Transcription
All right, here's the deal: I love David Goggins. In fact, I've read both of his books, and I think they were phenomenal. I highly recommend you read them. His story is incredibly inspiring. This guy went from a complete underdog—abusive father, learning disabilities, overweight—with seemingly no potential to running ultra marathons, which are 100 miles and beyond, setting a Guinness World Record for pull-ups in 24 hours, becoming a Navy SEAL, smoke jumper, author, and public speaker. It's crazy! This guy went from nothing to ultra success. He's dubbed the toughest man on Earth and truly exemplifies what it means to live a life of complete and utter discipline and resilience. He literally eats, sleeps, and breathes mental toughness.
I'm sure, especially if you're a guy, you look up to David as a source of inspiration, motivation, and evidence that we are more capable than we think. I mean, this guy literally ran his first ultra marathon with no training and broke multiple bones in his body. I believe he also experienced kidney failure from that. He has a quote that says, "When you think you are done, you are only 40% into what your body's capable of." That is just the limit we put on ourselves. That ultra marathon, and pretty much everything he has done and everything he describes in his books, is an example of that quote—that we are far more capable than we think.
So where's the problem here? As someone who thinks David Goggins and this kind of lifestyle and mindset is honestly freaking dope, and also as someone who is totally against victim mentality and pursuing comfort, there's also a trap that I found myself in multiple times throughout my life that has stemmed from striving to live this way. It's a trap that, if you're not careful, you can fall into and actually become stagnant and even regress in your life. So I wanted to just sit down and record this video to share my thoughts on this with you and hopefully steer you away from falling into this trap while also pursuing mental toughness and discipline and what David Goggins preaches.
All right, let's get started. I've had many seasons in my life of incredible discipline and resilience. I mean, I've done challenges like six months of no junk food, no cheat meals, only water, only cold showers, waking up early, and training intensely six times a week. I've also done challenges like 75 Hard with the additional ice bath every single day and making content every single day. You know, I woke up at 4:30 every single day and worked out before school for an extended period of time. What else? No sugar for months, extreme dieting, fasting—just a bunch of stuff, a bunch of challenges. None of which compared to anything that David Goggins has done, but I sure did feel like him in those moments.
What has happened in my life a few times, and the trap that I've fallen into, is taking this example of the kind of person that I could be—being incredibly disciplined, resilient, pushing myself to the absolute limit every single day through these challenges and making progress—and setting that as a benchmark of how I need to live 24/7. Now listen, I'm not here to be soft. I'm not here to try to be soft. I'm not here to give you excuses or anything. I'm totally against all of that, okay? But what I am here to do is talk about something real. This trap, if you are not careful, can cause you to be stagnant and spiral into inaction.
When you take this and set it as what you think you need to be living like every single day, 24/7, chances are you're going to get burnt out. You are going to start beating yourself up and have this mentality of, "Oh, I need to be doing this. I should be doing this all the time." You will be thinking that all the time. This is something that is sort of like a dark side of self-improvement, where you have this image, this idea of who you can be, who you know you can be, and then strive to be that perfect person all the time.
You are not perfect. So if you're striving to be perfectly disciplined and resilient and all these things every single day, you're going to fall into this trap of starting to beat yourself up and being like, "I should be doing this. I should be doing this." You keep falling and being imperfect, and you're like, "Oh, I keep doing this, blah, blah, blah." What that does is it just starts to weigh on you, and eventually, you just quit. You just don't do anything. It weighs on you so much that you spiral into inaction, and you start to become stagnant, maybe even regress to a point where you're worse off than where you started. Again, I've been there.
The first thing you need to realize, using David Goggins as an example, is that this guy is totally different from you. He has a different past. I mean, he might not be completely different, but he's a different human. He has a different past, different goals, different core motivations, different drivers, different calling—different everything. So you cannot take his life and be like, "I need to live like that all the time" because you're different. What drives him may not drive you, so it's not going to work like that long term.
Now, especially again if you're a man, I totally recommend you go on spouts of figuring out what you are truly capable of. Go run until you can't. Go hit some horribly uncomfortable workouts. Go on seasons of intense dieting or no sugar. Challenge yourself beyond what you think your limits are because I promise you that will be life-changing. Especially as a man, you should be doing these things and pursuing mental toughness and discipline.
But what that looks like for you might be different from David Goggins. You might not have a goal of going into the military, so doing multiple hell weeks and all this kind of stuff is not something you necessarily need to do. What you should do is pursue mental toughness in your own way and not make excuses. For you, that might be weightlifting, bodybuilding, doing a YouTube channel, making videos—anything! Sports, football—anything that could be totally different from David Goggins.
You cannot take his life, the kind of past he's had, the different convictions and seasons he's been through, and be like, "Yeah, this is how I have to live 24/7 or else I'm a failure." Use his achievements and accomplishments as evidence that we are more capable than we think and apply that to your life. That can be universal. Guess what? Pursuing discipline, not making excuses, not being a victim, making changes in your life, and taking action—those are universal things. But you don't have to be waking up at 3:30 and going for a run every single day. You know what I'm saying? It could look completely different for you.
So again, I'm not telling you to be soft or make excuses or anything. This is hard for me to talk about because I feel like there's a fine line. I am not someone who believes in making excuses and being a victim and being soft. But I am someone who believes that there is a trap you can fall into here because I've done it, and it can lead you to not doing anything, which is worse.
So be careful. Don't compare yourself. Don't take what you know you could be and apply that all the time. Don't use that as a perfect example of how you need to live and that you need to be perfect in that because you're going to fall. You're going to fail. You're going to fall short. That's just how we are as humans. That's going to happen.
You cannot use your failure or not living up to this perfect standard as evidence that you're just a total failure and horrible. You just can't do that because that's just going to spiral into a horrible mindset that will leave you not good at all. Instead, use that as motivation. Instead of comparing yourself to who David Goggins is today, compare yourself to who you were yesterday and be 1% better each day. When you fall short, when you fail, use that as evidence that you're human.
But don't make excuses. Don't allow that to become your lifestyle. Don't fall into the loop of comfort or pursuing short-term pleasure or any of that. You do not want to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to this perfect version of yourself or just someone else who's on a completely different life path than you and be like, "Yeah, I can't live up to that," and let that drag you down. That can't happen. You really shouldn't do that at all because that's a horrible trap to be in.
So again, I just want to clarify: I love David Goggins. This guy has changed my life. I've implemented everything in his books, and I totally recommend you read these books. He's a total inspiration. This guy is amazing. I highly recommend pursuing mental toughness, challenging yourself, and pushing yourself beyond your limits. I mean, these are the things that I talk about in my videos.
But again, you do not want to fall into the trap of comparison or thinking that you need to live your life perfectly all the time because that's going to backfire on you pretty heavily. Remember that David has different drivers, different core motivations, and different goals in your life. Don't use that as discouragement, but just use that as motivation that you can become the best version of yourself in a different way—your own way. Your best version of yourself is going to be different than David's.
For you, it might be business. Look at Alex Hormozi. If you don't know who that is, look him up. Him and David Goggins—boom! Both of them are incredibly mentally tough, incredibly driven, and disciplined, but they're doing completely different things. So for you, it's going to look different. Pursue excellence in your own life with your own things, with your own goals, and your own drivers and core motivations.
Don't make excuses. Pursue discipline, pursue discomfort, and pursue mental toughness. All right? But be careful about falling into the trap of comparison. Don't do it. You're not perfect; you're human. But don't let that be an excuse.
All right, so thank you so much for watching. Let me know in the comments what you think of this video. I know it's kind of a different one, but I thought this would be cool to talk about. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future videos. Thank you again for watching, and stay hard!