Joe Rogan Experience #1212 - David Goggins

Joe Rogan 0:00 Hey, you, come on, let's go. (book closes) Boom, and we're live. David Goggins, your book is fucking fantastic, man. (book closes) This has been my running partner. (book closes) The audio version of it has been my running partner for the last week. It's fucking amazing, man.

David Goggins 0:18 Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. And-

Joe Rogan 0:19 Well, you guys are doing something, uh, very unusual. The book is great. I've read, I've read it, like sat down and read-read. But the r- the audio book is really interesting-

David Goggins 0:28 Right.

Joe Rogan 0:28 ... because you and the gentleman that you wrote it with-

David Goggins 0:32 Yeah, Adam.

Joe Rogan 0:32 ... Adam was l-

David Goggins 0:33 Adam Scolnick.

Joe Rogan 0:34 Adam Scolnick, who, who reads it. Then you come on and talk about things in between. So it's more than just the book.

David Goggins 0:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 0:41 It's the book plus. It's the book plus like a podcast.

David Goggins 0:45 Right. Yeah, so how all that came to be, man, is, um, as I was going through this book for the last year, we would go through, change stuff up. I have so many stories, man. We went through, interviewed so many people, so many stories. He would come back and read it to me, all my changes. And when he'd read, I'm like, "Man, this guy has a great reading voice. I love his reading voice." And I started getting these different ideas about doing it, like, "You know what? Maybe he can read, and then I can do my podcast thing on the side. And he can like, after each chapter, in between chapters, make it a real interactive type of thing." And that's kind of how it came to be, man.

Joe Rogan 1:18 At the beginning, I gotta be honest, at the beginning I was like, "Who is this motherfucker talking for David Goggins?"

David Goggins 1:23 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:23 I was gonna call up Dave. Like, "Dave, can you read-

David Goggins 1:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:24 ... do this? Why don't you do it? Why are you d-" But, but it works.

David Goggins 1:28 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:28 It really does work.

David Goggins 1:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:30 Like as, as it goes on, and I got ... Also, y- it's very obvious that you and him are good friends. So when you guys are talking, then I don't mind him reading for you as much for some strange reason. (laughs)

David Goggins 1:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:41 I know it doesn't make any sense.

David Goggins 1:42 Well, I wouldn't say we're good friends. Um, I'm just joking, Adam, though you can hear right now.

Joe Rogan 1:46 (laughs)

David Goggins 1:46 Um, he became a pain in my fucking ass during this process, man, because, you know, he's just a, he's a real anal guy. You know, he, he helped out a lot. You know, I'm a, I'm a real raw, sadistic type of mindset. And he, uh, he helped me put that on paper, man, so I give him a lot of credit for that.

Joe Rogan 2:02 Well, it, y- it comes across. The book is outstanding. And, you know, it's, it's, it's more than just sitting wa- like sitting across from you and you telling your story is one thing, but this long, detailed history-

David Goggins 2:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:17 ... of how you became to be the person you became, I think it's very educational for people-

David Goggins 2:24 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:24 ... because they can realize like, oh, he wasn't always this guy.

David Goggins 2:27 (laughs) Right, right.

Joe Rogan 2:28 This is what's fucked up about people. Like you see a guy who's like you, who runs ... I mean, how many ultra-marathons did you run in a row? You remember, you had some insane number.

David Goggins 2:35 I think it was, um, I ran eight 100s in eight weekends in a row.

Joe Rogan 2:39 Just stop and think about that-

David Goggins 2:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:40 ... ladies and gentlemen. Eight 100s means eight 100-mile races.

David Goggins 2:45 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:46 Eight weekends in a row. 100-mile race will put you out for fucking six months.

David Goggins 2:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 2:51 You know, and you ran eight of them, eight weekends. It's a fuck, it's a fucking insane accomplishment.

David Goggins 2:55 It was nuts.

Joe Rogan 2:56 You think about a person like that, you think of them as in this like static, fully-formed version.

David Goggins 3:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:01 You don't usually get to see ... And especially someone like you, who you went into so much depth about your rise and fall and rise and fall. It wasn't like a straight linear process-

David Goggins 3:12 No.

Joe Rogan 3:12 ... between you getting inspired and then you becoming this bad motherfucker.

David Goggins 3:15 No, it wasn't like, um, what's that show called? Um, th- that Will Smith plays that, that Black guy who kind of makes it in, um, in the financial world. Uh, Pursuit of Happyness.

Joe Rogan 3:27 I never saw that.

David Goggins 3:28 Yeah, it's a great movie. It wasn't like Pursuit of Happyness, man. Like, like where the guy struggles and he, and he gets over it and he makes it.

Joe Rogan 3:34 Yeah.

David Goggins 3:35 I fell on my ass. I, I thought I got to the top of Mount Everest, and Mount Everest just fucking slide right underneath me, man. I was like, "Ah, dawg. I gotta start from scratch again." Scratch became my friend, literally, man. So you know, that's, th- that's how he put it in the book, man, just going up, going down, going up, just the real raw version of how my life was. And it was so in-depth to go back through your life with a fine-toothed comb that I almost got embarrassed to even put it out there to people.

Joe Rogan 4:00 Yeah.

David Goggins 4:00 That's what you gotta understand, man. Like, even me right now to talk to you, I'm in the car for a fucking hour getting pumped up 'cause I'm, I'm a shy, introverted-

Joe Rogan 4:09 (laughs)

David Goggins 4:09 ... leave-me-alone type of guy. Like, I'm still that motherfucker who was six years old, you know, at a play who can't say his line because I know I'm gonna stutter in front of five people. So I walk off stage. That's still me. So every day I'm fighting that dude so people think, "Oh, my God, man, you're on a podcast. You look so crazy, so evil." No, I'm trying to be locked into Joe so my mind isn't veering off saying, "Let's run out the damn door-"

Joe Rogan 4:34 (laughs)

David Goggins 4:34 ... "because people are watching me on the fucking podcast."

Joe Rogan 4:37 (laughs)

David Goggins 4:37 "I wanna open this damn door and get the hell outta here, man."

Joe Rogan 4:40 (laughs)

David Goggins 4:40 So that's the real me. So, uh, I'm not sadistic, man. I'm focused on what I have to do to stay locked into the game of life. And that's what, and that's why I tell people, man, I- I- I go there. I go there.

Joe Rogan 4:51 That's one of the reasons why this book is so good, is because you're so honest about your vulnerabilities and how you overcome them. And, uh, for people that see someone who's a beast, who's done great things, you just assume that they're different than you.

David Goggins 5:04 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:04 But then you hear about your insecurities and your pitfalls and all the things that went wrong with you, and you realize, "Well, goddammit, those are the same things that go wrong with me." Like, "Maybe I have that inside of me and I've just never summoned it."

David Goggins 5:16 Right. And I, I tell you this, I started really realizing that when I started overcoming myself, I started getting around these real alpha males, these hard, hard men. And I always put people way above me when I was growing up, like my god, they had to have a lot more than me to get to where they're at. And a lot of them did. But once you get around the, the best of the best of the best people, you can kind of start breaking them down and realizing, "Man, you, you're just as fucked up as me." Like-

Joe Rogan 5:44 (laughs)

David Goggins 5:44 Like, "We all have ..." But all you did was you hid it better. Your, your, your upbringing, your mom and dad, your society, the way you were raised, it hid it better than, than, than mine. You weren't the only Black kid, or there was like five, in a, in a school. You know, I can't hide. Going through BUD/S, I was the only Black k- ... You can't hide.... but I started realizing, just because I look different than you, a lot of you motherfuckers can't hide either. So it started giving me courage through watching people that we all have a story, we all have a jacked-up life in one way or another. Some of us don't have the guts to talk about it, though, and that's where I found the guts to talk about mine.

Joe Rogan 6:19 Well, there's some, there's purity in physical pursuits, right? Because it doesn't matter what your social status is, it doesn't matter how people perceive you. When it, when it comes down to how long can you stay in that pool, when it comes down to how far can you run-

David Goggins 6:32 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:32 ... when it comes down to how much can you push yourself past the part where you wanna quit-

David Goggins 6:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:37 ... how far can you keep going, there's a purity in that, that it, it, it dissolves social order. All that bullshit, all the, what people think about you goes out the window. It's what, who, who are you right now?

David Goggins 6:48 That's right.

Joe Rogan 6:49 Who are you right now?

David Goggins 6:50 That's a true statement, man, and I look at it as psych- as, as psychological warfare. And that's where I started learning that, that life is one big psychological warfare that you play on yourself. You play on yourself, man. The most important conversation I ever had with my- is, is with myself, and the shit I was telling myself was so fucked up. It was so wrong, it was so misguided, and other people start to write that dialogue for you also. And it starts to be what you say to yourself every single day, and I started creating a whole nother warfare, a whole nother battle started becoming, I was like, "Oh, hang on a second, Goggins. You have these tools. You have these tools. Your life was basically the perfect, the perfect grounds for training for where you need to go in your life. All the beatings, all the, all the bullying, all the, you know, you going through, uh, learning disabilities, all the struggles, it was the absolute perfect training ground for you to go to where you need to go." And that's how I started looking at my life versus, "Woe is me, poopy pants, kicking rock down the street," mentality. It was, "No, God just hooked you right the fuck up. He hooked you right up, man, with the perfect place. You were training for the first 18, 19, 20 s- you were training for this stuff, man. You had the advantage over everybody else," versus, "My God, they're so above me. They came from a great family. Mom and Dad love them. They didn't have to learn, they didn't start it up, they didn't struggle." No, man, your struggle is what made you who you are now. So I started flipping this into a whole different... I started being a master of what I was scared of. I was scared of my mind, and I became a, literally a master of that mind. And that's what now, from now on, it sets me apart from most people. I started diving into that.

Joe Rogan 8:31 Well, that is, uh, a big part of the stories, when you go over your childhood and, you know, your abusive father, and then having this great guy that was gonna become your stepdad, and then he gets murdered. It's, like, right when you're about to get out of it-

David Goggins 8:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 8:45 ... everything looks good. Boom. And then he gets murdered. It's like these things really did sort of set you up to start from scratch again, and just go, "Okay, roger that, we start from scratch."

David Goggins 8:55 Right.

Joe Rogan 8:55 And now you have that attitude. You developed it through all of these horrible personal experiences, all the trials and tribulations, all the evil shit that people tried to do to you. That sort of set you up to be able to deal-

David Goggins 9:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 9:08 ... in a way that a lot of people can't.

David Goggins 9:10 Well, w- I used to look at my life from a different vantage point, and when you're, when you're in all the muck, and you're just walking in muck, and walking in muck, and walking in muck, you don't see that if you look off to the fucking left of the muck, there's a sidewalk, brother. Get off, get off of it. You, you have your head down looking in this muck. Once I saw the sidewalk, got on the sidewalk, I got a little break, and I got a different vantage point. And then from the sidewalk, I found a cliff, then I found a mountain. I got way up high on top of my life and looked back down on it, and said, "Okay, I gotta figure this out, man. I'm not going anywhere." I'm starting to lie. I'm starting to... like, so when you have a messed up foundation... I started lying about everything. I wanted people to like me. I wanted to be accepted in some society of life, some social society. And I, and I, I was like, "Man, this isn't the right way. I messed up here. I messed up here. I messed up everywhere." And so I realized, the worst thing that happened to me is I lost myself, I never had myself, I never found myself, had no self-esteem. So I knew through working out and through learning, 'cause I had, it, it took a lot for me to learn also, I started finding self-esteem. Once I found that, that's when doors started opening up. I started... I stopped caring about people, that, what they thought, being judged. "Well, if I say this, if I start it right now, are you gonna make fun of me?" I stopped caring about that. And that's when my life started really changing for me, slowly but surely.

Joe Rogan 10:30 That, and that's such an important point when you're talking about the working out, because a lot of people, when they think about working out, they think of it as being a physical thing.

David Goggins 10:37 Right, no. No. I did it for mental.

Joe Rogan 10:40 Yeah.

David Goggins 10:41 People always say, "My God." Like, no, don't, don't look at it like... I didn't care about losing weight. I didn't care about being the fastest person. I didn't care about... I wasn't making the Olympics. I wasn't going to pros. I could barely read and write when I was in s- uh, uh, junior in high school. I wasn't going anywhere. I saw working out as a way for me to build callouses on my mind. I had a callous over-the-victimist mentality. So I watched these movies, I, you know, I talked about Rocky last time I was on here. I always equated training to mental toughening. Like, it always looked brutal, people waking up early and doing all these things, and it looked, it looked horrible. And I was like, "Wow, man, I gotta start doing that. Not to get better, bigger, and stronger, but that is what's gonna build me. That looks uncomfortable. That looks brutal. And getting up early, I don't wanna do that." So I made this long list of things I don't wanna do, and through that, I found myself. I started g- like, I'm like, "You guys aren't doing this shit in high school. You guys aren't getting up at 5:00 in the morning, running over here in this golf course." So I started seeing myself very differently than the average human being. I was like, "Hold on a second. I have something they don't have." And that's when I started to develop these things through working out. It was this great never-ending work ethic. And through work ethic, I developed self-esteem.

Joe Rogan 11:57 Now, is this something that you learned? Is this something you learned yourself from, from exercise yourself, or is it something you had read or heard about? Like, what made you equate-... this, doing this and doing these difficult things physically, to mental toughness, to being, this is the discipline that you need in order to get your life out of the situation you're in.

David Goggins 12:15 So, I never read anything. You know, I could, I could barely read, you know. So-

Joe Rogan 12:17 Right.

David Goggins 12:18 ... I wasn't reading back then. I just saw ... I watched a lot of movies, and I was really big into visualization. And, um, I always equated working out to struggle. And I struggled my whole life, but I ran from it. So, I started realizing, man, I gotta start facing the struggle and I gotta be mentally strong for the struggle. So, that's why I started come- coming up with like, uh, "I'm training for life." Mentally, I'm training for life. I'm not training for like, to, to lift 400 pounds. And I found out on my own, pretty much, is that through this, through, through discipline, through self-discipline, through repetition, through tons of repetition of the same thing that you don't want to do ... And that's the, that's the key thing. Through repetition of things you don't want to do, you develop mental, like a, like an armor for your mind. You start to armor your mind, 'cause your mind's like, "Okay, we suffer, we suffer every day. It's what we do. We do stuff that sucks every day." So, then when the suck stuff comes, you're ready for it. And that's how I started coming up, you know, I just started being very uncomfortable, and now I'm, it's like a, just a way of life.

Joe Rogan 13:20 It's a crazy thing to figure out, though. It's like that you figured it out, and you didn't just figure it out, you embraced it.

David Goggins 13:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:26 Like, when you were talking about your senior year of high school, when you're talking about y- your, your mirror being your accountability mirror, like, you had a radical shift.

David Goggins 13:34 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:34 Like, you just decided to not be a fucking loser-

David Goggins 13:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:37 ... and to start tightening up and start holding yourself accountable and, and get ready for things.

David Goggins 13:43 So, I had this my whole life. Uh, I mean, I don't know if people believe in God or what, I don't care what you believe in. There's been this unrelenting voice in my head. We all have this voice. It's the right or wrong voice. And a lot of times, that voice guides us into comfort. And my voice guided me into comfort a lot. But I had this other voice I heard my whole life saying, "Hey, motherfucker, what are you doing? No, man, we gotta go over here. We gotta go over here to, to that rock pile, over in the fucking corner, where nobody's at. That's, that's where victory's at. We're over there in that corner." So, this voice was giving me all these answers. Now, I wasn't a real smart kid growing up, but I had this crazy voice in my head saying, "Over there is where the fucking answers are." And I wouldn't listen to it 'cause over there was pain. Over there was me looking in the mirror, over there was me being accountable for all these things that went through my life. Even though people put them on me, it's now mine to own. And I didn't want to go over there by myself. But I had to, and this voice was guiding me there. Uh, it's God, whatever you want to call it, um, but that's what, that's what it was in me.

Joe Rogan 14:45 Do you think that's just what you, uh, when you separate yourself from your ego and w- what you were, your insecurities and all you, uh, like, if you were giving yourself advice, you would say that's what the thing is to do? So, do you think that's what it was, like, your subconscious or th- or you stripped away from all the bullshit, when you couldn't lie to yourself 'cause it's a voice in your head?

David Goggins 15:04 That's exactly it. That's exactly it. 'Cause-

Joe Rogan 15:06 'Cause just it knew.

David Goggins 15:07 It knew. I was a character. I was trying to find myself through a character. I was making different hairstyles and sagging my pants and I was off. I was off, man. I was, uh, I was a clown. I was a clown. And, uh, and, uh, and I was like, "This is not, this is not what you're supposed to be in life, man." And it's ugly when you look in that dirty mirror and you're trying to do a new hairstyle to go to school. You know, I had a hairstyle one time where I shaved the top of my head. You know how old men have their hair, like, leaving their head-

Joe Rogan 15:35 Yeah.

David Goggins 15:36 Yeah. So, I went to school with hair on the side of my head and in my back, and I shaved the f- the whole top of my head.

Joe Rogan 15:43 (laughs)

David Goggins 15:43 I, I just, I went to school like that, you know. And then I, I'd have like a-

Joe Rogan 15:46 What did the kids say?

David Goggins 15:48 I wanted to ... I don't remember what they said, but it wa- I was just a funny dude.

Joe Rogan 15:52 Right.

David Goggins 15:52 I was, you know, so that was my thing. I was the funny dude that came into school, like, Kriss Kross came out when I was in high school, so my pants were backwards. I said, "You know what? I'm gonna have my pants backwards, sagged down past my ass crack, shirt turned backwards with a toothbrush in my mouth with the reverse part." A reverse part is your head is shaved, and you have some hair on top, just a little piece of hair versus like a, like a part-

Joe Rogan 16:15 Right.

David Goggins 16:15 ... through here. The part was on a bald head. So, it was just, uh, I, I, I'd, I, I would sit at home instead of studying, I would think about, "What can I do to impress the motherfucker at school?"

Joe Rogan 16:26 Wow.

David Goggins 16:26 And that became my life. And that is, it's, uh, it's a long road to hoe to get to the guy who says, "Now, you don't ever smile on any podcast, you look so serious." I look at that shit, I'm like, "You motherfuckers have no idea who I am, who, who, where, where I've come from to get here today."

Joe Rogan 16:43 You could've probably been an entertainer, like you probably ... because you were doing all that kind of shit.

David Goggins 16:48 I have some jokes, Joe.

Joe Rogan 16:49 (laughs) Ah.

David Goggins 16:49 I got some jokes, Joe.

Joe Rogan 16:50 I bet you do.

David Goggins 16:51 So, what people read in this book can't hurt me. It's a sad story, it's a horrible story, it's a tragic story, it's a story that made me who I am today. But you have to learn to laugh at yourself too. Once you, once you go through that shit, I now ... So, there's a lot of parts in there where it's a lot of me against a lot of White people, you know. And I have a routine that I won't do, so people who are hiring me to speak, I'm not gonna do the routine. I, I often do it sometimes and think about it. I was the 36th Black guy to go through SEAL training, okay?

Joe Rogan 17:20 Out of how many people?

David Goggins 17:21 Out of probably, looking at, um, probably 11, 12, like, to, to, to make it through. Probably 13,000 SEALs. I was probably the 36th, uh, uh, I was the 36th Black guy to make it through and over, since like the, like the 1940s, you know, you're looking at almost 70 years.

Joe Rogan 17:35 Wow.

David Goggins 17:36 Yeah. So, you know, you don't, you know, do the math on that. So, there's not a lot of Black guys. And so, I take that and I make a nice comedy skit out of that shit.

Joe Rogan 17:42 (laughs)

David Goggins 17:43 You know, like, like, like the first time they tied me up and threw me, it's called drownproofing.

Joe Rogan 17:47 Yeah.

David Goggins 17:47 So, I'm negative buoyant as hell, you know.

Joe Rogan 17:49 Me too.

David Goggins 17:50 Oh.

Joe Rogan 17:50 I'm related to that, big time. When you talk about-

David Goggins 17:52 Yes, you're one of the few White boys, man that are, that are negative buoyant.

Joe Rogan 17:54 (laughs) I sink like a rock.

David Goggins 17:55 You sink like a rock. And that's hard. So, imagine them getting your hands and feet, tying your ass up and throwing you in the fucking water and say, "Swim." Ah, it was like throwing a cat in the water with fucking a brick on him. So, I was just losing my fucking mind.

Joe Rogan 18:07 (laughs)

David Goggins 18:07 So, it's just so many things I had to get over, you know. And I, and I, and I found humor. I found humor in my suffering.I was like, "Motherfu- what are you doing out here, Goggins? Like, this is crazy. Like, you're, you're literally trying to reinvent the wheel." But I was trying to reinvent my mind. I was trying to reinvent my mind, and I used every single tactic possible to do that. I didn't want to live, you know, live in this world where I was a fake human being anymore, and I was tired of blaming everybody for where I was at. My dad beat me, this happened. I mean, my

David Goggins 18:37 dad ran prostitutes, man. My dad literally snatched the soul out of my mom. Like, my mom is still battling, like, after my mom left my dad. And this is what I talk about in the book, she got married three times for a total of six months. You know?

Joe Rogan 18:51 Yeah.

David Goggins 18:51 And I, and I don't go there. And I'm not even gonna talk about the guy she married. So this woman was... She's, she's beautiful, she's, she's so smart, all this stuff, man. This guy literally stripped her soul away, and I, and I was a young kid watching it, and I had no soul to begin with. And my, and my brother, he has a story that, that he could write eight books. You know? My, my, my dad just came through and just washed us all clean. So to, to, to come out-

Joe Rogan 19:14 Is he still around?

David Goggins 19:15 He died about four years ago, four or five years ago. I'm not for sure. I, I didn't go to the funeral, but I forgave him. So I saw my dad through an eight-year-old's eyes. So, so we left when I was eight, and then at 22 I went back to see him through a grown man's eyes. And he was the same person I remembered, but I had to. You can't live with hate. You cannot move forward. As much as that guy tried to ruin all of our lives, that's where I came from. I had to, I had to figure out the origin of where I started from. So when I was going back through my life trying to fix who I am, the fucked up person I was, like, if your knee hurts, it's usually not your fucking knee that's hurting. It's something else, man. Like, it could be a tight quad, it could be the right leg if it's the left leg. You gotta find out the origin of where all this shit began. And, uh, it, it was him, so I had to go back to where, you know, my, my roots and, and the origin of all this happened, and it's hard to do that.

Joe Rogan 20:07 Did you make peace with him?

David Goggins 20:08 I made big peace with... So, we didn't have a peaceful conversation. We, you know, we, we, we left very geranimal. He's a, he's a, he's a vicious man. He, he was a vicious man. I mean, medieval motherfucker. So I had become a medieval motherfucker at that time. I was 22 and I was the big boy, and so I was no longer the guy who was afraid. It was now like, "Hey, I wanna kill you," type of shit. And we were sitting at Denny's after an all night skate or whatever the hell. You know, h- he owned bars and skating rinks and shit like that. And so we were sitting down and we kind of got into it, and I just kind of left. And, but I had to make peace with it in myself. I, I, I could not hold onto that hate, 'cause holding onto that hate was half the reason why I kept falling into the same pattern of failing. I had to get ... I had to start dumping off some baggage. I had to start figuring out me through him, and that's all he was there for. He was the origin. I, I, I had to figure him out, figure out why he was so evil to my mom, to me, and my brother, and I had to start studying him. Like, a lot of people have situations where someone does something and we all attack that person, like, like on the media. If someone does something wrong, everybody now is fucking perfect, and we now judge this guy. I don't judge him. I don't judge anybody. What I do is I start studying them. Why did they do that? Not in a judging way. I wanna learn from you.

Joe Rogan 21:27 And what'd you get out of your dad?

David Goggins 21:28 I got that he was... He grew up rough. He had... He was very insecure, had a lot of kids, and his insecurities just trickled over onto us. So yeah, he jacked us up real good, but he never fixed himself. So if you never fix yourself, the next person in line is gonna get the wrath, and we were next in line. You know, his, his first wife, you know, killed herself or whatever happened and, you know, got burned up in a house or some... It was some craziness, man. There's a lot of stuff that goes on there that I didn't put in the book 'cause I don't feel like going to court.

Joe Rogan 22:01 Yeah.

David Goggins 22:01 But, um, yeah. That's, uh... It was, it was a lot of stuff.

Joe Rogan 22:05 You know, one of the great parts about this book is that you, you detail exactly what was going through your mind in terms of, like, your weaknesses and how you had failed. And, and then you... It's not just one time. Like, you, you do the thing in high school where you get your shit together, and then you join the military, and then you wind up getting fat again. And then when you g- when you have to lose, what was it, 106 pounds-

David Goggins 22:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:33 ... in three months-

David Goggins 22:34 Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:34 ... to, to, to qualify for SEAL training?

David Goggins 22:37 For SEAL training. Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:38 That's insane.

David Goggins 22:39 Yeah. Uh, 'cause what I realized at that time, once again, I failed again. I thought... So what you're talking about is I took this ASVAB test. You know, I didn't know how to read and write pretty much in high school. I was like in fourth grade reading level. And I took that test a few times, and I finally passed it. And when I passed it, I actually drove my car to the (laughs) to the doggone, um, airport and watched planes take off 'cause I was like, "I'm gonna be on one of those planes one day going to Air Force boot camp." So I, I never... I always fixed the things on the surface. So if I couldn't read and write, I learned to read and write. I, I, I would always fix these things on the surface level. And so whenever something hard would, would, would, would, like, would, like, raise its ugly head, I didn't have any kind of tools to handle it. I'm like, "Man, I thought I fixed this already, man." But no, I didn't go deep into the dungeon of my soul to say, "Okay, what is making you a quitter? What is making you a weak man? What is making you afraid?" And so that's why I kept on quitting and going back to start or not knowing how to get through hard times. And that's why I always tell people, "I'm not a theorist." I didn't study... Like, you know, I didn't study a fucking book. I literally put myself in a fire repeatedly, like a sword. You put a sword in the fire repeatedly and repeatedly, if, if you keep on doing that, you're gonna get a nice sword, and then you keep on beating it. You gotta beat the shit out of it.

Joe Rogan 24:00 (laughs)

David Goggins 24:00 And that's what I am.

Joe Rogan 24:01 Yeah.

David Goggins 24:02 I, I became that m-... I, I, I said, "Okay, we, we can't quit. We gotta figure out why you are this pussy. Why are you this pussy, man? What is wrong with you? What's going on here?" So I kept on putting the sword back in the doggone fire, and I just beat it harder, and I beat it harder. Before I knew it, I started realizing, "Hmm.All right, man. The brain is starting to get hard. The brain is starting to get hard. I'm no longer a theorist. I'm now a practitioner. I put it in hell, I dissected it while it's in hell, 'cause you can't dissect anything in a normal environment. You can't dissect anything in 72-degree weather.

Joe Rogan 24:40 Right.

David Goggins 24:40 You must put it in the fucking freezer and freeze the fuck out of it. And then you dissect it. Dissect it when it's miserable. Dissect the brain when all it's thinking about is, "I need to get outta here, man. I wanna get outta the fucking freezer. Open the door." And he said, "Nah, five more seconds, man. Five more seconds in the freezer." And that's when you start to pick that brain apart. And that's what all this stuff did to me. I kept on putting myself back into the freezer or the fire and beating the shit out of myself, mentally and physically. Before I knew it, this is what happened.

Joe Rogan 25:15 Wow. It's a- it's an interesting way to self-teach.

David Goggins 25:19 Yes.

Joe Rogan 25:19 You know? Like most people that, you know, you talk to that are disciplined, they, uh, you know, they have something that they read that inspired them. They have certain f- people that they look up to, there's certain, you know, coaches that taught them. There's certain important moments in their life. But for you, it's a, a system of failure and, and reflection-

David Goggins 25:43 Yes.

Joe Rogan 25:43 ... and then rebooting.

David Goggins 25:44 That's it.

Joe Rogan 25:45 Yeah.

David Goggins 25:45 Repeated failure. And people think a lot of times about me, that I'm angry. "Oh my God, you sound so angry. You cuss so much. Oh my God, why you cuss so much? Why are you so crazy?" If you read my book, I cannot explain my life by saying, "Hey, it was a merry fucking Christmas, man." No, it wasn't. I want you to, I want you to go there with me. I'm taking you there with me. I'm, I'm a storyteller. I wanna take your ass down Paradise, where I... So the house I lived in, in Buffalo, New York, that I got my ass beat every day, funny. We lived on Paradise Road. And it was anything but fucking paradise. So I want you to go there with me. You wanna learn from me? Let me take your ass home. Let me take you there. So that's the whole thing about it, man. We're, we're scared to dive into our lives, what made us who we are, the beautiful people that we are. We're all jacked up in so many ways. That's the beauty of us. That's the beauty of me. I'm jacked up, but I figured out my own little process on how to get un-jacked up and how to... I'm not gonna get the same, you know, I'm not gonna get the same way you're gonna get there. You may get there by going point A to point B. I might get point C, to D, to E, to F. I'm gonna be there the same way you are, just a little harder. That's how I trained my brain. So it was just different. I'm just a diff- different thinker.

Joe Rogan 27:03 When you stop and think about all the different times that you did have to reboot and how you, you, you found like new goals and you found new inspiration, and you fired up a new discipline, and you became-

David Goggins 27:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 27:15 ... stronger and harder, and you got... One of the things that people always look for in life, they look for a point where they can rest.

David Goggins 27:23 Yes, sir.

Joe Rogan 27:23 "Oh, I'm gonna retire."

David Goggins 27:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:25 You know? Like people love, they love that expression, "the golden years".

David Goggins 27:30 Ah.

Joe Rogan 27:30 They love that expression.

David Goggins 27:31 Yes.

Joe Rogan 27:32 You know? They l- they love the, they love the idea of a struggle as long as it ends, and then when it ends, they're gonna have a nice comfortable spot.

David Goggins 27:39 It must end.

Joe Rogan 27:39 Like, yeah, it must end.

David Goggins 27:40 The suffering must end.

Joe Rogan 27:41 Yeah, you could relax, man. You've done so much.

David Goggins 27:44 That's right.

Joe Rogan 27:44 You've really done so much. But this, the idea of reaching this golden year is, is, it's a very flawed idea-

David Goggins 27:52 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:53 ... because it's an idea that you're gonna, you're gonna work hard, but then you're gonna reach the finish line, but there's no finish line.

David Goggins 27:58 No.

Joe Rogan 27:59 It doesn't exist.

David Goggins 28:00 That's the scary thing about life, my friend.

Joe Rogan 28:02 That is a scary thing, right? The theory now-

David Goggins 28:03 And that's what fatigues me. People go, "Man, why don't you ever smile?" There's no fucking end, my friend.

Joe Rogan 28:10 (laughs)

David Goggins 28:12 There's no end.

Joe Rogan 28:13 Every day.

David Goggins 28:13 There's no end.

Joe Rogan 28:14 I know that you're, you're, you're going to meet Cam Hanes after this.

David Goggins 28:17 Yes, sir.

Joe Rogan 28:18 And listen, please, if you guys run, put a number of that miles that you're going to run and leave it at that.

David Goggins 28:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:24 Do not say, "Let's see who quits." 'Cause you will both die. 'Cause that's a hard man.

David Goggins 28:29 He is a hard man.

Joe Rogan 28:30 Cameron Hanes is a hard man, and he will run until you die or he dies.

David Goggins 28:34 He's a hard man, dude.

Joe Rogan 28:35 He does a, he does those 2:40s.

David Goggins 28:37 Yes.

Joe Rogan 28:37 He does those ultra... He's, he's a sick fuck.

David Goggins 28:40 Yeah, see, those are the guys I'm looking for.

Joe Rogan 28:41 Yeah, that's the scary... Do you know, the two of you guys, you need to pick a number.

David Goggins 28:44 I know. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:45 Whatever you're gonna... I think you guys are gonna run 35 miles.

David Goggins 28:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:47 And you're gonna do good.

David Goggins 28:48 Yeah, I think we-

Joe Rogan 28:49 35's a good number. Leave it at that.

David Goggins 28:50 Yeah, we've been texting back and forth trying to make it, you know, trying to make it sensible, you know?

Joe Rogan 28:53 Yeah.

David Goggins 28:53 So we don't go off the chain.

Joe Rogan 28:55 'Cause if one of you motherfuckers wakes up and has a good strong espresso-

David Goggins 28:58 I know.

Joe Rogan 28:58 ... and goes, "Fuck it, let's do 300."

David Goggins 29:00 (laughs) It's gonna be on.

Joe Rogan 29:02 No.

David Goggins 29:02 It's gonna be a long day, man.

Joe Rogan 29:03 No.

David Goggins 29:05 That's it.

Joe Rogan 29:05 Yeah. Do you... You know this new race that they're doing where they're, um, you run for one hour. You run like as many, uh, and then you have like a bell rings, and then you sit down for a little bit.

David Goggins 29:16 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:17 You know what I mean?

David Goggins 29:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:17 Like, you, you, there's like a 4.17-mile thing.

David Goggins 29:21 Yep.

Joe Rogan 29:21 It's that sick fuck. What was th- the guy's name that created that? The guy that did the Barkley Marathon. Yes. Um, I don't think he's-

David Goggins 29:27 You're talking about Laz.

Joe Rogan 29:28 Yeah. Yeah, this crazy fuck.

David Goggins 29:30 Laz.

Joe Rogan 29:30 So he had people running for days and days and days.

David Goggins 29:33 He invited me out there for this race.

Joe Rogan 29:35 Yeah?

David Goggins 29:35 I actually got into the Barkley last year, but couldn't do it because of the book. So I'm supposed to do it this year, but now, you know, we'll see again how the schedule goes. But yeah, that, that's a sick, sick man. I've done a couple of his races. Like he has one called Strolling Jim. I actually won that one in 2016. But he's a, he's a sick man.

Joe Rogan 29:52 What is a strol- Strolling Jim race?

David Goggins 29:54 It's his probably easiest race. It's like, it's like through the back country of, uh, Tennessee. It's a 41-mile race on the road. It's one of the first, you know, ultra marathons out there ever. And my mom lives in Nashville, so it's like a hour drive. I went up there and it was like one of my first races back after me being all sick and jacked up for so long. And I got lucky, had a good race, and I happened to win it.

Joe Rogan 30:13 You know, you were talking about the psoas muscle.

David Goggins 30:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:15 And how it like... We have this thing now that we got, what is that called? A pro- Pro- PSO/Wright. PSO/Wright. Have you ever used one of those fucking things?

David Goggins 30:21 I have it also. I, I, I saw it in there, that, that little black contraction?

Joe Rogan 30:24 Yeah.

David Goggins 30:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:24 That hard m- uh, plastic thing?

David Goggins 30:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:26 That thing's, uh, phenomenal.

David Goggins 30:27 It's evil, man.

Joe Rogan 30:28 Yeah.

David Goggins 30:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:29 It's good. It's great.

David Goggins 30:29 It's amazing.

Joe Rogan 30:30 I started getting tightness in that when I was running a lot. Like I'd never gotten tightness in that area before.

David Goggins 30:35 Yes.

Joe Rogan 30:36 That s- it seems like that's a running thing, right?

David Goggins 30:38 It's a running thing and also a very stress thing.

Joe Rogan 30:40 Mm-hmm.

David Goggins 30:40 You know, if you're real stressed out, man, like for me, like if I talk about the origin, where it, where I, like, um, where things start, my body was so wrapped tight, I didn't know where, like where to start.

Joe Rogan 30:50 Yeah.

David Goggins 30:50 So I started with the psoas muscle, so that's a real good spot.

Joe Rogan 30:53 Well, the problem with these races is pro- the problem with people like you, that's the problem with these races. Like if you get you and another you...

David Goggins 31:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:01 ... and they're in there together...Like, you motherfuckers are gonna kill each other.

David Goggins 31:04 It's a long day.

Joe Rogan 31:05 It's a long day.

David Goggins 31:05 It's a long day. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:06 (laughs) It's a long day. (laughs) 'Cause if, they're doing a last man standing type deal, right?

David Goggins 31:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:12 Like, the first person to quit.

David Goggins 31:13 Yeah. It's a, it's a real long day, man. I mean, I've been up... I got a couple of hell weeks under my belt, man. I know how to stay up for 130 hours and move.

Joe Rogan 31:20 Yeah.

David Goggins 31:21 And I know how to self-motivate. A lot of motherfuckers don't know how to self-motivate, man. Like, we like to put the headphones on-

Joe Rogan 31:26 Yeah.

David Goggins 31:27 ... like, like before the big game and listen to the music.

Joe Rogan 31:29 Yeah.

David Goggins 31:30 What the fuck did you do when the headphones come off, bro? It's you and your own mind.

Joe Rogan 31:34 Right.

David Goggins 31:34 I know how to do that. That's, that's the hard part, man.

Joe Rogan 31:37 Do you ever listen to music when you run?

David Goggins 31:39 Never.

Joe Rogan 31:39 Mm-hmm. Never. Told you Jamie's cheating. I know. He has that video I got (laughs) .

David Goggins 31:43 But-

Joe Rogan 31:43 I knew... I thought you might've seen it.

David Goggins 31:44 But, I, um-

Joe Rogan 31:45 He talks about, like, running with music and- No, what did you say? Find it. Find the video. We'll play it.

David Goggins 31:50 I, um-

Joe Rogan 31:50 Oh, we might not be able to play it. We get- Yes. Is it somebody else's content? No, it's his content. It's his content.

David Goggins 31:53 I actually, um... But I did during my last pull-up record, I listened to... You know that song, um, from Rocky I, round 14, when Rocky gets knocked down the corner? I listened to that. It's two minutes and 13 seconds long.

Joe Rogan 32:09 Mm.

David Goggins 32:09 I listened to it on repeat for 17 hours.

Joe Rogan 32:12 (laughs) (laughs)

David Goggins 32:13 Merry Christmas, motherfucker. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 32:16 (laughs) Oh, man.

David Goggins 32:17 Merry Christmas. 17 hours, man. I went to such the dark, dark evil. I have a picture in my hand in the book. I was in a dark. I went to this... I went to a place, man, that I'm like, "I can do anything here. We gotta live here for a while."

Joe Rogan 32:33 Oh.

David Goggins 32:33 'Cause I kept on feeling that record, I go like, "I don't wanna see a pull-up bar again." I mean, like, I did 67,000 pull-ups, man, and like, this is my third.

Joe Rogan 32:40 (laughs)

David Goggins 32:40 I was like, "I can't... I, I don't wanna see another pull-up." So I was like, "I'm, I'm doing this come hell or high water, man." So, I, I broke it out.

Joe Rogan 32:46 It's just a vid-

David Goggins 32:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:47 Let me hear this. Let me hear this. Play this.

David Goggins 32:49 I'm out in California dreamin'. I got birds of a feather flying. So, I never trained with music. There's a reason why I don't do that. The music is not gonna always be there. The TV, the distractions, all these external things. I'm in the gym right now with all this loud music. People need it to get fired up. They need it to stay motivated. They need to stay in the fight. They need to just go in the gym to do whatever they're gonna do. What do you do when you have no external motivation? It's about the internal. What do you say to yourself? How are you gonna fire yourself up? What's that flame inside of you that keeps you going? Let that keep you going, not this. ... around town. Pulling up on you further down the line. Shooting like I'm playing make believe.

Joe Rogan 33:37 And when you're doing this, the whole time you're doing this, you're doing some of the hardest chin-ups you can do. You got a chain around your neck.

David Goggins 33:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:42 For the folks, folks that are just listening. And you're pulling down on ropes. You're doing chin-ups on, it looks like taped up ropes.

David Goggins 33:49 Yes, sir.

Joe Rogan 33:50 That's what it is? Yeah. Those are grip-

David Goggins 33:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:51 ... gri- that's like jujitsu guys do a lot of those.

David Goggins 33:53 Yes. I was... Uh, I, I spoke to the University of Alabama and they were in there. You know, most, you know, most of these athletes, man, they gotta get hype.

Joe Rogan 34:01 Yeah.

David Goggins 34:01 So that music is blaring.

Joe Rogan 34:02 Yeah.

David Goggins 34:03 And I'm like, "Man, once that shit comes off and you get popped in your fucking mouth-"

Joe Rogan 34:07 Yeah. (laughs)

David Goggins 34:09 "... your headphones are on the sidelines, brother-

Joe Rogan 34:10 (laughs)

David Goggins 34:11 "... what you gonna say? What's gonna happen?"

Joe Rogan 34:13 Yeah.

David Goggins 34:14 What are you gonna say to yourself then? So that's, that's how I train my mind, man.

Joe Rogan 34:17 (laughs)

David Goggins 34:17 I, I, I train my mind 'cause I know I'm getting popped in my mouth, man. I'm gonna get popped in the back of an alley one day, man, running around doing what I do, and there's gonna be no music.

Joe Rogan 34:27 Yeah.

David Goggins 34:28 You better fi- You better figure it out.

Joe Rogan 34:30 I told you Jamie's cheating.

David Goggins 34:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:33 (laughs) I told him it back in the... I was telling... But when I first started running, people said, "Do you run with music?" Because I know running's cheating when you have music on. It's cheating. You're cheating. You listen to music. But now I listen to music all the time. But more than I listen to music, I listen to books.

David Goggins 34:45 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:46 B- Books on tape, uh, audio books. And yours is, like I said, has been... The last two weeks has been my running partner.

David Goggins 34:52 Well, I appreciate that, man.

Joe Rogan 34:53 You're fucking phenomenal, man.

David Goggins 34:53 Your support has been huge. Thank you.

Joe Rogan 34:55 It's phenomenal. And you're doing this kind of independently, right?

David Goggins 34:58 Yeah. So what I did, man, is I pissed off a lot of people.

Joe Rogan 35:01 (laughs)

David Goggins 35:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:01 (laughs)

David Goggins 35:02 I was, um, I... So in 2012, I got an offer for my book for $30,000.00. I said, "You can go fuck yourself."

Joe Rogan 35:11 (laughs)

David Goggins 35:11 You know what the hell I went through, brother? So then everybody was like, "You know, we don't see a market for a Black guy, ultra runner, fat guy who, uh, couldn't read." Like, uh, you know, 15% of America is Black. You know, "We don't see many fucking," you know, "people buying your book."

Joe Rogan 35:27 They think only Black people will buy your book?

David Goggins 35:30 There's some ignorant people out there, man.

Joe Rogan 35:31 Is that really what they thought?

David Goggins 35:31 Everybody that follows me is white.

Joe Rogan 35:33 (laughs)

David Goggins 35:33 I don't have a Black... (laughs) I have like three Black followers, man.

Joe Rogan 35:37 Eve Edwards just left. He follows you.

David Goggins 35:38 It's hilarious. Yeah, right.

Joe Rogan 35:39 Eve Edwards is a big fan. He's Black.

David Goggins 35:41 Yeah, he's like, he's like an unusual species out there, man.

Joe Rogan 35:44 (laughs)

David Goggins 35:44 Like, and so I'm sitting there walking around going, "Man, you don't even know who..." Like, everybody I talk to is white. Like, you know, it's the ignorance of the world. And I'm in these meetings hearing this kind of stuff. So now, 2018, I get a $300,000 offer for a first time author. So I'm sitting back, you know, I'm like, "My God, man, you know, I used to make like fucking $60,000 a year, you know. This is the biggest payday yet." And I started thinking, I took that one second... I talk about the one-second decision a lot about what I went through in my life, what I've done. And I was like, "You know what? I struggled so hard in my life, I went through so much that the biggest trophy I own now is that book." The biggest trophy I own now is not the book itself, it's what's in the book.

Joe Rogan 36:24 Mm-hmm.

David Goggins 36:25 It's what... Like, I, I don't give a fuck if, if that sells one copy. Honest to God, man. Like, like my... What I did, and that's where I hope people understand, your life and the journey you put yourself through, there's noth- there's, there's nothing more than that. And that's all I want people to do is realize that you have to struggle. You have to struggle. The bigger the struggle, the bigger the peace. The bigger the suffering, the more peace.

Joe Rogan 36:49 I'm not just saying this 'cause you're here, but this book is valuable. This book is very valuable. It's valuable to people like anybody that... You know, I mean, biographies are very always valuable when you get to see the mindset of a person who's done things that you haven't done. You get to understand-

David Goggins 37:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:03 ... like that they're overcoming sort of the same sort of situations in their mind that you are.

David Goggins 37:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:08 Same insecurities and pitfalls. But-

David Goggins 37:10 Yeah, everybody is going through it, man.

Joe Rogan 37:12 Yeah.

David Goggins 37:12 Everybody. And that's, that, that's one thing I say. I'm, I'm, I'm blessed that way that...... my story, there's no color involved in it. It's a human story about struggle. And I happened to be in so many different situations that so many people can relate to about struggle that I guarantee you, mark my words, you read that book, there will be a section of that book that resonates with you hardcore. It will make you think. If, if you're not ready to think about your life and think about, you know, where you can be and think about what you haven't done, the book's not for you. If you're not ready to self, to, to really self-reflect and hold yourself accountable for where you're at and where you're not, the book is not for you, it's real.

Joe Rogan 37:52 I've read a lot of self-help books and I've listened to a lot of self-help, help books on tape too and a lot of, there's some of them that I have to shut off. I have to shut off a quarter way and I feel like someone's lying to me. I'm just like, "You're bullshitting me. You're just saying things." There's, uh, "I'm not, this doesn't resonate with me."

David Goggins 38:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:08 "It doesn't, it's not working."

David Goggins 38:09 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:10 Like, I'll give it a chance. I'll give it a chance, but if I'm, you know, half hour in, two hours in, it's still the same nonsense, I don't feel anything.

David Goggins 38:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:17 I'm just, I'm getting itchy listening to you.

David Goggins 38:19 Right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:20 I'm just, ugh. You know, I just wanna pull the headphones off and I'll just kill it and I'll stop it.

David Goggins 38:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:23 This was the total opposite. This one, man, I was, I was g- I was running extra miles so I could k- stay with the headphones on. And the, the thing that I think is gonna happen with this book is people are gonna get it, they're gonna get ahold of it, whether it's the audiobook or the, or the book book, and they're gonna, they're gonna recommend it, and then it's gonna spread like wildfire. This is a powerful book. This is a real self-help book. This is like, this is a, a real one. Like, it's not like, uh, someone orchestrates this whole thing, like, "What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna become a motivator."

David Goggins 38:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:53 "I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a personal influencer."

David Goggins 38:55 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:55 "I'm gonna be that guy that goes out there and tells people, 'You can optimize your life.'"

David Goggins 38:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 38:59 "'Here's how you do it.'" And there's so many of those fucking guys out there.

David Goggins 39:02 Right. Yeah, that's not me, man.

Joe Rogan 39:04 I know this one dude, I ran into him recently. I ran into him at this restaurant and he's fat as fuck. He's got this big old belly and he-

David Goggins 39:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:09 I know he does these, these motivational things. And I, I'm, uh, looking at him, I'm like, "What are you talking about, man?"

David Goggins 39:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:16 "Like, you're weak."

David Goggins 39:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:17 "Like, look at your body. Look at your own temple. Look at the, your meat vehicle."

David Goggins 39:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:20 "You're carrying around this fucking donut around your waist and it's just..." He was eating-

David Goggins 39:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:25 ... shitty food and he looked, looked soft. I'm like, "Wake up, bitch."

David Goggins 39:29 So many people are doing that now, man.

Joe Rogan 39:31 Yeah.

David Goggins 39:31 Too many people are talking this noise.

Joe Rogan 39:33 Exactly.

David Goggins 39:34 And, and I see them.

Joe Rogan 39:35 Yeah.

David Goggins 39:35 I know them. I'm not gonna say names, but I know them and I'm like, "Man, dude, do you know why my life is miserable right now? Because I can't go on your show right now, your podcast, if I didn't get after it this morning." So, I cannot talk to people and-

Joe Rogan 39:49 Unless you're authentic.

David Goggins 39:50 ... unless I'm authentic, because-

Joe Rogan 39:51 Yeah.

David Goggins 39:51 ... I used to be the most unauthentic motherfucker on the planet. Now, I have this voice in my head saying, "Oh, no, I'll call you up." If I lie to you about something, even a white lie, "Hey, yo, Joe, guess what, dude? I fucking lied to you, man. Like, that wasn't real." Like, it, it would bother me that badly now.

Joe Rogan 40:07 Right.

David Goggins 40:07 You know? So, another thing, I didn't... What's funny about all this book stuff, man, I didn't set out to write a book. Like, literally, man, when I was 24 years old on the couch, fat, spraying for cockroaches, eating donuts and drinking milkshakes, I did not plan on doing this. All I wanted to do was change the fucking reflection in that doggone mirror. This is all, just a bo- it's, it's, it's a byproduct of, of that. And that's, that's the funny thing about it. Like, everybody's like, "Oh, my God, David Goggins, what, you know, what the hell." I'm like, "What the fuck?"

Joe Rogan 40:35 That's why it works though.

David Goggins 40:37 Unbelievable.

Joe Rogan 40:38 It, it works because you really did do it. You really did do all those things and you show how you did it. And you're not using any bullshit theatrical jargon.

David Goggins 40:47 No.

Joe Rogan 40:47 You're not, y- you know, you're, you know, you're not saying a bunch of buzzwords. "Can you live the life of an actualized person?"

David Goggins 40:54 No.

Joe Rogan 40:54 "I can show you how." And you're looking at this guy talking and he's got a neck like a pencil and his, his, his, his body's just frail.

David Goggins 41:01 No.

Joe Rogan 41:01 Like, you don't even understand adversity. You don't understand overcoming.

David Goggins 41:05 This is not The Secret, you know?

Joe Rogan 41:06 Right. Yeah.

David Goggins 41:06 This isn't about the, the law of fucking attraction.

Joe Rogan 41:09 Yeah, exactly.

David Goggins 41:09 No, this ain't no attraction here, brother.

Joe Rogan 41:10 (laughs)

David Goggins 41:12 (laughs) This ain't no attraction here, man.

Joe Rogan 41:14 Yeah.

David Goggins 41:14 Like, this book is straight up.

Joe Rogan 41:15 People love that.

David Goggins 41:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:16 They love nonsense.

David Goggins 41:17 Yeah, i- this is no nonsense, man.

Joe Rogan 41:19 This is no nonsense. This is a real self-help book, man. This is the real deal. That's how you self-help. You self-help by people who've done it and you learn what they did and you realize there's no shortcuts.

David Goggins 41:28 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:28 And then you learn to embrace that no shortcut mentality and enjoy, enjoy the suffering and the, and the, and the grind of it. And what we talked about earlier, there's no fucking finish line. Doesn't exist.

David Goggins 41:39 You know what's funny about that? Uh, is I have people now... So, when I was in the worst part of my life, those people want to bring you back in. Those people, it's like, like you can see who you hang out with, like, when you're in your worst. And when you're trying to get better, w- what makes it hard to get better is that you are hanging around people who... Like, let's say you were an alcoholic. You hang around people who drink. And let's say you wanna stop drinking. Those people are gonna bring you back in. Like, I used to be this guy, this guy who was, you know, who wasn't worth anything. Now, those people who are still there, they're, 16, 17, 18, 30 years ago, they're trying to get you back there. So, the hardest part, you gotta see who you're hanging out with, man. You gotta hang out with the people who you wanna be like the most.

Joe Rogan 42:20 Yeah. People will definitely drag you down.

David Goggins 42:21 They'll drag you down.

Joe Rogan 42:22 And especially if you're around someone who makes a lot of excuses and they're always failing.

David Goggins 42:26 Ugh. Ugh.

Joe Rogan 42:26 Those are just like... They're, they're the opposite of inspiration. They're like a vacuum.

David Goggins 42:31 100%.

Joe Rogan 42:31 They're just sucking it out of you.

David Goggins 42:32 "Why are you doing that today, man?"

Joe Rogan 42:34 Yeah.

David Goggins 42:34 Why, "Why are you getting up again so early? Why are you doing this?"

Joe Rogan 42:36 Yeah.

David Goggins 42:36 "Why are you doing this?" The people you're hanging around with will suck the fucking life out of you.

Joe Rogan 42:41 Yeah.

David Goggins 42:41 Sometimes you just gotta be alone, man. Get your shit in.

Joe Rogan 42:44 And then there's also people that you're gonna be around that are always failing and they're always fucking up and then they're always coming to you to try to get you to help them.

David Goggins 42:51 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 42:51 They become a, a giant burden.

David Goggins 42:53 Yes.

Joe Rogan 42:53 They can never look in the mirror and get their own shit together.

David Goggins 42:56 That's true story.

Joe Rogan 42:56 They're always looking for external help.

David Goggins 42:58 That's right. Always looking for external. People don't wanna go in deep, man. All the answers are inside of you. It's a very primitive way... How, like how this book is written, it's, it's, it's primitive. It's, it's, it's very barbarian. It's, it's how we all think. It's how, it's, it's how man once walked the earth. And then we get all soft and all this computers and shit, and we start, we start going away from the, the most powerful thing we have is our fucking brain, is our mind. And we don't use it anymore.So, you know, it's like, i- i- everything has to be so quick.

Joe Rogan 43:28 Yeah, you use your mind when it comes to certain things, right? But what you're saying is, you don't use your mind when it comes to enduring.

David Goggins 43:34 Exactly. That is it.

Joe Rogan 43:36 Yeah.

David Goggins 43:36 You can't Google that shit.

Joe Rogan 43:37 Right.

David Goggins 43:38 "Hey, let me Google how to suffer."

Joe Rogan 43:40 (laughs)

David Goggins 43:41 No. That ain't gonna be in there, brother.

Joe Rogan 43:43 There's no answer. (laughs)

David Goggins 43:44 That ain't gonna be in there. That ain't gonna be in there. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:47 There's no answer.

David Goggins 43:48 It's not in there.

Joe Rogan 43:49 It doesn't exist.

David Goggins 43:51 No.

Joe Rogan 43:51 Yeah.

David Goggins 43:51 Find some water, real cold.

Joe Rogan 43:52 And what's interesting is that that is a mind thing. And people think of mind things, they think of calculating and mathematics-

David Goggins 43:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:59 ... they think of literature. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's many aspects to the mind.

David Goggins 44:03 That's it.

Joe Rogan 44:04 Yeah.

David Goggins 44:04 Don't overthink it.

Joe Rogan 44:05 Yeah.

David Goggins 44:05 Don't overthink it. Put your shoes on, lace 'em up.

Joe Rogan 44:08 (laughs)

David Goggins 44:09 That's all you got to do, my friend. (laughs) Don't overthink the process.

Joe Rogan 44:14 Yeah. But see, w- because you've overcome and because you've accomplished so much now, that even when you l- you talk about that moment of like, e- embracing that suck, like you see the big ass smile in your face. Like, you've, you've got a total different approach to it than the average person.

David Goggins 44:30 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:30 The average person, you're talking to them about doing chin-ups for 24 hours or anything-

David Goggins 44:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:34 ... fucking crazy, they don't look at it, they're like, "Ugh." There's like a, a negative, a doom feeling.

David Goggins 44:39 That's the thing about it, man. I talk about it in my book, open-mindedness. What separates me from a lot of people is they go and do an, a daunting task, and the task is overwhelming. Like, when I heard the pull-up record was 4,020 pull-ups and I was talking about breaking this record, people were like, "Oh, my God." I went right to a pen and paper. They go, "What are you doing?" I'm doing the math, man. What are you talking about? I'm open-minded to the fact that, okay, if I do five pull-ups in a minute for so many hours, I can get so many pull-ups in. How much time do I have to rest? I was breaking the math down. You have to be open-minded to the possibilities that, "I can do this." Once you shut your mind down to the possibility that it can be achieved, there's no way it can happen. So that's why my, my eyes and my body light up about things, 'cause I know that if you're in a fight, you have to attack. You have to keep attacking. The enemy has to know he is not going to give up. You must break the soul of whatever the fuck is in front of you. That's what I realized. I was never breaking the soul of anything in front of me. So, that's why I came up with this thing called taking souls in my book. I started to devise ways to break a soul, of a human being, of a, of a object, of, of, of whatever's in front of me. If you keep on attacking something, nothing wants to stand in front of anything that is relentless. Nothing.

Joe Rogan 45:56 The taking soul part of the book is really interesting, because, uh, you talked about, like, the, the mind shift that you had when you were in BUD/S.

David Goggins 46:04 Yes, sir.

Joe Rogan 46:05 Yeah. That was a, that's an intense part of the book.

David Goggins 46:07 It's, it is, uh, that's when a lot of stuff started clicking, man. I started watching those instructors on the side. 'Cause, you know, there's, there's three shifts. There's eight instructors, three shifts. 'Cause, you know, the guys going through, through hell week, they're up all day and all night for 130 hours. This is the promised land of mental hardening for me. I love this place. And you have the instructors who, who are, you know, you know, they've been there, done that. Now, they're instructing you. So, they do their eight-hour shift, they have their parkas on, it's usually cold, coffee, drinking their coffee, and they're beating the crap out of us. And when I started realizing, I started playing mind games. I, and I was like, "You know what? I bet these fuckers are looking at us, judging themselves about when they were going through hell week, about, 'Let me see, I'm looking at Goggins right now, I was better than him. I was better than that guy, I was better than that fucker over there.'" And I was like, "Okay. Okay. You're gonna judge me, right?"

Joe Rogan 47:01 (laughs)

David Goggins 47:01 "All right. 'Cause that's what I'm gonna do to you." So, what I started doing was I got my boat crew, Boat Crew 2, it's in the book, it's a great, great story. I said, "Come here, guys."

Joe Rogan 47:09 You can't break Boat Crew 2.

David Goggins 47:10 You can't break Boat Crew 2.

Joe Rogan 47:12 (laughs)

David Goggins 47:13 So, we, it's Wednesday, it's Wednesday and everybody's broken, everybody's beat up, man. And, and like this is when you start moving like a robot. Everybody's like just kind of just trying to get through hell week now and your energy's zapped. And they know, Wednesday is like that over the hump.

Joe Rogan 47:24 I love that you talked about that in the book too, that they put it in your head-

David Goggins 47:27 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:27 ... that Wednesday you're gonna be tired.

David Goggins 47:28 Oh, yeah. And that's another thing, they, they tell you how you're supposed to feel. So, you are feeling that way. I was like, "Uh-uh, don't let these motherfuckers tell you how you're supposed to feel. No, it's day one, motherfucker. This is hour one." So, I was getting my boat crew all jacked up. I said, "We're gonna take these motherfuckers' souls." So, when they had us doing this simple thing that guys were struggling with, Boat Crew 2 was just launching the fucking boat and you're yelling, "Yeah, you can't fucking hurt us. Can't hurt Boat Crew 2." And I looked on the instructors' faces and it looked like someone had just fucked with their soul. And I looked at my guys and my boat crew and I said, "Hey, guess what? Those motherfuckers aren't fucking tonight-"

Joe Rogan 48:08 (laughs)

David Goggins 48:08 "... 'cause we own space in their fucking head. We own space. They're gonna think about us tonight. They're gonna think about how the fuck-"

Joe Rogan 48:13 You're killing boners.

David Goggins 48:14 That's right.

Joe Rogan 48:15 (laughs)

David Goggins 48:16 How, how, on Wednesday, are these guys doing this?

Joe Rogan 48:19 And screaming out, "You can't hurt Boat Crew 2."

David Goggins 48:21 They can't ho- we were, we were bringing the fight. We were attacking. So, so when you keep on doing that, guess what people start doing? "I ain't fucking with these guys no more." So, Boat Crew 2 got a lot more sleep. Boat Crew 2 just became that boat crew like, "Hey, we," 'cause we just kept charging and we started fueling off of that. We started fueling off the fact that, man, it takes one second of energy to steal everybody's, and then you have all the energy you need. It's all you need. You need to look in someone's eyes. You know how it is when you fight somebody and you broke that motherfucker. He's like, "Oh, God, man. I don't wanna go back the next round." And you feel like, "My God, I can fight all day. I can fight all-"

Joe Rogan 48:56 Hmm.

David Goggins 48:56 "... day long." That's what taking souls is. But you have to have the will, the heart, the courage to go that distance when you're exactly jacked up, when you have nothing left to give, and give more.

Joe Rogan 49:11 That is an interesting thing about the mind, is that you can find inspiration. And when you find inspiration, when you get charged up, all of a sudden you have energy.

David Goggins 49:19 That's right. That's right.

Joe Rogan 49:20 It's weird.

David Goggins 49:21 And I talk about it in the book also, is about I learned how to control my adrenals.If you know how... You know how you get that fight or flight response when you got to move real quick?

Joe Rogan 49:32 Yeah.

David Goggins 49:32 And you know, I, I started learning the mind a lot, how to get myself jacked extremely fast, like in a horrible environment when everybody's miserable. I learned how to really find strength in the misery. When everybody's suffering, everybody's all poopy pantsed and their mentality is down and everything, I started just like, "My God, this is where I shine." And I started using all that misery for tons and tons, tons of drive and motivation to, to, to then lead people further, 'cause you can get a lot of power through misery. And once people see that, "My God, Goggins is fucking going," then everybody says, "Roger that. Let me get my shit and go too." So I started realizing that if you can just find strength just a little bit longer, you will have a crew of people following you along the way.

Joe Rogan 50:22 And that is another thing that no one can ever teach you, 'cause you, you're gonna have to learn that on your own.

David Goggins 50:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 50:28 You're gonna have to figure out how to pull that energy out of your mind on your own. There's not... There's, there's no book you can read that all of a sudden, "I have it. I've got the technique now. I know how to do it."

David Goggins 50:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:39 No, it's, it's a, a grind that you have to start and finish on your own.

David Goggins 50:44 You have to take great pleasure in the fact that no one wants to be where the fuck you're at right now. Great pleasure in that. Almost makes... You know, it has, it has to bring a passion out of you. It has to bring something very, very weird out of you, man. Like, you know, people don't really understand what that is. When you're in the worst environment possible, the worst situation possible and everybody's looking like, "God, man, I hope this ends," and you see that. Time slows down when you see that. You're, you're feeling that. Everybody has that look on their face like, "God, it's gotta go. I don't wanna be here anymore."

Joe Rogan 51:14 Have you ever gotten rhabdo, rhabdomyolysis?

David Goggins 51:16 Oh, yes, sir.

Joe Rogan 51:17 Did you get it?

David Goggins 51:18 Yes, sir.

Joe Rogan 51:18 (laughs)

David Goggins 51:18 Yes, sir.

Joe Rogan 51:19 When did you get it?

David Goggins 51:20 I got it on my second pull-up record attempt, and I talk about it a little bit in the book there. Um, and it... I have sickle cell trait, and a young kid just died from rhabdo, from uh... 'Cause sickle cell is not a good thing, obviously. Um, and rhab- rhabdo is a bad thing for having sickle cell.

Joe Rogan 51:36 You have sickle cell trait-

David Goggins 51:37 It's-

Joe Rogan 51:37 ... but you don't-

David Goggins 51:38 Trait.

Joe Rogan 51:38 ... have the disease.

David Goggins 51:39 I don't have the disease.

Joe Rogan 51:40 A buddy of mine died from it when I was a kid.

David Goggins 51:42 Really?

Joe Rogan 51:42 Yeah.

David Goggins 51:43 (coughs)

Joe Rogan 51:43 A guy I used to fight with, used to train with. Yeah, he, uh, was always sick. He'd have it. He'd get sick.

David Goggins 51:48 It's horrible.

Joe Rogan 51:49 He'd be gone, he'd be out of the gym for months and he'd come back and he'd just be trying to get his body back in shape again, then he'd get it again.

David Goggins 51:55 It jacks you up.

Joe Rogan 51:56 Then he wound up dying. He's a talented guy too. When you got it, what did you have to do?

David Goggins 52:02 So they put me in the hospital for a while. Um, that's when my hand got real messed up, and my fluids were extremely low. And I had done like, I think I did 3,000 pull-ups and they're like, "Man, your body is wrecked up." They-

Joe Rogan 52:15 Were you just not drinking water while you were doing it?

David Goggins 52:17 I was drinking water, but not enough.

Joe Rogan 52:18 Not enough?

David Goggins 52:18 So I was sipping this carbohydrate drink-

Joe Rogan 52:21 (clears throat) Mm-hmm.

David Goggins 52:22 ... and, um, my calories were extremely low. I didn't know how much I was gonna burn through, and you burn through an awful lot of calories, man, doing that many pull-ups for that many hours.

Joe Rogan 52:30 Yeah.

David Goggins 52:31 And with the repetition, with using the single points of just my hands and my biceps and my back, like my body was swollen like the Pillsbury Doughboy. I mean, it wa- it looked horrible and, um, so they, they kept me in there for a while, but-

Joe Rogan 52:44 How long?

David Goggins 52:45 Probably about eight hours. I was in there about eight hours.

Joe Rogan 52:48 Oh yeah?

David Goggins 52:48 On IVs and stuff like that.

Joe Rogan 52:50 So they just... It was basically a rehydration-

David Goggins 52:51 Tons of fluid.

Joe Rogan 52:52 ... issue that's a big part of it?

David Goggins 52:53 Yeah, tons of fluid.

Joe Rogan 52:53 Mm-hmm?

David Goggins 52:54 Tons of fluid. And they sent me home though, so I, I went home that night.

Joe Rogan 52:59 And how long did you wait before you jumped back at it?

David Goggins 53:02 I think I was back on the pull-up bar about a week and a half later.

Joe Rogan 53:05 (laughs)

David Goggins 53:07 And then I broke the record six-

Joe Rogan 53:08 (coughs)

David Goggins 53:08 Six weeks later-

Joe Rogan 53:09 Wow.

David Goggins 53:10 ... I broke the record.

Joe Rogan 53:11 Jesus Christ. So when you, when you did get back on the pull-up bar, it was... How fucked up was your body? From...

David Goggins 53:19 It was bad, but what I do is like what I've done through everything, uh, which isn't real smart. I mean, it, it works for me, so I'm not saying do this, is I've trained through a lot of my injuries and I started developing... I, I, I started doing that in BUD/S in SEAL training 'cause in SEAL training, they, uh, you know, you gotta start from day one or they just kick you out. So I started from day one enough. So my third time going through, I was really jacked up.

Joe Rogan 53:41 Well, you went... You had pneumonia.

David Goggins 53:43 Yeah, I had pneumonia and I had really bad stress fractures. So my stress fracture... So I was literally... I would put a sock on and then duct tape my foot all the way up to the top of my... or, or to the mid of my ankle or, or, or to the mid of my calf. And 'cause my stress fractures were so bad, so like the pivot point between my ankle and my shin, I just casted that all the way up. And so I went through for several months, for a few months, with stress fractures, and what was crazy about that is they healed. By the time I got to third phase, my stress fractures were healed.

Joe Rogan 54:13 Wow.

David Goggins 54:14 And I don't even know how, the rhyme or reason behind it. I ran on them. A few months later, they were healed.

Joe Rogan 54:19 Wow.

David Goggins 54:20 So I don't know what that means.

Joe Rogan 54:21 So you just pushed through the agony and eventually your body just said, "This crazy fuck is not gonna stop."

David Goggins 54:27 It's a true statement. Yeah, it's weird. A lot of my injuries I've just pushed through and they've, uh... I duct taped it up. I mean, I'm doing that.

Joe Rogan 54:33 Have you ever had to have surgery on any of them?

David Goggins 54:36 No, just heart... Just a couple heart surgeries, but um, none of my actual physical body.

Joe Rogan 54:40 And what was your heart surgery for again? You talked about this before, right?

David Goggins 54:42 Yeah, ASD. I had a hole in my heart.

Joe Rogan 54:45 Yeah.

David Goggins 54:45 So we talked about-

Joe Rogan 54:46 Which is even more ridiculous, yeah.

David Goggins 54:47 Yeah, that's what... We, we talked about that too, man. They, uh, they took me off and studied me for a while so they realized that, my God, I don't... You know, I shouldn't even been in the military. I wasn't even qualified to be in the military with a hole in my heart, you know, let alone be in special operations where you're jumping out of planes and stuff like that. So I was, I was lucky.

Joe Rogan 55:03 How'd they seal that up?

David Goggins 55:05 So they went in with a helix patch and, um, you know, through my femoral artery?

Joe Rogan 55:10 Mm-hmm.

David Goggins 55:10 Femoral artery, and they went through, put a patch, and they realized... You know, I missed like three or four years of a military career because of this heart surgery.

Joe Rogan 55:18 Wow.

David Goggins 55:18 Yeah, so I was, I was off of jump status, dive status. I was just, uh... So that's why I talk about recruiting so much. I wa- I, I stayed in recruiting for like three or four years and, um, you know-I became like a Navy SEAL recruiter when I was, uh, you know, doing this for a while. So, I got extended there because the heart surgery.

Joe Rogan 55:35 And a- uh, other than that, you never had to have any other surgeries?

David Goggins 55:39 Um-

Joe Rogan 55:39 No meniscus, no nothing like that?

David Goggins 55:41 No. No.

Joe Rogan 55:41 That's crazy.

David Goggins 55:42 No. And I've had some jacked up injuries. But see, how I grew up, you know, like I talk about in the book, my dad didn't believe in taking me by the hospital. Like, that's just how it was, man. It was, it was barbarian stuff, man. But, you know, you learn to deal with it and you live it.

Joe Rogan 55:58 (laughs)

David Goggins 55:59 You're fine. You get hard.

Joe Rogan 56:00 Did you ever get MRIs?

David Goggins 56:01 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:01 Get everything checked out?

David Goggins 56:03 As a matter of fact, man, I was terrified of the MRI machine for a long time.

Joe Rogan 56:05 (laughs)

David Goggins 56:05 I was claustrophobic. I was like, "Man, that's in the..." There's ... Yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot behind that, man. But yeah, I've, I've been checked out a lot. I've had, uh ... So, like I said, like six years ago, I started stretching out, like I thought I was dying. I couldn't even get out of bed. So, all that stretching out was from pretty much all these injuries I had that I never really fixed. And my body got knotted up and more knotted up and more knotted up. You know what I mean? It's gonna heal. One way or another it's gonna heal, and when it heals, it's not gonna heal right.

Joe Rogan 56:34 Right.

David Goggins 56:34 It's gonna heal all jacked up and crooked.

Joe Rogan 56:36 Yeah.

David Goggins 56:36 So, I'm a, I'm a crooked, jacked up dude, man-

Joe Rogan 56:38 (laughs)

David Goggins 56:38 ... but I can still get it done. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:41 It's amazing that you haven't had like knee surgeries or anything like that and consider all the running that you've done.

David Goggins 56:46 My left knee right now is in ... It's no joke. So, like I say, origin of pain, my right foot is messed up because of my left knee. So, right now, I'm, I'm taking care of my left knee. It's getting a lot better now. But don't worry, Cameron Hanes-

Joe Rogan 57:00 (laughs)

David Goggins 57:00 ... I will still be fucking out there running with your ass. I'm not gonna get out of it, buddy.

Joe Rogan 57:03 (laughs)

David Goggins 57:03 So, if you're listening, motherfucker, I will see you this weekend.

Joe Rogan 57:07 (laughs)

David Goggins 57:07 Merry Christmas. All right? Just so you know, brother. Merry Christmas. I'll see you soon.

Joe Rogan 57:12 Y- you don't know what's wrong with the knee? You have no idea?

David Goggins 57:15 It's from stretching. So, basically-

Joe Rogan 57:17 Stretching?

David Goggins 57:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:18 Really?

David Goggins 57:18 So, my whole ... 'Cause my body was in, in such bad alignment from just what I did to it-

Joe Rogan 57:25 Mm-hmm.

David Goggins 57:25 ... that now I'm in this huge stress routine and my body's getting back into alignment. So, your muscles ... Like, I was a power lifter, man. Like, I, I grew these huge muscles and now I'm this small guy. And I just ... And from the stress of my body going through three Hell Week's and all this sort of ... My body's got, became one knot.

Joe Rogan 57:42 Mm-hmm.

David Goggins 57:42 So, as things start to open up, joints start to hurt, things start to hurt. A- and I'm like, "God." So, it's been this big, long process. So, I'm faster and in better shape than ever. My organs work better. I'm, I'm healthier than ever. But I have these little tweaks here, these little tweaks there from the fact that I am now, my body was locked into position-

Joe Rogan 58:01 Hmm.

David Goggins 58:01 ... from these muscles being so tight. And now I'm like-

Joe Rogan 58:03 And what do you weigh now?

David Goggins 58:04 About 182, 183.

Joe Rogan 58:05 And you were at like 300 plus pounds when you got your fattest, right?

David Goggins 58:08 My fattest ... When I weighed in for the military, I don't know what my fattest was, but when I weighed in, on that scale, when Steven Sallo hit that scale on me, man, it was 297.

Joe Rogan 58:18 Whew.

David Goggins 58:18 And he's like, "Brother, you gotta lose 106 pounds." And I was like, "Fuck this. I can't." (laughs) I was like, "I was like, 'What are you talking about?' "

Joe Rogan 58:25 (laughs)

David Goggins 58:26 I was like, "How's that possible?" So anyway, it just, you know-

Joe Rogan 58:28 And not a lot of time, that's the crazy thing.

David Goggins 58:30 No.

Joe Rogan 58:30 They didn't give you ... Three months to lose that ... 33 pounds a month is a lot of fucking weight. Plus a few?

David Goggins 58:36 A- almost impossible. And that's what I thought. That's what I thought. But see, you see the person I am now.

Joe Rogan 58:41 Yeah.

David Goggins 58:41 I was 175 pounds in high school, so I was, I was a skinny guy in high school. So, I, I made myself big.

Joe Rogan 58:47 Mm-hmm.

David Goggins 58:48 I'm a small boned person, so it didn't ... It wasn't ... Uh, trust me, it was hard. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But-

Joe Rogan 58:56 What did people think around you when they saw you three months later and you were 100 pounds lighter?

David Goggins 59:00 My mom couldn't believe it. 'Cause my mom ... So, I was living in Indianapolis, Indiana at the time. And so, I was trying to study for this ASVAB test again, that, you know, I gotta take it again going in the Navy. And I'm out here trying to lose weight and I'm, you know, working for this company, spraying for cockroaches and all this other crap. And I would lay in her pond in fucking November in Indiana, just lay in her pond 'cause I'm like, "I'm, I'm going to bust. I gotta get hard." You know? So, I would lay in the pond, get outta the pond, and go for a run. Just all wet, cold. Like, my, my ... Like, the doggone shirt would just freeze up from ice and shit. And I used to be out there running. She said, "What is wrong with you, man?" Like, "You were that kid who just didn't wanna ... Like, what's wrong with you?" So, she started seeing the transformation. Like, you know, this guy is obsessed with trying to become somebody. And next thing she knew, man, my God, you actually lost that much weight that fast.

Joe Rogan 59:48 I love the fact that you did it, but what, what hurts me is when I hear stories about people that get like stomach stapling and surgery and all, all that shit that they do. Like, you just need to just lose the weight.

David Goggins 1:00:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:00 And if you just did it, if you just did it the right way, you would have earned it. And if you earn it, you'll keep it.

David Goggins 1:00:06 That's the thing about it, man. Like, we like to take these very quick fixes in life. We want the six-minute abs approach to life.

Joe Rogan 1:00:13 Yeah.

David Goggins 1:00:13 No, man. There's no permanent in that.

Joe Rogan 1:00:16 Yeah.

David Goggins 1:00:16 There's no permanent in that, man. There's no scarring. There must be scarring.

Joe Rogan 1:00:21 Well, people are terrified of this thing that you're saying, that there's no end, that there's no finish line.

David Goggins 1:00:26 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 That every day is a new thing, that you have to earn it still. After all the shit you've done, every day you get up and you have to earn it.

David Goggins 1:00:32 Yes. You know what's funny about that? I want you to be scared of it. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 (laughs) Yeah.

David Goggins 1:00:37 I want you to be scared of it.

Joe Rogan 1:00:38 'Cause it gives you fuel.

David Goggins 1:00:39 It's great motivation. And see, if you look at it that way, the reason why I speak the way I speak, 'cause I believe in what I'm saying, if I ever shut it down, that's the end of me. And whatever my 100% will be, I don't know what's gonna happen to me. Tomorrow they're gonna be like, "What if you can't run?" I will figure what the fuck I can do and do that. That would be my new 100%. You must continue to find your new 100%. Whatever life throws at you, you must find what you can do now. I may become the best, you know, scientist of all time. Who knows? Watch out. You know what I'm saying? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:16 (laughs)

David Goggins 1:01:16 Be scared. Watch out. (laughs) Who knows?

Joe Rogan 1:01:20 Well, that is an approach, like this- this approach, this mental approach, you can use that for anything once you get past the quitting mechanism of your mind.

David Goggins 1:01:29 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 Once you get past that thing, that this is applicable, you can- you can take these lessons that you learn from these grueling runs-

David Goggins 1:01:37 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:01:37 ... from this losing 106 pounds in three months, from all these different things of struggle-

David Goggins 1:01:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:41 ... you can take these lessons of struggle and you can apply them to anything.

David Goggins 1:01:46 Yes. I talk about it in my book here, about, um, that race I did that made SEAL training look like a- like a child's play in Ranger school. That- that first 100 miler I did where I shit on myself and all kind of stuff, that 19 hours it took me with no training, I sum it up like this. You're talking about struggle, how- how you can put so much of life into struggle. In that 19 hours, I lived five years, five years of struggle, of happiness, of- of depression, success, failure, in 19 hours. That's what's great about some of these things I do. You get a- a wide range of life in just 19 hours. You know, like when you get to like mile 50 and your mind's saying like, "We got to get out of here, man," and then you get to like mile 60, "Okay, we're feeling good." You have all these highs and lows that you have to manage within this suck fest of 19 hours. And that's what I get from a lot of these different things, that human growth, you know, growth of the mind. Without friction, there is no growth. Without friction, there's no growth.

Joe Rogan 1:02:45 There's no growth and there's no satisfaction.

David Goggins 1:02:48 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 1:02:49 Like, there's no re- Like people want to sit around and rest, but you don't really appreciate rest unless you earned it.

David Goggins 1:02:54 That's it. And people get- (laughs) they think I'm the craziest person on the planet. You are so far fucking removed from that statement, it's not even funny. I was 290 pounds twice in my life. I do not like to do the things I do, but there's humongous satisfaction from doing it. There's humongous satisfaction from lacing your shoes up, saying, "I don't really want to go for a run today," and then running-

Joe Rogan 1:03:20 Yeah.

David Goggins 1:03:20 ... and then getting back and saying, "Wow-"

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 "I did it."

David Goggins 1:03:22 "... I did it."

Joe Rogan 1:03:22 Yeah.

David Goggins 1:03:23 And that's what it's about. It's about these small steps to doing things you don't want to do.

Joe Rogan 1:03:26 You know Jocko, Jocko Willing?

David Goggins 1:03:28 I know him, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:29 Jocko's m- uh, every day-

David Goggins 1:03:30 Don't know him great, but I know him.

Joe Rogan 1:03:32 I- I know him pretty well. He's- he's awesome, but every morning you look at that motherfucker's Instagram, he's got a picture of his watch at 4:30. He gets up at 4:30 every morning and he earns his sunrise.

David Goggins 1:03:43 That's good stuff, man.

Joe Rogan 1:03:43 He works out like a motherfucker and then earns the sunrise.

David Goggins 1:03:46 That's good stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:03:47 But it's that thing, like there's no end.

David Goggins 1:03:49 No.

Joe Rogan 1:03:49 It doesn't end.

David Goggins 1:03:50 And- and- and it's scary.

Joe Rogan 1:03:52 That is scary for people.

David Goggins 1:03:53 It's scary.

Joe Rogan 1:03:53 Everybody wants that holding hands while the sun sets-

David Goggins 1:03:56 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:03:57 ... and their retirement-

David Goggins 1:03:57 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:03:58 ... and you're walking off into the sunset.

David Goggins 1:03:59 The biggest question I get is-

Joe Rogan 1:04:00 (coughs)

David Goggins 1:04:01 ... "So when do you rest?"

Joe Rogan 1:04:03 (clears throat)

David Goggins 1:04:04 "When do you recover?"

Joe Rogan 1:04:05 Yeah.

David Goggins 1:04:06 And I don't want to scare people, but the truth answer is, I don't take any days off.

Joe Rogan 1:04:15 No days?

David Goggins 1:04:16 No days.

Joe Rogan 1:04:16 Seven days a week?

David Goggins 1:04:17 Seven days a week.

Joe Rogan 1:04:18 Well, what is a- a normal day?

David Goggins 1:04:20 A normal day for me, a- a normal day, so let's say a light day.

Joe Rogan 1:04:24 Light day.

David Goggins 1:04:24 A light day is at least a seven-mile run. I will every- every four- every other day, so about four days a week, um, calisthenics plus gym workout. So I don't do any gym workout without hitting pull-ups, push-ups, I call it nickels and dimes. So like five pull-ups, 10 push-ups, or I'll go, you know, quarters and whatever, like s- like 25 pull-ups or and like 50 push-ups. So I have all these different things I mess up. So I will do weights with calisthenics, and every single night I stretch, for at least every night I stretch for at least two hours.

Joe Rogan 1:05:00 Two hours?

David Goggins 1:05:00 Every night. Every night.

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 So you stretch after you're done working out?

David Goggins 1:05:06 Yeah. So at nighttime, usually I'll be, uh, either in a- in a quiet room or I'll be watching TV or a good... I love sports, be watching the game and I'm on the floor, man. And that's what I do.

Joe Rogan 1:05:16 So you just stretch while you're doing stuff?

David Goggins 1:05:18 I stretch while I do stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 Two hours is a long-ass time to stretch.

David Goggins 1:05:21 I-

Joe Rogan 1:05:21 Is this just because you're trying to correct all the-

David Goggins 1:05:23 I'm trying to correct, um-

Joe Rogan 1:05:25 ... years of not doing that?

David Goggins 1:05:26 Y- No, years of just-

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 Do you ever fuck with yoga?

David Goggins 1:05:28 A lot.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 Yeah?

David Goggins 1:05:29 Yoga is the shit.

Joe Rogan 1:05:30 What do you do? Hot yoga?

David Goggins 1:05:31 I have my- I have my own yoga.

Joe Rogan 1:05:32 Mm-hmm.

David Goggins 1:05:33 So I kind of invented my own little yoga for what my body needs. I've done hot yoga several times. Yo- yoga's huge. Yoga's huge. Like holding those positions, and I- but I'm big on holding them for a long period of time. So that's where my stretching is. Like people say, "Don't hold stretches for a long time." I hold them for a long period of time because I'm trying to get full range of motion. A lot of people go in for like- like, um, like my shoulder's all messed up, I get surgery on it. Nah. If you don't have full range of motion in your body, don't go in and get