This conversation with David Goggins is real. This podcast is not for kids — it’s for adults — who want to understand toughness and authenticity.

David is clear. Very clear. He lives in true alignment. He’s figured out who he is — and he lives accordingly. Period.

The odds were stacked against David ever making anything of himself. He grew up in an abusive household, barely graduated high school, and struggled with serious health issues, to name just a few of the challenges David had to overcome. In spite of all of these obstacles, David never had a “woe is me” mentality.

David is the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces to complete SEAL training (including two Hell Weeks), the U.S. Army Ranger School (where he graduated as Enlisted Honor Man) and Air Force tactical air controller training.

David has completed multiple ultra-marathons, triathlons, ultra-triathlons, bike races and arduous mountain ascents, setting new course records and regularly placing in the top five. His achievements made him the subject of a lead feature in Runner’s World, where he was named “Running Hero”, and Outside Magazine named him “The Fittest (Real) Man in America.” The Navy SEALs even asked him to be their poster-boy and appear in a recruiting commercial.

“You have to find out what you truly want in life. You have to believe in something.”

In This Episode:

• Bullied, abusive father, no education in early life
• Why he embraces his past hardships rather than run from them
• Being lonely and realizing he needed to understand who he truly was
• The moment he decided he wanted to be the hardest person alive
• Finding the courage to change and not worry about failure
• Becoming aware of who he was and who he wasn’t and adjusting accordingly
• What’s at the center of “being hard”
• Learning to make time for reflection
• Actually wanting to change vs. needing “motivation”
• His method for utilizing self-talk
• How he is able to push through intense pain
• Why mastering your inner-self is all that matters

Quotables:

“I believe that we’re all artists. I believe that god or whatever you believe in… he makes you an artist. What your job is, in this world, is to paint your own masterpiece. The key there is your OWN masterpiece.”

“As a human being you always go back to wanting to feel sorry for yourself.”

“You can lie to people but you can’t lie to yourself.”

“It takes courage to not care what people think about you and what you say when you do fail.”

“Every man and woman must form their own ethos on what they stand for in their life. You have to stand for something or you stand for nothing.”

“The best conversation you’re going to have in your entire life is the one you have with your self.”

On holding himself accountable: “You can’t believe in yourself if you’re a piece of shit.”

“How you become hard is doing shit that you don’t want to do.”

“You gotta break big things [challenges] up into small pieces.”

“If you’re just happy & content with having a life where you go do your job and having nothing to look back on where you overcame a lot of things, I think you’re really cutting yourself short.”

“You need nothing but the breath in your fucking lungs to become great.”

“If you matter to yourself, you don’t care about anything else.”

“The biggest thing in the world to master is the internal part of a person’s life.”

“I didn’t run, I endured.”

“To defeat hell, I had to become hell.”

“God has to put some people on this earth to protect this planet. I happen to be one of those people.”

“If everybody worked on being better, the world would not be dangerous. It’s dangerous because people are worried about stupid shit.”

References:

David Goggins: Before (300 lbs) & After Photo