Joe Rogan Experience #1906 - David Goggins

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. DGDavid Goggins0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Now, you do a podcast every fucking day, man?

   3. NANarrator0:15

      Pretty much.

   4. DGDavid Goggins0:15

      God ...

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      This, uh, this week, every day.

   6. DGDavid Goggins0:16

      Don't give a fuck, man.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      But I was just on vacation.

   8. DGDavid Goggins0:20

      How was vacation?

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      It was nice. Little ... W- vacations are hard, you know, because, like ... (clears throat) Even though I enjoy rest, I always feel like I shouldn't be.

   10. DGDavid Goggins0:29

       (laughs) Like, oh.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       Always, you know?

   12. DGDavid Goggins0:31

       I get it. I get it.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       You go on vacations?

   14. DGDavid Goggins0:33

       No.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       Never?

   16. DGDavid Goggins0:35

       No.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:35

       (laughs)

   18. DGDavid Goggins0:36

       Nope.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       For me, creatively, it's good. It's good to get a reset, 'cause I come back in guns blazing, like, a really ... Uh, I don't, uh, don't risk any mental burnout when I do it.

   20. DGDavid Goggins0:47

       Well, I have resets, but my resets are like, um, I call them aid stations, mental aid stations.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:53

       Mm.

   22. DGDavid Goggins0:53

       So when you're going fucking hard and you're grinding all the fucking time, like, everybody knows there's 24 hours in a day, but when I'm in the shower, it's a mental aid station.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:02

       Mm-hmm.

   24. DGDavid Goggins1:02

       I don't think about shit. I don't fucking think about people. I don't think about work. I don't think about running. I don't think about working out. When I'm in the car, another fucking mental aid station. When I'm fucking eating, mental aid station. So, people eating and they working, all this other shit, man. So I g- I can grind hard because a lot of the times, man, I'm in mental fucking aid stations-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       Hmm.

   26. DGDavid Goggins1:23

       ... chilling.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:23

       So you have little mini vacations. Hmm.

   28. DGDavid Goggins1:25

       Mini vacations, man, all day long. All day long.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:28

       (laughs) Do you feel now almost a responsibility to, like, stay at it all the time 'cause so many people are watching and paying attention and drawing inspiration from you?

   30. DGDavid Goggins1:39

       100%. I mean, like, I probably would've retired a long time ago, but I get these emails from people, and it's like they're living through me. Like, their strength comes through what they know I'm doing. So there's so many times I wanna get up and say, "Oh, man, fuck it, man. I got mine. I'm good." And I'm like, "Fuck. Fucking Tommy out there, motherfuckers."
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   So it was worse…

   1. DGDavid Goggins15:01

      It was... It had nothing. It was just like a little dangling, fucking like... So from my knee down, the shin, the tib-fib, it just dangled. Like, there was nothing. And I was like, "Okay, man, this, this is fucked."

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:14

      So it was worse after the cleanup?

   3. DGDavid Goggins15:16

      Much worse. Like, I was done. I went from running 200 mile to... I, I did 240-mile race in, in 2020, October of 2020. It was Moab. Went out there, got second place, 62 hours. Knee was fucked up, getting it drained before the fucking race, but I still ran 240 miles. Literally, five or six days before the race, I'm getting it drained, and it was a baseball-sized fucking, um... It's called a Baker's Assist. So they drained it, and I went in there and did the race. Finished it, and I was like, "Okay, here we go." Went on to do some more races. I did like another 200 miler, did a couple more races, and then, like I said, Cam came down. Right after that, I went and got this surgery done. And I went from running every day to now, I have some fucking leg that just dangles. And after that surgery, it just fucking dangled, and I was like, "Okay, man, I'm fucked."

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:05

      As... Just from that little piece of meniscus?

   5. DGDavid Goggins16:06

      Just that little piece of meniscus. And I'm sitting there thinking, "Okay, man. This is not... This doesn't make any sense to me. There's, there's something fucked. I don't understand why I can't... I can't put any pressure on my leg." The, the amount of blood they were taking out was, was unbelievable. So there's the blood right there.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:22

      (laughs) Jesus Christ.

   7. DGDavid Goggins16:23

      That's the blood, dude.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:24

      Oh my God. There's one, two, three, four, five, six-

   9. DGDavid Goggins16:26

      And you see the black blood?

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:28

       Yeah.

   11. DGDavid Goggins16:29

       That is deoxygenated blood. So whatever was going on, whatever the fuck was going on...

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:34

       That's why it looks different colors? So the-

   13. DGDavid Goggins16:36

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:37

       ... red blood is the b- the blood that has oxygen?

   15. DGDavid Goggins16:38

       That's right.

   16. JRJoe Rogan16:39

       And that was just, like, coagulated-

   17. DGDavid Goggins16:41

       Yes.

   18. JRJoe Rogan16:41

       ... just fucked up blood?

   19. DGDavid Goggins16:43

       Yep.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:44

       Jesus.

   21. DGDavid Goggins16:45

       Yeah. So that... So after surgery, I'm like, I'm like seven, seven days out or whatever the fuck it was, I... And once again, I don't know the exact times, but I have them in the book. I have everything fucking dialed in. Um, I went back and I was like, "Man, I'm f- I'm fucked up." I mean, it was a simple meniscus surgery, man. Like people-

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:02

       Yeah.

   23. DGDavid Goggins17:02

       ... go back a week later. They're playing two weeks, three weeks-

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       Yeah.

   25. DGDavid Goggins17:04

       ... tops. I'm like, "Man, I'm never gonna fucking run again. I'm gonna walk with a fucking limp." So I'm going back, I'm getting fucking, like, um, literally getting my knee drained every week, getting PRP. I'm like, "Man." But in the back of my mind, I, I know how far I can push myself. I know my body so fucking well. So well. And I'm like, "This is, um, this is wrong." I go, "I, I'm never gonna run again. I'm never gonna run again." And I walk with a limp. So this went on for about six, six months. So I had the surgery done in February. It was, uh, February, March, April, May, June. About four months, four months after the surgery, four or five months, I'm like, "Hey, Jennifer. Um, I gotta find another, uh, s- you know, somebody else to look at my fucking knee." So I try to keep my shit together, but imagine when you go from every day of your fucking life grinding, and you go to nothing.

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:58

       Mm-hmm.

   27. DGDavid Goggins17:59

       Like literally, like, 90-minute surgery, done.

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:02

       That's crazy that it was just a little meniscus scope.

   29. DGDavid Goggins18:05

       90-minute surgery, done. And I was like, "Okay, man, this is..." Anyway, so I found this guy named Dr. Gemoll outta New York. And we fly there, but I'm like, "He can't fix this, man." Because I knew it was a lot more than knees. It was just... It was all kind of this fucked up body shit. And I, um, I walk in the office and he decides to see me, and me and Jennifer in there. Jennifer's happy.... she's happy as shit. She's like, "Oh my God, man. This guy's gonna be able to get you a, a fucking meniscus replacement." He, he was all kind of gurued out.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:37

       Mm-hmm.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Well, the way I…

   1. DGDavid Goggins30:00

      go. I had somewhere to fucking go and I got there. And buddy, when motherfuckers tell you, "You can take a break now." Hey, you're fucked up? As long as my knees are halfway working, I got the run. You're telling me may- may- maybe a chance I can't run no more? Hmm. Give me an excuse to fucking not do shit, but as long as I have no excuse, I gotta do it. But I wa- I was, I was happy where I was. I gave everything. I gave everything to who I am. And that's why I'm... People are always, "I don't believe that." Don't, don't believe it. I gave everything. And when you give everything, man, you have no regret. People didn't understand me. People don't understand me now. I don't give a fuck.I know exactly what I was doing. I'm not a masochist, I'm not crazy, I'm not this and that. People try to title me and label me. No, I had something to fucking do.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:46

      Well, the way I describe it to people when people ask me, like, "Why does he do all these things?" Like what is- what is the motivation here? I go, "He's on a mental journey that very few people have ever been on." Because the- w- people don't understand you. They- or they misunderstand you, or they purposely misinterpret the way you're living your life. You're trying to understand your mind in a way that very few human beings ever get to understand their mind, because you're taking your mind into these terrible dark places all the time and you're trying to pull things out of that. You're trying to learn things about yourself and about your potential from that.

   3. DGDavid Goggins31:32

      That's exactly it.

   4. JRJoe Rogan31:33

      And that's what people don't understand.

   5. DGDavid Goggins31:34

      I studied the darkness. Y- y- you find no fucking answers in the light. None. It's too happy, it's too nice. It- we're not- we don't need to be taught how to live in happiness. We don't n- that- that just comes naturally to us, happy moments. But the dark times, man, you can't- and you can't get there unless you put yourself there. Life will take you there, but when you get into those dark moments, that's why people- that's why people... H- how are you able to... Man, I couldn't fucking read and write till I was a junior in high school. How are you able to write like this, man? Motherfucker, I go to such places in my mind and I study the darkness. Like, it's not just physical. When I was growing up and I saw my mom getting beat and I got beat, and I was some stuttering little Black kid in an all white school and I'm on stage and I gotta say one line, one fucking line in front of fucking 15 people, and I walk off stage coming with a fucking stutter. All those insecurities and all those fucking things, man, I used to go home and fucking cry. I'm like, "Oh, my God, man, I'm fucked up. This is all fucked up." I- I- I'm, "Hang on, man." As I got older, "We gotta study this shit, man. The only way we're gonna fucking get through this if you study it." So every time I'm in a dark moment and life's fucked up around me, whether it be physical or just life, I get in it, man, with a fucking pen and paper. I'm like, "Okay, this fucking sucks. I can feel like I'm fucking losing my shit, but let's fucking study this. Let's come out of this motherfucker a genius." You know, I studied the- I studied the- the- the- the black matter of the mind, the dark matter, you know, like fucking Stephen Hawking. If that's- if that's fucking his name, I said it right.

   6. JRJoe Rogan33:09

      (laughs)

   7. DGDavid Goggins33:09

      That motherfucker studied the space and shit.

   8. JRJoe Rogan33:12

      Yeah.

   9. DGDavid Goggins33:12

      That's what I consider myself, man. You know, I- I was on a journey, like- just like you said. I mean, you- you- you couldn't have said it any better. And so many people get it wrong and I don't give a fuck, man. You can't... For me, I cannot help people... There's- there's a lot of cookie cutter shit out here in this world. "Oh, discipline, wake up early, take cold shower, fuck this, fuck that," whatever.

   10. JRJoe Rogan33:33

       (laughs)

   11. DGDavid Goggins33:33

       It's all fucking bullshit. It's not. But what they don't teach you within the cookie cutter is, like, our minds are like a fucking garage. And the garage, you... If you open a garage that's all cluttered up, it's all fucked up, you can't put your car in there. You got fucking boats and you got fucking kids' toys and shit everywhere. But if you organize that fucking garage and you put everything in its rightful spot, you can pull that car in there. You can put two cars in there, you can put bikes in there. And that's like with the mind. People talk about discipline and fucking determination and fucking, you know, repetitions and all of this shit. Consistency. Why people fall off the wagon so often is because their mind is full of shit. There's no room in that mind for discipline. There's no room for consistency. They may do it once or twice, but then the mind takes over and that cluttered fucking garage comes in. And then, it's like a circuit breaker, man. A circuit breaker just overloads and it fucking sparks. And our minds, that's- that's our mind, man. It's like a fucking circuit breaker that has so much shit in it, you keep on loading it, you can't put any more into it. So I've- I talk about it in there, man, so much about clearing space in your fucking mind so then you have room for all those discipline. Waking up early, taking those... 'Cause they- they- they do mean something, but we don't get to that fucking dark matter that is keeping you from clearing out that mental garage.

   12. JRJoe Rogan35:03

       That's a good way to put it 'cause that is the mind of most people, is filled with stuff that they have to move around-

   13. DGDavid Goggins35:11

       Oh, my God.

   14. JRJoe Rogan35:11

       ... to get to what they want, and it's constantly piling up-

   15. DGDavid Goggins35:15

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JRJoe Rogan35:15

       ... and just shit, unorganized and...

   17. DGDavid Goggins35:17

       Organize mine, man. You're looking at fucking... I gotta take care of the kids, the kid's schedule is all fucked up, my husband, my- my wife, you know. I'm- I- I fucking... I'm going by McDonald's to get this and I- I'm rushing my schedule. Everything's just fucked.

   18. JRJoe Rogan35:29

       And I wish I was doing this, but I'm doing that-

   19. DGDavid Goggins35:31

       That's it.

   20. JRJoe Rogan35:31

       ... and that and this, and I want a raise, but I can't get one.

   21. DGDavid Goggins35:34

       That's it.

   22. JRJoe Rogan35:34

       My boss is an asshole.

   23. DGDavid Goggins35:36

       Where is greatness in that, man?

   24. JRJoe Rogan35:37

       Yeah.

   25. DGDavid Goggins35:38

       You can't... you- you can't fit discipline into that. You can't fit structure. You can't fit consistency. You can't fit the grind. And then when you try, it just gets fucking... it- it gets fucking overrun by the fucking clutter in your fucked up mental garage.

   26. JRJoe Rogan35:53

       When you are in these dark places and you're gathering up these lessons, how difficult is it to try to bring that back and convey it to people when you're not in that space? Like, when you're in that space, when you're in the Moab 240-

   27. DGDavid Goggins36:11

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan36:11

       ... and you- you're going uphill and you're in the middle of the g- it's just deep suck.

   29. DGDavid Goggins36:16

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan36:17

       How do you convey where that mental fortitude t- comes from? How do you bring that back? It's almost like you've got something you can't even hold in your hand-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yep. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      about being exhausted, "When am I gonna get a break?"

   2. DGDavid Goggins45:02

      Yep.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:03

      "How much do I have left in the tank?"

   4. DGDavid Goggins45:05

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:05

      "Can I even push forward here or will I gas out and risk getting stopped?"

   6. DGDavid Goggins45:10

      And that is exactly what you said goes on in the human mind-

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:15

      Yeah.

   8. DGDavid Goggins45:15

      ... when talent, when you have a talent problem.

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:17

      Yeah.

   10. DGDavid Goggins45:18

       It's exactly what goes on in your mind. So how are you gonna fucking defeat that, bro? You're sitting there getting beat the fuck down by a motherfucker that's on you, fucking just throwing you down, take down, take down, take down, hit in the face, hit in the face, and all that's going through your mind is what you just fucking said. There's no positivity in that. But when you train the mind the way I trained mine, fucking ready, man. Fucking ready 'cause, first of all, I didn't have much talent so I had to train one fucking thing. You better train your fucking mind because my talents could run out way early. When shit got hard for me back in the day, bro, "I'm done, I'm out, see you. Okay." I gotta invent a motherfucker that can, so I invented Goggins. I invented a motherfucker that, that, that realized we're not good enough, but Goggins realizes we're mentally strong as fuck and we're gonna out strength these motherfuckers in the mind.

   11. JRJoe Rogan46:11

       There's a big, um, under- there's an understanding in fighting that sometimes talent is a curse because some people are very talented and they just don't work as hard.

   12. DGDavid Goggins46:24

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JRJoe Rogan46:25

       You know, uh, Khabib Nurmagomedov talks about that.

   14. DGDavid Goggins46:28

       Right.

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:28

       And he's one of the greatest mixed martial arts fighters of all time.

   16. DGDavid Goggins46:32

       For sure.

   17. JRJoe Rogan46:32

       One of the rare guys to retire undefeated. But he's like, "Talented guys don't work hard enough."

   18. DGDavid Goggins46:37

       No.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:38

       He's like, "Talented guys... The problem with talented guys is they can get by early. They're, they're, like, faster than people."

   20. DGDavid Goggins46:45

       Yep.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:45

       "Maybe they just have a better understanding or better coordination." Some people are just... You know, we're not even, like, people are not even in their abilities when it comes to sports. Some people are just very gifted.

   22. DGDavid Goggins46:57

       Yes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:58

       But gifted fighters, in particular, they just... there's something about it where a lot of them never realize their full potential.

   24. DGDavid Goggins47:07

       No.

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:07

       Because they don't develop that mental game that you're talking about.

   26. DGDavid Goggins47:10

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan47:10

       They don't have to.

   28. DGDavid Goggins47:11

       No.

   29. JRJoe Rogan47:11

       'Cause they can piece people up on the outside, they win fights easy, they stop a bunch of people in the first round-

   30. DGDavid Goggins47:17

       Yep.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:13:36

   Do you ever have…

   1. DGDavid Goggins1:00:00

      Defense is shifting." Then you call an audible. In my mind, a lot of times, man, I'm like, uh, it doesn't mean I quit. I, I don't quit. You know, I may not make it the first time, but I'll come back. I gotta call an audible. I gotta fucking... I gotta, I gotta fucking get my head back in the game. I gotta, I gotta figure this shit out. It doesn't mean you leave, it means you study it more. It means you study it more. And, and whenever I fail at something... People always say, "Man, how do you handle failure, man?" 'Cause I fail a lot, dude. I fail all the fucking time. They go, "How do you ha- handle it?" What I'm trying to do... And this isn't being arrogant, man. I, I... It's being real. Not many people are trying to do, so there's not many people that who c- who can even open their fucking mouth and criticize me when I do fail, 'cause I'm on... I'm, I'm, I'm trying to do shit, man, that many people aren't trying to do, but I don't look at failure as failure. I look at failure as your first, second, third, fourth, fifth attempt. I look at them as attempts. I don't look at anything as failure, 'cause when you're willing to try to do some... Not trying is failure.... that's, that's the... And that's not some after-school special shit, but when you're able to go out there, there, there is no failure. It's attempts. 'Cause when you're trying to do something that's bigger than you, whatever you are, whoever you are, if, if, if you were paralyzed, you're trying to walk one step and you didn't, you didn't fail, motherfucker. That was your first attempt. If that's your biggest thing, that's how your mindset needs to go into everything. So I don't look at it as f-... Failure is a big word, like, that gets people down and shit. We give so much power to words. I don't. I take the power right away. I didn't fail shit.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:01:40

      Do you ever have conversations with Cam about mindset?

   3. DGDavid Goggins1:01:44

      We... No. We, we, we really don't go there too much at all about mindset. Like, whenever we get together, it's really about breaking the motherfuckers down. Like, we-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:01:52

      (laughs)

   5. DGDavid Goggins1:01:53

      It's like, it's like, p-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:01:54

      But wouldn't you be interested, though, in how he approach... Because I don't know if everybody shares your approach. I know there's not very many people like you.

   7. DGDavid Goggins1:02:02

      Right.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:02:02

      Cam is one of them.

   9. DGDavid Goggins1:02:03

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:02:03

       So, like, how many of 'em are like you and how many of 'em have that sort of similar approach? And how many of 'em are willing to discuss their own demons? Because a lot of people that are, like, super endurance athletes or very hard people, they don't ever wanna even discuss the weakness. They don't wanna shine any light on it.

   11. DGDavid Goggins1:02:22

       No, people hate that.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:02:23

       Yeah.

   13. DGDavid Goggins1:02:23

       People hate it, man. A- and I love it. And, and the reason that people hate it, to me, this is just my own theory, is because you haven't beat it.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:02:31

       Hmm.

   15. DGDavid Goggins1:02:31

       That's why. People go, "Man, why are you so open and vulnerable?" I tell you everything I lied about, everything I fucked up with, every... I'll tell you everything. I am an open fucking book. I don't give a fuck. The only reason why I don't give a fuck anymore is because I overcame it and I beat it. So I don't even talk about it.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:02:50

       Hmm.

   17. DGDavid Goggins1:02:50

       Why most people aren't willing to go to that darkness and that vulnerability is because they're still dealing with it. When people who have overcome it, they're open fucking book, bro, because they're proud. They're fucking proud. That's why I speak... "Man, man, why are you always yelling?" I go, "Fuck you." This is how I talk, bitch.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:03:08

       (laughs)

   19. DGDavid Goggins1:03:08

       'Cause I'm proud, motherfu-... You know what I'm saying? I'm a proud motherfucker, man.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:03:10

       Yeah.

   21. DGDavid Goggins1:03:11

       And it's not proud like, "Look at me." It's like, "Motherfucker, I know where I fucking came from, bitch. I shouldn't be here right now talking to you. Shouldn't be talking to you, motherfucker. I shouldn't be. You're honestly a fat, sloppy motherfucker." I'm proud. So I'm able to tell you, "I was fucked up." Many people can't. 'Cause-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:03:30

       Do... You know, that's a common thing that people say when I interview them after fights. Like, "I'm not supposed to be here."

   23. DGDavid Goggins1:03:36

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:03:36

       "This is not supposed to happen to me."

   25. DGDavid Goggins1:03:37

       Right.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:03:38

       "I was not..." There's a common thing when I've had conversations with people and they, you know, they've won a big fight, they've had this big event.

   27. DGDavid Goggins1:03:46

       Right.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:03:46

       They, they say, "I, I wasn't supposed to be here."

   29. DGDavid Goggins1:03:48

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:03:49

       Statistically. Like, Chris Gutierrez just said that, uh, last UFC fight when I interviewed him. He's like, s-... "I'm not supposed to be here."

Episode duration: 2:34:51