David Goggins & Elon Musk's Performance Secrets - Polina Pompliano | Modern Wisdom Podcast 298

When Elon Musk looks at people, he actually sees computers. He looks at you and he's like, "Wow, Kris. Like, look, you have the hardware that you were born with, which is your brain and the genes you got from your parents. But then there's also the software, the stuff that you consume on a daily basis, the content that you consume, the things that you learn that constantly upgrade your hardware. So what software are you installing in your mind on a daily basis?" And, and the way I think about it is like an iPhone. Like, are you operating at the latest iPhone update or are you still on like iOS 4? People like Elon are constantly upgrading that hardware. He sees the brain as a tool that's malleable, not something that's fixed and you're born with.

So you, you do The Profile, where you write a, a dossier about some of the most interesting people on Earth. Was there anyone that comes to mind as a person who you didn't really know if you were going to like them, and then after profiling them you ended up becoming a fan?

Ooh, that's interesting. Okay. So one that I wasn't really sure about was David Goggins, who, um, is this ultra-athlete. Uh, he went through BUD/S training, uh, for Navy SEALs, like, uh, several different times. And when I first came across his story, I was like, "I don't know. This guy just seems like very, you know, all in, aggressive, uh, very, uh, like a, like a man's man." I was like, "I'm not sure that I'll learn a lot from an ultra-athlete." Um, at the time I was training for a marathon when I first came across his story, so I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll learn something about, like, his, his, uh, regimen, his routine." But what I ended up finding out, that actually David Goggins is one of the most interesting people to me, because it's not just about physical, the, the physicality for him. It's very, very mental, and the fact that it took him so long to get in the right mindset to be able to do the things that he has done it's absolutely incredible, and I think he's a very, very good example of what somebody who's mentally resilient, uh, is. He, uh, you know, he used to... He's faced everything from racism to physical abuse to emotional abuse at the hands of his parents, at the hands of his classmates. Um, he had a very, very difficult childhood, and then he used these, like, mental techniques to get more mentally tough and to be able to do these, like, physical challenges that he, um, imposed on himself.

What are some of the techniques that he uses?

One of them is, he calls it the accountability mirror. So when he weighed like 300 pounds, he was, uh, he worked as a... He was spraying for cockroaches. He, um, came home one night with this, like, massive Steak 'n Shake shake from Steak 'n Shake, uh, and he sat down to watch TV, 'cause that's what he did every single day. And he came across this documentary on Navy SEALs, and that's kind of what piqued his interest to start getting in shape and turning his life around. But the accountability mirror basically was he posted sticky notes all over his mirror that told him, "Okay, for the next day, you're not gonna lie to anybody, uh, in order to protect your own feelings or their feelings," or whatever, because we all do that, right? Like, we lie every single day. He wanted to stop lying to himself and others, so that was a goal. He set these like... And, and another goal was, be able to run one mile. And, and those are, those are super, super specific things, because when you look in the mirror, the only person you cannot lie to is yourself. So he, it sounds really harsh, but, uh, he looked in the mirror the first day and he said... He looked at his reflection and he was like, "You're fat, you're lazy, you're unhealthy, you're stupid." All the things that he believed about himself, and those sticky notes were his, um, kind of the, the steps he took to change that narrative, so when he looked in the mirror he was proud of what he was seeing.