How to Build Immense Inner Strength
Speaker: David Goggins and Andrew Huberman
Duration: 02:37:35
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLb8_wgX50
Caption track: nDLb8_wgX50.en.vtt
Note: Caption text may contain errors from the source publisher or automatic speech recognition.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast
[00:00:02] where we discuss science and science-based tools
[00:00:04] for everyday life.
[00:00:05] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:00:09] I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor
[00:00:11] of neurobiology and ophthalmology
[00:00:13] at Stanford School of Medicine.
[00:00:15] My guest today is David Goggins.
[00:00:17] David Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL who
[00:00:20] served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:00:22] He's also a highly accomplished ultramarathon runner.
[00:00:25] For those of you that don't know,
[00:00:27] ultramarathons are distances longer
[00:00:29] than 26 miles and, in David's case, often longer
[00:00:32] than 200 miles.
[00:00:34] For his achievements in athletics,
[00:00:35] he has been inducted into the International Sports
[00:00:38] Hall of Fame.
[00:00:39] He also held a Guinness World Record for the most pull-ups
[00:00:42] completed in 24 hours.
[00:00:44] I should mention that not only was David a decorated Navy
[00:00:46] SEAL, but he also graduated from Army Ranger School.
[00:00:50] David is also a highly successful writer,
[00:00:53] having authored two books, the first entitled "Can't Hurt Me"
[00:00:56] and the second entitled "Never Finished," both of which
[00:00:58] are best sellers.
[00:01:00] David's books cover many topics, including
[00:01:02] his autobiographical description of what can only
[00:01:05] be described as an incredibly challenging child
[00:01:09] and young adulthood.
[00:01:10] His home was abusive.
[00:01:12] His school environment was abusive.
[00:01:13] He essentially had no positive resources directed his way and.
[00:01:17] In his 20s, he found himself to be obese, that is,
[00:01:21] more than 300 pounds working a job
[00:01:23] he despised for minimal pay.
[00:01:25] And it was at that point that David began an inner dialogue
[00:01:30] that forced him to explore the demons born out
[00:01:32] of his childhood but also the position that he found himself
[00:01:35] in as a young man and then began the journey
[00:01:39] to navigate that dialogue and transform himself into the Navy
[00:01:42] SEAL, the ultramarathon runner, the bestselling author,
[00:01:45] and the extraordinarily positive and influential man
[00:01:48] that he is today.
[00:01:49] As some of you may know, David has
[00:01:51] done various public lectures.
[00:01:53] He's a familiar face online because there are so
[00:01:56] many clips of him on YouTube.
[00:01:58] And he has done podcasts before.
[00:02:00] However, I'm certain that you'll find today's discussion
[00:02:03] to be very different than previous podcasts
[00:02:06] that David has been featured on.
[00:02:08] The reason is that-- of course, we
[00:02:10] get into his accomplishments.
[00:02:11] We talk about the mindset that allowed
[00:02:13] him to achieve those things.
[00:02:15] But, today, David really lets us under the hood.
[00:02:17] He lets us into the form of inner dialogue
[00:02:21] that he has to embrace, indeed that he
[00:02:23] has to grapple with on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times
[00:02:26] throughout the day and night in order
[00:02:29] to impose the sort of self-discipline
[00:02:31] that he is so well known for.
[00:02:33] We also get into some of the scientific mechanisms
[00:02:35] underlying willpower.
[00:02:36] And we talk about David's current endeavors
[00:02:39] that include, for instance, his own exploration of science
[00:02:43] and medicine for which he has become an intense scholar
[00:02:46] and practitioner.
[00:02:47] I should mention that multiple times throughout today's
[00:02:50] discussion you will hear curse words.
[00:02:53] Now David and I both acknowledge that cursing
[00:02:55] isn't for everybody and that cursing
[00:02:58] itself is different than cursing at somebody.
[00:03:01] Nonetheless, we do realize that many people, parents
[00:03:05] perhaps especially, might not want to hear cursing.
[00:03:09] If you don't want to hear cursing,
[00:03:11] well, then this podcast episode is probably not for you.
[00:03:14] However, if you are comfortable with cursing
[00:03:16] or if you can tolerate it, I assure you
[00:03:19] today's discussion is highly worthwhile.
[00:03:22] Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize
[00:03:24] that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research
[00:03:26] roles at Stanford.
[00:03:28] It is, however, part of my desire and effort
[00:03:30] to bring zero cost to consumer information
[00:03:32] about science and science-related tools
[00:03:34] to the general public.
[00:03:35] In keeping with that theme, I'd like
[00:03:37] to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
[00:03:40] Our first sponsor is Maui Nui Venison.
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[00:03:47] I've spoken before on this podcast
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[00:04:50] Today's episode is also brought to us by AeroPress.
[00:04:53] AeroPress is similar to a French press for making coffee,
[00:04:56] but it is, in fact, a much better way to make coffee.
[00:04:59] I first learned about AeroPress well over 10 years ago.
[00:05:02] And I've been using one ever since.
[00:05:04] AeroPress was developed by Alan Adler, who
[00:05:07] was an engineer at Stanford.
[00:05:08] And I knew of Alan because he had also
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[00:05:25] So he was sort of famous in our community
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[00:05:33] Now I love coffee.
[00:05:34] I'm somebody that drinks coffee nearly every day, usually
[00:05:37] about 90 to 120 minutes after I wake up
[00:05:39] in the morning, although not always.
[00:05:40] Sometimes if I'm going to exercise,
[00:05:42] I'll drink coffee first thing in the morning.
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[00:06:40] Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.
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[00:06:47] I've spoken many times before on this podcast
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[00:06:54] Now a key component of getting a great night's sleep
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[00:07:54] And now for my discussion with David Goggins.
[00:07:57] David Goggins, welcome.
[00:07:59] DAVID GOGGINS: My man.
[00:08:00] Good to see you again, man.
[00:08:01] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great to see you.
[00:08:03] It was late 2016, early 2017, I believe,
[00:08:05] when you were in my lab at Stanford.
[00:08:06] DAVID GOGGINS: Yes sir.
[00:08:07] ANDREW HUBERMAN: We did a little work later that day
[00:08:10] down in San Jose.
[00:08:11] And, gosh, see you everywhere, but it's not enough.
[00:08:15] So great to have you here.
[00:08:16] DAVID GOGGINS: Thanks for having me on, brother.
[00:08:17] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.
[00:08:19] You embody discipline and doing hard things.
[00:08:23] I think we should just start right off with--
[00:08:24] DAVID GOGGINS: Yeah.
[00:08:25] Let's just go there.
[00:08:26] ANDREW HUBERMAN: --the bold truth.
[00:08:27] But right before we went hot mics,
[00:08:31] we were talking about learning.
[00:08:33] Right now, you're spending some time learning and doing things
[00:08:37] that I think most people probably don't typically
[00:08:39] associate David Goggins with.
[00:08:40] DAVID GOGGINS: Right.
[00:08:41] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Why don't you tell us about that?
[00:08:42] DAVID GOGGINS: Well, most people just
[00:08:44] look at me as the guy that runs and yells as he's running.
[00:08:48] While I do that to motivate people,
[00:08:51] but people don't understand that my day is broken up
[00:08:54] into segments.
[00:08:56] I work out.
[00:08:57] I eat.
[00:08:58] I sleep, but I spend most of my time studying.
[00:09:01] So like I'm in the medical world.
[00:09:02] I'm a paramedic in Canada.
[00:09:05] But I spend a lot of my time trying
[00:09:08] to nuke every single thing about it because I'm not
[00:09:11] trying to just be a paramedic, learn about veins,
[00:09:15] and arteries, and how the heart pumps, and stuff like that.
[00:09:17] I'm trying to learn to the point where
[00:09:19] I can save someone's life.
[00:09:21] And even though paramedics are doing that all over the world,
[00:09:24] I'm trying to be that paramedic that can really
[00:09:26] dissect exactly what's going on and figure out what medication
[00:09:29] goes where, just trying to learn the algorithm of what's
[00:09:34] going on, man.
[00:09:35] So I spent a lot of time with it.
[00:09:36] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love the word algorithm
[00:09:38] because when I teach biology or try and learn
[00:09:40] anything that's related to biology and especially
[00:09:43] the human body, I need to know the nouns.
[00:09:46] But it's the verbs that matter.
[00:09:47] And that's really what you're talking about.
[00:09:49] Just saying that sits there, that brain part there,
[00:09:53] doesn't tell you how it all works together.
[00:09:55] So what does your process for studying look like?
[00:09:58] If we dropped a camera in the room,
[00:10:02] brought a microphone into your inner dialogue--
[00:10:06] gosh, wouldn't we all love that.
[00:10:08] But if we dropped a microphone into your inner dialogue,
[00:10:10] are you waking up looking at the books and going,
[00:10:12] yeah, fresh day, let's learn or is some of the same resistance
[00:10:16] that you've talked about coming up around physical work,
[00:10:20] is that coming up from time to time?
[00:10:22] DAVID GOGGINS: You know what, I was nervous at first.
[00:10:25] I'm going to keep it real.
[00:10:28] So I'm not a real smart guy.
[00:10:31] And what I mean by that is I was born with ADD, ADHD.
[00:10:35] Like my brain cannot retain information.
[00:10:38] I'm not some genetic freak when it comes to running,
[00:10:41] when it comes to lifting weights.
[00:10:42] I am absolutely the bottom of the barrel.
[00:10:44] And people will never believe me.
[00:10:47] And they can just whatever.
[00:10:49] Believe what you want to believe.
[00:10:51] So when you ask me this question about what does studying look
[00:10:55] like for me, I have to go over the same page over, and over,
[00:11:01] and over, and over again, while Jennifer can look at that page
[00:11:04] while she's quizzing me, she'll learn it right then
[00:11:08] as she's-- she didn't know anything about it.
[00:11:10] She will quiz herself or quiz me and learn it
[00:11:14] as she's quizzing me.
[00:11:15] It's the most frustrating thing in the world
[00:11:17] how my brain works.
[00:11:19] So what I do is I literally sit there with a pen and paper.
[00:11:23] And I have my books.
[00:11:24] And I go through and have to write everything
[00:11:27] down every single day.
[00:11:31] I will study the same page until it's
[00:11:34] photographic memory from writing the same thing down.
[00:11:38] And then from there, I'll go back through and relearn it
[00:11:40] again.
[00:11:41] So I'll learn the bulk of it.
[00:11:44] But then I'll go through and learn the small things
[00:11:49] within that.
[00:11:50] So if it's a medication, I'll learn what the medication does.
[00:11:54] First, I'll learn how to even say
[00:11:56] the medication because these medications aren't
[00:12:00] like albuterol.
[00:12:01] No, it's very big words.
[00:12:03] So I'll go through, learn how to say the name.
[00:12:05] Then I'll go through learn what the dose is.
[00:12:08] Then I'll go through-- and this is like every single day.
[00:12:11] So it's not like, oh, I got it.
[00:12:13] Let's just go through-- no, nothing is I got it.
[00:12:15] Every single thing-- so I can't wait
[00:12:19] to get in this conversation because everything
[00:12:21] I do in life, it sucks.
[00:12:24] Everything I do in life, it sucks.
[00:12:26] That's why when I was 300 pounds and 24 years old,
[00:12:30] it wasn't like I had some big epiphany of let's just
[00:12:34] go be a Navy SEAL, and let's lose some weight.
[00:12:36] No, I knew my entire life was going
[00:12:40] to be a struggle, which is why I just ignored it.
[00:12:43] And I said, I'm not even trying to jump off any of this shit
[00:12:48] and learn how to read, how to write, how to memorize,
[00:12:51] how to become something I am not.
[00:12:54] But through that process, something happened to me.
[00:12:57] And I realized-- this is why I feel sorry for no one.
[00:13:01] In this podcast, they're going to really not like me
[00:13:05] because people are going to think
[00:13:07] that I am maybe lying or maybe fibbing or exaggerating.
[00:13:14] No, I am literally--
[00:13:16] I was the lowest form on Earth, no talent, no ability to learn.
[00:13:22] And I literally know what it is to be rock bottom
[00:13:25] and to build that up.
[00:13:26] So that question about learning is the pain in my ass.
[00:13:29] And I don't have to do it.
[00:13:31] Just think about it.
[00:13:32] I'm 49 years old, and I'm a multi-millionaire.
[00:13:35] I don't have to do anything.
[00:13:37] So all I thought about when I was growing up
[00:13:39] is, man, I can't wait to one day get to the point
[00:13:44] where I no longer have to do this stuff.
[00:13:47] But what happened as I got older,
[00:13:49] it became a way of living.
[00:13:51] So how I do every day is how I do every day.
[00:13:54] It's a discipline.
[00:13:55] It's a regimen.
[00:13:57] It was a choice I made.
[00:13:59] And the choice I made was what are you willing to sacrifice,
[00:14:04] and what are you willing to give up to find every bit of who
[00:14:08] you are as a human being?
[00:14:09] And I was willing to give up everything to do that.
[00:14:11] So studying is no joke.
[00:14:13] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love that you're studying.
[00:14:15] I recall a few years ago, I heard some interview or podcast
[00:14:20] with you.
[00:14:20] And you just threw out like I don't know what I'll do next.
[00:14:23] Maybe I'll be a scientist.
[00:14:24] And I went yeah.
[00:14:26] Because I knew-- because I know you a bit.
[00:14:29] And I see your work out there, but we
[00:14:30] had met before, that if you decided
[00:14:34] that you were going to do it--
[00:14:35] and learning medicine, which is what you're doing,
[00:14:38] learning human physiology is so detailed.
[00:14:41] DAVID GOGGINS: Very.
[00:14:42] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And people out there
[00:14:43] have to understand when you look at a textbook
[00:14:45] and you see the veins and the capillaries different colors,
[00:14:49] when the body is open, they're not different colors.
[00:14:51] DAVID GOGGINS: Right, right, right.
[00:14:53] ANDREW HUBERMAN: So I mean, some things
[00:14:54] have different color contrasts, but it's not
[00:14:56] like it's all labeled when you pop it open.
[00:14:58] DAVID GOGGINS: Exactly.
[00:14:59] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And so the process of writing things down
[00:15:01] by hand is important for you.
[00:15:03] So you go back and read those notes.
[00:15:04] Do you think about that stuff on your runs
[00:15:06] too or are you segmenting your day
[00:15:08] like when you're done studying, are you heading out for a run
[00:15:11] and thinking about other things?
[00:15:12] Or are you still rehearsing the material in your head?
[00:15:16] DAVID GOGGINS: So when I write it down, I write it down,
[00:15:19] and I'm able to--
[00:15:21] I'm actually looking down at this table
[00:15:22] right now because I'm back to writing.
[00:15:24] So I'm actually there right now as I'm speaking to you.
[00:15:27] I write it down in a way that I'm memorizing page 69.
[00:15:32] So I'm writing it down.
[00:15:34] So then writing it down and that page sync together in my brain.
[00:15:38] So I'm looking at the book in my brain right now.
[00:15:42] That's just how it works for me.
[00:15:44] And I have to do it over and over again.
[00:15:46] So that page is stuck in my mind.
[00:15:48] So I'm literally flipping through pages
[00:15:50] as I'm taking these tests.
[00:15:52] And I'm taking these national tests to become a paramedic
[00:15:55] or become an advanced EMT or whatever.
[00:15:57] I'm literally as I'm taking that test I'm going through.
[00:16:01] And I'm like-- now I'm flipping pages in my head
[00:16:05] where that page was.
[00:16:06] And how I do that is just from how I write it
[00:16:09] and how it's on the page.
[00:16:11] When I run, I can't recall any of it.
[00:16:16] I cannot bring any of that because I'm running.
[00:16:20] How my mind is wired now is that everything I do is what I do.
[00:16:25] Because the focus it takes for me to-- right now, I'm running.
[00:16:29] I'm not like a great runner.
[00:16:31] I'm not like injury free.
[00:16:33] So like my first 20 minutes of the run I'm limping.
[00:16:37] I'm literally limping because I've
[00:16:39] had several knee surgeries.
[00:16:41] And my body was twisted.
[00:16:43] And so now it's untwisting.
[00:16:45] So people look at me, oh, looks, like he's limping when he runs.
[00:16:49] I am limping when I run.
[00:16:50] My body is jacked up so I'm focusing
[00:16:52] on how to get the best out of a broken body.
[00:16:56] So everything I do is a total focus
[00:16:59] on what I'm doing at that point in my life.
[00:17:01] ANDREW HUBERMAN: So it seems like you've really
[00:17:03] trained away or somehow gotten away from the ADD
[00:17:07] that you mentioned because what you described
[00:17:09] is like a deep trench.
[00:17:10] It's like a V shaped trench.
[00:17:11] I'm imagining like there's a ball bearing,
[00:17:13] and it's like, phewp, and it can only go forward in that trench
[00:17:16] or back.
[00:17:17] And it goes forward.
[00:17:18] It's not like sliding around at the concave at the bottom,
[00:17:21] zip-zip-zip, like a tension.
[00:17:23] So it's like you trained that up.
[00:17:25] Is there a similar feeling when you're
[00:17:27] in the full focus of running versus full focus of studying?
[00:17:31] Does it kind of feel like, oh yeah,
[00:17:33] that's the same groove but different thing or is it
[00:17:36] just completely different world?
[00:17:38] DAVID GOGGINS: It's a completely different world.
[00:17:41] Both of them for me is suffering,
[00:17:43] but it's suffering a whole different way.
[00:17:45] Like when I was going through school, I never forget--
[00:17:48] I think I was in third grade.
[00:17:51] And back then, ADD, ADHD, wasn't like here's this medicine
[00:17:57] or here's this thing.
[00:17:58] They want to put you in a special school.
[00:18:00] So for me, I was so far behind in learning
[00:18:04] that their big thing was let's just put him
[00:18:06] in a special school because he'll never learn.
[00:18:09] And through that process of like I
[00:18:12] don't want to be in a special school,
[00:18:14] I don't want to be treated any differently, it really--
[00:18:18] like I never took medication.
[00:18:20] I've never taken medication for this.
[00:18:22] That's why right now you see me looking right in your eyes.
[00:18:24] What the hell is Huberman saying right now.
[00:18:28] And that's why I don't feel bad for people who have ADHD,
[00:18:32] who have learning disabilities.
[00:18:34] And some are impossible because you just can't.
[00:18:38] But a lot of them you can.
[00:18:41] But people don't want to go through the process of focus,
[00:18:45] of teaching yourself how to truly focus.
[00:18:47] This is where my message gets lost.
[00:18:49] It gets lost because I may say MF or F because that's
[00:18:54] the passion that comes out of me.
[00:18:57] It takes everything for me to learn a sentence.
[00:19:02] So when I speak about David Goggins,
[00:19:04] I can't speak about David Goggins in a way that's
[00:19:07] just calm and cool.
[00:19:09] Because when I wake up, I know the journey
[00:19:11] that it takes for me to find my greatness.
[00:19:13] And it's hard.
[00:19:15] Nothing is easy.
[00:19:17] Nothing just like, oh, I wake up, and I just do this
[00:19:19] or I do that or it just-- no, I watch people every day
[00:19:23] go through life, and it's so easy.
[00:19:25] For me to be where I'm at today, it takes every bit of me.
[00:19:30] So when I speak about it, and as I get going here,
[00:19:33] you'll start seeing me-- the tempo will rise.
[00:19:35] The passion will come out because I'm back there.
[00:19:38] I'm doing what I do every day to become a human being.
[00:19:41] And so nothing is easy.
[00:19:44] Like running is running.
[00:19:45] It sucks.
[00:19:46] But you have a choice to make.
[00:19:48] Do you want to sit down and go back to that guy you once were?
[00:19:52] No.
[00:19:53] So this is what it takes.
[00:19:55] It takes that misunderstanding of people.
[00:19:58] And they'll never get it because they were never David Goggins.
[00:20:01] So that is what it takes for me to do what I do.
[00:20:03] It may take you something differently.
[00:20:05] So for me, everything has to be in the study.
[00:20:07] Everything has to be into this.
[00:20:08] Everything has to be in-- everywhere
[00:20:10] I am it has to be there, me, focused where I am.
[00:20:13] That's why you're my second podcast
[00:20:15] I've done since Rogan, since the book came out.
[00:20:17] I don't have time for that shit because if I want to be great,
[00:20:21] I'm not trying to maximize money or maximize people knowing me.
[00:20:25] I do these things because maybe someone out there will
[00:20:29] understand me and get it and say, I can grow from this guy,
[00:20:33] and others just won't.
[00:20:35] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Sounds like friction is something
[00:20:37] you're very familiar with.
[00:20:39] It's a word just I feel like is like cast above us
[00:20:41] right now in bold face, highlighted, underlined
[00:20:44] letters.
[00:20:44] DAVID GOGGINS: Friction is growth.
[00:20:45] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Friction, like you're up in the morning.
[00:20:48] And I imagine David Goggins going to the coffee maker,
[00:20:51] stretching out, good morning, sunshine.
[00:20:53] And you're telling me from eyelids open there's friction.
[00:20:57] DAVID GOGGINS: Yes, and that is the thing that people
[00:20:59] don't-- they don't fucking get.
[00:21:02] The biggest misunderstanding about David Goggins
[00:21:04] of all time--
[00:21:05] it's like whether you believe in God or not--
[00:21:07] I do-- he put this lab rat, which is me, on this planet
[00:21:14] and said let me fucking see what a beat up,
[00:21:18] abused kid who can barely learn, barely learn,
[00:21:23] who has a twisted body, messed up genetics, sickle cell, this
[00:21:28] and that, let me give him everything
[00:21:31] that pretty much disqualifies you from the military.
[00:21:33] But back then, it wasn't as-- and let's put him in this
[00:21:38] and see what comes out of it.
[00:21:39] So to do that, friction--
[00:21:42] you don't wake up in the morning time
[00:21:43] and go to the coffee maker.
[00:21:45] Matter of fact, sometimes you don't even sleep.
[00:21:47] What it requires is when I'm at--
[00:21:50] 2 o'clock-- it's 2 o'clock in the morning.
[00:21:52] And my brain is thinking about a fucking drug.
[00:21:55] And I got to get up and look in my book
[00:21:57] to see what that drug is, how I remember it.
[00:22:00] And this is every day of my fucking life.
[00:22:04] That's why when I train a fighter or I train someone,
[00:22:06] I'm like, you have no fucking idea how great you really
[00:22:09] are because you are using such minimal,
[00:22:14] minimal of what you have.
[00:22:16] And if people can learn to focus, this is what's possible.
[00:22:21] While it may not be pretty-- like
[00:22:23] people want to do a documentary on me.
[00:22:24] I go no.
[00:22:26] I don't want to do a documentary on me
[00:22:28] because I will have normal everyday people picking me
[00:22:32] apart.
[00:22:33] Oh, his life is miserable.
[00:22:35] Who wants to live like that?
[00:22:38] It's crazy how he-- it's almost like he's sick.
[00:22:40] He's psychotic.
[00:22:44] The most frustrating thing in the world for me
[00:22:46] is when normal people judge a man like myself
[00:22:50] on what it really takes to extract greatness from nothing.
[00:22:57] It takes every bit of who you are if you choose that route.
[00:23:02] If you don't, Merry Christmas, do what you got to do.
[00:23:06] But, yeah, all these things for me--
[00:23:09] like I told you, man, I'm going to keep it real.
[00:23:12] I'm not coming here to talk about perform without purpose
[00:23:18] because I go through--
[00:23:19] when I write these books, I go through,
[00:23:22] I try to dumb down David Goggins.
[00:23:25] How can I give normal people-- and I'm normal.
[00:23:28] But I found something that most don't want to find.
[00:23:31] How can I speak to people and give them
[00:23:33] something from this crazy psychotic brain that I've
[00:23:36] developed?
[00:23:37] How can I give them that?
[00:23:38] So I sit down with Jennifer for years
[00:23:41] and write down perform without purpose,
[00:23:44] callus your mind, armor your mind, the cookie jar,
[00:23:48] the accountability mirror, shit that people can fucking use
[00:23:52] in their lives.
[00:23:53] No, no, I'm glad it helps you.
[00:23:57] But the barbaric life that I live that you have to live,
[00:24:02] the almost obsession that you must have to be great,
[00:24:06] you can't put that shit in a fucking book, bro.
[00:24:08] You can't put in a book.
[00:24:10] You can't.
[00:24:11] You can't write about it.
[00:24:12] ANDREW HUBERMAN: It has to be experienced.
[00:24:13] DAVID GOGGINS: It has to be experienced.
[00:24:15] And you can't even--
[00:24:16] after you experience it, to write it in the book,
[00:24:21] it would seem like he needs to be locked up.
[00:24:24] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Too gory.
[00:24:25] DAVID GOGGINS: It's too gory.
[00:24:26] Doesn't make sense for a guy that everything,
[00:24:28] every second of the day he is trying
[00:24:31] to extract more from something.
[00:24:34] He's constantly thinking.
[00:24:36] He's constantly, constantly disciplined,
[00:24:38] never going off the path.
[00:24:40] Whatever is injured on him, he figures away.
[00:24:43] It's a conquerors mindset.
[00:24:46] And very few people, if any, can really understand what that is.
[00:24:52] Like I'm almost 50.
[00:24:55] And I've been this way for almost 30 years.
[00:24:58] Like what do you do for fun?
[00:25:02] These questions, I don't get them.
[00:25:04] I don't understand them.
[00:25:05] I don't-- so yeah.
[00:25:06] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I get asked that sometimes,
[00:25:08] what do you do for fun.
[00:25:08] I start listing off all this stuff like podcasting, reading,
[00:25:11] working out.
[00:25:13] So some of that resonates.
[00:25:15] But I think what's so truly unusual about what
[00:25:19] you're describing, your process is that from go it's hard.
[00:25:25] And I have to ask was being 300 pounds, having essentially--
[00:25:29] I'm using the words you've described.
[00:25:31] DAVID GOGGINS: No, do it.
[00:25:32] ANDREW HUBERMAN: You've said it before.
[00:25:33] You had a tendency at one point in your life early
[00:25:35] on tell lies, try and get people's approval.
[00:25:38] DAVID GOGGINS: Lied my ass off.
[00:25:40] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Crazy haircuts, attention seeking,
[00:25:43] and yet all of that triggered something
[00:25:47] that now is extraordinary.
[00:25:52] Do you think those hardships were
[00:25:56] necessary to flip the switch?
[00:25:58] DAVID GOGGINS: I don't know if they were necessary,
[00:26:00] but it was something that made me feel--
[00:26:04] I didn't feel good.
[00:26:06] It was easy.
[00:26:08] The brain that I was given as a child,
[00:26:12] it was easy to go home and think about,
[00:26:14] how do I want to be a freak today?
[00:26:17] How do I want to show up to school today and be a freak?
[00:26:19] It didn't require me going home and opening a book up saying,
[00:26:23] it's going to take me all year to learn this fucking page.
[00:26:26] So instead of learning that page,
[00:26:29] I learned how to become a character.
[00:26:33] And maybe that character that I created,
[00:26:36] that 300 pound, insecure guy that
[00:26:39] used to fake it till I make it type of guy,
[00:26:43] let me become your friend, let me lie to you
[00:26:45] until you like me type of guy--
[00:26:48] when you have any manhood, womanhood, a human being,
[00:26:55] a soul, a spirit, any--
[00:26:58] I must have just this much pride because that's exactly
[00:27:02] what opened the door for me.
[00:27:03] Because every day, you were a character.
[00:27:05] Every day, you were a clown.
[00:27:06] Every day, you opened that Spanish book or that science
[00:27:11] book or English book, and you looked at it.
[00:27:13] It looked like a foreign language.
[00:27:17] And you're saying, where do I start?
[00:27:20] Where do I start?
[00:27:21] And, obviously, it was necessary.
[00:27:24] The more I talk about it, it was necessary because what
[00:27:26] happened is I became haunted by the mere fact
[00:27:31] that this is my existence.
[00:27:33] And you got to live with that.
[00:27:35] And I lived with it for a lot of years.
[00:27:38] And so I sat back and said, OK, all right,
[00:27:41] I know what this takes.
[00:27:42] And when you sit back, as fucked up as I was--
[00:27:46] and I had a laundry list, a table
[00:27:50] like this of what I have to do to become
[00:27:53] just a human being that can make ends meet,
[00:27:57] that can make $1,000 a month.
[00:27:59] Just to get there was like, oh my god, dude, like how--
[00:28:03] I'm 16, 17, I can't read.
[00:28:06] I can't write.
[00:28:09] Oh my god, I'm so behind the power curve.
[00:28:11] And my brain is about being depressed.
[00:28:13] And my dad beat-- my mom's not home.
[00:28:15] And kids are calling me nigger at school.
[00:28:17] And I'm like, oh my god, man, what the fuck do I do?
[00:28:21] And it wasn't like someone came around and said,
[00:28:23] hey, man, you can do this.
[00:28:26] This is all me.
[00:28:28] Some people want to know where does this cold man come from.
[00:28:32] I'm not trying to be cold.
[00:28:34] It's the reality of my life.
[00:28:36] It's the reality of a lot of people's lives.
[00:28:39] And so, yeah, that had to happen for me to be haunted,
[00:28:43] to be haunted, to pull out, to extract
[00:28:46] the guy that I am today.
[00:28:47] That haunting is something that's still there today
[00:28:51] because no matter how much you improve,
[00:28:53] no matter how much you change who you are,
[00:28:57] it's not permanent.
[00:28:59] You don't just wake up and say, oh my god, man,
[00:29:03] you're David Goggins.
[00:29:04] You break records.
[00:29:05] You do this.
[00:29:05] You do that.
[00:29:06] People want to know, how are you able to just be so hard?
[00:29:12] Because I never turn the fucking thing off.
[00:29:14] Because once it turns off, I go right back
[00:29:17] to the David Goggins that is.
[00:29:19] And that's the guy that I'm constantly fighting every day.
[00:29:23] And it's a choice.
[00:29:24] And that choice makes you misunderstood.
[00:29:27] It makes you crazy.
[00:29:28] That's why I hate fucking social media.
[00:29:31] In 2013, people wanted me to write my book.
[00:29:35] I did it in 2018.
[00:29:37] Took five years.
[00:29:39] And the reason why I didn't do it--
[00:29:40] I sat at the table, and Jennifer was there.
[00:29:42] This was before she started working for me,
[00:29:45] I started dating her or whatever.
[00:29:47] And all these people were there.
[00:29:48] And they're like, man, you got to go on social media.
[00:29:51] And I was like, fuck you, man.
[00:29:54] It's poison.
[00:29:56] It's poison because I knew what I did to get where I am.
[00:30:00] And I'm going to have these people,
[00:30:01] these normal, everyday people, fat, lazy,
[00:30:06] exactly who I was judging me.
[00:30:11] Because I know it because I was once them.
[00:30:13] All my hard work, all my dedication,
[00:30:15] I'm going to have some normal dude get
[00:30:17] his little brownie, his little Ding Dong, Ho Ho, Twinkie,
[00:30:20] sit there with his coffee picking me apart.
[00:30:24] Oh, he must be unhappy.
[00:30:27] Do you know how hard it is to put these shoes
[00:30:29] on every damn morning?
[00:30:30] And I'm gonna have you pick me apart?
[00:30:33] So, yeah, there's so much that goes into this
[00:30:39] that I was like fuck this.
[00:30:42] I never wanted anything to do with it.
[00:30:44] So anyway.
[00:30:48] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'm not a psychologist.
[00:30:50] But knowing your story from what you've written,
[00:30:53] what you've said on social media,
[00:30:54] and elsewhere, podcasts and here now especially, it's
[00:30:58] amazing to me, and, frankly, it pulls
[00:31:00] at my heartstrings a little bit I
[00:31:02] realize that's not what you're trying to do
[00:31:04] but that in the course of your childhood and in your young
[00:31:07] adulthood that no one ever got between you and the world.
[00:31:11] I forget where I heard it that if a kid has just one
[00:31:14] person that believes in them--
[00:31:16] and I had my trials and tribulations.
[00:31:17] But I had great coaches, great mentors.
[00:31:20] I attached to them.
[00:31:21] I found them if they didn't necessarily find me.
[00:31:23] But I'm realizing that your situation was no one's ever
[00:31:28] said, hey, I'm going to stand here next to you
[00:31:30] or get in front of you, put a shield up.
[00:31:33] And so it's almost like you've got these different--
[00:31:39] it's all you, but there's versions of yourself--
[00:31:41] that like you knew social media-- like I don't know
[00:31:44] that I have the wherewithal in 2013 '14, '15, '16,
[00:31:47] '17 to get in front of myself while doing
[00:31:50] all this because I've already got so much going on in here.
[00:31:53] Is that about right?
[00:31:53] DAVID GOGGINS: That is right.
[00:31:55] But I had developed a lot of anger.
[00:31:57] And I still have it.
[00:31:58] And it will never go away for the normal human beings
[00:32:02] of this world because when you put yourself in the sewer
[00:32:06] like I was in-- and please, if someone saved me,
[00:32:09] come out and announce it to the world.
[00:32:12] There was no one.
[00:32:14] There's no one.
[00:32:16] So when you know that--
[00:32:18] and then I'm sitting at the table
[00:32:20] with all these smart people who are telling
[00:32:21] me what to do and shit and guiding me through my life
[00:32:24] now when I'm 40 fucking years old.
[00:32:27] It's 2000-- I don't know 40-something years old.
[00:32:30] Now I'm 49.
[00:32:31] And I'm looking at them all.
[00:32:32] And they're now trying to guide me
[00:32:34] on what's right on this poison.
[00:32:39] And so, yeah, what you say is right.
[00:32:41] But for me, it was more of I know now.
[00:32:46] I don't need you to guide my future.
[00:32:50] I know what's good for me and what's bad for me.
[00:32:53] And for me, it took every bit of focus I could.
[00:32:56] And I know social media--
[00:32:57] that's why people love to go on there because they want to show
[00:33:01] you the good side of life.
[00:33:05] I'm not teaching good side of life.
[00:33:07] So I had to figure out a way when
[00:33:09] I came on 2016 of teaching you what life really is
[00:33:14] for the majority of us is hell.
[00:33:17] And so while people love to show you the cars, and the house,
[00:33:22] and the vacations and shit, all that's good.
[00:33:25] All that's happy.
[00:33:27] I'm going to show you the side that I know most of you
[00:33:30] are going through.
[00:33:31] And people hide very well.
[00:33:33] I don't want to hide anymore.
[00:33:35] I hid it for 24 fucking years.
[00:33:38] So that's why now when I told you
[00:33:39] we can talk about whatever you want
[00:33:41] because as human beings, the first thing we have to learn--
[00:33:46] I also stuttered real bad growing up.
[00:33:47] So if you hear me stutter every now and then,
[00:33:49] it's because that was part of my life also.
[00:33:53] So it's funny.
[00:33:55] Human beings want to show you the best side.
[00:33:57] And they want to hide the worst side.
[00:33:59] For me, I'm going to teach you how
[00:34:01] to be vulnerable because that's the only way you fix yourself.
[00:34:05] You don't fix yourself by coming out here
[00:34:07] and me selling you some fucking books.
[00:34:09] That's why I don't have them.
[00:34:11] I forgot them.
[00:34:13] I'm glad people got something from the book.
[00:34:16] I want you to learn that the only way you grow
[00:34:21] is how to look at yourself and say, OK,
[00:34:24] like I did, table longer than this, what the fuck I have
[00:34:28] to do to get somewhere?
[00:34:30] There was nothing good on there, nothing.
[00:34:32] Yeah, I loved playing basketball.
[00:34:34] I left that out.
[00:34:35] That's something I love to do.
[00:34:37] I don't care about that.
[00:34:38] That didn't make the fucking list
[00:34:40] because the list that I had to live by
[00:34:42] was the very list that was going to get me at this table
[00:34:45] with you to talk to you to the normal human beings, which
[00:34:50] I once was, about how you can get somewhere and how it looks.
[00:34:55] It looks very ugly.
[00:34:58] There's no fucking passion.
[00:35:00] There's no fucking motivation.
[00:35:02] There's no, oh my god, man, I fucking--
[00:35:05] no, it's every day of your life just doing,
[00:35:11] no passion, no discipline, no motivation, all these words.
[00:35:15] I hate that so many people fucking use these words now
[00:35:17] because it's watered.
[00:35:20] Someone sitting in the room by themselves
[00:35:22] and they figure themselves out and say, god, this
[00:35:24] is going to fucking suck.
[00:35:27] Where's passion when you're 300 pounds?
[00:35:31] Where's the motivation when you can't read and write?
[00:35:33] Where is it?
[00:35:34] So how did this happen?
[00:35:36] I just fucking did.
[00:35:38] I just did.
[00:35:40] I said maybe at the end of this journey,
[00:35:41] there will be something there for me.
[00:35:43] If not, I can read.
[00:35:46] If not, I'm 185 fucking pounds.
[00:35:50] There was no magic potion.
[00:35:52] There was no, oh, let me wake up and look at some shit.
[00:35:55] No.
[00:35:56] All those words are overused.
[00:35:58] They're bullshit.
[00:35:59] It's all bullshit.
[00:36:01] Just do.
[00:36:02] You're living.
[00:36:03] How do you want to live?
[00:36:05] How do you want to die?
[00:36:06] How do you want to fucking be remembered?
[00:36:09] That's it.
[00:36:12] Period.
[00:36:13] ANDREW HUBERMAN: As many of you know,
[00:36:15] I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012.
[00:36:17] So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
[00:36:20] AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink
[00:36:22] that's designed to meet all of your foundational nutrition
[00:36:25] needs.
[00:36:25] Now, of course, I try to get enough servings of vitamins
[00:36:28] and minerals through whole foods sources that include vegetables
[00:36:30] and fruits every day.
[00:36:31] But, oftentimes, I simply can't get enough servings.
[00:36:34] But with AG1, I'm sure to get enough vitamins, and minerals,
[00:36:37] and the probiotics that I need.
[00:36:39] And it also contains adaptogens to help buffer stress.
[00:36:42] Simply put, I always feel better when I take AG1.
[00:36:45] I have more focus and energy, and I sleep better.
[00:36:47] And it also happens to taste great.
[00:36:50] For all these reasons, whenever I'm
[00:36:51] asked if you could take just one supplement what would it be,
[00:36:54] I answer AG1.
[00:36:56] If you'd like to try AG1, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim
[00:37:01] a special offer.
[00:37:02] They'll give you five free travel
[00:37:04] packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3, K2.
[00:37:07] Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman.
[00:37:10] The word haunted is ringing in my head.
[00:37:13] DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.
[00:37:15] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think it's such a powerful word.
[00:37:17] DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.
[00:37:18] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because I was about to m
[00:37:21] it seems like a huge part of your process, maybe
[00:37:24] the entire process, is it's all stick no carrot,
[00:37:27] you talk about the carrot, the positive thing.
[00:37:29] And then there's the stick, the thing you're trying to avoid.
[00:37:32] I feel like it's-- the way it's landing for me is it's all
[00:37:38] stick and gas pedal.
[00:37:39] DAVID GOGGINS: That's it.
[00:37:40] ANDREW HUBERMAN: There's no carrot.
[00:37:41] You're not imagining, oh, when I'm a paramedic, when
[00:37:44] the book is published.
[00:37:45] And, obviously, you set those goals,
[00:37:47] and you make those targets.
[00:37:48] But it's all stick.
[00:37:49] DAVID GOGGINS: All stick.
[00:37:51] ANDREW HUBERMAN: No carrot.
[00:37:52] DAVID GOGGINS: Think about that.
[00:37:54] I'm waking up right now studying.
[00:37:56] Like I have a test tomorrow.
[00:37:59] I already passed the fucking test.
[00:38:01] Think about that.
[00:38:03] Every day in my life, that's what I must do just
[00:38:06] to retain what I learned.
[00:38:09] Four hours plus a day, I go through and do that.
[00:38:13] There's no stick.
[00:38:14] Or there's only a stick.
[00:38:16] There's never been a carrot, which
[00:38:18] is why when I speak to people, I have to figure out
[00:38:25] a way to resonate with them.
[00:38:27] Because all I want to say to them
[00:38:30] is let me teach you the real life, how it really is.
[00:38:35] The reason why you're a loser and the reason why you're not
[00:38:37] fucking making it and the reason why you're
[00:38:40] trying to go to all these--
[00:38:41] I go to all these fucking conventions,
[00:38:42] speak all the fucking time.
[00:38:44] I look in the fucking audience.
[00:38:46] And these people sign up, sign up,
[00:38:48] sign up fucking every year go to a convention,
[00:38:50] thinking they're going to learn something fucking different.
[00:38:53] No, you're lazy.
[00:38:55] You know exactly what to do, exactly what to do.
[00:38:58] Because even me in my state of I can't read and write,
[00:39:03] I knew exactly what to do.
[00:39:06] It just sucks doing it.
[00:39:08] It sucks to do it.
[00:39:10] It sucks to wake up every morning of your life
[00:39:13] and say, god, man, I'm not smart.
[00:39:16] So guess what I got to do.
[00:39:18] I got to study the same shit that I got one of the highest
[00:39:21] scores in the nation on and do it again, and do it again,
[00:39:26] and do it again.
[00:39:27] It's not just there.
[00:39:28] It's not just there permanently for me.
[00:39:30] So, yeah, it's all stick.
[00:39:33] It's all stick.
[00:39:35] The only carrot you have is like maybe, maybe.
[00:39:42] Because whenever I take these tests that are real hard,
[00:39:45] the back of my brain is like a good chance
[00:39:48] you're not going to make it, Goggins.
[00:39:50] This ain't you, bro.
[00:39:52] This ain't you.
[00:39:53] You weren't born like this.
[00:39:55] This ain't you.
[00:39:56] The real you, bro--
[00:39:58] study all you want to.
[00:39:59] But the second that fucking computer
[00:40:00] comes on with 150 questions, this ain't you, man.
[00:40:05] And somehow, comes back.
[00:40:07] I passed.
[00:40:08] I passed again, passed again.
[00:40:11] But that real me back here every fucking time
[00:40:14] is saying that ain't you, bro.
[00:40:17] That ain't you.
[00:40:19] And I have to outwork that voice.
[00:40:22] When I'm taking that test and I get
[00:40:24] to a question I don't fucking know the answer,
[00:40:26] I'm like fuck, man.
[00:40:27] And then say, see I told you, man.
[00:40:30] That ain't you.
[00:40:33] You're 300 pounds, man.
[00:40:34] You sit at home.
[00:40:34] You figure out how to do your hair.
[00:40:36] That's what you do, how to come to school
[00:40:38] with the reverse baldness when you're 16.
[00:40:42] That's you.
[00:40:44] So there is no get out of jail free card.
[00:40:49] This is why I say stay hard.
[00:40:51] Because when you weren't given the gifts,
[00:40:54] the only thing you can do in life is stay hard.
[00:40:58] And I know people cannot stand me.
[00:41:01] They can't stand this talk.
[00:41:04] This is all you can do.
[00:41:07] There's no magic pill or a magic potion.
[00:41:10] All you can do is outwork the man
[00:41:14] that God created or woman in you.
[00:41:17] And what that looks like is unfun.
[00:41:20] That's why I said, do not do a documentary on me
[00:41:24] because people will not see the truth.
[00:41:27] They will see what they want to see is
[00:41:29] I don't want to live like that.
[00:41:31] Good, good.
[00:41:33] And you will live exactly the way
[00:41:35] you live now, questioning who you are,
[00:41:38] wondering what is possible, wondering
[00:41:40] what you are capable of doing.
[00:41:42] That's how that looks or you can be me, which am I happy?
[00:41:48] I don't know.
[00:41:48] Never really thought about it.
[00:41:50] Don't really care about it because all I really
[00:41:51] cared about was when I looked in that fucking mirror,
[00:41:54] I saw a piece of shit.
[00:41:55] Happiness wasn't on the mirror at 16 or when I was 300 pounds.
[00:41:59] It wasn't like, I'm looking for happiness.
[00:42:02] No, I'm looking at myself in the mirror and say, all right,
[00:42:05] motherfucker, you did it again today.
[00:42:08] You're a bad boy because that shit sucks.
[00:42:11] I have about a couple of minutes of that that I got the carrot.
[00:42:16] The second I lay down and go to bed, the carrots gone
[00:42:18] because I'm waking up all through the night to check
[00:42:21] the work I did that day.
[00:42:24] Did I get this drug right?
[00:42:25] Did I get this right?
[00:42:26] Did I get that right?
[00:42:28] What did I do?
[00:42:29] Oh my god, fuck, I'm already losing it.
[00:42:33] Stick.
[00:42:35] ANDREW HUBERMAN: That stick's haunting you.
[00:42:37] DAVID GOGGINS: Haunting me.
[00:42:38] ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's following you around.
[00:42:39] So no picture of Jordan on the wall.
[00:42:41] You're not listening to YouTube inspiration video.
[00:42:43] DAVID GOGGINS: No.
[00:42:44] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Those would be all your voice anyway.
[00:42:46] [LAUGHTER]
[00:42:47] You're not listening to your top 10 favorite songs
[00:42:50] just to get rolling and then lace the shoes, hit the books.
[00:42:54] It's all in here.
[00:42:55] DAVID GOGGINS: All in there.
[00:42:56] I used to do that when I was fat.
[00:42:58] Rocky, I mean, that was my thing.
[00:43:01] Round 14 was my thing.
[00:43:03] And as I got older and older and older, that started to go away.
[00:43:09] And I started to create--
[00:43:13] I had all these people that I used to watch.
[00:43:15] Rocky was one, Barnes, Elias from "Platoon,"
[00:43:21] Jack from "A Few Good Men" when he's on the stand going crazy.
[00:43:25] I saw a lot of these characters that I looked at
[00:43:28] and I was like, man, I ain't got none of that.
[00:43:31] But they were characters.
[00:43:33] After a while, I lived a life so disciplined
[00:43:38] that every body that I once looked
[00:43:40] to, these fake characters, I built that as a man.
[00:43:46] And when I was younger, I had this image in my mind
[00:43:50] of what does a man look like to me?
[00:43:52] And I got all these people who are badasses, characters.
[00:43:58] And in my mind, I became that.
[00:44:01] And that's what kept me going a lot was
[00:44:04] I had this pipe dream of becoming a little bit of this
[00:44:07] and a little bit of that because when
[00:44:08] you have no parents raising you and you
[00:44:11] have no role models growing up, it's not daydreaming.
[00:44:16] You start to create a reality like, mm, maybe I can be that.
[00:44:25] And after becoming this guy, that
[00:44:31] is the biggest thing I can ever do in my life is
[00:44:33] I became that guy.
[00:44:35] That I once looked at all these, guys and now
[00:44:37] I look at myself like, god, who the fuck can do that?
[00:44:39] I can.
[00:44:41] But what it takes is a discipline
[00:44:43] that no one can ever even--
[00:44:48] they don't understand it.
[00:44:49] They don't understand it.
[00:44:50] But everybody has the ability to do it,
[00:44:52] but they just don't want to.
[00:44:53] They want to keep asking questions
[00:44:55] and keep going to seminars.
[00:44:57] And the greatness is right in you.
[00:44:59] And that's why once again--
[00:45:00] I say this a million times here, I do not feel sorry for you.
[00:45:04] I will not sugarcoat what I'm going
[00:45:07] to say to you because all of you know
[00:45:09] what I'm saying is the truth.
[00:45:12] Everybody knows it's the truth.
[00:45:14] This is what it looks like.
[00:45:15] And you know it too.
[00:45:16] You know it too.
[00:45:18] If you ain't got nothing, I hate to tell you what it looks like.
[00:45:20] It's ugly.
[00:45:21] It's not a documentary.
[00:45:22] It's not an HBO special.
[00:45:24] You ain't going to watch me like, hey, man,
[00:45:25] you guys gotta watch this.
[00:45:26] No, it's like, oh, god, this looks like a train wreck.
[00:45:28] It's like a nightmare.
[00:45:29] This looks like this guy's got-- no, that's what it looks like.
[00:45:32] Hard work looks horrible.
[00:45:34] It's not motivating.
[00:45:36] It's not motivating at all.
[00:45:37] It ain't like Rocky round 14 where he gets knocked down
[00:45:40] and goes like this to Apollo Creed.
[00:45:42] Looks like a man being stuck in a fucking dungeon.
[00:45:45] And there's no fucking way out.
[00:45:48] But you have the fucking key.
[00:45:52] But you refuse to use it.
[00:45:55] And that's nothing motivating about that.
[00:45:57] So, yes, no documentary on David Goggins.
[00:46:00] ANDREW HUBERMAN: The real life--
[00:46:01] DAVID GOGGINS: The real life.
[00:46:02] ANDREW HUBERMAN: --David Goggins is the documentary.
[00:46:04] It's already being written.
[00:46:07] You're it.
[00:46:08] DAVID GOGGINS: Right.
[00:46:08] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, I'm going to share a little neuroscience
[00:46:10] tidbit.
[00:46:11] DAVID GOGGINS: Love it.
[00:46:11] ANDREW HUBERMAN: But I think it's one
[00:46:13] that you'll appreciate.
[00:46:14] Most people don't know this, but there's
[00:46:16] a brain structure called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.
[00:46:20] As we pointed out before, that's a noun.
[00:46:22] It's a name.
[00:46:22] It doesn't mean anything.
[00:46:23] We could call it the Cookie Monster.
[00:46:26] But what's interesting about this brain
[00:46:28] area is there are now a lot of data
[00:46:31] in humans, not some mouse study, showing that when people do
[00:46:36] something they don't want to do like add three
[00:46:39] hours of exercise per day or per week
[00:46:43] or when people who are trying to diet and lose weight
[00:46:46] resist eating something, when people do anything
[00:46:49] that they, and this is the important part,
[00:46:51] that they don't want to do, it's not about adding more work.
[00:46:54] It's about adding more work that you don't want to do.
[00:46:58] This brain area gets bigger.
[00:47:00] Now here's what's especially interesting about this brain
[00:47:02] area to me.
[00:47:03] And by the way, I'm only learning this
[00:47:04] recently because it's new data.
[00:47:07] But there's a lot of it.
[00:47:08] The anterior mid-cingulate cortex
[00:47:11] is smaller in obese people.
[00:47:14] It gets bigger when they diet.
[00:47:17] It's larger in athletes.
[00:47:20] It's especially large or grows larger
[00:47:23] in people that see themselves as challenged
[00:47:27] and overcome some challenge.
[00:47:30] And in people that live a very long time,
[00:47:35] this area keeps its size.
[00:47:38] In many ways, scientists are starting
[00:47:40] to think of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex not just
[00:47:43] as one of the seats of willpower but perhaps actually
[00:47:48] the seat of the will to live.
[00:47:50] DAVID GOGGINS: See, now we're talking.
[00:47:52] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And when I learned
[00:47:52] about the anterior mid-cingulate cortex,
[00:47:54] I was like almost out of my seat.
[00:47:55] And I've been in the neuroscience game
[00:47:57] since I was 20.
[00:47:58] DAVID GOGGINS: Now we're talking.
[00:47:59] ANDREW HUBERMAN: We're the same age.
[00:47:59] And I was so pumped because I've heard of the amygdala, fear,
[00:48:02] prefrontal cortex.
[00:48:03] It's planning an action.
[00:48:04] I could tell you every brain area and every--
[00:48:06] I teach neuroanatomy to medical students.
[00:48:08] But when I started seeing the data
[00:48:11] on the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, I was like, whoa,
[00:48:16] this is interesting.
[00:48:18] And all the data point to the fact
[00:48:20] that we can build this area up.
[00:48:22] But that as quickly as we build it up,
[00:48:25] if we don't continue to invest in things that are hard for us,
[00:48:29] that we don't want to do-- that's the part that
[00:48:31] feels so Goggin-esque to me, that we don't want to do.
[00:48:35] Like if you love the ice bath-- yeah, I love the ice bath--
[00:48:38] and you go from 1 minute to 10 minutes,
[00:48:40] guess what, your anterior mid-cingulate cortex did not
[00:48:42] grow.
[00:48:43] DAVID GOGGINS: None.
[00:48:44] ANDREW HUBERMAN: But if you hate the cold water,
[00:48:46] if you're afraid of drowning and you get into water
[00:48:49] and put your head under and survive,
[00:48:54] then the anterior mid-cingulate cortex gets bigger.
[00:48:56] But if you don't do it the next day or if you do it the next
[00:48:59] day and you enjoy it because, hey, hey, I did it yesterday,
[00:49:02] woo-hoo, happy me, Merry Christmas as you would say--
[00:49:04] DAVID GOGGINS: Right.
[00:49:05] Merry Christmas.
[00:49:06] ANDREW HUBERMAN: --guess what, the anterior
[00:49:07] mid-cingulate cortex shrinks again.
[00:49:10] To me, this is one of the most important discoveries
[00:49:12] that neuroscience has ever made because it's
[00:49:16] that I don't want to do something but do it anyway
[00:49:19] that grows this area.
[00:49:21] And it's almost like--
[00:49:22] I have a friend.
[00:49:23] He's been sober 30 years from alcohol.
[00:49:25] And he always says, the amazing thing about addiction
[00:49:27] is there's a cure.
[00:49:29] The problem is it only works one day at a time.
[00:49:32] And so you have to renew it every day.
[00:49:34] DAVID GOGGINS: That's right.
[00:49:35] ANDREW HUBERMAN: So the anterior mid-cingulate cortex to me--
[00:49:37] when I learned about it, two things went off in my head.
[00:49:40] Whoa, this is super interesting.
[00:49:41] And, two, I got to tell David Goggins about this.
[00:49:43] And I waited until now--
[00:49:45] DAVID GOGGINS: I'm glad.
[00:49:46] ANDREW HUBERMAN: --to tell you because I felt like, well,
[00:49:48] for obvious reasons I wanted to tell you
[00:49:50] and I wanted to tell you here.
[00:49:51] DAVID GOGGINS: Well, I love that because that's
[00:49:54] how I've lived my entire life.
[00:49:55] I don't know anything about that.
[00:49:57] But people go, man, you have such a strong will.
[00:50:01] It's something that you build.
[00:50:03] Like I never forget I was on a podcast one time.
[00:50:05] And this dude goes you were blessed with a strong mind.
[00:50:10] Like the hell are you talking about I
[00:50:15] was blessed with a strong mind?
[00:50:17] That's something that you have to develop.
[00:50:20] You develop that over years, decades of suffering
[00:50:25] and going back into the suffer.
[00:50:28] That's why a lot of people who graduate Navy SEAL training,
[00:50:31] they want to know--
[00:50:35] I talk about it very openly all the time.
[00:50:39] A lot of guys don't want to go back into that water,
[00:50:42] don't want to go back into the hard stuff.
[00:50:44] And maybe not-- anything hard, anything hard
[00:50:47] in life, once you get through it, it's like you become a POW.
[00:50:52] Like how many POWs you know want to go back to POW camp?
[00:50:55] None.
[00:50:56] When something sucks so bad in life--
[00:50:59] this is on this that we're talking about now--
[00:51:03] very few people want to go back.
[00:51:05] They're happy they graduated.
[00:51:09] I realized I'm the same way.
[00:51:12] I don't want to go back.
[00:51:14] I have to go back.
[00:51:16] I must go back because that is exactly where all the knowledge
[00:51:21] of my life exists was back there in what you're exactly
[00:51:25] what you're talking about.
[00:51:26] Well, I didn't know anything about this.
[00:51:28] But how I grew a will was constantly doing these things
[00:51:33] to now it's just life.
[00:51:37] I wake up.
[00:51:37] While it still sucks, it's just life.
[00:51:40] You don't sit back and like, oh my god.
[00:51:42] Like I have days I don't want to do.
[00:51:44] But I know I'm going to do it.
[00:51:46] I know from years of just doing it.
[00:51:49] So that's beautiful.
[00:51:51] And this is why I came on here with you today.
[00:51:53] And I'm glad that you're talking about this because human beings
[00:51:56] need to hear this.
[00:51:58] They need to stop hearing these hacks on this and that.
[00:52:03] There's no fucking hack, bro.
[00:52:05] There's no fucking hack.
[00:52:06] Yeah, you may this and that and saunas and all this shit
[00:52:11] that they-- yeah, it's great.
[00:52:13] There is no fucking life hack.
[00:52:16] To grow that thing-- how do you grow it?
[00:52:19] Do it, and do it, and do it, and do it.
[00:52:23] That's the hack.
[00:52:24] The hack is going to fucking suck.
[00:52:26] And that's what I realized.
[00:52:28] That's what I realized.
[00:52:29] That's why I wanted to come on here today.
[00:52:31] I didn't want to come on here and talk
[00:52:33] about no fucking passion and purpose
[00:52:35] and how to get the fuck out of bed
[00:52:37] and how to hit a fucking alarm clock,
[00:52:39] all this catchphrase bullshit because that wasn't how
[00:52:43] I lived, wasn't how I lived.
[00:52:46] I lived, I woke up like every human being does
[00:52:48] and goes fuck, man.
[00:52:49] I'm a fucking piece of shit today.
[00:52:51] How the hell is this going to work out for me?
[00:52:53] And you fight that.
[00:52:56] You don't override it.
[00:52:57] There's no override button.
[00:52:59] It's the conversation in your head.
[00:53:02] So how do you do that?
[00:53:04] We don't have enough of these conversations
[00:53:06] about the real conversation that every human being is having.
[00:53:10] And they have no idea how to get out of it.
[00:53:12] But they do is that shit right there, man.
[00:53:16] You got to build your will.
[00:53:18] How you build your will?
[00:53:20] Exactly what you said, man.
[00:53:21] Exactly what you said.
[00:53:23] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, I feel like knowing
[00:53:25] the name of something, anterior mid-cingulate cortex,
[00:53:27] doesn't fundamentally change us.
[00:53:29] But one thing I like about biology
[00:53:31] is that willpower, if somebody feels they don't have it,
[00:53:36] feels like this thing that other people have.
[00:53:38] But everybody, unless they're brain-damaged,
[00:53:40] like a hole through their head, has two anterior
[00:53:45] mid-cingulate cortex, one on each side of their brain.
[00:53:48] Everyone has one.
[00:53:49] They have two.
[00:53:50] So I feel like it's just a question of opening the portal.
[00:53:55] And the portal-- again, I'm going to say 10 times,
[00:53:59] and forgive me-- is I think people
[00:54:00] go, oh, I do hard things.
[00:54:01] I do sets to failure.
[00:54:03] And then I do forced reps.
[00:54:04] I love training with weights.
[00:54:06] I love doing sets to failure.
[00:54:07] I even like forced reps.
[00:54:08] But guess what?
[00:54:09] I like forced reps.
[00:54:10] So I'll tell you, they don't build
[00:54:12] my anterior mid-cingulate cortex because I like to do it.
[00:54:16] Anything you like to do is not going
[00:54:18] to enhance this aspect of willpower.
[00:54:20] And it seems so obvious once you hear it.
[00:54:22] You kind of go, oh yeah, of course.
[00:54:24] But I think you really close that loop for people
[00:54:29] when you share what you're sharing today
[00:54:32] and what you've shared elsewhere before as well.
[00:54:34] When you're trying to explain the friction
[00:54:36] is the critical ingredient.
[00:54:38] And I think people think, oh, if it's effort, well,
[00:54:40] then I'm getting better.
[00:54:41] That's part of it, necessary, but not sufficient,
[00:54:44] as we say in science.
[00:54:45] But the suck part, the haunt, being haunted, the stick,
[00:54:52] they're really unpleasant terms.
[00:54:53] These are probably the most unpleasant terms we've ever
[00:54:56] used on this podcast.
[00:54:58] Those are the-- those are the levers.
[00:55:01] Those are the gears.
[00:55:02] And without those, this thing that you're talking about,
[00:55:05] David Goggins, as a verb--
[00:55:08] I sometimes make the joke, but it's not a joke.
[00:55:11] Goggins is a name, and it's a verb.
[00:55:15] People go, I'm on to Goggins that.
[00:55:17] But that's, I think--
[00:55:20] again, I'm not a psychologist.
[00:55:21] But I think that's what you're talking about,
[00:55:23] the stick, the friction, being haunted.
[00:55:26] It's the suck part that grows this anterior mid-cingulate
[00:55:29] cortex.
[00:55:30] DAVID GOGGINS: So now you know why
[00:55:32] there's so many people that fail in this world
[00:55:35] to figure out their purpose, their purpose in life.
[00:55:40] Where do I go?
[00:55:41] Because to grow that, now, you may not look like me,
[00:55:48] how my daily life looks.
[00:55:50] It don't look fun.
[00:55:53] Don't look fun.
[00:55:56] So it's a choice that people have to make in life.
[00:55:59] But what's so funny about it is even the richest of rich,
[00:56:02] who have everything, they always ask me this question.
[00:56:07] I feel like I'm missing something.
[00:56:10] I don't feel like I'm missing shit.
[00:56:13] I don't have what you all have.
[00:56:15] But you will never in my life hear me tell you
[00:56:20] I'm missing something.
[00:56:21] And everybody is.
[00:56:23] They're missing this feeling.
[00:56:26] I found it a long time ago.
[00:56:29] And I found it right there in that willpower thing.
[00:56:32] When you're nothing, nothing, and change yourself
[00:56:36] into something, like me, you call it happiness, peace,
[00:56:43] whatever the fuck you want to call it,
[00:56:47] people are missing exactly what went on with David Goggins.
[00:56:51] Why don't you smile?
[00:56:52] I do.
[00:56:54] But I figured something out.
[00:56:56] That's why I am never--
[00:56:58] you never hear me say, I'm missing something.
[00:57:00] I found it years ago.
[00:57:02] You find it in the suck.
[00:57:07] And you find it repeatedly in the suck to the point
[00:57:10] where you know exactly who you are.
[00:57:12] Most people are missing something
[00:57:13] because they don't know who they are.
[00:57:17] They never examined themselves.
[00:57:19] They've never done this experiment on themselves.
[00:57:23] The lab rat.
[00:57:24] We're all lab rats.
[00:57:25] But you're also the scientist.
[00:57:28] You create your own self.
[00:57:30] Most people are missing something
[00:57:32] because there's so much trapped in there.
[00:57:35] I don't even want to say potential.
[00:57:37] I think that's a word-- it's used out too much too.
[00:57:39] There's so much in you that God or whoever the hell
[00:57:42] you believe in or if you're an atheist in you
[00:57:44] that you have not unlocked, that you walk around
[00:57:48] with this gorgeous wife or great husband and all this money.
[00:57:51] You're like, god, I feel like I'm missing something.
[00:57:54] Yeah, because it's about 75% of you
[00:57:58] is still fucking in there, still chained up because you just
[00:58:03] didn't want to find your willpower,
[00:58:05] didn't want to find your soul, your will, your heart,
[00:58:07] your determination, your guts, your courage.
[00:58:10] And what that looks like, it looks scary,
[00:58:12] like you're little scary lab that went in.
[00:58:14] Scary to wake up every day and say, I'm stupid,
[00:58:18] but I'm going to figure out a way
[00:58:19] to be smarter versus saying, man, I just can't do that.
[00:58:24] So you limit this box.
[00:58:25] So your box becomes so small of things you can do.
[00:58:29] My box wasn't even a box.
[00:58:31] It was a fucking little pinhole.
[00:58:35] And then through examining myself,
[00:58:38] getting some willpower, some courage,
[00:58:41] it became bigger than this table.
[00:58:42] But that's what we all do.
[00:58:43] That's why I wanted to come here today and talk
[00:58:45] to you about real shit, not no fucking hacks.
[00:58:48] There's no hacks, bro.
[00:58:50] It's you against you.
[00:58:52] You against you.
[00:58:54] And if you misunderstand that, you
[00:58:56] have a real problem, real problem.
[00:58:59] I can understand you misunderstand
[00:59:00] me, running down the street, shirt off, fuck this, no.
[00:59:03] Yeah.
[00:59:04] I can get it.
[00:59:04] I get it.
[00:59:05] If you misunderstand what I'm saying right now today,
[00:59:09] the problem is you.
[00:59:11] And you don't want to fix it.
[00:59:13] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, the children of wealthy people
[00:59:15] are a case study in how not having enough friction
[00:59:20] can destroy a life.
[00:59:21] DAVID GOGGINS: True statement.
[00:59:23] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I mean, I could list off
[00:59:24] prominent names in the press.
[00:59:26] But those are actually the least interesting.
[00:59:28] What's probably more interesting, as an example,
[00:59:30] is all the ones we don't hear about because we never
[00:59:33] hear about them.
[00:59:34] They just dwindle and wither.
[00:59:36] Or I think there's this big category of people,
[00:59:39] I'm realizing, as we have this conversation today that they're
[00:59:44] not super successful.
[00:59:45] They're not struggling.
[00:59:48] They're successful enough that they never have to--
[00:59:52] you can get to the point where you
[00:59:54] don't have to impose friction.
[00:59:56] You even said it.
[00:59:57] Your bank account is in a place where you don't really
[00:59:59] need to do all the things you do,
[01:00:01] probably not even a small fraction of them.
[01:00:02] DAVID GOGGINS: Do nothing.
[01:00:03] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.
[01:00:04] But you realize the stick and being haunted
[01:00:06] is the fuel and the engine.
[01:00:09] And you'd be a-- you'd be truly crazy to give that up
[01:00:13] because you've internalized all that.
[01:00:15] But most people, they're good enough for them.
[01:00:19] And so they don't actually want to be better badly enough
[01:00:23] in order to start going rung after rung.
[01:00:28] DAVID GOGGINS: Well, think about when you build willpower.
[01:00:30] And think about how much I've built.
[01:00:33] Now that you know about this--
[01:00:35] I didn't know about this.
[01:00:36] But think about how much I've built.
[01:00:38] Everything I've ever done in my life, I didn't want to do.
[01:00:42] Everything every day.
[01:00:44] I'm a lazy piece of shit.
[01:00:48] And I'm one of the hardest working people to ever step
[01:00:50] foot on this planet Earth.
[01:00:51] And I'm saying that very proudly because I know what I do.
[01:00:54] It's not cocky.
[01:00:55] I'll tell you I'm stupid.
[01:00:57] And I'll also tell you the exact opposite of what I've done.
[01:01:01] It's the truth.
[01:01:03] It is the truth.
[01:01:04] So imagine how much I've developed in that time frame.
[01:01:07] But this is the scary thing.
[01:01:10] Why most people don't want to do that and build that willpower
[01:01:15] is because it is scary.
[01:01:18] It unlocks a whole bunch of things about who you are
[01:01:20] and who you're not.
[01:01:22] And a lot of people don't want to go down that journey
[01:01:24] to discover who they are and who they're not
[01:01:27] because it's not a pretty journey.
[01:01:30] I mean, I've gone down it.
[01:01:31] It's not like I went down it once.
[01:01:34] I go down it all the time.
[01:01:36] And when you unlock that-- and you can't just turn it off.
[01:01:39] Like, people say, hey, how come you haven't retired yet?
[01:01:43] I built all this willpower.
[01:01:47] Do you think it's going to let me just
[01:01:50] retire because my knees hurt?
[01:01:53] It is telling me every morning--
[01:01:55] I wake up, and I'm like, man, my knees hurt.
[01:01:58] My legs hurt.
[01:01:58] My body hurts.
[01:01:59] But you can still run.
[01:02:01] So why aren't you running?
[01:02:04] If you can still run--
[01:02:05] there will be a time when you can't lace them up anymore.
[01:02:07] But you can still run.
[01:02:10] So I still run.
[01:02:12] When the time comes I can't run, the body will say,
[01:02:16] you just can't run.
[01:02:17] But if I can still do something, that
[01:02:20] willpower that I have created, it
[01:02:23] makes me do it every fucking day.
[01:02:26] And that's what they don't get.
[01:02:27] What builds a human being is you start with the small building
[01:02:31] blocks.
[01:02:32] And before you know it, man, you become something
[01:02:34] that it doesn't even make sense to most people
[01:02:36] because it's just who you are now.
[01:02:38] That's why I can still run at 50 with broke--
[01:02:41] at 49 with broke down knees and broke down body
[01:02:43] because my body knows you still can.
[01:02:46] Therefore, I do.
[01:02:47] Second you stop, the willpower is gone.
[01:02:50] And that's beautiful.
[01:02:51] I'm so glad you brought that to me because I always wondered,
[01:02:55] what's this separation thing now?
[01:02:58] At 24 years old, I started building something
[01:03:00] that I didn't even know was going
[01:03:01] to be what it is now at 49.
[01:03:03] And that's all it was.
[01:03:05] It was just that.
[01:03:07] ANDREW HUBERMAN: This structure, anterior mid-cingulate cortex,
[01:03:10] has inputs and outputs from a bunch of places.
[01:03:12] But you'll probably not be surprised to learn
[01:03:15] that it's strongly activated when we move our body when
[01:03:20] we don't want to move our body.
[01:03:23] I feel like it's like the David Goggins structure.
[01:03:25] DAVID GOGGINS: It really is.
[01:03:27] ANDREW HUBERMAN: It is.
[01:03:28] And it also has strong connections
[01:03:30] to the dopamine reward pathway.
[01:03:31] And everyone goes, yay, dopamine.
[01:03:33] Everyone loves dopamine.
[01:03:34] I'm partially responsible for people knowing a bit more
[01:03:38] about dopamine.
[01:03:39] But dopamine's badly understood.
[01:03:41] Everyone thinks dopamine, dopamine hits.
[01:03:43] It's about reward.
[01:03:44] It's about motivation and drive.
[01:03:47] And there are pain inputs to the dopamine centers of the brain.
[01:03:51] No one talks about that.
[01:03:52] Everyone's like, oh, you want the chocolate, chocolate, sex,
[01:03:55] cocaine.
[01:03:56] Yeah, that's all true.
[01:03:57] It'll release dopamine.
[01:03:59] Pain releases dopamine.
[01:04:00] The anterior mid-cingulate cortex
[01:04:02] can trigger the release of dopamine in response
[01:04:05] to this thing that we're calling friction.
[01:04:07] And that's a learned thing.
[01:04:10] That's something that no animal or human being
[01:04:12] comes into the world learning.
[01:04:13] We all are averse to pain.
[01:04:16] And like pleasure, like sugar, fat.
[01:04:19] Don't like hot surfaces.
[01:04:21] But this is a structure that learns.
[01:04:25] It has neuroplasticity, the ability
[01:04:27] to change throughout the entire life span.
[01:04:29] And here's the part that I think,
[01:04:31] again, is just neuro nerd speak for what you already know
[01:04:34] and have done and exemplify, is that people say,
[01:04:38] oh, it has plasticity.
[01:04:39] You can change it.
[01:04:40] But guess what?
[01:04:40] It has plasticity in both directions.
[01:04:42] It can grow.
[01:04:43] But just as easily as it can grow, it's like Silly Putty,
[01:04:46] it can shrink.
[01:04:47] So it requires constant upkeep.
[01:04:51] And that answer isn't one that people are going to like.
[01:04:54] They're like, give me the energy drink.
[01:04:56] Give me the supplement.
[01:04:57] Give me the-- give me the sauna protocol that's
[01:04:59] going to make my anterior mid-cingulate cortex-- there's
[01:05:02] someone out there right now who's going,
[01:05:03] wait, if I took transcranial magnetic stimulation
[01:05:05] and I stimulate-- yeah, you'd probably-- actually, they've
[01:05:08] done that.
[01:05:08] They stuck a little wire during neurosurgery
[01:05:10] into this structure.
[01:05:12] This was actually discovered by a colleague
[01:05:14] of mine, Joe Parvizi.
[01:05:17] Stimulate.
[01:05:17] And the patients go, I feel like there's a storm coming.
[01:05:21] And they go, oh, is it scary?
[01:05:23] And they go, no, I want to go through it.
[01:05:25] They come off the stimulation, and people are like--
[01:05:28] this is the seat of what we're talking about.
[01:05:30] DAVID GOGGINS: Right.
[01:05:31] Exactly.
[01:05:32] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it learns.
[01:05:33] So the fact that you've kept this brain structure--
[01:05:36] I'm convinced if we imaged your brain, it'd be large,
[01:05:40] and it would be larger in two years, in a year.
[01:05:44] But this is the no days off rationale because it can grow,
[01:05:48] and it can shrink.
[01:05:49] DAVID GOGGINS: I know.
[01:05:50] What you're saying right now, I didn't know any of this.
[01:05:54] And I never-- and I always talk to you.
[01:05:55] But I wish I could just put this on paper.
[01:05:59] And you're saying it in a way that people can understand.
[01:06:02] I can never put it into words on what I built
[01:06:06] and the power that is within all of us.
[01:06:10] But you put it so in a scientific way.
[01:06:14] Most people, for me, he's just crazy.
[01:06:16] That's why I don't like talking about it, man.
[01:06:19] I know I'm not crazy.
[01:06:21] I know what I had to do to get where I had to go.
[01:06:24] People look at it as crazy because there are people
[01:06:26] that just--
[01:06:27] if you can't imagine yourself doing something,
[01:06:33] the person that's doing it is crazy
[01:06:36] because in your mind, the logic behind it, it doesn't compute.
[01:06:41] Therefore, you have to give somebody a title.
[01:06:44] And the title for me is usually he's crazy
[01:06:47] or he's this, he's that.
[01:06:48] No.
[01:06:51] For some reason, me wanting to be somebody
[01:06:53] so fucking bad in my life, I created that.
[01:06:57] And I've been trying to figure out
[01:06:59] years of my life trying to explain to people.
[01:07:02] But even though you're explaining it now,
[01:07:06] this is the easy fucking part.
[01:07:09] Them listening to this shit is the easy fucking part.
[01:07:13] The part that why they're always be the ones of ones
[01:07:18] is because putting that practice,
[01:07:22] putting that into actual work, no, man.
[01:07:26] No.
[01:07:27] That's where the demons come in.
[01:07:29] That's where you're like, I don't want to be better.
[01:07:34] If this is what it takes to be better,
[01:07:35] I don't want to be better.
[01:07:36] So everybody's-- that's why there's a lot of average.
[01:07:40] And it makes me so fucking mad.
[01:07:43] Every day I walk this Earth, and I see average
[01:07:46] all over the fucking place.
[01:07:48] And they want to ask me, how did you do it?
[01:07:51] I can't tell you how because you're not going to fucking--
[01:07:53] you're not going to do it.
[01:07:55] You're not going to do it you.
[01:07:56] You're just going to--
[01:07:57] You're going to continue being like this every day
[01:07:58] you wake up.
[01:07:59] Like you said, it's like, get the coffee.
[01:08:03] Make the pancakes.
[01:08:05] Kiss the girl.
[01:08:06] Kiss the kids.
[01:08:08] You wake up, right to work.
[01:08:10] Immediate, your mind is in action.
[01:08:13] No one wants to do that.
[01:08:15] No one.
[01:08:15] And I don't blame them.
[01:08:17] But don't be mad when you're laying there
[01:08:19] in your fucking bed, and you're in the fucking hospital,
[01:08:22] and you're 70, 80, 90 years old.
[01:08:24] And you're thinking, man, I feel like I
[01:08:27] didn't fucking do something.
[01:08:29] Because you did.
[01:08:30] You didn't do it.
[01:08:31] You didn't do shit.
[01:08:33] You may have lived a great life, man,
[01:08:35] but you're always going to feel empty inside.
[01:08:37] I don't feel empty.
[01:08:38] So call me what you want.
[01:08:39] There's not one empty bone in my fucking body
[01:08:44] because I have figured out that really--
[01:08:47] the magic potion, at least to my life.
[01:08:50] And it's very rewarding.
[01:08:52] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'd like to take a quick break
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[01:09:55] People like to talk about what they used to be able to do.
[01:09:58] I hear this a lot.
[01:09:59] You should have seen me in high school.
[01:10:01] I always laugh.
[01:10:02] Like, yeah, OK.
[01:10:03] Got it.
[01:10:04] And it's not just guys.
[01:10:05] You should have seen me working out in high school.
[01:10:08] I was super fit.
[01:10:09] People will look back to a time where
[01:10:11] they felt like they were capable of something.
[01:10:14] And now they're not.
[01:10:15] And you kind of want to just grab them and go, wait.
[01:10:18] That was you then.
[01:10:18] It's you now.
[01:10:19] And but people tend to think about how
[01:10:21] the conditions that were around success
[01:10:25] must have been part of it.
[01:10:27] And you can understand why.
[01:10:28] It's very rational.
[01:10:30] I was in that situation.
[01:10:31] I was successful.
[01:10:32] I'm in this situation.
[01:10:33] I'm not.
[01:10:34] That was the past.
[01:10:35] This is the present.
[01:10:37] Ergo, capable.
[01:10:39] You see how people get into these loops.
[01:10:41] And as you mentioned, you spent the first 20 years of your life
[01:10:43] in extremely challenged circumstances.
[01:10:46] And then you can see how people get to a point
[01:10:48] where everything feels hard.
[01:10:52] Like, when you're 300 pounds--
[01:10:53] I haven't ever been 300 pounds.
[01:10:55] But I can't imagine it feels good to get up and move around.
[01:10:59] DAVID GOGGINS: It's defeating.
[01:11:00] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I got a friend.
[01:11:01] He's in excess of 300 pounds.
[01:11:04] We've been trying on him for years.
[01:11:05] But no win.
[01:11:07] And he's got crazy psoriasis on the back of his calves.
[01:11:10] And he actually smells bad sometimes
[01:11:13] because he can't wash as well as he would.
[01:11:15] He's big, big.
[01:11:17] And it pulls all my sympathy.
[01:11:20] But life is very hard for him and getting worse.
[01:11:23] He's a young guy with a lot of medical issues
[01:11:25] now, for obvious reasons.
[01:11:27] And so I think people like that think, well, it's already hard.
[01:11:31] Why would I make it harder?
[01:11:34] Your message is a little different.
[01:11:36] And you have the life experience.
[01:11:38] DAVID GOGGINS: It's a lot different.
[01:11:38] ANDREW HUBERMAN: You've been there.
[01:11:40] So for me, saying, oh yeah, lose weight--
[01:11:44] I was a skinny guy who got to be a less skinny guy.
[01:11:47] So I don't really have a foot to stand on.
[01:11:53] What do you say to those people who are like,
[01:11:55] listen, getting up in the morning is hard.
[01:11:58] Trying to not dissolve into a puddle of my own tears
[01:12:00] and my own misery is hard.
[01:12:03] DAVID GOGGINS: You know why people connect with my books
[01:12:06] so well?
[01:12:06] For some reason, God put me in almost every fucked up
[01:12:09] situation on the planet Earth.
[01:12:11] So when I talk to people, it's not sugar-coated
[01:12:14] because I'm not saying it from I was a 175 pounds my whole life.
[01:12:21] I don't say much to those people.
[01:12:24] Maybe you're a piece of shit.
[01:12:27] Maybe you want to be nobody.
[01:12:29] Maybe you're happy exactly where you are in life
[01:12:31] because obviously, you are.
[01:12:33] Maybe you don't have the determination
[01:12:35] to be somebody better than who you are.
[01:12:37] And if you want to live with that, I'll support you in that.
[01:12:42] If you're good with being who you are, that every day you
[01:12:46] wake up, and every day, you smell like shit because you
[01:12:48] can't wash your body well, and your skin is messed up
[01:12:51] because your health's so bad, and you
[01:12:53] can't put your clothes on right, you need help with that.
[01:12:54] You need help like-- when I was 300 pounds,
[01:12:56] I needed help wiping my ass.
[01:12:59] That makes you feel good?
[01:13:02] Nothing I can say to you.
[01:13:04] If every day you wake up with this-- see, people are haunted.
[01:13:08] But they obviously like horror films
[01:13:10] because they keep watching the same fucking movie.
[01:13:13] I don't like horror films.
[01:13:14] A lot of people like horror films.
[01:13:16] So I don't say much to them.
[01:13:18] I say exactly what I said to you right there
[01:13:21] because I was once you.
[01:13:24] I didn't like horror films, so I changed it.
[01:13:26] Some people are just--
[01:13:28] they become-- like you said, it gets real small
[01:13:31] when you're lazy and you're fat, your will.
[01:13:35] Their will is so small that they don't have any.
[01:13:39] And you can't give it to them.
[01:13:41] There has to be something-- this is
[01:13:42] what I'm talking about now because this isn't a hack.
[01:13:47] This has to be in you.
[01:13:49] Something in you has to wake up.
[01:13:53] And usually, the only person that can wake it up is you.
[01:13:56] Sometimes you can read a David Goggins book
[01:13:58] because I was all this shit and then a lot more of fucked up.
[01:14:03] But if you don't have a little flame, just barely--
[01:14:08] you're done.
[01:14:10] I can't light it for you.
[01:14:13] And that's the harsh reality of this life
[01:14:15] that I want to get across so fucking bad.
[01:14:18] You can watch me.
[01:14:19] You can watch you.
[01:14:20] You can watch fucking Rogan and Cameron
[01:14:22] Hanes, all these motherfuckers.
[01:14:23] You can go to Tony Robbins's fucking bullshit,
[01:14:26] all this shit.
[01:14:27] You can do all this shit.
[01:14:30] You're going to keep going back and keep
[01:14:32] spending money and spending money and spending
[01:14:35] money with no results.
[01:14:36] You're going to wonder, wow.
[01:14:37] Maybe let me go try out David Goggins.
[01:14:39] He ain't going to fucking help you.
[01:14:42] You have to explore, examine the insides of yourself.
[01:14:47] And what do you really want out of life?
[01:14:49] Your friend and a lot of people out here
[01:14:52] just don't fucking want it.
[01:14:54] So guess what?
[01:14:56] Have fun with your life.
[01:14:58] Go from 300 to 350 to 400 to 450 to 500
[01:15:03] because you don't want it.
[01:15:07] And that's the harsh reality.
[01:15:09] I can't give you shit.
[01:15:11] You can't give them shit.
[01:15:12] We can give you ideas.
[01:15:14] But end of the day, when I was losing the weight,
[01:15:18] I had to miserably wake up every morning in the cold
[01:15:22] because it was Indiana, November, when it started.
[01:15:25] I was miserable.
[01:15:28] This is your new life.
[01:15:31] Take it or leave it.
[01:15:33] There's no happiness about it.
[01:15:35] There's no peace behind it.
[01:15:37] It sucks.
[01:15:38] It just fucking sucks.
[01:15:41] And that's the one thing, if I could teach anybody anything,
[01:15:46] it just fucking sucks.
[01:15:48] And it's going to continue to suck.
[01:15:51] And then one day, you'll get to a special part in your life
[01:15:54] that it might get a little bit better.
[01:15:56] But to lose the weight you have to lose, my friend, sorry.
[01:16:02] It's going to suck every fucking day because then when
[01:16:05] you're 300 pounds, you're going to go out to lose weight,
[01:16:07] you could probably get injured.
[01:16:09] So then you got to work on the injury.
[01:16:11] And then you get even more depressed.
[01:16:12] This is what I went through.
[01:16:13] And then you're hungry because now you're depressed.
[01:16:16] It's just a vicious cycle.
[01:16:18] And if you're not strong mentally
[01:16:21] and you have no willpower, you're
[01:16:23] going to continue falling back in this hole
[01:16:25] versus the man that sits back and goes,
[01:16:27] all right, motherfucker.
[01:16:28] This is why I cuss because this is what is in me.
[01:16:31] This is what it took for me to be me.
[01:16:34] Sorry.
[01:16:35] It didn't take, hey, OK, we're going to do this today.
[01:16:37] No.
[01:16:37] This fucking really sucks.
[01:16:39] This is real, dude.
[01:16:41] This is real.
[01:16:43] And every day, I'm set back.
[01:16:48] So this is what I would tell your boy.
[01:16:50] This is exactly what I'd tell him.
[01:16:51] Every day you wake up, you're going to probably
[01:16:53] be set back for the first four weeks
[01:16:55] before you lose significant weight because the mind is
[01:16:58] going to be fucking with you the whole time.
[01:17:00] There's no dopamine.
[01:17:02] There's no dopamine in there at 300 pounds.
[01:17:05] You got nothing.
[01:17:06] Your hormones are shot.
[01:17:08] You have to envision something that is more powerful than you.
[01:17:13] Something has to get you out of bed.
[01:17:17] And you have to create it.
[01:17:18] It has to be false because you're not it.
[01:17:21] You're a fat piece of shit.
[01:17:23] And that's the reality of it.
[01:17:25] So you have to create a false reality, to live in that
[01:17:30] just to get to work on yourself.
[01:17:35] That's the reality.
[01:17:36] ANDREW HUBERMAN: He'll see this, and he'll
[01:17:38] appreciate that message.
[01:17:39] We'll see what he does.
[01:17:40] DAVID GOGGINS: We'll see.
[01:17:41] ANDREW HUBERMAN: So far, last 13 years, it's been no movement.
[01:17:44] But I have had other friends who were
[01:17:48] drug and alcohol addicts who quit after one conversation.
[01:17:52] Never went back.
[01:17:53] DAVID GOGGINS: That's awesome.
[01:17:54] That means they want it.
[01:17:55] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, just one guy, I won't out him,
[01:17:58] but walked up to me at a party in 2019, July 4th party,
[01:18:01] and said, I'm a pile.
[01:18:04] And I go, what?
[01:18:05] And he goes, I'm a pile.
[01:18:05] Look at me.
[01:18:06] I'm 60 pounds overweight.
[01:18:07] And I go, do you drink?
[01:18:08] He goes, every day.
[01:18:08] I go, how much?
[01:18:09] He goes, a case.
[01:18:11] He goes, I smoke a lot of weed.
[01:18:12] But he's successful in other areas of his life.
[01:18:15] And so I said, well, here's what I know.
[01:18:18] Quit alcohol and weed for you.
[01:18:20] I'm not telling people what to do.
[01:18:22] Don't eat until 2:00 PM.
[01:18:24] Get on an exercise bike, and pedal
[01:18:27] in the morning like someone's chasing you with a poison dart
[01:18:31] until you want to puke.
[01:18:33] And I was kind of half-joking.
[01:18:35] And then two months later, he was, like,
[01:18:39] I haven't had a drink.
[01:18:40] I lost 30 pounds.
[01:18:41] He lost those 60 pounds.
[01:18:42] He never went back.
[01:18:42] Now, he's super fit.
[01:18:44] It's amazing.
[01:18:45] So some people flip the switch.
[01:18:47] He is very self-critical by nature.
[01:18:50] DAVID GOGGINS: That's what flips--
[01:18:51] ANDREW HUBERMAN: He's super self-critical.
[01:18:53] DAVID GOGGINS: Yep.
[01:18:53] That's what flips the switch.
[01:18:55] Think about it, man.
[01:18:57] We know what to do.
[01:18:59] We don't need Andrew Huberman to tell us what to do.
[01:19:02] We know what to do, every one of us.
[01:19:05] That's why he flipped it so fast because he knew what to do.
[01:19:10] He didn't go by your exact protocol.
[01:19:13] He didn't go by the exact--
[01:19:15] no.
[01:19:15] He knew exactly what to do.
[01:19:19] And you just saying some shit to him, it woke something up.
[01:19:24] He knew what to do.
[01:19:25] And that's the thing that people need to get that.
[01:19:28] You know what to do.
[01:19:29] Why aren't you doing it?
[01:19:31] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And I'm talking about myself now.
[01:19:34] Those modes of just kind of passive consumption,
[01:19:37] they're so easy to wash over us.
[01:19:39] I used to have this thing, and I'm fighting this
[01:19:41] now because I knew we were going to have this conversation
[01:19:43] today, where I like to start things
[01:19:44] on the hour or the half hour.
[01:19:46] Worst practice in the world for me
[01:19:50] because if I miss that half hour, I'm like, oh, it's 12:33.
[01:19:55] I'll start at 12:45.
[01:19:58] Ah, it's 12:45.
[01:20:00] I'll start at 1:00.
[01:20:01] I just lost time.
[01:20:03] And so this is so stupid.
[01:20:05] And the other day, I was like, man, I
[01:20:07] got to tell David about this because my new thing is I start
[01:20:10] no matter what time it is.
[01:20:12] If I wake up in the middle of the night--
[01:20:13] I got a friend.
[01:20:14] He paints in the middle of the night.
[01:20:15] I'm like, you're an insomniac?
[01:20:16] He's like, I don't know.
[01:20:17] I just do it.
[01:20:18] Then sometimes he goes back to sleep.
[01:20:19] Sometimes he doesn't.
[01:20:20] Everyone's got their thing.
[01:20:21] But I thought about this.
[01:20:22] I'm like, no more am I going to say I'm starting
[01:20:24] at 1:00 because I know me.
[01:20:26] If I miss the 1:00 ding and then my pen's not hitting the paper
[01:20:30] or I'm not typing on the keyboard,
[01:20:32] I'm not going to do it.
[01:20:33] But That's a self-admitted weakness.
[01:20:36] DAVID GOGGINS: I love it, man.
[01:20:37] I had that for a lot of years.
[01:20:40] I know I'm going to do it.
[01:20:43] That's the haunting part is that it's going to happen.
[01:20:48] It has to happen.
[01:20:51] And that's a fact.
[01:20:52] Like, there's no get out of jail free card, bro.
[01:20:55] None.
[01:20:56] Like, that is a life that I don't know.
[01:21:00] I don't have that ability.
[01:21:03] Or I have the ability.
[01:21:04] I don't have the--
[01:21:07] I'm not good enough, smart enough.
[01:21:11] I'm not talented enough to do that.
[01:21:16] Some people are.
[01:21:18] Some people can start at 1:00.
[01:21:19] Some people don't have to start at all.
[01:21:22] If you lack talent, you can't sit back and say,
[01:21:27] I'll start in half an hour.
[01:21:30] I can't do that.
[01:21:31] I got to start now.
[01:21:32] And after I get back from starting, I got to start again.
[01:21:35] And then when I get done with that run or that study session,
[01:21:38] if it wasn't good enough, I got to go back again
[01:21:41] because repetition is what taught me everything.
[01:21:45] So you can honestly outwork anything.
[01:21:48] But it's that you, obviously, are a very talented man.
[01:21:53] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, I have worked hard at certain things
[01:21:56] and built up some things that I've
[01:21:59] been good at most of my life.
[01:22:00] DAVID GOGGINS: You're amazing.
[01:22:01] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Gathering, organizing, and disseminating
[01:22:03] information's something I've been
[01:22:04] doing since I was a little kid.
[01:22:05] I used to give lectures at school on Monday about stuff
[01:22:08] I learned over the weekend.
[01:22:09] DAVID GOGGINS: See, check that out.
[01:22:10] ANDREW HUBERMAN: But they took me to a psychiatrist.
[01:22:12] We're the same age.
[01:22:13] Back then, if you got sent to a psychiatrist,
[01:22:14] people thought you were crazy.
[01:22:16] DAVID GOGGINS: I was one.
[01:22:16] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, exactly.
[01:22:17] DAVID GOGGINS: I was one.
[01:22:18] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Exactly.
[01:22:19] So I remember feeling like a freak.
[01:22:20] Also, I didn't have a stutter, but I had a grunting tic.
[01:22:23] It comes back when I'm tired.
[01:22:24] And the only thing that helped that was hitting
[01:22:27] my head on something, shaking my head,
[01:22:31] which is why skateboarding was good because I'd slam,
[01:22:33] and I'd feel like, oh.
[01:22:34] I feel good.
[01:22:35] But that's not healthy.
[01:22:37] That's not good.
[01:22:38] Or just work.
[01:22:39] Work is what gets it out.
[01:22:40] It's like an-- it's like an RPM or high.
[01:22:42] [REVVING SOUND] Anyway, that's me.
[01:22:45] But yeah, I think certain things over time,
[01:22:47] I feel like talent or gifts or whatever you want to call them,
[01:22:50] but there are many things that are
[01:22:51] exceedingly difficult for me.
[01:22:54] And I have learned from your example.
[01:22:55] I know that you are very both humble and very clear
[01:22:59] that you don't have-- you say, you're
[01:23:01] not going to get it by examining you.
[01:23:03] But I think the way you're sharing today
[01:23:06] and the way you've shared it on other podcasts before,
[01:23:09] there are pieces that really help
[01:23:11] people feel into the process of what
[01:23:15] you're talking about today.
[01:23:16] We're elaborating on it, I think, a lot, this notion
[01:23:19] of being haunted and the stick.
[01:23:21] I mean, of course, of course, now it makes so much sense why
[01:23:25] you don't want to talk about sleep or rest or recovery
[01:23:27] because that's--
[01:23:28] sure, that's important.
[01:23:30] I've heard you say, yes, you sleep.
[01:23:31] Yes, you eat.
[01:23:32] Yes, you hydrate.
[01:23:33] Yes, you will stretch your psoas or whatever.
[01:23:35] But it's funny how that becomes the viral message.
[01:23:37] DAVID GOGGINS: That's why I said fuck that today.
[01:23:38] ANDREW HUBERMAN: But that's not the unique--
[01:23:40] that's not the unique message that you carry.
[01:23:44] Like, anyone can talk about that.
[01:23:46] So do I have that right?
[01:23:47] That you're acknowledging sleep is important.
[01:23:49] Recovery is important.
[01:23:50] DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.
[01:23:50] ANDREW HUBERMAN: But that's not what you're about.
[01:23:52] DAVID GOGGINS: You have to forego something.
[01:23:54] Yes.
[01:23:55] Ice baths.
[01:23:57] Saunas.
[01:23:58] Sleep.
[01:23:59] Nutrition.
[01:24:00] All this shit's so fucking important, dude.
[01:24:03] I don't have time for some of it.
[01:24:06] To extract what I had to extract, something had to give.
[01:24:10] Like, you talk about you when you were younger.
[01:24:12] You would give these speeches and stuff.
[01:24:15] The same age you were giving speeches,
[01:24:17] I was trying to figure out how to say the without stuttering.
[01:24:21] And I realized, as I got older, that all these things are
[01:24:24] important.
[01:24:26] But for me to stop stuttering, I got
[01:24:28] to build fucking confidence.
[01:24:32] And speech therapy didn't help that.
[01:24:34] Nothing helped that.
[01:24:36] I have to forgo a lot of shit to be as fucked up
[01:24:40] as I am to build confidence, for me
[01:24:43] to stand in a fucking room of 10,000-- of one person, and not
[01:24:46] [STUTTERING SOUNDS] and be like, oh, and put my head down.
[01:24:49] Let me look around.
[01:24:51] Let me read these paragraphs first.
[01:24:54] And then before I read the paragraphs,
[01:24:56] because they're calling me next, let
[01:24:57] me just leave the room because I'm going to stutter.
[01:25:00] That's a miserable life.
[01:25:02] And that's one of many things I did besides lying,
[01:25:05] besides being insecure, besides being immature,
[01:25:07] besides being fat, besides being one of the only Black kids
[01:25:11] in my school.
[01:25:11] There's a lot of things I had to overcome to gain confidence.
[01:25:16] And in doing so, a lot of that had to go.
[01:25:20] A lot of it.
[01:25:21] So I became the guy that became, once again, misunderstood.
[01:25:24] You only sleep four hours a day, two hours a day?
[01:25:26] Sometimes you don't sleep at all?
[01:25:28] Like, what's this, and what's this, and what's this?
[01:25:31] I know it's all important.
[01:25:35] I can't.
[01:25:35] Something's got to go.
[01:25:36] For me to get confidence, because confidence
[01:25:39] is the building block of where I'm trying to go,
[01:25:41] for me to gain confidence in myself,
[01:25:44] this fucked up kid has got to do a lot of fucked up shit
[01:25:46] to gain confidence.
[01:25:48] And along the way, the stutter went away.
[01:25:51] And I gained confidence.
[01:25:52] And now, my life is a little bit more--
[01:25:56] there is no balance.
[01:25:59] There is no balance.
[01:26:01] It's a little bit more what it should be for a lot of people.
[01:26:05] But there'll never be balance because confidence is something
[01:26:07] that you're constantly--
[01:26:09] confidence and belief you're building every day.
[01:26:13] And so something's got to give.
[01:26:15] And I'm willing to forego a lot of things
[01:26:17] to have that because I know if you
[01:26:20] want to give somebody kryptonite,
[01:26:23] take that shit away from them.
[01:26:25] So yeah, I don't sleep sometimes.
[01:26:27] And sometimes I don't eat the right way.
[01:26:29] And sometimes I don't do this and do that and whatever, man.
[01:26:31] But you put me in a room of 10,000 people any time
[01:26:34] of the day, and I'll walk in there thinking
[01:26:36] I'm the baddest motherfucker in here
[01:26:38] because I know what it took to be on this stage.
[01:26:40] And a lot of people would not do that.
[01:26:42] So that's what it takes.
[01:26:44] ANDREW HUBERMAN: There's a question
[01:26:46] I've been wanting to ask you since we started.
[01:26:48] And I thought about coming in here.
[01:26:50] And I've been thinking about in the weeks ahead of this.
[01:26:52] And I'm going to just come clean and say I don't exactly
[01:26:54] know how to ask the question.
[01:26:56] DAVID GOGGINS: Just ask it.
[01:26:58] ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's about relationships.
[01:26:59] DAVID GOGGINS: Oh, do it, man.
[01:27:01] ANDREW HUBERMAN: So I know in myself
[01:27:05] that my discipline is much higher when it's just me.
[01:27:09] But that's because I had certain things early on.
[01:27:12] But then I was a terrible student.
[01:27:14] Barely finished high school.
[01:27:15] But then when I got serious, I got serious.
[01:27:16] But I did that by staying away from everybody.
[01:27:20] And anyone's who's ever had a relationship of any kind,
[01:27:25] but in particular, romantic relationships,
[01:27:27] knows that, yes, you can derive tremendous support from those.
[01:27:30] Like, you got this, baby.
[01:27:31] You can go.
[01:27:32] And you're like, yeah.
[01:27:33] I got this.
[01:27:34] She said I got this.
[01:27:35] Feels great to finish something and share with someone,
[01:27:38] share a meal, get the hug.
[01:27:40] But there's another side to all of that
[01:27:43] that I'd like to learn more about from you,
[01:27:45] which is there's a warm body next to you
[01:27:48] in bed in the morning.
[01:27:49] You don't want to get up.
[01:27:50] They also have needs.
[01:27:52] You've got your mission that people sometimes
[01:27:56] need things from us.
[01:27:58] But also, oftentimes, the people that
[01:28:00] love us most, that truly love us and that want to support us,
[01:28:04] don't understand this thing.
[01:28:07] And they're the first people to tell us, like, listen.
[01:28:12] Take a day off.
[01:28:13] And then this whole cycle, at least in my head,
[01:28:15] goes off, like, you just want a vacation.
[01:28:17] And then it's almost like a paranoia.
[01:28:19] I'm not saying anything nice about myself right now.
[01:28:21] DAVID GOGGINS: All good, man.
[01:28:22] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Former girlfriends
[01:28:23] are going to be like, yeah.
[01:28:24] Like, they remember that.
[01:28:25] And so support of people close to you is critical.
[01:28:29] This could be friends.
[01:28:30] Could be romantic partners.
[01:28:31] Whatever.
[01:28:31] But they're also-- the knife cuts both ways.
[01:28:35] It can be the thing that can really
[01:28:37] undermine this thing that you're talking about because people
[01:28:40] that care about us also want to see us comfortable.
[01:28:42] They want to see us happy.
[01:28:43] They want to see us peaceful.
[01:28:45] They want to see us wake up from a great night's sleep.
[01:28:47] And they want things too.
[01:28:49] So how do you untangle that whole bit?
[01:28:51] DAVID GOGGINS: Well, it's funny, man.
[01:28:53] I'm unbalanced, but I'm mostly unbalanced
[01:28:55] towards the family side, which people don't get about me.
[01:28:58] I'll start being unbalanced.
[01:28:59] I get all my stuff in.
[01:29:01] But what I do is I make sure that my family has everything
[01:29:04] they need, everything they need, those who
[01:29:08] want to be part of my family.
[01:29:10] Some don't.
[01:29:11] Some family members don't want to be part of David Goggins.
[01:29:14] I get it.
[01:29:14] I got it.
[01:29:15] That's life.
[01:29:16] Those who are part of my family, I
[01:29:20] give them everything they need so they
[01:29:22] can leave me the fuck alone.
[01:29:25] I make sure you're happy as fuck because I got to go to work.
[01:29:27] And I don't mean smokejumping.
[01:29:30] I don't mean running.
[01:29:32] I mean all of it.
[01:29:34] It takes every--
[01:29:35] I can't have you in my fucking shit.
[01:29:38] I can't.
[01:29:39] So I know for me to have a family,
[01:29:42] I gotta make sure that you realize I'm going to give you
[01:29:44] everything you need.
[01:29:44] So when you start bitching at me,
[01:29:46] I'm going to say, look, hang on.
[01:29:48] I dedicated my life to give you everything you need.
[01:29:51] I need this time right here for me
[01:29:54] to be the best I can be because this journey started
[01:29:56] without anybody.
[01:29:58] And I make sure everybody knows that who comes in my life.
[01:30:00] I've been left-- think about it.
[01:30:03] I was left alone at a young age to figure this shit out.
[01:30:09] I figured it out for myself and have been very successful
[01:30:13] for myself.
[01:30:14] No one's going to come in here and fuck with my shit.
[01:30:17] That's why I make sure I will take care of whatever you need.
[01:30:20] Whatever you need from me, you got it.
[01:30:22] Money, house, my love, my support,
[01:30:25] I'm going to give you everything you need.
[01:30:27] That said, I do it the highest level possible.
[01:30:31] And I'm saying that with Jennifer in the next room.
[01:30:33] So please come here and say something
[01:30:34] if it's wrong, Jennifer.
[01:30:35] I don't give a fuck.
[01:30:36] Say what you got to say.
[01:30:37] So then when it's time for me to go to work,
[01:30:40] I expect you to do the same for me
[01:30:43] because it takes every bit of me to do what I have to do.
[01:30:48] So I make sure that I'm very unbalanced from my family
[01:30:52] so I can be exactly that unbalanced for myself.
[01:30:56] And that's how I do it.
[01:30:58] I let people know right up front,
[01:31:00] I'm not what you want in a man.
[01:31:06] I guarantee that.
[01:31:07] There's going to be a lot of late nights,
[01:31:09] a lot of early mornings, a lot of times
[01:31:11] where I got to be by myself thinking about the process that
[01:31:14] is next in my mind.
[01:31:16] I can't have aggravation.
[01:31:17] I can't have this.
[01:31:18] Can't have that.
[01:31:18] There's a lot of things.
[01:31:19] But I let them know up front.
[01:31:21] I'm very vocal about that.
[01:31:23] Sometimes relationships work for me.
[01:31:25] Sometimes they didn't.
[01:31:27] But that's who I am.
[01:31:28] One thing I did wrong in my life was I tried for so many years
[01:31:32] to please people.
[01:31:35] And I did it at the expense of myself.
[01:31:40] I was leaving a lot in the tank.
[01:31:42] And when you do that, you stop living.
[01:31:45] But the person in your life is happy as fuck
[01:31:48] because you're giving them everything they want.
[01:31:50] They have their-- their life is full.
[01:31:53] But you feel empty.
[01:31:55] And that's not a relationship to me.
[01:31:58] So for me, it's important that you
[01:32:00] know exactly who I am because this is what life made.
[01:32:05] And I'm not trying to change it because I just figured it out.
[01:32:10] So I'm not trying to compromise David Goggins.
[01:32:13] I would never, ever compromise David Goggins.
[01:32:17] That doesn't mean I won't give you what you need
[01:32:19] and what you want and what you desire.
[01:32:22] But I don't need money.
[01:32:23] I don't need fame.
[01:32:24] I don't need shit.
[01:32:25] So I give it all away.
[01:32:28] What I do need is to make sure that that willpower is worked
[01:32:33] on every fucking day and every night for the rest of my life
[01:32:36] because that's the one thing that's
[01:32:38] going to keep me feeding you, keeping you where you need
[01:32:41] to be, because once that willpower is gone,
[01:32:44] 300-pound David Goggins, he may not look like it,
[01:32:47] but I will walk around with it.
[01:32:51] So the things that are important to you in life,
[01:32:53] you must do always.
[01:32:55] Or you're nobody.
[01:32:57] And that's how I handle relationships.
[01:33:00] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Amen to that.
[01:33:01] Something I could personally work on
[01:33:03] is that upfront, clear communication
[01:33:06] because it resonates that feeling of there's something
[01:33:09] inside that's not getting worked out that, when I'm on my own,
[01:33:13] it's a lot easier.
[01:33:14] But then, of course, wanting relationships and family,
[01:33:17] I think that's a healthy part of being human too.
[01:33:19] And obviously, you've worked it out.
[01:33:20] So I appreciate you sharing that.
[01:33:22] I don't think I've ever heard you
[01:33:23] talk about it that way before.
[01:33:25] DAVID GOGGINS: People are scared of that conversation
[01:33:27] with their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend.
[01:33:30] But why are you scared of it?
[01:33:33] Why are you scared to tell a motherfucker, your wife,
[01:33:36] your husband, who you are, who you are, exactly who you are?
[01:33:42] And that was the problem I had-- that's a problem
[01:33:44] that a lot of us have in life.
[01:33:46] No one knows who you really are.
[01:33:49] No one knew who I really was.
[01:33:52] I went to a school where there were a lot of Black kids.
[01:33:55] A lot of Black kids didn't want to be in special ops.
[01:33:58] I never talked about special ops to Black kids.
[01:34:01] Why?
[01:34:03] I was wondering what--
[01:34:04] I'm not going to fit in.
[01:34:07] That's not what they do.
[01:34:08] A lot of Black kids don't do that kind of shit.
[01:34:10] So whatever I wanted to do, no one really
[01:34:13] knew the real me growing up because I never wanted anybody
[01:34:16] to know the real me.
[01:34:17] I was always afraid of what you might say
[01:34:19] or how you're going to feel or whatever.
[01:34:21] You got feelings.
[01:34:24] You have a life that you have to live.
[01:34:26] So it's important that whatever's on your mind,
[01:34:29] you let that person know.
[01:34:30] Therefore, you're giving them the option
[01:34:32] to be with you or not.
[01:34:34] This is who I am.
[01:34:36] If you don't like it, that's good, man.
[01:34:37] I got it.
[01:34:38] But this is David Goggins.
[01:34:40] So that honest conversation is very important, man,
[01:34:43] so everybody knows where they stand.
[01:34:45] That person may not be for you.
[01:34:48] And that's all good.
[01:34:49] ANDREW HUBERMAN: This world could
[01:34:50] use a lot more of that upfront, completely honest conversation.
[01:34:53] I feel like so much of the world's problems
[01:34:56] are because everyone's dancing around these issues.
[01:34:59] DAVID GOGGINS: It takes a lot.
[01:34:59] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Recently in the news,
[01:35:00] seeing people losing their job because they
[01:35:02] won't say something publicly.
[01:35:03] You can tell they kind of what it.
[01:35:04] It's like, people just, I think, deep down really
[01:35:07] crave the direct message.
[01:35:08] Like, what are you about?
[01:35:10] What are you not about?
[01:35:10] But I think now, everyone's afraid of getting canceled.
[01:35:14] It's a big deal, getting canceled, that people think,
[01:35:17] oh, I can't work if I am who I am.
[01:35:19] Or if I'm not pretending to be somebody else,
[01:35:23] then silence is considered agreement.
[01:35:28] There's all sorts of complicated stuff.
[01:35:30] And I do feel for the generation coming up
[01:35:33] because we didn't have social media and all of that.
[01:35:36] Again, just walled off from that.
[01:35:38] There's a real benefit from just not paying attention.
[01:35:40] DAVID GOGGINS: People love to lie.
[01:35:43] You know, I thought I was only a person--
[01:35:45] when I was growing up, I thought I
[01:35:47] was the only person that lied because I lived in a bubble.
[01:35:49] And people love to lie about who they're not.
[01:35:53] They love to lie about who they're not, dude.
[01:35:55] And that's, for me, the reason why I'm so vulnerable,
[01:36:00] and I'm so real and honest.
[01:36:04] Find somebody to come out and tell me
[01:36:06] I'm lying about my fucking life.
[01:36:08] And for me to come where I came from
[01:36:10] and have the resume I have now, you
[01:36:12] know the confidence you get?
[01:36:14] How I don't care who-- you're going to-- you're
[01:36:17] going to judge me?
[01:36:18] You're going to judge me?
[01:36:19] What have you done in your life?
[01:36:20] So me, being so honest and so upfront and so truthful,
[01:36:25] that came with me finally figuring out who I was,
[01:36:30] but also conquering David Goggins, the demons of David
[01:36:34] Goggins.
[01:36:35] Therefore, now, you're just an open book.
[01:36:37] You look at somebody, look them right in the eye.
[01:36:39] Tell me exactly who the fuck you are.
[01:36:41] You walk away.
[01:36:42] I'm good, bro, because I know exactly what this journey took
[01:36:45] to get here.
[01:36:46] And that gives you a fire and a passion that people
[01:36:49] can call you nigger, they can call you--
[01:36:51] if you're a lesbian or gay or bise-- call me
[01:36:54] whatever the fuck you want.
[01:36:55] If you put yourself in the fire and you come out
[01:36:59] every fucking day like this, brush it off, not scared
[01:37:01] to go back in there again, come on, man.
[01:37:04] Your truth is real.
[01:37:06] You come out every day, man, with a way
[01:37:08] of talking to people that people don't have because there's
[01:37:11] no truth behind them.
[01:37:13] And the truth is the starting line.
[01:37:14] When you sit down the ugly mirror and say, I'm this,
[01:37:16] I'm this, I'm this and this, you finally started your life.
[01:37:19] Maybe 40 years old.
[01:37:22] Maybe 40 years old, five, six kids, wife.
[01:37:25] But the second you look in that mirror and you say, I'm this,
[01:37:28] I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, well, basically,
[01:37:31] I'm not this, I'm not this, I'm not this, I can't do this,
[01:37:34] I can't do this, I'm all these insecurities,
[01:37:37] your life finally started.
[01:37:39] And once you start that life, man, the truth
[01:37:41] comes out big time because you no longer care.
[01:37:43] So that's the problem.
[01:37:44] Most people just don't want to have that conversation
[01:37:47] to the point where they can go on stage and a million people
[01:37:49] and say, I'm all of this.
[01:37:54] And have a good day.
[01:37:56] See you.
[01:37:57] It's empowering.
[01:37:59] It's very empowering.
[01:38:00] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I feel like the way we're educated in school,
[01:38:04] but also outside of school, is we're trained, as human being,
[01:38:07] as these young brains, to try and figure out
[01:38:09] how to get positive feedback from other people.
[01:38:11] It's like we're little dogs.
[01:38:14] You have a bulldog.
[01:38:15] DAVID GOGGINS: That's right.
[01:38:15] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I had a bulldog.
[01:38:17] Saw the picture of your bulldog.
[01:38:18] She's great.
[01:38:19] DAVID GOGGINS: Charlie dog.
[01:38:20] ANDREW HUBERMAN: They're an amazing species.
[01:38:21] DAVID GOGGINS: They are.
[01:38:22] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think of them economy of effort
[01:38:25] or amazing breed, excuse me.
[01:38:26] They're an amazing breed.
[01:38:27] Economy of effort.
[01:38:28] They don't do anything unless it's necessary.
[01:38:31] It's the exact opposite of everything we're talking about.
[01:38:33] It's kind of interesting.
[01:38:34] And they're kind of hedonists.
[01:38:36] Now, it is true that they'll die to protect you.
[01:38:39] DAVID GOGGINS: Oh, yeah.
[01:38:40] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it's an instinct.
[01:38:41] I saw that with Costello.
[01:38:42] I'm sure that--
[01:38:43] DAVID GOGGINS: I saw it with Charlie.
[01:38:43] Yeah.
[01:38:44] ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's an instinct.
[01:38:45] But if they're not in that position,
[01:38:48] if there's no need to exert effort--
[01:38:50] DAVID GOGGINS: They're resting.
[01:38:50] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.
[01:38:51] So your bulldog's resting for you.
[01:38:53] DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.
[01:38:54] Got it.
[01:38:54] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Exactly.
[01:38:55] So you don't need to rest because--
[01:38:56] DAVID GOGGINS: Active recovery Charlie.
[01:38:58] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Perfect.
[01:38:58] DAVID GOGGINS: That's it.
[01:38:59] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Perfect.
[01:38:59] That's going to be your answer from now on.
[01:39:01] People go, does he sleep?
[01:39:02] Does he rest?
[01:39:02] Go, no.
[01:39:02] He somehow worked it out so his bulldog does it for him.
[01:39:05] DAVID GOGGINS: Right.
[01:39:06] ANDREW HUBERMAN: But we're sort of
[01:39:08] indoctrinated into this way of being
[01:39:10] from a time that we're young, where, of course,
[01:39:13] praise feels good.
[01:39:15] Someone tells you, hey, I like that shirt, or good job today,
[01:39:19] or nicely done.
[01:39:20] Or for me, because growing up in a big pack of friends growing
[01:39:24] up, and I was never the greatest athlete, wasn't terrible,
[01:39:27] wasn't great, et cetera, like, a fist bump, or, like, feeling
[01:39:30] crewed up.
[01:39:30] And you're just like, yeah.
[01:39:32] But you've talked about this before in reference
[01:39:34] to the SEAL Teams.
[01:39:36] We both know a lot of people in that community.
[01:39:38] And the Teams component is a big part of it for a lot of people.
[01:39:40] And it's a wonderful thing.
[01:39:43] But there's a danger to that dopamine hit,
[01:39:47] for lack of a better way to put it,
[01:39:49] from we can only derive when it's coming from the outside.
[01:39:55] You're talking about being able to either say, good job,
[01:39:59] but also, just look to one's own personal history and say,
[01:40:03] I've done hard things.
[01:40:05] And I can do it again and again because I do it again and again
[01:40:08] and again.
[01:40:08] You're talking about parenting yourself, inspiring yourself,
[01:40:15] scaring yourself, all of that from the inside.
[01:40:18] So very different than the way we're
[01:40:21] raised, which is to figure out how to get the biscuit.
[01:40:23] DAVID GOGGINS: It's funny, man.
[01:40:24] People want to know how I'm always motivated.
[01:40:29] It's the unseen work, which you just said is a true statement.
[01:40:32] Those are false dopamine hits that people
[01:40:34] are giving you, man.
[01:40:36] There's no belief in that.
[01:40:38] These are teamwork dopamine-- like, I'm out
[01:40:41] running at 2 o'clock in the morning, 1
[01:40:43] o'clock in the morning in the gym, long sessions by myself.
[01:40:48] That's real.
[01:40:50] I'm able to extract dopamine, the good dopamine whenever
[01:40:54] I want.
[01:40:55] Man, I've trained 99% of my life alone.
[01:41:01] No one patted me on the back.
[01:41:03] I did all of the work alone.
[01:41:07] And while I'm still hard on myself, I know what I did.
[01:41:11] So whenever times get bad for me,
[01:41:13] people are all this, who's going to carry the boats and lo--
[01:41:16] that's real.
[01:41:17] I hate that people know me for that guy
[01:41:20] because that guy is not every fucking day.
[01:41:23] When they see me, they want that energy.
[01:41:26] That's not me every day.
[01:41:27] I can extract it immediately when I need to
[01:41:30] because when you train alone--
[01:41:32] and I lived alone for so many years in this misery.
[01:41:35] And you're able to get out by yourself.
[01:41:38] I can take myself to such a level of real passion
[01:41:42] and purpose.
[01:41:43] And the feeling I get is something
[01:41:46] I can't even explain by mys--
[01:41:48] I don't need anyone.
[01:41:50] That's why people come to me to motivate them.
[01:41:52] No one can motivate me.
[01:41:55] I have a resume full of fucking motivation
[01:41:58] that whenever I'm down, I'm like, oh hang on, motherfucker.
[01:42:02] Oh, you know the truth.
[01:42:04] You know the truth.
[01:42:05] You know the darkness of the fucking dungeons
[01:42:07] and the fucking demons that fly.
[01:42:09] And then from there, it's like, OK.
[01:42:12] You were there.
[01:42:13] You know this.
[01:42:14] There was no one there to pick up
[01:42:15] the rucksack, to pick up the boat, to pick up
[01:42:17] the log, to go in there.
[01:42:19] It was you.
[01:42:20] There was no pat on the fucking back at 300, at 275, at 250,
[01:42:25] at 220.
[01:42:25] No.
[01:42:26] That was you.
[01:42:28] So those things that come out of me,
[01:42:30] that extract from me in the darkness, people
[01:42:33] are looking for that pat on the back.
[01:42:34] Where is it?
[01:42:35] Oh, I don't need it because what I've done
[01:42:40] is in the fucking unseen work.
[01:42:44] I built Frankenstein.
[01:42:47] So whenever shit gets nasty, David Goggins
[01:42:50] goes, you had nobody anyway, motherfucker.
[01:42:53] So see how I'm talking to myself right now?
[01:42:55] That's me.
[01:42:57] That's shit fires me the fuck up.
[01:42:59] That shit makes me fucking nuts.
[01:43:00] You had nobody anyway, motherfucker.
[01:43:03] Look around you.
[01:43:04] There was no fucking team.
[01:43:06] It was you.
[01:43:07] There was no weight loss program or mom and dad waking you up,
[01:43:11] saying you can do it, you can be better, trying to build belief.
[01:43:14] You built belief when you had nothing.
[01:43:17] Rock bottom.
[01:43:20] You did that.
[01:43:20] So as times get hard for me, the truth comes out.
[01:43:26] And my truth is powerful as fuck.
[01:43:29] It's real.
[01:43:31] It's tangible.
[01:43:32] I feel it.
[01:43:33] It comes out of my brain as I speak about it.
[01:43:36] I'm reliving every single dark moment of my life to be here.
[01:43:43] So that is what people don't get.
[01:43:46] That is what motivates David Goggins is the unseen work.
[01:43:50] But everybody needs that pat on the back.
[01:43:53] They need that training partner.
[01:43:54] They need that accountability coach.
[01:43:57] I don't need that shit.
[01:43:58] And neither do they.
[01:44:00] But it's what we've trained ourselves
[01:44:02] to believe that we need.
[01:44:03] ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's almost like there's
[01:44:05] this pill on the shelf.
[01:44:06] I'm speaking in analogy.
[01:44:08] And we take it, and we get jazzed up.
[01:44:11] And we're like, yeah.
[01:44:13] But there's this other medicine cabinet behind there.
[01:44:16] And it's in us.
[01:44:16] You're saying the real medicine cabinet is inside.
[01:44:19] DAVID GOGGINS: Oh, yes.
[01:44:20] When you continue to overcome--
[01:44:23] and I had so many obstacles to overcome.
[01:44:25] So it's actually a benefit to me.
[01:44:27] But the benefit, it's not like a benefit like that.
[01:44:29] You have to have the courage and the patience
[01:44:32] to overcome and overcome.
[01:44:34] Before you know it, man, you have a whole medicine cabinet.
[01:44:38] But there's no medicine in the motherfucker.
[01:44:40] There's no pre-workout.
[01:44:42] I don't take none of that shit.
[01:44:44] All I got to do is flip my brain.
[01:44:48] Put my finger in there and say, OK, that's a good one.
[01:44:51] It's all I got to do, man.
[01:44:52] I got the Rolodex.
[01:44:53] I'm just like, go fuck yourself, Goggins.
[01:44:55] And oh, but you won.
[01:44:58] Let's do that one today.
[01:44:59] There's nothing I need.
[01:45:02] And this is the thing that people
[01:45:03] don't get about David Goggins.
[01:45:05] I can't teach it in a 1-minute video.
[01:45:10] We all have this ability to have our own medicine cabinet.
[01:45:15] But unless you go in there and put the medicine in there,
[01:45:21] it's always going to be fucking empty, man.
[01:45:23] You're always going to need the pre-workout.
[01:45:25] You're always going to need the--
[01:45:26] I don't drink coffee.
[01:45:27] I don't do ca--
[01:45:28] I don't do none of that.
[01:45:28] I don't need it.
[01:45:29] I can run for 70 hours, and I have before, no caffeine.
[01:45:35] I got all this wonderful shit that I overcame on my own,
[01:45:40] by myself, in the darkness, that, man, when it's cold,
[01:45:44] I'm hot.
[01:45:46] When it's hot--
[01:45:48] I can feed myself all the time.
[01:45:52] That's why when people say, man, why aren't you
[01:45:54] missing anything, I can't explain it to you, man.
[01:45:58] Can't explain it to you.
[01:45:59] You'll never understand.
[01:46:01] That's why I don't do all these podcasts, dude.
[01:46:04] I love you, man.
[01:46:05] That's why you-- my first book, you did a blurb for me.
[01:46:09] That's why I'm here.
[01:46:10] I love what you're doing for people, man.
[01:46:12] But I can't explain this.
[01:46:15] I can't.
[01:46:15] I can't explain this because people don't want to do this.
[01:46:18] They don't want to do this, man.
[01:46:19] But I don't know, man.
[01:46:22] I get jazzed up even talking about it,
[01:46:23] man, because so many people think my life is just so, oh
[01:46:27] god, his life is horrible.
[01:46:29] Don't follow him.
[01:46:30] He's crazy.
[01:46:30] Really?
[01:46:31] ANDREW HUBERMAN: But there are a good number of people,
[01:46:34] I would say, and that's an under-- that actually do.
[01:46:36] I think what I'm hearing today, and it's really sinking in, is
[01:46:40] that a great many people either partially or completely
[01:46:43] misunderstand you.
[01:46:45] DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.
[01:46:46] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'll put myself in the partially category.
[01:46:48] DAVID GOGGINS: Big time.
[01:46:49] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because I thought
[01:46:50] it was about just forward center of mass, carrot, carrot,
[01:46:55] carrot, carrot.
[01:46:57] But it's the stick.
[01:46:58] DAVID GOGGINS: It's the stick.
[01:46:59] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it's being haunted.
[01:47:00] And you know, I do have examples from my own life, which is not
[01:47:03] what today is about, about being really afraid
[01:47:06] and then turning things around.
[01:47:08] My biggest fear is getting comfortable.
[01:47:10] I do not have as much of a stick-oriented approach.
[01:47:14] But today's conversation's changing the way I think.
[01:47:18] I'm not going to step away from this
[01:47:19] and think, OK, there are 25 neural circuits that
[01:47:22] can explain 10 of the things that David's talking about.
[01:47:24] And what I'm thinking about is the fact
[01:47:27] that everybody has a brain.
[01:47:28] They have a mind.
[01:47:30] Forget the brain.
[01:47:31] The brain's just the physical structure.
[01:47:32] But what that manifests, what that creates is the mind.
[01:47:37] And everybody has that.
[01:47:39] So I do believe that everyone has the capacity
[01:47:42] to do what you're talking about at some level.
[01:47:46] I also will be the first to confess
[01:47:49] that I think you are highly unusual.
[01:47:51] Let's just say maybe even n of 1, as we say in science.
[01:47:56] Sample size of one.
[01:47:59] Somebody who has created this process for themselves
[01:48:01] and keeps them in this-- themselves
[01:48:03] in this forward center of mass with the stick
[01:48:06] battering the back of their head all the time.
[01:48:09] Highly unusual.
[01:48:12] But this internal medicine cabinet
[01:48:14] that you're talking about building up,
[01:48:15] true confidence, not needing anything from the outside,
[01:48:18] I like to think that people want that.
[01:48:23] They want to be known.
[01:48:24] They're afraid.
[01:48:26] But that they want to be known for who they really are
[01:48:29] and that you're describing the path to do this.
[01:48:31] And I will say I'm immensely grateful that you're
[01:48:34] talking to us this way today about things
[01:48:36] that you've talked about before.
[01:48:37] But we're hitting it a little differently, I like to think.
[01:48:40] DAVID GOGGINS: Very differently.
[01:48:41] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because what you're talking about
[01:48:45] is a process.
[01:48:46] It's verbs.
[01:48:46] It's all verbs.
[01:48:47] DAVID GOGGINS: All action.
[01:48:49] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it's not about success.
[01:48:51] It's more, actually, about keeping
[01:48:54] that friction dialed to 10.
[01:48:57] And no energy drink, no supplement.
[01:48:59] People often misunderstand me.
[01:49:00] They think-- like, I'm big on people getting sunlight
[01:49:03] in the morning so they set their circadian rhythm
[01:49:04] and get better sleep and so they can-- et cetera.
[01:49:06] But then people always think-- they go straight
[01:49:08] to the supplements.
[01:49:09] What should I take?
[01:49:10] And then, of course, people think
[01:49:11] I'm all about supplements.
[01:49:12] And supplements are one piece for me.
[01:49:14] But it's like tiny fraction compared to the doing,
[01:49:17] the do's and don'ts.
[01:49:18] DAVID GOGGINS: That's why I didn't
[01:49:19] want to talk about that today.
[01:49:20] That's why I'm glad we're talking about this.
[01:49:22] This is it.
[01:49:24] Like, the brain is the most powerful weapon in the world.
[01:49:27] And it's crazy how a kid that wasn't real smart,
[01:49:33] I was forced to go only internal.
[01:49:37] External had to go away.
[01:49:39] The external world had to go away.
[01:49:41] In living so deep inside myself, it was me in this brain
[01:49:46] and figuring out how this thing works.
[01:49:48] And so many people are doing exactly that, the supplements,
[01:49:54] the this, the that.
[01:49:55] And I agree, it helps.
[01:49:58] But once you figure out your brain,
[01:50:03] you become unstoppable to almost anything.
[01:50:07] Yeah, you can't beat death.
[01:50:09] You can't whatever, whatever.
[01:50:10] Your brain is amazing.
[01:50:12] Once you feed it the right conversation, the right mental
[01:50:17] nutrients, the right mental supplements,
[01:50:21] the right internal dialogue at the right time
[01:50:25] with the right hit, with the right proof of what you've
[01:50:29] done in the past, and you send that right
[01:50:32] to the right circuit, dude, you're a fucking beast.
[01:50:36] A beast.
[01:50:37] But once again, you just can't read about it.
[01:50:43] You can't sit back and be a theorist.
[01:50:46] You have to be a fucking practitioner.
[01:50:49] And in that practice is where that becomes proof-positive
[01:50:53] of what I'm saying.
[01:50:54] It's like, god, David Goggins is blowing my mind.
[01:50:58] What is this?
[01:50:59] He's not crazy.
[01:51:00] And so many people, a lot of people,
[01:51:09] have listened to me the right way.
[01:51:10] And they come back, and they're like, I'm totally on board.
[01:51:14] It happened.
[01:51:16] I'm like, it'll keep going, man, if you keep doing it.
[01:51:20] But that is it, man.
[01:51:21] There's no sun.
[01:51:24] There's no glory.
[01:51:25] There's no carrot.
[01:51:27] There's no victory.
[01:51:29] But there is all of it in one.
[01:51:30] I just can't explain it real well to people, man.
[01:51:32] But what you get the other end is something
[01:51:36] that you're always found.
[01:51:39] You're never lost anymore.
[01:51:41] Doesn't mean the journey is easy.
[01:51:43] Doesn't get any easier.
[01:51:44] But you're always found.
[01:51:46] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love that.
[01:51:47] I just want to hover on that for a sec
[01:51:49] the same way we hovered on haunted and the stick.
[01:51:53] I think people feel lost.
[01:51:55] I've certainly felt lost at times in my life, many times.
[01:51:59] And yeah, there's that thing.
[01:52:01] I don't think there's a neuroscience or a psychology
[01:52:04] term for it.
[01:52:04] Someone will put it in the comments and say, oh yeah,
[01:52:06] that's what so-and-so said.
[01:52:08] But like you said, we're not trying to be theoretical here.
[01:52:10] We're trying to be practical.
[01:52:11] The business of finding yourself and knowing, oh.
[01:52:16] But it's sort of like I'm safe because I'm in danger,
[01:52:20] and I've been in danger before, and I got myself out.
[01:52:23] It always seems to come back to verbs.
[01:52:25] Again, I don't have a language for this.
[01:52:27] For once, I'm lost for words.
[01:52:29] There's like-- it's about a process, the algorithm.
[01:52:33] And the reason-- here, I'm just kind of trying to make sure
[01:52:36] I'm understanding things correctly.
[01:52:38] One of the reasons why it must be uncomfortable
[01:52:40] for you to be who you are publicly
[01:52:42] is because people want to focus on the running or the swearing.
[01:52:46] And by the way, the swearing is welcome.
[01:52:49] I'll tell you, I came up through laboratories
[01:52:51] where all three people I worked for swore a lot.
[01:52:56] But there was one rule.
[01:52:58] I couldn't swear at people.
[01:52:59] So my graduate advisor, brilliant woman,
[01:53:02] unfortunately, she died early, they all died early--
[01:53:05] I'm the common denominator.
[01:53:07] I had that internalized for a long time.
[01:53:08] Anyway, she said, but if you swear at people, you're out.
[01:53:12] But you can swear as much as you want.
[01:53:13] So that's the rule I have.
[01:53:15] It's like, you can swear as much as you want.
[01:53:16] Just don't swear at people.
[01:53:17] And if you swear at people, better be ready to fight.
[01:53:20] Definitely not going to fight you.
[01:53:21] So you can swear at me, get away with it.
[01:53:22] But the fact of the matter is that it must
[01:53:25] be frustrating that people--
[01:53:27] because I know people go, oh, it's
[01:53:29] all about supplements and ice baths.
[01:53:31] Listen, I like supplements.
[01:53:32] I love supplements and ice baths.
[01:53:33] But that's not the full picture.
[01:53:34] It's just a gravitational pull.
[01:53:36] It's the swearing.
[01:53:37] It's the running.
[01:53:38] It's his feet that are all messed up.
[01:53:40] It's the fact that he got a Triton.
[01:53:42] He's a SEAL guy.
[01:53:44] Talk about that too.
[01:53:46] And there's a gravitational pull for people.
[01:53:49] And they're missing-- that's the tip of the iceberg,
[01:53:53] is what I'm realizing.
[01:53:53] I'm realizing that today thanks to the way
[01:53:56] you're phrasing things because the bigger vessel
[01:53:58] is all in here.
[01:53:59] And as you said, how do you put that in a book?
[01:54:01] DAVID GOGGINS: It's impossible.
[01:54:03] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because it's highly individual.
[01:54:04] You do it your way.
[01:54:05] And you're saying, everyone needs
[01:54:07] to go figure out how to do it their way for them.
[01:54:09] DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.
[01:54:10] And the thing about being misunderstood,
[01:54:13] it's very frustrating, more than I can even imagine.
[01:54:17] I can't even express how frustrating
[01:54:19] it is when the cussing and everything comes
[01:54:24] from a place of real.
[01:54:27] I can't explain what I do without it.
[01:54:31] The passion comes out of me.
[01:54:32] It's almost like speaking in tongues because when you put
[01:54:35] that much work-- and people go, oh yeah,
[01:54:37] there's been this basketball player, this football player,
[01:54:40] this--
[01:54:42] dude.
[01:54:44] No.
[01:54:46] Everything, everything is work.
[01:54:51] Everything.
[01:54:51] And people don't believe it.
[01:54:53] So when I speak, the motherfucker and the fuck
[01:54:59] and the shit, that is what it took for me,
[01:55:05] what it takes for me, the anger, the passion, the jaw-dropping--
[01:55:15] just it takes that because I'm not that.
[01:55:20] This is how I look at it, man.
[01:55:23] What built this guy?
[01:55:25] Let's imagine being in the coldest
[01:55:26] water you can possibly take.
[01:55:28] I always go back to Hell Week with this.
[01:55:30] I hated that water.
[01:55:32] Hated it.
[01:55:34] You're sitting there locked arms, and you're in the water
[01:55:36] all the time.
[01:55:37] And they're bringing you in and out of the water,
[01:55:39] in and out of the water.
[01:55:42] When you have this dialogue in your head,
[01:55:44] and these people are judging me off a freaking 1-minute video,
[01:55:49] and you're constantly your whole life,
[01:55:51] when you figured it out at 24, that I got to--
[01:55:54] I just got to, just fucking got to,
[01:55:57] and this is just going to suck.
[01:55:58] Every day it's going to suck.
[01:56:00] And live like that to be better.
[01:56:03] And I put it this way.
[01:56:04] I'm in the water.
[01:56:05] The water is going over my head, the Pacific Ocean.
[01:56:07] It's freezing.
[01:56:09] February.
[01:56:10] Cold as shit.
[01:56:11] Been through three Hell Weeks.
[01:56:15] For you to constantly win, win, win,
[01:56:19] when this voice over here, the real you,
[01:56:22] is saying get the fuck out of here, go, you're nobody.
[01:56:27] You've always been nobody.
[01:56:29] And it's true.
[01:56:31] People don't hear that.
[01:56:33] That's a true voice.
[01:56:34] That's a real reality of David Goggins at 24 years old.
[01:56:39] It's not a false reality.
[01:56:41] And then you had to create another voice over here that
[01:56:46] is saying, you're better than that other voice.
[01:56:48] And you're in the freezing cold water
[01:56:51] that both voices don't want to fucking be in.
[01:56:56] But you win.
[01:56:59] Then goes from the water to the studying
[01:57:02] to the running to the losing weight
[01:57:04] to how you eat to how you function as a man.
[01:57:06] Every day of your life, you're winning these battles.
[01:57:10] And then I have normal people who only have one voice.
[01:57:16] Never created the second voice.
[01:57:18] The winning voice is the second voice.
[01:57:19] They have one voice.
[01:57:22] And that's just, I'm a piece of shit.
[01:57:25] And that's all they hear.
[01:57:28] And then they judge people like me
[01:57:31] who are out here trying to be better.
[01:57:35] It's something that I can never really--
[01:57:39] it's a frustrating thing for me because I
[01:57:43] know the majority of people.
[01:57:45] I know what goes on in the brain because I studied the mind
[01:57:48] more than almost-- more than you because I'm a practitioner.
[01:57:53] So for you to be a piece of shit and come out of that,
[01:57:56] you don't just come out of it.
[01:57:58] You spend decades studying your mind and the human mind
[01:58:05] on how it functions in good environments, bad environments,
[01:58:09] stressful environments, patient environments.
[01:58:12] You study it all because you had to put all this
[01:58:14] together to create the mind to become successful.
[01:58:18] So I had to-- it wasn't like God blessed me with this brain.
[01:58:22] I had to create a mind.
[01:58:24] And so in doing so, I figured out
[01:58:26] every piece of shit human being in the world
[01:58:28] because that's what I was going off of for myself.
[01:58:32] So I know why you go on Instagram.
[01:58:34] I know why you-- because you just have the time.
[01:58:39] You have the time because you don't
[01:58:42] want to put that time into bettering oneself.
[01:58:46] So I know why I'm misunderstood.
[01:58:49] I'm misunderstood by people who have plenty of time
[01:58:53] on their hands to misunderstand me because they are exactly
[01:58:56] where I once was, which is a low-life, lazy piece of shit.
[01:59:01] And it's the harsh reality of people who troll you,
[01:59:04] who go after you.
[01:59:06] They have nothing better to do with their lives.
[01:59:09] It's not some after school special.
[01:59:11] It's the truth.
[01:59:12] But I once was that way.
[01:59:15] I know where it all comes from.
[01:59:17] That's why it's frustrating to me
[01:59:18] now because I'm not so frustrated at the fact
[01:59:20] that I'm being trolled.
[01:59:22] I'm frustrated by the fact that you
[01:59:23] don't have the courage, the courage
[01:59:26] to try to be somebody better than what you're not.
[01:59:29] And that's the frustrating part.
[01:59:31] ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's interesting
[01:59:33] because earlier, we were talking about relationships.
[01:59:36] And you said, in a very candid way,
[01:59:39] and I really appreciate you sharing that,
[01:59:41] that you make sure that the people close
[01:59:42] to you, your family, has everything they need
[01:59:44] and that they also understand that you're
[01:59:46] going to take what you need to continue to build you period.
[01:59:49] DAVID GOGGINS: Period.
[01:59:50] ANDREW HUBERMAN: In some ways, it
[01:59:53] seems you've also included the general public in that family.
[01:59:57] You're saying, listen, I'm going to give you what you need.
[02:00:01] I'm going to give you as much of myself as I can,
[02:00:03] except I'm going to stop right at the line
[02:00:06] that if I were to cross it is going
[02:00:08] to prevent me from continuing to build myself.
[02:00:11] And by the way, this relationship
[02:00:13] only exists because I don't cross that line.
[02:00:17] And I think as much as there are detractors out there
[02:00:21] or people that try--
[02:00:23] I mean, whatever they're doing is pretty feeble, in my mind.
[02:00:26] I mean, it's like cap gun fire, it that.
[02:00:29] DAVID GOGGINS: Very feeble.
[02:00:32] ANDREW HUBERMAN: So many of us, men and women, old and young,
[02:00:37] hear something and feel something in your message.
[02:00:41] Like, yeah, it seems kind of crazy.
[02:00:43] Gosh.
[02:00:44] Doesn't he ever just relax?
[02:00:46] What about his sleep?
[02:00:47] Look at his feet.
[02:00:48] He's going to-- he's going to injure himself.
[02:00:50] Listen, I'll be very direct.
[02:00:51] I got friends who were in the Teams who just go, what's he
[02:00:54] going to do when he can't run?
[02:00:55] And I know the answer is keep running.
[02:00:57] DAVID GOGGINS: That's right.
[02:00:58] ANDREW HUBERMAN: But it's more comfortable
[02:01:00] for people, even high achievers--
[02:01:02] DAVID GOGGINS: Especially high achievers.
[02:01:04] ANDREW HUBERMAN: --to believe that if you
[02:01:05] took one thing away, that it would all go away.
[02:01:07] It's absolutely clear that's not the case with you.
[02:01:10] I'm 100% convinced.
[02:01:12] I just know that because we're talking about this.
[02:01:14] DAVID GOGGINS: Do you know how many times
[02:01:14] I haven't been able to run?
[02:01:16] Two heart surgeries.
[02:01:17] Multiple knee surgeries.
[02:01:18] And after every knee surgery, they said,
[02:01:20] you're not going to run again.
[02:01:22] And I'm fine with that.
[02:01:24] There's no running up here, bro.
[02:01:26] None.
[02:01:27] This was what it was all about.
[02:01:29] That's what they lost.
[02:01:30] What if you can't run?
[02:01:31] Give a fuck.
[02:01:33] It was never about running.
[02:01:35] Why do you think I run?
[02:01:37] It's the worst thing.
[02:01:39] I hate doing it more than anything.
[02:01:43] Hence the willpower.
[02:01:44] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.
[02:01:45] Your anterior mid-cingulate cortex
[02:01:46] DAVID GOGGINS: Hence the willpower.
[02:01:47] ANDREW HUBERMAN: --would start to regress
[02:01:49] if you loved running.
[02:01:50] DAVID GOGGINS: Think about it.
[02:01:51] Every day, I wake up.
[02:01:53] I don't just run a mile, two miles.
[02:01:56] It's the one thing I hate the most to do.
[02:02:00] And I do it like I love it.
[02:02:03] 250, 260, 300-mile runs at one time.
[02:02:08] No sleep.
[02:02:09] And every step, when I get to the-- think about this.
[02:02:11] I get to the fucking start line cussing at Jennifer.
[02:02:16] Why the fuck am I here?
[02:02:17] I hate this shit.
[02:02:21] After 70-some hours of running, every fucking
[02:02:24] question I ever had is answered.
[02:02:27] Every question I had is answered.
[02:02:29] I capped success.
[02:02:33] People go, what do you mean, you capped success?
[02:02:37] For me to be who I am--
[02:02:41] so when I go smokejump, I smoke jump three to four months out
[02:02:47] of the year, sometimes five.
[02:02:48] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Could you, just for those
[02:02:50] that aren't educated about-- just
[02:02:52] give us a brief description of what smokejumping entails.
[02:02:55] DAVID GOGGINS: So basically, you jump into fires.
[02:02:59] Not into them, but you jump by fires that people can't get to.
[02:03:02] ANDREW HUBERMAN: So out of planes and helicopters.
[02:03:04] DAVID GOGGINS: Right, out of planes.
[02:03:06] I parachute.
[02:03:07] It's all parachuting.
[02:03:08] So you parachute out of airplanes.
[02:03:10] And then you fight the fire, you and sometimes four other guys
[02:03:13] or maybe eight other guys, guys and gals.
[02:03:15] And you're putting this fire out.
[02:03:18] So I lose millions of dollars every summer to do this.
[02:03:23] It blows people's minds.
[02:03:24] Why the hell are you doing this?
[02:03:25] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And you're breathing soot.
[02:03:27] DAVID GOGGINS: I'm breathing soot.
[02:03:28] Knees are jacked up.
[02:03:29] Hitting the ground.
[02:03:30] Hurting.
[02:03:31] Whatever.
[02:03:32] Talking to normal people, they'll never get it,
[02:03:34] so I don't even explain it to them.
[02:03:37] But this is why-- this is why I call it capped success.
[02:03:40] I'm talking financial success.
[02:03:42] For me to continue having that willpower, the second I just
[02:03:48] become a speaking monkey and travel around
[02:03:52] and speaking gigs 12 months out of the year,
[02:03:54] put camps on, do this, put on lectures, get supplement lines
[02:03:59] and do this and write more books and shit,
[02:04:01] I've ruined the exact thing I worked on my entire life.
[02:04:08] And while I didn't know it until the day,
[02:04:10] but something always told me, this
[02:04:13] is a very, very, very perishable skill, this willpower
[02:04:17] that you have, because I do have a willpower that I have never
[02:04:20] seen in anybody in my life.
[02:04:22] It is a haunting force that just keeps me going.
[02:04:25] And I know that that is my strength.
[02:04:28] If you have that-- so that's worth every dime I've ever
[02:04:33] made in my life is the fact I can look a man in the eye
[02:04:37] finally and have a real conversation
[02:04:39] without going like this because I'm lying,
[02:04:42] or I'm a piece of shit.
[02:04:43] Or I know-- you know how a person--
[02:04:45] and so many people do this shit.
[02:04:47] They're talking to you on who they want to be.
[02:04:51] They're lying to you.
[02:04:54] And they walk away--
[02:04:55] I've done it so many times.
[02:04:56] You walk away like, god, man.
[02:04:57] If I could just tell them the truth.
[02:04:59] Why the hell can't I just tell him the truth?
[02:05:03] Know how good it feels for me now
[02:05:04] to look at you in your eye and every man
[02:05:08] I see because women won't get this.
[02:05:10] Women will not get this.
[02:05:13] Man to man, that man shit, when you
[02:05:15] look another man in the eye, and you
[02:05:17] know that everything you're fucking saying is real,
[02:05:19] and it comes from a real working place, something
[02:05:22] that you earned, it's the best feeling in the world.
[02:05:25] ANDREW HUBERMAN: You can say that actually happened.
[02:05:27] Like, I know with certainty what I'm saying actually happened.
[02:05:30] DAVID GOGGINS: Actually happened.
[02:05:31] Who I am and who I say I am, I am.
[02:05:34] No more lies.
[02:05:36] No more skirting the truth.
[02:05:38] No more bullshit.
[02:05:39] And that is worth every dime I've ever made in my life.
[02:05:43] And I swear to God on that.
[02:05:47] Every dime I've ever made in my life, building who I built,
[02:05:51] so I capped success because I know
[02:05:54] that if I ever go 12 months out of the year
[02:05:58] and don't put several-- every day, I'm going at it.
[02:06:01] But several months out of the year,
[02:06:03] I go right back to ground zero, which means
[02:06:06] I'm just fucking David Goggins.
[02:06:09] No Goggins.
[02:06:10] No carry boats, fucking logs bullshit.
[02:06:13] It's just pick up that fucking Pulaski and dig.
[02:06:17] Hey, get that fucking pump.
[02:06:20] Walk down a mile.
[02:06:21] Put it in the fucking water.
[02:06:22] Mosquitoes beating-- you're just David Goggins.
[02:06:25] You're nobody because that's where my growth is.
[02:06:28] That's where my willpower comes from.
[02:06:31] And that's where it stays.
[02:06:32] That's why when I talk to you now-- and can't nobody
[02:06:35] talk like this, dude.
[02:06:36] People don't talk with this kind of passion
[02:06:38] because it ain't there.
[02:06:39] It ain't there.
[02:06:40] They're regurgitating some shit from 30 fucking years ago.
[02:06:44] I'm regurgitating shit from an hour ago.
[02:06:47] Hour ago.
[02:06:49] Come on, man.
[02:06:49] It's just be real.
[02:06:53] And I can't be on these podcasts.
[02:06:55] I can't talk to anybody without being real.
[02:06:57] I'll go away.
[02:06:59] I'll just go away because I can't give you
[02:07:02] what I want to give you.
[02:07:05] ANDREW HUBERMAN: You said perishable skill.
[02:07:07] I think that's another set of words
[02:07:09] I want to highlight because skill implies behavior.
[02:07:12] And when we were just talking a second ago
[02:07:14] about the deep, true bedrock sense of confidence that
[02:07:19] comes from looking someone in the eye
[02:07:21] and telling somebody something that you absolutely
[02:07:23] know it's true because it happened,
[02:07:25] you're talking about actions.
[02:07:27] Not talking about perceptions.
[02:07:29] You're not talking about what you believe happened.
[02:07:32] You know it happened.
[02:07:33] And there's something really concrete about actions.
[02:07:35] I mean, that's what's so interesting is
[02:07:37] we're talking about the mind.
[02:07:38] But actions are the manifestation of the mind.
[02:07:42] And the stuff that just stays in here, people die with that.
[02:07:47] It doesn't go anywhere.
[02:07:49] Long ago, somebody said--
[02:07:51] I forget what the context was.
[02:07:52] It was a neuroscientist.
[02:07:53] He said, most emotions, they're just emotions.
[02:07:57] They're just in there.
[02:07:58] You don't have to do anything with them.
[02:08:00] And I think certain emotions you want to do something with.
[02:08:03] But I think people forget this.
[02:08:04] They feel miserable, like they're
[02:08:05] going to dissolve into a puddle of their own tears.
[02:08:07] No one ever died from an emotion.
[02:08:09] But they feel-- they overwhelm us as if it's a tidal wave.
[02:08:13] It's going to pull us under and drown us.
[02:08:15] It's so interesting to me because I think what people--
[02:08:18] listen, you have a gravitational pull.
[02:08:20] People can feel the energy.
[02:08:22] I think, yes, you're either completely badly
[02:08:26] or partially understood.
[02:08:27] There's only one guy on the planet
[02:08:29] that truly understands you.
[02:08:30] I think there's one woman, Jennifer,
[02:08:32] who probably understands you as much as anyone's going to.
[02:08:34] And then the rest of us are kind of grasping,
[02:08:36] trying to figure it out.
[02:08:38] But you're saying, go inward.
[02:08:40] So first, go inward.
[02:08:43] And then it's actions.
[02:08:45] Inward and actions.
[02:08:46] Now, the inward piece is something
[02:08:47] I'd like to just spend a little bit of time on because there
[02:08:50] are a couple of characters from history, people that
[02:08:52] were in concentration camps.
[02:08:53] Nelson Mandela.
[02:08:55] I mean, I'm not sure he had Instagram in there.
[02:08:57] I'm pretty sure he didn't.
[02:08:58] And I don't think there was anyone coaching him on,
[02:09:01] hey, you're going to get out someday.
[02:09:02] And actually, you're going to lead an entire country.
[02:09:05] I'm pretty sure that's not how it worked.
[02:09:07] He had to find it here.
[02:09:08] He had to find it between his ears.
[02:09:10] And there are other examples.
[02:09:12] But that's an important one.
[02:09:14] So the process of going inward, does it, for you--
[02:09:19] and here, I will ask for suggestions
[02:09:21] because I think people want--
[02:09:22] there are those of us who want to build this skill.
[02:09:27] Wall yourself off.
[02:09:29] Phone off for big portions of the day, perhaps.
[02:09:34] Texting off.
[02:09:36] The requests, the this, the that.
[02:09:40] Anyone that knows you knows that-- we've
[02:09:42] communicated a few texts, but most of it
[02:09:44] comes through a filter.
[02:09:45] She's great.
[02:09:46] She knows you.
[02:09:47] And she knows how to protect your time.
[02:09:49] DAVID GOGGINS: And that hurts people's feelings.
[02:09:50] People get mad about that.
[02:09:51] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Hey, God bless--
[02:09:52] God bless you, Jennifer.
[02:09:58] Cutting oneself off, when you're in there,
[02:10:01] you say it's just you.
[02:10:05] And the voices that come up are not pleasant.
[02:10:10] And then at some point, it converts to action.
[02:10:14] OK.
[02:10:17] What is the process of picking the action?
[02:10:19] That's the piece that I feel like there's,
[02:10:21] like, a bridge to build here, if you can, if you would.
[02:10:25] DAVID GOGGINS: So the action being, like, what's next?
[02:10:27] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, so when you
[02:10:29] go to sleep at night, when that happens,
[02:10:32] you know what you're going to do the next day?
[02:10:34] It's pre-planned?
[02:10:34] DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.
[02:10:35] ANDREW HUBERMAN: OK.
[02:10:35] DAVID GOGGINS: Yes.
[02:10:36] It's always the same thing.
[02:10:37] ANDREW HUBERMAN: You're not building it on the fly.
[02:10:39] DAVID GOGGINS: No.
[02:10:39] Nothing's on the fly.
[02:10:41] So how it works internally for me is I'll
[02:10:45] put it exactly how it is.
[02:10:47] I'm an artist.
[02:10:49] And every day, I'm painting Mona Lisa.
[02:10:54] Every day.
[02:10:55] And but it's a different one.
[02:10:56] It's not the same painting.
[02:10:58] So every day I wake up, even though I'll do the same thing,
[02:11:00] it takes a different way to get there.
[02:11:02] So every day, in my mind, I'm going through my mind.
[02:11:04] I'm just like-- and a good painter will not just paint.
[02:11:11] He needs to create.
[02:11:12] And you can't create with phones and everything
[02:11:15] going around you.
[02:11:16] So you got to block yourself off.
[02:11:18] You only do two podcasts in a year.
[02:11:21] You block yourself off.
[02:11:22] And you're painting this thing inside.
[02:11:25] And you're going through all these different colors
[02:11:27] of paint and everything else.
[02:11:29] And you can only figure out the right painting
[02:11:32] if you spend the correct amount of time in your brain.
[02:11:35] So every single day, I'm literally
[02:11:37] going through my mind, and I'm painting.
[02:11:39] I'm creating this masterpiece.
[02:11:42] And the masterpiece is always myself.
[02:11:44] And but to do that, you cannot have any distractions
[02:11:48] because if you're talking to an artist and he's trying to think
[02:11:51] about the next painting, he can't.
[02:11:54] It's impossible to listen to you and listen
[02:11:57] to what your mind and body are telling you we must do.
[02:12:01] Because people don't do enough of.
[02:12:02] They don't do any of it.
[02:12:05] They don't have passion.
[02:12:06] They lack passion, drive, determination
[02:12:08] because you haven't spent time with yourself.
[02:12:11] Your mind will tell you what is next.
[02:12:14] But you haven't spent the time to go,
[02:12:18] all right, let me just figure this out.
[02:12:23] You're looking for let me Google this, and let me Google that,
[02:12:27] and let me-- you're not going to find it there
[02:12:29] because there's billions of people in this world.
[02:12:35] And they're all supposed to be individuals.
[02:12:39] But we have a pack mentality.
[02:12:42] That's why you're so fucking lost.
[02:12:44] Why am I so unique?
[02:12:48] I'm being exactly what the fuck I was supposed to be.
[02:12:50] I ain't follow shit.
[02:12:52] And when I did follow shit, I was like everybody else.
[02:12:55] The second I said, OK, man, hang on, dude, you don't like this,
[02:12:59] you don't like this, you don't like this, who are you,
[02:13:03] David Goggins?
[02:13:04] Who are you supposed to be?
[02:13:07] Miraculously, all these things just--
[02:13:10] I couldn't even-- the list of shit I had to do, just, wham.
[02:13:15] It's like, fuck.
[02:13:16] OK.
[02:13:17] Wow.
[02:13:18] Once you sit down with yourself and say, OK, I
[02:13:19] don't want to be like Michael Jordan or Jim Brown--
[02:13:22] they're both born on my birthday.
[02:13:23] So I looked at their birthday.
[02:13:24] I said, oh, maybe I can be one of the--
[02:13:26] I can't.
[02:13:27] I'm going to be David fucking Goggins.
[02:13:31] And that looks like this.
[02:13:34] It just came.
[02:13:36] Everything flooded.
[02:13:37] So every single day of my life, there's
[02:13:41] a different thing that comes up that I have to do.
[02:13:44] But no one knows what to do because everybody else is
[02:13:46] following steps.
[02:13:49] Like the Republican and Democratic parties.
[02:13:51] I'm not political--
[02:13:52] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Neither am I.
[02:13:53] DAVID GOGGINS: --at all for this reason.
[02:13:55] Republicans are going to vote Republican.
[02:13:59] Democrats are going to vote Democrat.
[02:14:02] You're not even a human fucking being, bro.
[02:14:05] No way all you fuckers agree with all the same fucking shit.
[02:14:09] And I know I don't.
[02:14:10] So once you figure out yourself and who you are,
[02:14:14] all the answers come.
[02:14:16] So every night, a different painting is being painted.
[02:14:20] And it's a beautiful painting for myself.
[02:14:22] I'm like, OK.
[02:14:23] That's it.
[02:14:23] It may look the same to most motherfuckers.
[02:14:26] But the end result is very fucking different.
[02:14:29] That's why my-- if you look at what I've done in 49 years,
[02:14:34] it's more than most people will ever do in their life
[02:14:36] because they were a race car driver.
[02:14:39] And that's what they did.
[02:14:41] They drove a fucking car.
[02:14:42] It's great.
[02:14:45] I was all kind of shit because that's exactly what
[02:14:49] the painting was saying to do.
[02:14:50] It's what the mind was saying to do.
[02:14:52] Wasn't saying just drive a car, so then that race car driver
[02:14:54] didn't know what the fuck to do.
[02:14:55] He retires from being a race car driver, and they're lost.
[02:14:59] People go, how are you still--
[02:15:01] I don't get it.
[02:15:03] Dude, you're never going to fill your list.
[02:15:06] But you never found your list because it never
[02:15:09] was presented in front of you because your head was
[02:15:11] cluttered with shit because you never just stopped
[02:15:15] for lots of minutes, lots of years, and just said,
[02:15:20] all right, it's me and you.
[02:15:22] Let it go.
[02:15:23] And it just-- bam.
[02:15:25] It's right there.
[02:15:27] ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'm not a psychologist,
[02:15:29] as I mentioned before.
[02:15:32] But I'm going to venture a hypothesis here.
[02:15:37] I think that you've mastered the process of internal dialogue.
[02:15:44] But when I say dialogue, I think most people think, oh,
[02:15:47] the inner voice, the chatter.
[02:15:50] But that's just one half of a dialogue.
[02:15:52] A dialogue is a two-way street.
[02:15:55] So I completely agree because I know from experience
[02:15:59] that when we go inward, oftentimes, we hear things,
[02:16:01] if we're really honest with ourselves, it's like, oh no,
[02:16:03] I don't want to think about that.
[02:16:05] No.
[02:16:05] And then we start looking outward.
[02:16:07] Or we start trying to shift our attention or distract.
[02:16:11] And there are a million reasons that
[02:16:13] are handed to us, excuses, and seemingly good justifications
[02:16:17] to be able to do that.
[02:16:19] But dialogue is a two-way street.
[02:16:21] And it hit me while you were just
[02:16:22] saying what you were saying, I was
[02:16:24] paying very close attention.
[02:16:25] And I realized David Goggins is talking about the voice that
[02:16:31] comes up, including the terrible stuff that no one wants
[02:16:34] to hear about themselves from themselves.
[02:16:36] But then he's also got the dialogue down where
[02:16:39] he knows the counter voice.
[02:16:41] He goes, yeah, you're right.
[02:16:42] And so I'm going to do this.
[02:16:43] Or maybe no, remember this.
[02:16:47] You're in a dialogue, a two-way dialogue in there, not
[02:16:51] a one-way chatter dialogue.
[02:16:53] There are books written by famous psychologists
[02:16:55] about chatter, trying to shift your internal narrative.
[02:16:58] You're like, bring the internal--
[02:17:00] the internal narrative, that's what going inward is about.
[02:17:03] But it's not one voice.
[02:17:05] Again, there's a hypothesis.
[02:17:06] And I'm not claiming to be all-knowing.
[02:17:07] Lord knows I'm not all-knowing.
[02:17:10] But you've mastered the dialogue.
[02:17:12] And if there are three voices, strong, medium, and weak,
[02:17:16] in there, you're like, let's all come to the table.
[02:17:19] So you've got a symphony of voices in there
[02:17:22] that are all you, that you know to be you.
[02:17:24] And you know how to have those convers-- you're not
[02:17:27] afraid to be in those conversations.
[02:17:28] And then you know what the outcome of that committee
[02:17:32] decision is, and you put it into real-world action.
[02:17:35] And the world only sees the action.
[02:17:37] DAVID GOGGINS: That's it.
[02:17:38] ANDREW HUBERMAN: And only you can
[02:17:40] know your internal dialogue.
[02:17:42] And only I can know my internal dialogue.
[02:17:44] And the only way to, quote unquote, "know it"
[02:17:46] is to spend a hell a lot of time there.
[02:17:48] DAVID GOGGINS: That's right.
[02:17:49] ANDREW HUBERMAN: OK.
[02:17:50] DAVID GOGGINS: A lifetime.
[02:17:51] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Got it.
[02:17:51] DAVID GOGGINS: A lifetime.
[02:17:52] Like, think about it.
[02:17:55] For me to be sitting here in front of you,
[02:17:58] you're not going to call 300-pound Ecolab
[02:18:01] guy to come sit here.
[02:18:03] You might.
[02:18:03] I don't know.
[02:18:04] Maybe.
[02:18:04] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Probably not.
[02:18:05] DAVID GOGGINS: Probably not.
[02:18:06] Think about this.
[02:18:09] What we teach people is kind, kindness to yourself.
[02:18:16] Do you think if I taught myself kindness--
[02:18:19] and I agree with it.
[02:18:20] God, so many people-- so many people take me out of context,
[02:18:22] it's ridiculous.
[02:18:24] Take it however the fuck you want to take it.
[02:18:26] When I was 300 pounds, where do you
[02:18:30] think that conversation would that got me
[02:18:32] if I spoke kindness to myself?
[02:18:33] I'll tell you where it gets me.
[02:18:35] Right back to 7-Eleven with another box of mini chocolate
[02:18:38] donuts and a chocolate milkshake.
[02:18:41] That's the one voice.
[02:18:44] That's the one voice that most of us have
[02:18:47] that you're talking about.
[02:18:48] If you don't have a conversation in there, the other voice
[02:18:51] that you create that says, OK, how does this look?
[02:18:56] Looks very ugly.
[02:18:58] That kind conversation for me went away a long time ago,
[02:19:02] which is why the dialogue is now what you see.
[02:19:05] A lot of action.
[02:19:07] Because most people have inaction because there's
[02:19:11] one person talking.
[02:19:12] And that one person is always leading you
[02:19:14] down the same path, the path that
[02:19:16] makes you feel very comfortable and happy with yourself.
[02:19:22] The second you create the other voice, there's conflict.
[02:19:25] Just battles.
[02:19:26] Just wars.
[02:19:28] Just defeat.
[02:19:30] One thing I learned, and I taught myself this,
[02:19:32] and people go, I don't understand what you're saying,
[02:19:34] I'm going to try to break it down real quick.
[02:19:37] I didn't teach myself victory first.
[02:19:41] I taught myself failure.
[02:19:43] I taught myself how to fail.
[02:19:47] And people like, that's so depressing.
[02:19:50] Is it?
[02:19:50] When you're 300 pounds and you can't read and write
[02:19:53] and you're fucked up, you know how many times
[02:19:55] you're going to fucking fail on that process?
[02:19:58] So if you don't know how to fail, there is no victory.
[02:20:02] I never talked about winning because I
[02:20:04] knew the path to winning was going
[02:20:08] to be years of failing first.
[02:20:10] So I taught myself how to fail properly.
[02:20:14] No one teaches you how to fucking fail.
[02:20:18] But if you're going out for insurmountable fucking
[02:20:21] odds that make absolutely no fucking sense,
[02:20:24] a Black kid that can't swim, 300 pounds--
[02:20:26] going to be a Navy SEAL.
[02:20:28] OK.
[02:20:31] You better teach yourself how to fail first
[02:20:34] because if you sit in failure for too long,
[02:20:38] you will never come out of it.
[02:20:40] So the first part of my success was
[02:20:45] learning how to fail properly.
[02:20:48] And then eventually, I started getting a few victories.
[02:20:53] But that's what people don't get.
[02:20:55] When you have buried yourself in such a deep fucking hole,
[02:20:59] you better first talk about the failures
[02:21:01] you're going to have first.
[02:21:01] And that's when that other voice comes up.
[02:21:03] It tells you, we've got to do something.
[02:21:04] But it also tells you, boy, I'm not
[02:21:07] going to lie to you, Goggins.
[02:21:09] You're in for a fucking climb, bro.
[02:21:12] You're going to get your ass handed to you,
[02:21:14] made fun of, the outside noise, the inside noise.
[02:21:18] Both voices are going to be fucking telling
[02:21:20] you to go fuck yourself.
[02:21:22] You are in for hell, bro.
[02:21:26] I am.
[02:21:27] So I better learn to fail.
[02:21:28] ANDREW HUBERMAN: So this is what you
[02:21:30] mean when you say that whatever anyone says,
[02:21:32] it's insignificant?
[02:21:33] DAVID GOGGINS: Insignificant as fuck.
[02:21:34] ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's the cap gun fire
[02:21:36] because it's just like it-- because the voice
[02:21:38] in your own head is far worse.
[02:21:40] And I should say, sorry, one of the voices in your head.
[02:21:44] I'm being very detailed, almost surgical
[02:21:46] about that because I think this thing about inner dialogue
[02:21:49] we think is one voice.
[02:21:50] But you're making it clear it's many voices.
[02:21:53] DAVID GOGGINS: It is.
[02:21:54] And the thing about it is, you have to be really--
[02:21:59] and sometimes all the voices are telling you
[02:22:01] the wrong shit, man.
[02:22:03] But through years, years, not a podcast or listening to a book
[02:22:08] or reading a book, years of sacrifice,
[02:22:12] of suffering, of diligent pinpoint fucking work
[02:22:16] on what you want to do for yourself,
[02:22:18] not like, oh, let me just do a bunch of shit.
[02:22:23] Let me-- I want to be in every task possible.
[02:22:27] No.
[02:22:28] Pinpoint what I want to do with my life.
[02:22:33] What happens is you have all these voices that
[02:22:36] are telling you you're fucked up,
[02:22:38] and this is going to be hard.
[02:22:39] But for some reason, you put so much practice into you
[02:22:44] that you can ignore every one of them that
[02:22:47] are telling you you're not going to fucking make it.
[02:22:50] And still be able to fucking make it
[02:22:53] because you have put the practice in that you
[02:22:56] know this is the process.
[02:22:59] It's such a daunting task that all the voices are saying no.
[02:23:04] But you still have the conviction
[02:23:06] that I know I can do this.
[02:23:08] And that's what it took for me to get here.
[02:23:13] 20, 30 years ago, I had this--
[02:23:15] 35 or whatever it was, 25 years ago, pipe dream.
[02:23:21] And ever since then, every voice was like, you're a fucking nut.
[02:23:27] But when you put that practice in every day, you lace them up.
[02:23:30] And I mean, run.
[02:23:32] It's just a metaphor for life.
[02:23:34] When you lace them motherfuckers up every day,
[02:23:36] pretty soon, you win.
[02:23:38] Pretty soon, you'll fucking win.
[02:23:40] If you have the courage and the heart and the dedication
[02:23:42] and the mindset of everybody can go fuck themselves,
[02:23:45] I know what I know.
[02:23:46] I've listened to myself enough to know.
[02:23:49] I know what I know.
[02:23:51] None of you can hear what I'm hearing.
[02:23:53] And that's what people don't do enough of.
[02:23:55] They don't listen to their journey.
[02:23:58] They listen to everybody else's shit.
[02:24:00] Before you know it, I'm crazy.
[02:24:02] But if I'm so fucking crazy, why am I so successful?
[02:24:06] How that happen?
[02:24:09] But I'm so misguided and fucked up.
[02:24:13] And don't listen to him.
[02:24:17] Why am I the only one to do a whole bunch of shit?
[02:24:20] Why am I a trailblazer?
[02:24:23] Why?
[02:24:23] How is that possible?
[02:24:24] How can you be fucked up and also self-made at the same
[02:24:28] fucking--
[02:24:29] no.
[02:24:29] No.
[02:24:30] Obviously, you're not looking at the truth in front of you.
[02:24:34] The truth in front of you is it sucks.
[02:24:37] It's painful.
[02:24:39] It's fucking mind-numbing.
[02:24:41] And that is the truth.
[02:24:44] And that's why a lot of people don't
[02:24:46] like listening to me because this is what it takes,
[02:24:49] creating another voice and sometimes going at it alone.
[02:24:53] All the time going at it alone because no one's
[02:24:55] going to believe in you.
[02:24:57] And that's that.
[02:24:59] ANDREW HUBERMAN: What I'm about to say is not conjecture.
[02:25:01] And I can say that with confidence
[02:25:04] because I did a four-episode guest
[02:25:05] series with a brilliant psychiatrist, a guy named
[02:25:08] Paul Conti.
[02:25:09] He's from Trenton.
[02:25:10] He's a Stanford, Harvard-trained guy.
[02:25:12] He's also got a lot of street in him.
[02:25:13] He's had his own hardship, real hardship.
[02:25:16] He's brilliant.
[02:25:17] And he said something that I'll never forget,
[02:25:20] which is, we think that the forebrain, the part
[02:25:22] of our brain that creates strategy, et cetera,
[02:25:25] is the supercomputer.
[02:25:26] He said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[02:25:28] No, no, no.
[02:25:29] He's like, the supercomputer of the brain
[02:25:31] is the unconscious mind.
[02:25:33] It's the part of our mind that's controlling most everything.
[02:25:38] And most people, unfortunately, don't
[02:25:40] do the work to understand how their unconscious is
[02:25:42] controlling them.
[02:25:43] And that's a scary thing, this idea,
[02:25:45] like your mind is controlling you.
[02:25:47] And I'm not going to get into the free will debate.
[02:25:49] I believe in at least some will.
[02:25:53] I believe what you're describing and this internal dialogue,
[02:25:59] I think you have access to your unconscious mind
[02:26:02] by listening to the dialogue, going inward.
[02:26:04] We know this is true in sleep, in dreams, in meditation,
[02:26:07] and just by shutting out everything else, shutting out
[02:26:10] all the external noise, which is filled
[02:26:13] with things that pull us to it.
[02:26:14] Noise makes it sound bad, but it's the gravitational pull
[02:26:16] of all the things that allow us to distract ourselves
[02:26:19] without knowing.
[02:26:22] The ice cream.
[02:26:23] The have a cookie.
[02:26:24] The Merry Christmas.
[02:26:26] The unconscious mind, this huge piece
[02:26:28] of the iceberg underneath that Paul calls the supercomputer,
[02:26:32] he's saying that with knowledge as a neurobiologist,
[02:26:35] psychiatrist, psychologist, so he really knows,
[02:26:37] that's the piece that if one does real introspection,
[02:26:41] he calls it the cupboards.
[02:26:42] You got to look in the cupboards.
[02:26:43] And it's often really scary what you find in there.
[02:26:45] And most people are just like, I don't even
[02:26:47] want to know the cupboards are there.
[02:26:48] But you're pulling all the cupboard doors open.
[02:26:52] And then you're-- and you're extremely deliberate with what
[02:26:55] gets put into action.
[02:26:58] You're not just going, oh, like, I'm pissed,
[02:26:59] so I'm going to act pissed.
[02:27:01] Or I'm tired, so I'm going to act tired.
[02:27:03] It's you're picking very carefully what to do.
[02:27:07] And that's a process that I'm guessing came to you.
[02:27:11] Does it come to you as a, OK, it makes
[02:27:13] sense why running makes sense.
[02:27:15] It makes sense why smokejumping makes sense.
[02:27:20] So it seems like a huge portion of your time
[02:27:25] is spent understanding yourself and making sense to you.
[02:27:30] And so when people don't understand you,
[02:27:32] it's got to be extra frustrating because most people don't
[02:27:34] understand themselves.
[02:27:35] So then we're all running around going, you're this,
[02:27:37] and you're that because most people are just
[02:27:39] unwilling to look inward.
[02:27:40] And I'm including myself, by the way.
[02:27:42] I mean, I've done a fair amount of introspection.
[02:27:44] But I'm inspired today, that word, inspired, but it's true,
[02:27:47] motivated to start going inward further because it is scary.
[02:27:53] It's like, we don't know what's in those cupboards,
[02:27:55] and it's terrifying, especially because we don't know.
[02:27:59] DAVID GOGGINS: And those are the first ones to open up.
[02:28:01] And like you talked about, you got
[02:28:02] to go through those cupboards.
[02:28:03] I do spring cleaning every fucking
[02:28:05] day in those dark cupboards.
[02:28:08] Those dark cabinets are the ones I start with first.
[02:28:10] That's the real me, man.
[02:28:13] That's the real me.
[02:28:13] That's why I'm not ashamed.
[02:28:16] I don't hide.
[02:28:17] I used to hide.
[02:28:19] I don't hide anymore.
[02:28:20] He's exactly right.
[02:28:21] I don't know all the fucking science behind shit.
[02:28:24] I know what I know.
[02:28:26] That's why I don't listen to anybody anymore.
[02:28:28] I don't listen to shit.
[02:28:28] I think most people are full of shit because I know.
[02:28:31] I know the deep, dark secrets of those fucking cupboards.
[02:28:35] It's ugly, man.
[02:28:36] And every day, I'm talking to them.
[02:28:38] Every day, I'm cleaning them.
[02:28:39] I'm cleaning them, and I'm talking
[02:28:40] to the same demons that came out of those fucking cupboards
[02:28:42] as I'm cleaning them.
[02:28:43] Sometimes they go right back in them again.
[02:28:46] It's not easy.
[02:28:48] And this is why most of us just--
[02:28:52] why I am misunderstood because what comes out
[02:28:56] of those cabinets that I'm cleaning,
[02:28:59] sometimes they see on Instagram.
[02:29:01] Sometimes they'll see it in a podcast.
[02:29:03] Sometimes they see it in this one.
[02:29:04] I turn people off.
[02:29:05] Open up your own cabinets.
[02:29:10] And then go talk about it.
[02:29:13] Let me see how pretty it looks.
[02:29:15] Let me see how pretty you sound.
[02:29:17] Let me see how put together your words are.
[02:29:20] I bet you a fuck or a motherfucker comes out
[02:29:22] because for you to go back in there again
[02:29:24] to clean the same fucking cabinet that the demon came out
[02:29:27] of takes some big balls, bro.
[02:29:30] To do it every day of your life.
[02:29:33] To go back in there and spring clean every day, not once
[02:29:38] a fucking year, once every decade.
[02:29:41] Every day you know it gets dusty.
[02:29:43] And every day, you don't start with the victories.
[02:29:47] You don't go, oh, this is nice.
[02:29:49] Look at my-- look at my I love me wall.
[02:29:51] Let me clean up.
[02:29:51] This is a little dusty.
[02:29:52] No.
[02:29:53] I go right for the things that are going to keep me buried.
[02:29:56] And I go right there first because if I don't clean those
[02:29:58] out first, the day doesn't start.
[02:30:01] So what are you saying to me is truth.
[02:30:06] And like I told you many times today, I
[02:30:09] can never figure out how to explain this shit to people
[02:30:13] because I'm not neuro nothing.
[02:30:16] I'm just a guy that said, OK, we got to start in the dungeon.
[02:30:21] And we got to stay here for the rest of our lives.
[02:30:25] For you to become successful, the dungeon
[02:30:27] is a place that has to be clean.
[02:30:30] And it's the scariest place to be.
[02:30:33] That's why I'm misunderstood because I'm
[02:30:35] speaking from the dungeon.
[02:30:37] That's why I am successful because I
[02:30:40] go there every damn day.
[02:30:41] And that is the truth, what he says.
[02:30:44] It's the exact truth.
[02:30:46] Those cabinets are fucking dusty, dirty,
[02:30:49] and scary as shit.
[02:30:51] Broken glass, fucking dark, spiders, cobwebs.
[02:30:58] But most of all, your biggest fears,
[02:31:01] the biggest things that put you in a fucked up place you
[02:31:04] are today are in there.
[02:31:05] That's why we all like to keep them shut.
[02:31:07] You like to lock them up.
[02:31:08] Act like they never happened.
[02:31:09] That's why you never grow.
[02:31:11] You never improve.
[02:31:13] You never have real conversations
[02:31:14] like we're having right now.
[02:31:15] Never.
[02:31:17] Oh no.
[02:31:18] No, no, no, no, no.
[02:31:19] Let's not-- no, no, no.
[02:31:20] Let's not go there.
[02:31:21] I talked to so many people who tell me that.
[02:31:24] Let's talk about this.
[02:31:27] Because they'll tell me, but they can only say it once.
[02:31:31] And they'll say it in passing.
[02:31:32] They won't get deep in the weeds with it.
[02:31:34] Like, you can't just clean it.
[02:31:37] Motherfucker, you got to spit shine that motherfucker.
[02:31:40] You got to relive it, every fucking detail of it.
[02:31:45] You can't just be like, oh yeah, yeah, my dad beat me.
[02:31:47] And it is what it is.
[02:31:51] It ain't is what it is, motherfucker.
[02:31:52] It's killing you.
[02:31:54] It's taken over your whole fucking life.
[02:31:57] But that's the conversation.
[02:31:58] Yeah, my dad beat-- but I'm fine now, though.
[02:32:00] I'm good.
[02:32:01] OK.
[02:32:03] All right.
[02:32:04] No, you ain't.
[02:32:04] You ain't fine.
[02:32:07] This is real talk.
[02:32:08] People don't have that.
[02:32:09] So your boy's right.
[02:32:11] 100% right.
[02:32:12] Scary as shit.
[02:32:14] It's scary as shit.
[02:32:16] But it makes you who you're supposed to be.
[02:32:20] And that's the test.
[02:32:22] We forget.
[02:32:23] We think we're supposed to breathe air and have kids
[02:32:26] and pay the bills and shit.
[02:32:29] But what's this life about?
[02:32:31] That makes no sense.
[02:32:34] We're being tested, my friend.
[02:32:36] Tests come when you have not studied.
[02:32:41] Tests come when you think that you're in a great place.
[02:32:45] That's the test.
[02:32:46] The test is every day of your life.
[02:32:48] And most of us fail because we don't
[02:32:50] know why we're here because we don't go inward to say, oh.
[02:32:54] You gave me a lot of shit to fix, man.
[02:32:57] And this test sucks.
[02:33:00] But then you start.
[02:33:03] ANDREW HUBERMAN: David Goggins.
[02:33:07] I don't think I could add to that.
[02:33:08] I know I can't.
[02:33:12] Thank you for sharing what you shared today.
[02:33:17] I mean, as much as your process or anyone's process
[02:33:22] can't be completely understood from the outside,
[02:33:28] you gave us a real window into this thing,
[02:33:31] this process that you--
[02:33:35] as you said, God put it on you.
[02:33:37] I believe in God too.
[02:33:38] People can believe what they want.
[02:33:39] But somehow, your life, God gave you these challenges early on.
[02:33:45] And then there was a point where you went internal.
[02:33:50] And like you said, you developed a skill.
[02:33:53] But it's a perishable skill.
[02:33:55] And you clearly live in the process
[02:33:58] of opening those cupboards, reopening those cupboards,
[02:34:02] trying to spit shine those cupboards,
[02:34:04] understanding that they're never, ever really done,
[02:34:08] but that you can gain ground on them, that you can win day
[02:34:12] after day after day.
[02:34:14] And you really shared a lot of concrete things
[02:34:16] that I know people are going to be
[02:34:21] able to apply if they choose.
[02:34:23] And I agree with you.
[02:34:23] I think most people will be like, whoa.
[02:34:26] That was a lot.
[02:34:28] It's heavy.
[02:34:28] I think I want to just kind of bake myself in Netflix and Chex
[02:34:34] Mix instead.
[02:34:37] But there's also the reality that there
[02:34:40] are men and women, boys and girls who hear that and go, OK,
[02:34:46] and start cracking the cupboards open.
[02:34:49] And I just know that for myself, I'm
[02:34:52] extremely grateful that you're willing to put it
[02:34:54] all out there.
[02:34:55] You're so brutally honest, so brutally authentic.
[02:35:00] That word authenticity gets thrown around so much.
[02:35:03] And I can tell you that for me and for everybody else, that's
[02:35:07] really what resonates.
[02:35:09] So whether or not you want to, whether or not it's
[02:35:11] the purpose behind it or not, you're lighting the path.
[02:35:15] So thank you.
[02:35:17] DAVID GOGGINS: Respect Thank you.
[02:35:18] Thanks for having me.
[02:35:19] ANDREW HUBERMAN: Thank you for joining me
[02:35:20] for today's discussion with David Goggins.
[02:35:22] To learn more about David and to find links
[02:35:25] to his two fantastic books, "Can't Hurt Me,"
[02:35:27] and "Never Finished," please see the show note captions.
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[02:37:29] [MUSIC PLAYING]