mornings, a lot of times where I get to be by myself thinking about the process that is next in my mind. I can’t have aggravation. I can’t have this, can’t have that. There’s a lot of things, but I let him know upfront. I’m very vocal about that. Sometimes relationships work for me, sometimes they didn’t, but that’s who I am.

One thing I did wrong in my life was I tried for so many years to please people, and I did it at the expense of myself. I was leaving a lot in the tank, and I and when you do that, you stop living. But the person in your life is happy as hell because you give them everything they want. They have their their their life is full, but you feel empty. And that’s not a relationship to me.

So for me, it’s important that you know exactly who I am because this is what life made. And I’m not trying to change it because I just figured it out. So I’m not trying to compromise David Goggins. I will never ever compromise David Goggins. That doesn’t mean I won’t give you what you need and what you want and what you desire. But I don’t need money. I don’t need fame. I don’t need stuff. So I give it all away. What I do need is to make sure that that willpower is worked on every day and every night for the rest of my life. Because that’s the one thing that’s going to keep me feeding you, keeping you where you need to be.

Because once that willpower is gone, 300 pound David Goggins, he may not be look like it, but I will walk around with it. So the things that are important to you in life, you must do always or you’re nobody. And that’s how I handle relationships.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Amen to that. Something I could personally work on is that upfront clear communication because I it resonates that feeling of, like, there’s something inside that’s not getting worked out that I was when I’m on my own. It’s it’s it’s a it’s a lot easier. But then, of course, wanting relationships and family, I think that’s a healthy part of being human too.

DAVID GOGGINS: Very.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Obviously, you’ve worked it out, so I appreciate you sharing that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about it.

The Importance of Honesty in Relationships

DAVID GOGGINS: No. People are scared of that, man. People are scared of that conversation with their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend. And but why are you scared of it? Why are you scared to tell a person, your wife, your husband, who you are? Who you are. Exactly who you are. And that was the problem I had. That that’s a problem that a lot of us have in life. No one knows who you really are. No one knew who I really was.

I went to a school where there were a lot of black kids. A lot of black kids didn’t want to be in special ops. I never talked about special ops with black kids. Why? I was wondering what, I’m not going to fit in. That’s not what they do. A lot of black kids don’t do that kind of stuff. So whatever I wanted to do, no one really knew the real me growing up because I never want anybody to know the real me. I was always afraid of what you might say or how you’re going to feel or whatever.

You got feelings. You have a life that you have to live. So it’s important that whatever’s on your mind, you let that person know. Therefore, you’re giving them the option to be with you or not. This is who I am. If you don’t like it, that’s good, man. I I got it. But this is David Goggins. So there’s that that honest conversation is very important, man. So everybody knows where they stand. That person may not be for you, and that’s all good.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: This world could use a lot more of that upfront, completely honest conversation. I feel like so much of the world’s problems are because everyone’s dancing around in these issues. Takes a lot. Recently in the news, seeing people losing their job because they won’t say something publicly. You can tell they kind of want it. It’s like and people just I think deep down really crave the direct message. Like, what are you about? What are you not about?

But I think now everyone’s afraid of getting canceled. It’s a big deal. Right? You know, getting canceled that people think, oh, I can’t work if I am who I am or or, if I’m not pretending to be somebody else, then, you know, silence is considered, you know, agreement. You know, there’s all sorts of complicated stuff, and I I do feel for the generation coming up because we didn’t have social media and all of that. They’re getting just walled off from that. There’s a real benefit from just not paying attention.

The Power of Truth and Vulnerability

DAVID GOGGINS: People love to lie. People love to lie. You know? I thought I was the only person growing like, when I was growing up, I thought I was the only person that lied because I live in the bubble. And people love to lie about who they’re not. They love to lie about who they’re not, dude. And that’s, for me, the reason why I’m so vulnerable and I’m so real and honest, find somebody to come out and tell me online about my life.

And for me to come where I came from and have the resume I have now, you know, the confidence you get, how I don’t care who you’re going to you’re going to judge me? You’re going to judge me? What have you done in your life? So me being so honest and so upfront and so truthful, that came with me finally figuring out who I was, but also conquering David Goggins, the demons of David Goggins. Therefore, now you’re just a open book.

You look at somebody looking around the eye, tell me exactly who you are. You walk away. I’m good, bro. I know exactly what this journey took to get here. And that gives you a fire and a passion that people can call you names. They can call you if you’re a lesbian or gay or bicep, call you whatever you want. If you put yourself in the fire and you come out every day like this, brush it off, not scared to go back in there again, come on, man. Your truth is real. You come out every day, man, with a way of talking to people that people don’t have because there’s no truth behind them. And the truth is a starting line.

When you sit in an ugly mirror and say, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, you finally started your life. Maybe 40 years old. Maybe 40 years old, five, six kids, wife it’s like you look in that mirror and you say, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m this. Well, basically, I’m not this, I’m not this, I’m not this, I’m not this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I’m all these insecurities, Your life finally started. And once you start that life, man, the truth comes out big time.

You know I don’t care. So that’s the problem. Most people just don’t want to have that conversation to the point where they can go on stage with a million people and say, I’m all of this. And have a good day. See you

The Impact of External Validation

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It’s it’s it’s empowering. It’s very empowering. I feel like the the way we’re educated in school, but also outside of school is we’re trained as human beings, these young brains to try and figure out how to get positive feedback from other people.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It’s like we’re we’re like little dogs.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep. You got a bulldog. That’s right. I had a bulldog. Saw the picture of your bulldog.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: She’s she’s great. They’re Charlie dog. They’re an amazing species.

DAVID GOGGINS: They are. I think of them, economy of effort.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Or amazing breed. Excuse me. They’re an amazing breed. Economy of effort. They don’t do anything unless it’s necessary.

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s it’s kind of the exact opposite of everything we’re talking about.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: David. Yeah. Kind of interesting that and they’re kind of hedonist.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Now it is true that they will they’ll die to protect you.

DAVID GOGGINS: Oh, yeah. And it’s an instinct.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yes. I saw that with Costello. I’m sure that I saw it with Charlie.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah. It’s it’s an instinct. But if they’re not in that position, if there’s no need to exert effort.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: They’re rested.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So your bulldog’s resting for you.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes. Got it. Exactly.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So you don’t need to rest because Active recovery, Charlie.

DAVID GOGGINS: Perfect. That’s it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Perfect. That’s going to be your answer from now on. Active recovery Charlie. Sleep, does he rest? No. He somehow worked it out, so his bulldog does it for him.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right.

The Danger of External Validation

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But we’re sort of indoctrinated into this way of being from a time that we’re young where, of course, praise feels good. Right? Someone tells you, “Hey. I like that shirt” or “Good job today” or “Nicely done” or for me, because I like growing up in a big pack of friends growing up, and I was never the great staff. It wasn’t terrible, wasn’t great, etcetera. Like a fist bump or, like, a feeling crewed up. And you’re just like, yeah.

But you’ve talked about this before in reference to the SEAL teams. We both know a lot of people in that community, and the team’s component is a big part of it for a lot of people. And it’s a wonderful thing. Right. But there’s a danger to that dopamine hit, for lack of a better way to put it, from what we only derive when it’s coming from outside. You’re talking about being able to either say good job, but also, like, just look to one’s own personal history and say, I I’ve done hard things, and I can do it again and again because I do it again and again and again. You’re talking about parenting yourself.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Inspiring yourself.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Scaring yourself.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: All of that from the inside.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So very different than the way we’re raised, which is to figure out how to get the biscuit.

The Power of Self-Motivation

DAVID GOGGINS: It’s funny, man. People want to know how I’m always motivated. It’s the unseen work, which you just said is a true statement. Those are false dopamine hits that people are giving you, man. There’s no belief in that. These are teamwork dopamine. Like, I’m not running at 2 o’clock in the morning, 1 o’clock in the morning in the gym, long sessions by myself. You that’s real. How I’m able to just extract dopamine, the good dopamine whenever I want. Man, I’ve trained 99% of my life alone. No one pat me on the back. I did all of the work alone.

And while I’m still hard on myself, I know what I did. So whenever times get bad for people, all this, who’s going to carry the boats and that’s real. I hate that people know me for that guy because that guy is not every day. Like, when they see me, they want that energy. That’s not me every day. I can extract it immediately when I need to because when you train alone and I lived alone for so many years in this misery, and you’re able to get out by yourself. I can take myself to such a level of real real passion and purpose. And, like, the feeling I get is something I can’t even explain by my I don’t need anyone. That’s why that’s why people come to me to motivate them. No one can motivate me.

I have a resume full of motivation that whenever I’m down, like, oh, hang on. Oh, you know. You know the truth. You know the truth. You know the darkness of the dungeons and the demons that fly. You know and then from there, it’s like, okay. You were there. You know this. There was no one there to pick up the rucksack, to pick up the boat, to pick up the log, to go in there. It was you.

It was you. There was no pat on the back at 300 at at at 275, at 250, at 220. No. That was you. So those things that come out of me that extract from me in the darkness, people are looking for that pat on the back. Where is it? Oh, I don’t need it. Because what I’ve done is in the unseen work, I built Frankenstein. So whenever stuff gets nasty, David Goggins goes, you had nobody anyway. So see how I’m talking myself for now? That’s me. That stuff fires me up. That stuff makes me nuts. You had nobody anyway. Look around you. There is no team. It was you. There was no weight loss program or mom and dad waking you up saying you can do it. You can be better trying to build belief. You built belief when you had nothing.

Rock bottom. You did that. So as times get hard for me, the truth comes out, And my truth is powerful as hell. It’s real. It’s tangible. I feel it. It comes out of my brain as I speak about it. I’m reliving every single dark moment of my life to be here. So that is what people don’t get. That is what motivates David Goggins is the unseen work, but everybody needs that pat on the back. They need that training partner. They they need that accountability coach. I hear that stuff, and neither do they. But it’s what we’ve trained ourselves to believe that we need.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It’s almost like there’s this pill on the shelf. I’m speaking in analogy. Right. And we take it and we get jazzed up. We’re like, yeah. But there’s this other medicine cabinet behind there, and it’s in us. You’re saying the the real medicine cabinet is inside.

DAVID GOGGINS: Oh, yes. When you continue to overcome and I had so many obstacles to overcome. So it’s actually a benefit to me, but the benefit is not like a benefit like that. You have to have the courage and the patience to overcome and overcome. Before you know it, man, you have a whole medicine cabinet, but there’s no medicine in it. There’s no pre-workout. I don’t take none of that stuff. All I gotta do is flip my brain, put my finger in there, and say, okay. That’s a good one. That’s all I gotta do, man. I got the Rolodex of just, like, go yourself, Goggins, and, oh, but you won. Let’s do that one today. There’s nothing I need. And this is the thing that people don’t get about David Goggins.

I can’t teach it in a one minute video. We all have this ability to have our own medicine cabinet. But unless you go in there and put the medicine in there, it’s always going to be empty, man. You’re always going to need the pre-workout. You’re always going to need to I don’t drink coffee. I don’t do I don’t do none of that. I don’t need any I I can run for 70 hours than I had before. No caffeine. I got all this wonderful stuff that I overcame on my own by myself in the darkness. That man, when it’s cold, I’m hot. When it’s hotter, like, I I I can feed myself all the time. That’s why when people say, man, why aren’t you missing anything? I can’t explain it to you, man. Can’t explain it to you. You you you never understand.

That’s why I don’t do all these podcasts, dude. I ain’t got I I I love you, man. That’s why you my first book, you did a blur for me. That’s why I’m here. I love what you’re doing for people, man, but I can’t explain this. I can’t. I can’t explain this because people don’t want to do this. They don’t want to do this, man, but it’s I don’t know, man. I get I get jazzed up even talking about it, man, because so many people think my life is just so oh, god. His life is horrible. Like, don’t don’t follow him. He’s crazy.

Misunderstanding David Goggins

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Really? But there are good number of people, I would say, and that’s an unders that that actually do. I think it I what I’m hearing today, and it’s really sinking in, is that a great many people either partially or completely misunderstand you.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I I’ll put myself in the partially category.

DAVID GOGGINS: Big time.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because I thought it was about just forward center of mass, carrot, carrot, carrot, carrot, but it’s the stick. It’s the stick. And it’s being haunted. And, you know, I do have examples from my own life, which is not what today’s about, about being really afraid and then turning things around. Right. My biggest fear is getting comfortable. Right. I do not have as much of a stick oriented approach, but today’s conversation’s changing the way I think. I’m not going to step away from this and think, okay. There are 25 neural circuits that can explain 10 other things that David’s talking about. And what I’m thinking about is the fact that everybody has a brain. They have a mind. Forget the brain. The brain is just the physical structure, but what that manifest, what that creates is the mind. And everybody has that.

So I do believe that everyone has the capacity to do what you’re talking about at some level. I also will be the first to confess that I think you’re highly unusual. Let’s just say, maybe even n of one as we say in science. Sample size of one. Right. Somebody who has created this process for themselves and keeps them in this forward center of mass with the stick battering the back of their head all the time. Right. Highly unusual. But this internal medicine cabinet that you’re talking about building up true confidence, not needing anything from the outside. I think I like to think that people want that. They want to be known. They’re afraid, but that they want to be known for who they really are and that you’re describing the path to do this. Right.

And I will say I’m immensely grateful that you’re talking to us this way today about things that you’ve talked about before, but we’re hitting it a little differently, I like to think.

DAVID GOGGINS: Very different.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because what you’re talking about is a process. It’s verbs. It’s all verbs. All action. And it’s not about success. It’s more actually about keeping that friction dialed to ten. Right. And that I no energy drink, no supplement. People often misunderstand me. They think, you know, like, I’m big on people getting sunlight in the mornings. They can set their circadian rhythm and get better sleep. It’s like, etcetera. But then people always think they go straight to the supplements. Yeah. What should I take? You know? And then, of course, people think I’m all about supplements. Supplements are one piece for me, but it’s, like, tiny fraction compared to the the doing, the do’s and don’ts. That’s why I didn’t want to talk about that today. That’s why I’m glad we’re talking about this.

The Power of the Brain

DAVID GOGGINS: This is it. This is it. Like, the brain is the most powerful weapon in the world. And it’s it’s crazy how a kid that wasn’t real smart, I was forced to go only internal. External had to go away. The external world had to go away. In living so deep inside myself, it was me in this brain and figuring out how this thing works. And it’s so many people are doing exactly that, the supplements, the this, the that. I agree. It helps. But once you figure out your your brain, you become unstoppable to almost anything. Yeah. You can’t beat death. You can’t whatever whatever. Your brain is amazing.

The Power of Mental Conditioning

DAVID GOGGINS: Once you feed it the right conversation, the right mental nutrients, the right mental supplements, the right internal dialogue at the right time with the right hit, with the right proof of what you’ve done in the past, and you send it right to the right circuit, dude, you’re a beast. A beast. But once again, you just can’t read about it. You can’t sit back and be a theorist. You have to be a practitioner.

And in that practice is where that becomes proof positive. What I’m saying is, like, god. Like, David Goggins, he’s blowing my mind. What is this? He’s not crazy. And so many people, a lot of people, have listened to me in the right way, and they come back and they’re like, “I’m totally on board. I it it happened. It happened.” I’m like, it’ll keep going, man, if you keep doing it. But that is it, man.

There’s no sun. There’s no glory. There’s no carrot. There’s no victory, but there is all of it in one. I just can’t explain it real well to people, man. But what you get the other end is something that you’re not you’re always found. You’re never lost anymore. Doesn’t mean the journey’s easy. Doesn’t get any easier, but you’re always found.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love that. I just want to hover on that for a sec the same way we hovered on haunted and the stick. I think people feel lost. I’ve certainly felt lost at times in my life, many times. And, yeah, there’s that thing. I don’t think there’s a neuroscience or a psychology term for it. Someone will say put it in the comments and say, “Oh, yeah. That’s what so and so said.” But like you said, we’re not trying to be theoretical here. We’re trying to be practical. The business of finding yourself and knowing, like but it’s sort of like, I’m safe because I’m in danger, and I’ve been in danger before, and I got myself out.

It always always seems to come back to verbs. Again, I don’t have a language for this. You know? For once, I’m lost for words. There’s like a it’s it’s about a a process, the algorithm. And you and the reason here, I’m just kind of trying to make sure I’m understanding things correctly. One of the reasons why it must be uncomfortable for you to be who you are publicly is because people want us focus on the running or the swearing. And by the way, the swearing is is welcome. I’ll tell you, I came up through laboratories where all three people I worked for swore a lot. But there was one rule.

I couldn’t swear at people. So my graduate advisor, brilliant woman, unfortunately, she died early. They all died early. I’m the common denominator. I had that internalized for a long time. Right. Anyway, she said, but if you swear at people, you’re out. Right. But you can swear as much as you want. So that’s that’s the rule I have. It’s like you can swear as much as you want. Just don’t swear at people. If you swear at people, better be ready to fight. Right.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I’m definitely not going to fight you. So you can swear at me. Get away with it. But the fact of the matter is that it must be frustrating that people because I know people go, oh, it’s it’s all about supplements and ice baths. Listen. I like supplements. I love supplements and ice baths, but that’s not the full picture. It’s just a gravitational pull. It’s the swearing. It’s the running. It’s his feet that are all messed up. Yeah. It’s the fact that he got a Triton. Yeah. He’s this seal guy. Yeah. We talk about that too. Right? You know?

And there’s a gravitational pull for people, and they’re missing, like, the that’s, like, the tip of the iceberg is what I’m realizing. I’m realizing that today, thanks to the way you’re phrasing things because the bigger vessel is all in here. And

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And as you said, how do you put that in a book? It’s it’s impossible.

DAVID GOGGINS: Because it’s highly individual.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yes.

DAVID GOGGINS: You do it your way.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yes.

DAVID GOGGINS: And you’re saying everyone needs to go figure out how to do it their way for them.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yes.

The Frustration of Being Misunderstood

DAVID GOGGINS: And the thing about being misunderstood is very frustrating. More than I can even imagine. I I I can’t even express how frustrating it is when the cussing and everything comes from a place of of of real. I can’t explain what I do without it. The passion comes out of me. It’s almost like speaking in tongues. Because when you put that much work and people go, “Oh, yeah. There’s been this basketball player, this football player, this dude.” No. No. Everything everything is work. Everything. And people don’t don’t believe it.

So when I speak, the profanity and it’s that is what it took for me. What it takes for me. The anger, the passion, the the the the jaw dropping just it takes that because I’m not that. This is how I look at it, man. What built this guy let’s imagine being in the coldest water you can possibly take. I always go back to Hell Week with this.

I hated the water. Hated it. You’re sitting in locked arms and you’re in the water all the time, and they’re bringing you in and out of the water, in and out of the water. When you have this dialogue in your head and these people are judging me off of a freaking one minute video, and you’re constantly your whole life when you figured it out 24 that I gotta I just gotta this gotta and this is just going to suck. Every day is going to suck.

And live like that to be better. And I put this I’m in the water. The water is going over my head. The Pacific Ocean, you know, it’s freezing. February, cold as hell. Been through three hell weeks. For you to constantly win, win, win, when this voice over here, the real you, is saying, get out of here. Go. You’re nobody. You’ve always been nobody.

And it’s true. People don’t hear that. That’s a true voice. That’s the real reality of David Goggins at 24 years old. It’s not a false reality. And then you had to create another voice over here that is saying you’re better than that other voice. And you’re in the freezing cold water that both voices don’t want to be in. But you win. And it goes from the water to the studying, to the running, to losing weight, to how you eat, to how you function as a man. Every day of your life, you’re winning these battles.

And then I have normal people who only have one voice. Never created the second voice. The winning voice is a second voice. They have a one voice, and that’s just I’m a piece of crap. That’s all they hear.

And then they judge people like me who are out here trying to be better. It’s something that I can never really it’s a frustrating thing for me because I know I know the majority of people. I know what goes on in the brain. I studied the mind more than almost more than you because I wasn’t I’m a practitioner. So for you to be a piece of crap and come out of that, you don’t just come out of it. You spend decades studying your mind in the human mind on how it functions in good environments, bad environments, stressful environments, patient environment. You studied all because you had to put all this together to create the mind to become successful.

So I had to it was like, god bless me with this brain. I had to create a mind. And so in doing so, I figured out every piece of crap human being in the world because that’s what I was going off of for myself. So I know why you go on Instagram. I know why you because you just have the time. You have the time because you don’t want to put that time into bettering oneself. So I know why I misunderstood. I misunderstood by people who have plenty of time on their hands to misunderstand me because they are exactly where I once was, which is a lowlife lazy piece of crap.

There’s the harsh reality of people who troll you, who go after you. They have nothing better to do with their lives. It’s not some after school special. It’s the truth by once was that way. I know where it all comes from. That’s why it’s frustrating to me now because I’m not so frustrated at the fact that I’m being trolled. I’m frustrated by the fact that you don’t have the courage the courage to try to be somebody better than which you’re not, And that’s the frustrating part.

Understanding Relationships and Public Perception

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It’s interesting because earlier, we were talking about relationships and you said in in a very candid way, and I really appreciate you sharing that, that you make sure that the people close to you, your family has everything they need. Right. And that they also understand that you’re going to take what you need to continue to build you. Right. Period. Period. In some ways, it seems you’ve also included the general public in that family.

You’re saying, listen. I’m going to give you what you need. I’m going to give you as much of myself as I can, except I’m going to stop right at the line

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That if I were to cross it, is going to prevent me from continuing to build myself. And by the way, this relationship only exists because I don’t cross that line.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And I think as much as there are detractors out there, people that try. Right? I mean, it’s pretty whatever they’re doing is pretty feeble in my mind.

DAVID GOGGINS: Very feeble.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You know, so many of us, men and women, old and young, hear something and feel something in your message. Well, like, “Yeah. Like, it seems kind of crazy. Gosh. Like, doesn’t he ever just relax? You know? What about his sleep? You know?” And I you know that time. “Look at his feet. He’s going to he’s going to injure himself.” I’ve heard listen. I’ll be very direct. I got friends who were in the teams who just go, “You know, what’s he going to do when he can’t run?” And I know the answer is keep running.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right? But it’s more comfortable for people

DAVID GOGGINS: Even high achievers

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It’s best to

DAVID GOGGINS: High achievers.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: To believe that if you took one thing away, that it would all go away. It’s absolutely clear that’s not the case with you. I’m 100% convinced. I just know that because what we’re talking about is this.

The True Source of Motivation

DAVID GOGGINS: Do you know how many times I haven’t been able to run? Two heart surgeries, multiple knee surgeries, and after every knee surgery, they say not going to run again? And I’m fine with that. There’s no running up here, bro. None. This was what it was all about. That’s what they lost. What if you can’t run? Give a damn? It was never about running.

Why do you think I run? It’s the worst thing. I I hate doing it more than anything.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Hence, the willpower. Right. Your anterior midcingulate cortex

DAVID GOGGINS: Hence the willpower.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Would start to regress if you loved running.

DAVID GOGGINS: Think about it. Every day I wake up. I don’t just run a mile, two miles. It’s the one thing I hate the most to do, and I do it like I love it. 250, 260, 270, 300 mile runs at one time. No sleep in every step. When I get to the think about this. I get to the start line cussing at Jennifer.

The True Nature of Motivation

DAVID GOGGINS: Why am I here? I hate this stuff. After 70 some hours of running, every question I ever had is answered. Every question I had is answered. I cap success.

I don’t people go, we mean you cap success. For me to be who I am so when I go smoke jump, I smoke jump three to four months out of the year, sometimes five.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Could you just for those that aren’t, educated about, just, like, give us a brief description of what smoke jumping entails?

DAVID GOGGINS: So, basically, you jump into fires, not into them, but you jump by fires that people can’t get to.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So out of planes and helicopters.

DAVID GOGGINS: Right. Out of planes and parachute. It’s it’s all parachuting.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So you parachute out of airplanes, and then you fight the fire.

DAVID GOGGINS: You and sometimes four other guys or maybe eight other guys, guys and gals, and you’re putting this fire out. So I lose millions of dollars every summer to do this. It blows people’s minds. Why the hell are you doing this? And you’re breathing soot. I’m being soot, knees are jacked up, hit hitting the ground, hurting, whatever. Talking to normal people, they’ll never get it, so I don’t even explain it to them.

But this is why this is why I call cap success. I’m talking financial success. For me to continue having that willpower, the second I just become a speaking monkey and travel around in speaking gigs 12 months out of the year, put camps on, do this, put on lectures, get supplement lines, and do this, and write more books and stuff. I’ve ruined the exact thing I worked on my entire life. And while I didn’t know it until today, but someone always told me, this is a very, very, very perishable skill, this this willpower that you have, because I do have a willpower that I have never seen in anybody in my life. It is a haunting force that just keeps me going, and I know that that is my strength.

If you have that so that’s worth every dime I’ve ever made in my life. Is the fact that I can look a man in the eye finally and have real conversations without going like this because I’m lying or I’m a piece of crap or I know you know how a person in so many people do this stuff? They’re talking to you on who they want to be. They’re lying to you, and they walk away. I’ve done it so many times. Walk away like, god, man. Why can’t he tell him the truth? Why the hell can I just tell him the truth?

No. Good it feels for me now to look at you in your eye and every man a man I see, because women won’t get this. Women will not get this. Man to man. That man stuff. You’re looking at a man in the eye, and you know that everything you’re saying is real, and it comes from a real working place, something that you earned. It’s the best feeling in the world.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You can say that actually happened. Like, I know with certainty what I’m saying actually happened.

DAVID GOGGINS: Actually happened. Who I am and who I say I am, I am. No more lies. No more skirting the truth. No more nonsense. And that is worth every dime I’ve ever made in my life. And I as I swear to God on that, Every dime I’ve ever made in my life, building who I built so I cap success because I know that if I ever go 12 months out of the year and don’t put several every day, I’m going at it. But several months out of the year, I go right back to ground zero, which means I’m just David Goggins. No Goggins. No Kerry Boats logs nonsense.

It’s just pick up that Pulaski and dig. Hey. Get that pump. Walk down a mile. Put it in the water. Mosquitoes beaten. You’re just David Goggins. You’re nobody. Because that’s where my growth is. That’s where my willpower comes from, and that’s where it stays.

That’s why I’m going to talk to you now. And and that kind of might talk like this, dude. People don’t talk this kind of past because they it it ain’t there. It ain’t there. They’re they’re regurgitating some stuff from 30 years ago. I’m regurgitating stuff from an hour ago. Hour ago. Come on, man. It’s just be real. And I can’t be on these podcasts. I can’t talk to anybody without being real. I’ll go away. I’ll just go away because I I I can’t give you what I want to give you.

The Perishable Skill of Willpower

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You said perishable skill. I think that’s another word set of words I want to highlight because skill implies behavior. And when we were just talking a second ago about the deep true bedrock sense of confidence that comes from looking someone in the eye and telling somebody something that you absolutely know it’s true because it happened. You’re talking about actions. Not talking about perceptions. You’re not talking about what you believe happened. You know it happened.

And there’s something really concrete about actions. I mean, that’s what’s so interesting is we’re talking about the mind, but actions are the manifestation of the mind. And I and the stuff that just stays in here, people die with that. It doesn’t go anywhere. I I long ago, somebody said, you know I forget what the context was. It was a neuroscientist. He said, you know, most emotions, like, they’re just emotions. They’re just in there. Like, you don’t have to do anything with them.

DAVID GOGGINS: And I think certain emotions you want to do something with.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right. But I think people forget this. They feel miserable, like they’re going to dissolve into puddle of their own tears. No one ever died from an emotion. Right. But they feel like they they overwhelm us as if it’s a tidal wave. It’s going to pull us under and drown us. It’s so interesting to me because I think what people listen. You have a gravitational pull. People can feel the energy. I think, yes, you’re either completely, badly, or partially understood. There’s only one guy on the planet that truly understands you. I think there’s one woman, Jennifer, who probably understands you as much as anyone’s going to, and then the rest of us are kind of grasping trying to figure it out. Right.

But you’re saying go inward. So first go inward and then it’s actions. Inward and actions. Now the inward piece is something I’d like to just spend a little bit of time on. Because there are couple characters from history, people that were in concentration camps. Nelson Mandela. I mean, I’m not sure he had Instagram in there. I’m pretty sure he didn’t. Right. And I don’t think there was anyone coaching him on, like, hey. You’re going to get out someday, and, actually, you’re going to lead an entire country. I’m pretty sure that’s not how it worked. He had to find it here. He had to find it between his ears. Right.

And there are other examples, but that’s an important one. So the process of going inward, does it for you and here, I will ask for suggestions because I think people want there are those of us who want to build this skill. Right. Wall yourself off. Phone off. For big portions of the day perhaps. Texting off. The requests to this to that.

Anyone that knows you knows that I we’ve communicated a few texts, but most of it comes through a filter. She’s great. She knows you. You know? And she knows how to protect your time. And that hurts people’s feelings. People get mad about that. Hey. God bless. God bless you, Jaffer. You know? Cutting oneself off. When you’re in there, you say it’s just you, and the voices that come up are not pleasant. And then at some point, it converts to action. Okay.

How much what is the process of picking the action? That’s the piece that I feel like we there’s, like, a bridge to build here, if you can, if you would.

DAVID GOGGINS: So they actually mean, like like, like, what’s next?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah. So what like, when you go go to sleep at night, when that happens, you know what you’re going to do the next day? It’s preplanned?

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Okay. It’s always the same thing. You’re not building it on the fly?

DAVID GOGGINS: No. Nothing’s on the fly. Nothing in me.

The Art of Self-Creation

DAVID GOGGINS: So how it works internally for me is, I I put it exactly how it is. I’m an artist. And every day I’m putting I’m I’m painting Mona Lisa every day. And but it’s a different one. It’s not the same painting. So every day I wake up, you know, they’re the same thing. It takes a different way to get there. So every day in my mind, I’m going through my mind. I’m just like and a good painter will not just paint. He needs to create.

And you can’t create the phones and everything going around you, so you gotta block yourself off. You only do two podcasts in a year. You block yourself off, and you’re and you’re painting this thing inside, and you’re going through all these different colors of paint and everything else. And you can only figure out the right painting if you spend the correct amount of time in your brain. So every single day, I’m literally going with my mind, and I’m painting.

I’m creating this this masterpiece, and the masterpiece is always myself. And but to do that, you cannot have any distractions. Because if you’re talking to an artist and he’s trying to think about the next painting, he he can’t. So it’s impossible to listen to you and listen to what your mind and body are telling you we must do. People don’t do enough of. They don’t do any of it. You’re they don’t have passion. They they lack passion, drive, determination because you haven’t spent time with yourself. Your mind will tell you what is next, but you haven’t spent the time to go, alright. Let me just figure this out.

You’re looking for let me Google this, and let me Google that, and let me you’re not going to find it there because there’s billions of people in this world, and they’re all supposed to be individuals. But we have a pack mentality. That’s why you’re so lost. Why am I so unique? I’m being exact what I’m supposed to be. I ain’t follow stuff. And when I did follow stuff, I was like everybody else. The second I said, okay, man. Hang on, dude. You don’t like this. You don’t like this. You don’t like this. Who are you, David Goggins? Who are you supposed to be? Miraculously, all these things just, I I couldn’t even the the list of stuff I had to do just wham.

It’s like, okay. Wow. Once you sit down with yourself and say, okay. I don’t want to be like Michael Jordan or Jim Brown. They both were on my birthday. So I I looked at their birthday. I said, oh my maybe it can be one of these I can’t. I’m going to be David Goggins. And that looks like this. It just came everything flooded. So every single day of my life, there’s a different thing that comes up that I have to do. But no one knows what to do because everybody else is following steps like the Republican and Democratic parties.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I’m not political

DAVID GOGGINS: Neither am I. At all for this reason. Republicans are going to vote Republican. Democrats are going to vote Democrat. You’re not even a human being, bro. No way all you guys agree with all the same stuff. And I know I don’t.

So once you figure out yourself and who you are, all the answers come. So every night, a different painting is being painted, and it’s a beautiful painting for myself. Like, okay. That’s that’s it. It may look the same to most people, but the end result is very different.

That’s why my launch I if you look at what I’ve done in 49 years, it’s more than most people ever do in their life because they were a race car driver. That’s what they did. They drove a car. It’s great. I was all kind of stuff because that’s exactly what the painting was saying to do. It’s what the mind was saying to do. When I was saying this driver car, so then that race car driver know what to do. He he he retires from being a race car driver, and they’re lost. People, how how are you still I don’t get it. Dude, you’re never going to fill your list, but you never found your list because it never was presented in front of you because your head was cluttered with stuff.

Because you never just stopped for lots of minutes, lots of years, and they said, alright. It’s me and you. Let it go. And it just bam. It’s right there. It’s right there.

The Power of Internal Dialogue

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I’m not a psychologist as I mentioned before, but I’m going to venture a hypothesis here. I think that you’ve mastered the process of internal dialogue. But when I say dialogue, I think most people think, oh, the the inner voice, the the the chatter. But that’s just one half of a dialogue. A dialogue is a two way street. So I completely agree because I know from experience that when we go inward, oftentimes we hear things if we’re really honest with ourselves. It’s like, I don’t want to think about that or that. No. And then we start looking outward or we start trying to shift our attention or distract.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And there are million reasons that are handed to us excuses and seemingly good justifications to be able to do that. But dialogue is a two way street, and it hit me while you were just saying what you were saying. I was paying very close attention, and I realized David Goggins is talking about the voice that comes up, including the terrible stuff that no one wants to hear about themselves from themselves, but then he’s also got the dialogue down where he knows the counter voice.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: He goes, yeah. You’re right. And so I’m going to do this. Or maybe, no. Remember this. You’re in a dialogue, a two way dialogue in there, not a one way chatter dialogue.

There are books written by famous psychologists about chatter, trying to shift your internal narrative. You’re like, bring the internal the internal narrative, that’s what going inward is about, but it’s not one voice. Again, there’s a hypothesis. I’m not claiming to be all knowing. Lord knows I’m not all knowing. Okay? But you’ve mastered the dialogue and if there are three voices, strong, medium, and weak in there, you’re you’re like, let’s all come to the table. Right. So you got a a a symphony of voices in there that are all you that you know to be you. Right.

And you know how to have those converse you’re not afraid to be in those conversations. And then you know which what the outcome of that committee decision is, and you put into real world action. And the world only sees the action. That’s it. And only you can know your internal dialogue. And only I can know my internal dialogue. And the only way to, quote unquote, know it is to spend a hell of a lot of time there.

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Okay.

DAVID GOGGINS: A lifetime.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Got it.

DAVID GOGGINS: A lifetime. Like, think about it. For me to be sitting here in front of you, you’re not going to call 300 pound Ecolab guy to come sit here.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You might. I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not.

DAVID GOGGINS: Probably not. Think about this. What we teach people is kindness to yourself. Do you think if I taught myself kindness and I agree with it, guys. So many people so many people take me out of context. It’s ridiculous. Take it however you want to take it. When I was 300 pounds, we think that conversation would’ve got me if I spoke kindness to myself. I’ll tell you where it gets me. Right back to 7-Eleven, another box of mini chocolate donuts and a chocolate milkshake. That’s the one voice.

That’s the one voice that most of us have that you’re talking about. If you’re going to have a conversation in there, the other voice that you create that says, okay. How does this look? Looks very ugly. That kind conversation for me went away a long time ago, which is why the dialogue is now which you see a lot of action because most people have inaction because there’s one person talking, and that one person’s always leading you down the same path, the path that makes you feel very comfortable and happy with yourself.

The second you create the other voice, there’s conflict. There’s battles. There’s wars. There’s defeat. One thing I learned, I taught myself this, and people go, I don’t understand what you’re saying. I’m going to try to break it down real quick. I didn’t teach myself victory first. I taught myself failure. I taught myself how to fail. And people are like, that’s so depressing. Is it? When you’re 300 pounds and you can’t read and write and you’re messed up, there’ll be times you’re going to fail on that process. So if you don’t know how to fail, there is no victory. I never talked about winning because I knew the path to winning was it’d be years of failing first. So I taught myself how to fail properly.

Learning to Fail Properly

DAVID GOGGINS: No one teach you how to fail. But if you’re going out for insurmountable odds, that make absolutely no sense. A black kid that can’t swim, 300 pound would be a Navy Seal. Okay. You better teach stuff how to fail first. Because if you sit in failure for too long, you will never come out of it. So the first part of my success was learning how to fail properly. And then eventually, I started getting a few victories, but that’s what people don’t get.

When you have buried yourself in such a deep hole, you better first talk about the failures you’re going to have first, and that’s when that other voice comes up. It tells you we gotta do something. It also tells you, boy, I’m not going to lie to you, Goggins. You’re in for a climb, bro. You’re going to get your ass handed to you, made fun of the outside noise, the inside noise. Both voices are going to be telling you to go screw yourself. You are in for hell, bro.

I am. So I better learn to fail. So this is what you mean when you say that whatever anyone says, it’s insignificant.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Insignificant as hell. Right. It’s the cap gun fire because it’s just like it because the voice in your own head is is far worse. The the and I should say, sorry, one of the voices in your head.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah. I’m I’m being very, like, detailed, almost surgical about that because I think this thing about inner dialogue, we think is one voice.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But you’re making it clear it’s many voices.

DAVID GOGGINS: It is. And the thing about it is you you you have to be really and sometimes all the voices are telling you the wrong stuff, man. But through years, years, not a podcast or listening to a book or reading a book, years of sacrifice of suffering, of diligent pinpoint work on what you want to do for yourself. Not like, oh, let me just do a bunch of stuff. Let me I want to be in every task possible. No. Pinpoint what I want to do with my life. What happens is you have all these voices that are telling you you’re messed up and this could be hard. But for some reason, you put so much practice into you that you can ignore every one of them that are telling you you’re not going to make it and still be able to make it. Because you have put the practice in that you know this is the process. It’s such a daunting task that all the voices are saying no. But you still had the conviction that I know I can do this. And that’s what it took for me to get here.

Twenty, thirty years ago, I had this 35 or whatever it was. 30 so 25 years ago, pipe dream. And ever since then, every voice was like, you’re a nut. But when you put that practice in every day, you lace them up. And I don’t mean run. It’s just a metaphor for life. When you lace them up every day, pretty soon you win. Pretty soon you’ll win. If you have the courage and the heart and the dedication and the mindset of everybody can go screw themselves. I know what I know. I’ve listened to myself enough to know. I know what I know. None of you can hear what I’m hearing. And that’s what people don’t do enough of. They don’t listen to their journey. They listen to everybody else’s stuff.

Before you know it, I’m crazy. But if I’m so crazy, why am I so successful? How that happened? I’m so misguided and miss and messed up and don’t listen to him. Why am I the only one to do a whole bunch of stuff? Why am I a trailblazer? Why? How is that possible? How can you be messed up and also self made the same no. No. Obviously, you’re not looking at the truth in front of you. The truth in front of you is it sucks. It’s painful. It’s mind numbing, and that is the truth. And that’s why a lot of people don’t like listening to me because this is what it takes, creating another voice and sometimes going at it alone. All the time going at it alone because no one’s going to believe in you.

The Power of the Unconscious Mind

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And that’s that. What I’m about to say is not conjecture, and I can say that with confidence because I did a four episode guest series with a a brilliant psychiatrist, a guy named Paul Conte. He’s from Trenton. He’s a Stanford Harvard trained guy. He’s also got a lot of street numbies. He’s had his own hardship, real hardship. He’s brilliant. And he said something that I’ll never forget, which is, you know, we think that the the forebrain, the part of our brain that creates strategy, etcetera, is the supercomputer. He said, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. It’s like, the supercomputer of the brain is the is the unconscious mind. It’s the part of our mind that’s controlling most everything.

And most people, unfortunately, don’t do the work to understand how their unconscious is controlling them. And that’s a scary thing, this idea like your mind is controlling you, you know, and I’m not going to get into the free will debate. I believe in at least some will. I believe what you’re describing and this internal dialogue, I think you have access to your unconscious mind. You by listening to the dialogue going inward, we know this is true, in sleep, in dreams, in meditation, and just by shutting out everything else, shutting out all the external noise, which is filled with things that pull us twice.

Noise makes us sound bad, but it’s it’s the gravitational pull of all the things that just allow us to distract ourselves without knowing that, you know, is the ice cream, the have a cookie, the Merry Christmas. The unconscious mind, this huge piece of the iceberg underneath that Paul calls the the supercomputer. He’s saying that with knowledge as a neurobiologist, psychiatrist, psychologist, so he really knows. That’s the piece that if one does real introspection, he calls it the cupboards. You gotta look in the cupboards, and it’s often really scary what you find in there.

And most people are just like, I don’t even want to know the cupboards are there. But you’re pulling all the cupboard doors open. And then you’re and I’m you’re extremely deliberate with what gets put into action. You’re not just going, oh, like, I’m pissed, so I’m going to act pissed, or I’m, you know, tired, so I’m going to act tired. It’s you’re picking very carefully what to do.

And that’s a process that I’m I’m guessing came to you. Does it come to you as a okay. It makes sense why running makes sense. It makes sense why smoke jumping makes sense. So it seems like a huge portion of your time is spent understanding yourself and making sense to you. And so when people don’t don’t understand you, it’s gotta be extra frustrating.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because most people don’t understand themselves. So they were all running around going like, you’re this and you’re that because most people are just unwilling to look inward. And I’m including myself, by the way. Right. I mean, I’ve done a fair amount of introspection, but I’m inspired today, that word inspired, but it’s true, motivated to start going inward further because it is scary. It’s like we don’t know what’s in those cupboards, and it’s terrifying.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yes. Especially because we don’t know. And those are the first ones that open up. And like he talked about, you gotta go through those covers. I do spring clean every day in those dark covers. Those those those dark cabinets, the ones I start with first. That’s the real me, man. That’s the real me. That’s why I I’m I’m not ashamed. I don’t hide. I used to hide. I don’t hide anymore.

He’s exactly right. I I don’t know all the science behind stuff. I know what I know. That’s why I don’t listen to anybody anymore. I don’t listen to stuff. I think most people are full of stuff. Because I know. I know the deep, dark secrets of those cupboards. It’s ugly, man. And every day I’m talking to them. Every day I’m cleaning them. I’m I’m cleaning them, and I’m talking to the same demons that came out of those cupboards as I’m as I’m cleaning them. Sometimes they go right back in them again. It’s not easy. And this is why most of us just why I am misunderstood.

Because what comes out of those cabinets that I’m cleaning, sometimes they see on Instagram. Sometimes they don’t see it in the pocket. Sometimes they see in this one. I turn people off. Open up your own cabinets, and then go talk about it. Let me see how pretty it looks. Let me see how pretty you sound. Let me see how put together your words are. I bet you a or a comes out because for you to go back in there again to clean the same cabinet the demon came out of, Take some big balls, bro, to do it every day of your life. To go back in there in spring clean every day.

Not once a year. Once every decade. Every day, you know, it gets dusty. And every day, you don’t start with the with the victories. You don’t go, oh, this is nice. Look at my look at my I love me wall. Let me clean up this little dusty. Nope. I go right for the things that could keep me buried. And I go right there first because if I don’t clean those out first, the day doesn’t start.

So what he’s saying to me is truth. And like I told you many times today, I can never figure out how to explain this stuff to people because I’m not neuro nothing. I’m just a guy that said, okay. We gotta start in the dungeon, and we gotta stay here for the rest of our lives. For you to become successful, the dungeon is a place that has to be clean, and it’s the scariest place to be.

Confronting the Darkest Parts of Ourselves

DAVID GOGGINS: That’s why I’m misunderstood because I’m speaking from the dungeon. That’s why I am successful because I go there every damn day. And that is the truth what he says. It’s the exact truth. Those cabinets are dusty, dirty, and scary as hell.

Broken glass, dark, spiders, cobwebs, but most of all, your biggest fears. The biggest things that put you in the place you are today are in there. So So we all like to keep them shut. Even like to lock them up, act like they never happen. That’s why you never grow. You never improve. You never have real conversations like we’re having right now. Never. Never. Oh, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. Let’s not no. No. No. Let’s not go there.

I talked to so many people who tell me that. Let’s talk about this because they’ll tell me, but they can only say it once, and they’ll say it in passing. They won’t get deep in the weeds with it. Like, you can’t just clean it. You gotta spit shine that. You gotta relive it every detail of it. You can’t just be like, “Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My dad beat me, and they you know? You know? It it it is what it is. Hey. It is what it is.” It’s it’s killing you. It’s taken over your whole life. But that’s the conversation. “Yeah. My dad beat me. But I I’m fine now, though. I’m good.” Okay. Alright. No. You ain’t. You ain’t fine.

This is this is real talk. People don’t have that. So your boy’s right. Hundred percent right. Scary as hell. It’s scary as hell. But it makes you who you’re supposed to be, and that’s the test. We forget. We we think we’re supposed to breathe air and have kids and pay the bills and stuff. But what what’s this life about? That make no sense. Being tested, my friend, tests come when you have not studied. Test come when you think that you’re in a great place. That’s that’s the test. The test is every day of your life. And most of us fail because we don’t know why we’re here because we don’t go inward to say, oh, you gave me a lot of stuff to fix, man, and this test sucks. But then you start. David Goggins.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I don’t think I could add to that. I know I can’t. Thank you for sharing what you shared today. I mean, as much as your process or anyone’s process can’t be completely understood from the outside, you gave us a real window into this thing, this process that you was as you said, God put it on you.

DAVID GOGGINS: I believe in God too. People can believe what they want, but I somehow your your life god gave you these challenges early on, and then there was a point where you went internal.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And like you said, you developed a skill, but it’s a perishable skill.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

The Ongoing Process of Self-Improvement

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And you clearly live in the process of opening those cupboards, reopening those cupboards, trying to spit shine those cupboards, understanding that they’re never ever really done, but that you can gain ground on them. Right. That you can win day after day after day. And you really shared a lot of concrete things that I think peop I know people are going to be able to apply if they choose. Right.

And I agree with you. I think most people will be like, woah. That was a lot.

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It’s heavy. I think I want to just kind of bake myself in Netflix and Chex Mix

DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Instead. But there’s also the reality that there are men and women, boys and girls who hear that and go, okay, and start cracking the the cupboards open. Right. And I I just know that, you know, for myself, I’m extremely grateful that you’re willing to put it all out there. You’re so brutally honest, so brutally authentic. That word authenticity gets thrown around so much. And I can tell you that for me and for everybody else, like, that’s what really what resonates. So whether or not you want to, whether or not it’s the purpose behind it or not, you’re lighting the path. So thank you.

DAVID GOGGINS: Respect. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Thank you for joining me for today’s discussion with David Goggins. To learn more about David and to find links to his two fantastic books, “Can’t Hurt Me” and “Never Finished”, please see the show note captions.

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