David Goggins, a former Navy SEAL and ultra-endurance athlete, rejects vacations, calling even rest "mental aid stations" to escape relentless self-push. His 2020 knee surgery—bone-on-bone arthritis, broken tools—proved his discipline’s cost, yet he insists suffering accelerates growth, like finishing Moab’s 240-mile race in 62 hours with drained knees. Goggins dismisses societal excuses for laziness, citing childhood abuse, stuttering, and poverty as fuel for his unyielding mindset, which he documents to inspire others. He clarifies his "part-time savage" phase isn’t self-destruction but outpacing haters, who drain mental bandwidth better spent on discipline. Cold-water training and MMA fighters like Khabib Nurmagomedov prove suffering rewires DNA, while COVID-era entitlement exposes hollow expectations. True fulfillment demands relentless evolution—physical and mental—over inherited success or external validation. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, I have resets, but my resets are like, I call them aid stations.
Mental aid stations.
So when you're going fucking hard and you grind all the fucking time, Like everybody knows you're 24 hours in a day, but when I'm in the shower, it's a mental aid station.
I don't think about shit.
I don't fucking think about people.
I don't think about work.
I don't think about running.
I don't think about working out.
When I'm in the car, another fucking mental aid station.
When I'm fucking eating, mental aid station.
So people eat and they work and all that sort of shit, man.
So I can grind hard because a lot of times, man, I'm in mental fucking aid stations.
Do you feel now almost a responsibility to stay at it all the time because so many people are watching and paying attention and drawing inspiration from you?
I love that phrase, uncommon amongst uncommon men.
Because it's such a good phrase because it just shows you...
You've been on this path for so long, and you're grinding for so long, but you're also honest about there's moments where you don't want to fucking do this, which is why it's so interesting, because you do it.
But that's what people need to hear because they feel like that somewhere out there there's some superhuman person who never feels despair and doesn't have any...
There's no...
No hesitation.
They feel like there's this person that's so different than them and so much stronger than them and doesn't ever have any procrastination.
And I looked at what they did to your knee, and I looked at what it looks like, what the actual bone-on-bone looks like, and how it had distorted because there's no cushioning at all.
And the doctor said to you, I can't even believe you could fucking walk on these knees.
From the top, from your tibia to your femur, there's zero space.
It's just kneecap covering two bones that are rubbing against each other.
And so this was after surgery where they had to cut your knee and Slice your shin like in half and then take a chunk out of it because it had deformed so much from you running with bone on bone that it was starting to like swell out in one direction and it was changing the alignment of your leg.
So basically, that little meniscus, that whatever the fuck was in there, so my alignment was so bad, the only thing that was keeping me able to do anything was that little fucked up, messed up meniscus.
It was all jarred up and jacked up, but the second that thing got out, dude, It was like, have you seen Star Wars, those storm things, those big fucking things that, what are they called?
So after surgery, I'm like seven days out or whatever the fuck it was.
And once again, I don't know the exact times, but I have them in the book.
I have everything fucking dialed in.
I went back and I was like, man, I'm fucked up.
I mean, it's a simple meniscus surgery, man.
Like people go back a week later.
They're playing two weeks, three weeks, tops.
I'm like, man, I'm never gonna fucking run again.
I'm gonna walk with a fucking limp.
So I'm going back.
I'm getting fucking like, I'm literally getting my knee drained every week, getting PRP. I'm like, man, in the back of my mind, I know how far I can push myself.
I know my body so fucking well, so well.
And I'm like, this is wrong.
I'm never going to run again.
I'm never going to run again.
I walk with a limp.
So this went off about six months.
So I had the surgery done in February.
It was February, March, April, May, June.
About four months after the surgery, four or five months, I'm like, hey, Jennifer.
I gotta find somebody else to look at my fucking knee.
So I try to keep my shit together.
But imagine when you go from every day of your fucking life grinding, and you go to nothing.
So I went just to pretty much appease her and just see if there's anything left.
So I walk in the office and the doc's like, yeah, I'm looking at your x-rays.
And that's the doctor who's like, I don't know how.
This is when Dr. Gamal looked him up.
World-renowned motherfucker, dude.
And when this guy looked at me, straight-faced.
He said, man...
I don't know how you did anything with those knees, anything, let alone run 200 miles back to back, 240 miles, whatever the fuck you did, I don't know how you did it.
And so I'm like, okay, whatever.
Can we get it fixed?
And he didn't want to get there because he knew I was fucked.
He's like, no, you know, we can maybe, you know, try an unloader brace.
So basically my knee went in on the meniscus side on the inside So it was like jamming on the inside.
So this brace kind of like it kind of helps realign the knee a little bit So then you cannot have so much pressure on the inside your leg So that's it right there.
And so this, it looks like some sort of a clear gel-looking stuff, which is, you know, the meniscus is just a cushioning in between the two bones and the cartilage.
I think he made it more normal, but from what I understand, if you put that in there, like structure-wise, what makes it more normal is the surgery he did.
So right now, there's no bone-on-bone for me.
So there's no need for that meniscus at all.
So a lot of people get their meniscus taken out if you have the right alignment and your body can do what it's supposed to do.
But what I like about, and this was literally a trained skill for me, was I'm always preparing for not being a bitch.
A lot of people get to a point, for instance, if Jennifer can't do something, if she can't go for a run or whatever, just because something's wrong, like some simple shit, it's going to bother her.
I got to a point in my life where I realized this is life.
And so I move on past things real quick.
So people are like, oh my God, what are you going to do, David, if you can't run?
Motherfucker, I'll swim.
Or I'll go to college or I'll do something else.
This isn't my life.
So I'm very aware how quick life can take shit from you.
And I've always prepared my mind for the next chapter.
And what happened with me was I started this thing called front-loading.
So when I was young, I used to be a little piece of shit.
You know, like, fucking, oh, I'm not good enough.
I can't do this.
I can't do that.
But the second I got my head out of my ass, and I realized, man, you can achieve a lot of shit if you get off your ass and you start moving and you start motivating yourself, start becoming a self-motivator.
So I started front-loading.
And front-loading is, people are like, man, you've done so much by 47. Because I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring me.
So my military resume is fat.
You know, I fucking did a lot in the military.
I did a lot outside the military.
I've made money.
I've done almost every race out there, a hard race in the world.
I've broken pull-up records.
I've done a lot of shit.
So when these bad times come, and also, not only that, work your ass off so you can enjoy.
Yeah, you're taking a shot.
You know, you may not live to be old, but what if you do?
And you worked your ass off when you were able, and you were able to fucking get up early, able to grind.
If you front-loaded properly, the back half of your fucking life is money.
And that's what I did.
The second I realized that, man, you are a piece of shit, we gotta get going.
Because at 47, man, you're not gonna be able to do any of this shit.
50, whatever you are.
So I front-loaded.
So all these bad things that have happened to me, I sit back and go, man, how are you handling this so well?
Motherfucker, I've done it.
I front-loaded.
I have the money I need.
I have the success I need.
I have the fucking determination, the willpower, and also the pride in myself.
So when I wake up every morning, I know who the fuck I am.
Well, the way I describe it to people when people ask me, like, why does he do all these things?
What is the motivation here?
I go...
He's on a mental journey that very few people have ever been on Because the what people don't understand you they or they misunderstand you or they purposely misinterpret the way you're living your life You're trying To understand your mind in a way that very few human beings ever get to understand their mind.
Because you're taking your mind into these terrible dark places all the time and you're trying to pull things out of that.
You're trying to learn things about yourself and about your potential from that.
I couldn't fucking read and write until I was a junior in high school.
How are you able to write like this, man?
Motherfucker...
I go to such places in my mind, and I study the darkness.
Like, it's not just physical.
When I was growing up, and I saw my mom getting beat, and I got beat, and I was some stuttering little black kid in all-white school, and I'm on stage, and I gotta say one line, one fucking line in front of fucking 15 people, and I walk off stage, I'm gonna fucking stutter.
All those insecurities and all those fucking things, man.
I used to go home and fucking cry.
I'm like, God, man, I'm fucked up.
I'm so fucked up.
Hang on, man.
As I got older, we got to study this shit, man.
The only way we're going to fucking get through this is if we study it.
So every time I'm in a dark moment...
And life's fucked up around me, whether it be physical or just life.
I get in it, man, with a fucking pen and paper.
I'm like, okay, this fucking sucks.
I can feel like I'm fucking losing my shit.
Let's fucking study this.
Let's come out of this motherfucker a genius.
You know, I studied the black matter of the mind.
The dark matter, you know, like fucking Stephen Hawking.
That's fucking his name.
I said it right.
That motherfucker studied the space and shit.
That's where I consider myself, man.
I was on a journey, just like you said.
You couldn't have said it any better.
And so many people get it wrong.
I don't give a fuck, man.
You can't.
For me, I cannot help people.
There's a lot of cookie cutter shit out here in this world.
Oh, discipline.
Wake up early.
Take cold shower.
Fuck this.
Fuck that.
Whatever.
It's all fucking bullshit.
It's not.
But what they don't teach you within the cookie cutter is like our minds are like a fucking garage.
And the garage, if you open a garage and it's all cluttered up, it's all fucked up, you can't put your car in there.
You got fucking boats and you got fucking kids' toys and shit everywhere.
But if you organize that fucking garage and you put everything in its rightful spot, you can pull that car in there.
You can put two cars in there.
You can put bikes in there.
And that's like with the mind.
People talk about discipline and fucking determination and fucking, you know, repetitions and all this shit.
Consistency.
Why people fall off the wagon so often is because their mind is full of shit.
There's no room in that mind for discipline.
There's no room for consistency.
They may do it once or twice, but then the mind takes over and that cluttered fucking garage comes in.
And then it's like a circuit breaker, man.
A circuit breaker just overloads and it fucking sparks.
And our minds, that's our mind, man.
It's like a fucking circuit breaker that has so much shit in it, you keep unloading it, you can't put any more into it.
So, I talk about it in there, man, so much about clearing space in your fucking mind so that you have room for all those discipline, waking up early, taking those, because they do mean something, but we don't get to that fucking dark matter that is keeping you from clearing out that mental garage.
And that's the only reason I do have the shit I do, is I'm studying this shit.
Because I know that...
I never thought I was going to be writing books and trying to help people get better.
But I was always trying to do it because I knew I sucked.
And so when you know you're trying to get somewhere, you know you suck, you know that you believe that you're a born loser, you are taking snapshots, man.
Like, you know, you see something on your phone, like, oh man, I'm going to take a fucking snapshot of that, or however you do the little picture shit so you can save it on your phone.
I do that in my mind.
So when I get in these moments, I'm like, fucking, okay, wow, that's some fucking good knowledge right there, man.
I snapshot it, because I know that I can use that later.
I can use this because I'm not out there just...
I'm not...
Most people, they go out and they run.
And they go out and they do...
And they're like, oh, this is beautiful.
Look at the fucking mountains and the shit and all this bullshit.
No.
I don't like it.
My body hurts.
I'm hurting.
How do we get through this?
And it's a fucking...
It's a lab.
It's my mental lab.
And so when I come home, I'm not forgetting it.
Every day I get done running or every day I get through work and every day I get through studying, whatever it is that brings me to that place of knowledge, I come home and that book was mostly written on a scratch piece of paper in hand.
So I come home from running and I write everything out.
I write everything out, all those things.
And as I'm running, I'm talking about it.
So all these things that pop in my head as I continue to run, I'm going through it.
I'm starting to layer it down.
I'm starting to break it down into, okay, that happened.
Okay, now let's layer this.
Because that's just not how it happened.
It just didn't happen that way.
What led up to this?
And so it becomes me by myself in school.
I'm literally going to school right now and I'm learning.
So when I come home, I write it out.
And then I'm able to write out and I'm able to think about it and say, okay, oh, this is good shit.
Literally, a few days before the race, I'm getting drained.
Before the race.
So, that's in your fucking mind, man.
It ain't like, oh, I show up to start line, oh, this is fucking great.
I'm gonna fucking have a good time out here.
No, I'm thinking, alright, I said my fucking knees drained.
Like, I'm in pain at mile zero.
And that's in your brain.
I have 240 miles ahead of me.
And there's nothing in life.
Nothing in life.
This is why I love endurance sports so much.
I love it and I hate it.
It's a love-hate relationship.
62 hours, I equate that to fucking seven years of life.
You can't get that, man.
So what I know that Ultra does for me is it packs in.
It packs in.
I can't live several lifetimes.
I can't.
Because the knowledge I need to gain for this life I live in today, I need two or three or four lifetimes to be where I want to go.
Ultra gives it to me in fucking high definition real fast.
62 hours, you go out there and fucking suffer?
You come back, oh, that was 62 hours.
I gained seven fucking years of knowledge.
The ups and downs, the pain, the suffering, the...
You learn how to chunk this shit down like, oh my God, man, I'm at mile 100. How the fuck am I going to get to mile 118?
Everything becomes, you start to learn life out there and you learn so much in such a condensed period of time and nothing in the world can do it like pushing yourself to the absolute limit.
I call it like, so people have talent.
People have a lot of talent.
And this is going beyond your talent.
So when talent, when there's no more talent, what happens to you?
Most people quit.
People only go to their talent level.
And once their talent level is gone, it becomes a mental game.
The whole mental game sets in then.
And most people can only perform to their talent.
And they realize, man, why am I always messing up right here?
But when they get tired and when they get pushed and when they get into that, when the world starts narrowing and the walls start closing in and they can't see peripherally anymore and they're exhausted and they start making mistakes.
So all of their understanding of what to do next gets clouded because they're thinking about quitting.
When you drag a motherfucker into hell who's a demon, you're in a long race.
And they're hard.
People with a talent problem who are so talented, they're hard to train.
They're hard to push.
If you're their coach and you're trying to get them to see that we got to get you past this talent problem, we got to get you to the point where you're into that mental zone.
Because we got to get you way past your talent.
And it's hard for coaches to take these fighters or whoever Past your talent, and on the other side of that is where they gain true, true levels.
The levels beyond talent, that's where it really is.
Because if you're able to take a motherfucker down to the deep end, while a motherfucker's just putting his toe in, fueling the water and shit, if a motherfucker's in the deep end, he'll be able to take you down there, and he's mentally strong, it's over.
But you know what's interesting about this book is you talk about how there was moments, even though you're clearly deep-end qualified, clearly deep-end certified.
You took some time, and you hadn't been a deep-end for a while, and you're like, I'm kind of a part-time savage now.
That's right.
This is kind of bullshit.
And you're recognizing it in yourself, even though you know your ability, you know your history, you know what you've been capable of doing in the past.
What's funny about that part-time savage thing in there, man, where I fucking totally dogged myself because it's the truth.
All this became nice.
Waking up, motherfucker.
Baking an egg, motherfucker.
Fuck protein shake, early morning shit.
And I stopped having those hard conversations with myself.
Boy, my whole life.
That's why my friends hate my ass, boy.
Because I'm hard on me.
If I'm hard on me, I don't give a fuck about you.
I don't give a fuck about what you think.
I don't give a fuck if you think about me and nothing else.
Hard on myself, bro.
Every morning I woke up, all right, motherfucker.
I call it my morning meeting.
My morning meeting, we all have these fucking meetings all fucking day long.
We go to work.
We're working for somebody else.
They want a meeting because they want to be successful.
So we all sit our ass down, try to make them better, try to make them more money, try to make them more powerful.
We don't do that for ourselves.
Every morning I wake up, I used to.
I had to get back into it again because in that chapter, you see, I became a little bitch.
That morning meeting, I wake up, okay, Goggins, what did you do fucked up yesterday?
Where were you at?
And I just go through and analyze my life.
And then I went through a period of time there, man, where I stopped having those conversations.
You know how you...
Let's say you and your wife go out.
Let's say...
I don't know.
Let's make up a story here.
You and your wife go out and you see your cousin.
And your cousin's fat as fuck.
I don't know if they are or not.
Hopefully not.
If they are, apologize.
Maybe.
So they go out and you see your cousin.
She's fat as fuck.
He's fat as fuck, whoever.
And...
You guys get back in the car and you guys, man, you see motherfucking Mary Jo?
How fat she was?
That's what we do.
We go back and the hard conversation that you should be having with Mary Jo.
Hey Mary Jo, you fucking gained some weight, huh sister?
Fucking kind of big.
That's what I do to myself.
A lot of people that we see all day long, we see them.
We don't have the hard conversation with them.
We walk around, I'd rather you fucking hate me and get better than like me and stay the same.
And that's how I feel about David Goggins.
Motherfucker, I hate you, David.
But I get better from it.
I get better from it.
And that's why when people see me and I know you, you're in my little foxhole.
If you're in my foxhole and you become a piece of shit, hey, come here, brother.
Let me talk to you real quick, brother.
People don't like that shit, man.
But I'm not going to allow you to go to a place that's going to be hard to get out of.
It's gonna be hard.
If I allow you to gain five more pounds, or allow you to take four more days off of school, or allow you to keep on procrastinating in your fucking life, and I see it, and I tell Jennifer behind your back, I'm doing you no fucking justice.
Zero justice.
So where this world is now, you can't say a motherfucking thing.
And so the harder it is, the more you start to push back.
And the more you push back and it's not right for people to talk about.
It's not right for like, let's say you are fat.
I was fat.
That's why I talk about it.
Go ahead and say something, motherfucker.
I was fat too.
And it was hard as fuck every fucking day to get up.
I know what it feels like when you roll your fat ass out of bed and all you want is some fucking damn cinnamon buns and shit and fucking chuck and milkshakes.
I know what it is.
I know exactly what it is.
But I can't want it more than you.
And so many people just want it the easy way.
I'm sorry, man.
It's not.
So what they start to do is they build this narrative.
It's okay.
When the narrative should be, you need to fucking work harder.
You need to fucking discipline your mind better.
We need to help people more than just saying it's okay.
It's okay that you're not fucking willing to fucking help yourself out.
That's not okay.
It's not okay.
It's not acceptable.
Even though it's your life, if that's acceptable, that's unacceptable.
And there's a lot of people in this world, me included, that if I accepted that, I wouldn't be anywhere.
So, yeah, a lot of people just fucking, they start creating a narrative about themselves that make it okay.
The ultimate get out of jail free card.
And now the world is set up to have so many get out of jail free cards.
This is what, it's interesting though, is that when you're talking about how you had to come to this realization that you'd become a part-time savage, this isn't recently.
And if you do take a little time and start enjoying it, all of a sudden that general in the back of your head is like, hey, hey, look at what you're doing.
Whenever we meet him and together, you can guarantee it's going to be two people that love each other, but are waiting for the other motherfucker to break.
100% dude.
It's like this thing in the back of your head.
Okay, maybe this will break them.
Maybe this will break them.
So we haven't broken each other yet, but I'm sure the day will come.
I think one of the most important parts about the way you express yourself in your books is that you do talk about your weaknesses, and you do talk about your past and how you started off on this journey, and you talk about how there are those moments that you doubt, but you still go.
Sometimes, like, you know, you got called an audible.
You know, the line of scrimmage, man, like some of the great quarterbacks, they'll be at the line of scrimmage and they'll look at the defense.
The defense is, oh, fuck.
Defense is shifting.
Did he call an audible?
In my mind, a lot of times, man, I'm like, it doesn't mean I quit.
I don't quit.
You know, I may not make it the first time, but I'll come back.
I gotta call an audible.
I gotta fucking get my head back in the game.
I gotta figure this shit out.
It doesn't mean you leave.
It means you study it more.
It means you study it more.
And whenever I fail at something, people always say, man, how do you handle failure, man?
I fail a lot, dude.
I fail all the fucking time.
They go, how do you handle it?
What I'm trying to do, and this isn't being arrogant, man.
It's being real.
Not many people are trying to do.
So there's not many people who can even open their fucking mouth and criticize me when I do fail.
Because I'm trying to do shit, man, that many people aren't trying to do.
But I don't look at failure as failure.
I look at failure as your first, second, third, fourth, fifth attempt.
I look at them as attempts.
I don't look at anything as failure.
Because when you're willing to try to do something, not trying is failure.
And that's not some after school special shit, but when you're able to go out there, there is no failure.
It's attempts.
Because when you're trying to do something that's bigger than you, whatever you are, whoever you are, if you're paralyzed, you're trying to walk one step, and you didn't.
You didn't fail, motherfucker.
That was your first attempt.
If that's your biggest thing, that's how your mindset needs to go into everything.
So I don't look at it as, failure is a big word that gets people down and shit.
If you're not good by the age of seven or eight years old, you have a good chance of being fucked the rest of your life.
So if you're parents or you came up wrong, and then seven or eight, if you don't have the self-esteem, but you fucking grind, you're like, I want to be better.
When you get to that UFC championship, or you get to where I got, or where I am, It's almost like you can't believe the journey like I talked about in that fucking VFW and I'm in the first chapter that book man I'm sitting in that audience all those fucking people and I'm about to get the you know Americanism award and I was grinding so hard I never took time to reflect on my life and this was like Time to reflect and I was all kind of fucked up and I got on stage man just fucking cried for like 59
seconds and And it was such an emotional moment for me that I fucking, that I fucking did what I did.
And I overcame it.
And it was, it was alone, man.
You know, a lot of people have fucking like teammates and fucking like, you know, family push.
My mom was struggling, bro.
She was struggling.
So it was like me and my mom.
And so it was a lot of just me.
So when you're waking up every morning by yourself and you're fucking getting after it by yourself and it's the hidden work.
People see a one minute video of me running and shit.
And like these fighters, you know, they see during the fight or after the fight.
They don't see these motherfuckers, man, what they deal with every fucking day.
I'm not good enough.
I'm not good enough.
I shouldn't be here.
I shouldn't be here.
Because every day, even though they're fucking the best in the world, That little motherfucker at seven or eight years old is still in there saying, oh man, we don't have something.
We're not good enough.
We shouldn't be here.
So you're always fighting that motherfucker.
Even though you beat it, you never truly beat it.
So when they get on stage and they're talking to Joe Rogan, it's not even real.
It's not even real.
All those mornings that you didn't want to fucking get up, and I look at it as like a fucking...
Like a rock.
And you find this fucking rock and that rock is you.
And every day you fucking fight not wanting to get up.
And you do anyway.
You chip another piece off that fucking rock.
And every day you fucking eat the right foods.
And every day you go to train.
You train harder and harder and harder and harder.
And you get up earlier.
And all these things you do to start forming yourself.
You're chipping another fucking piece of that rock off.
Before you know it, you have this beautiful fucking piece of artwork that you built.
But people don't and then once you get there you see it it becomes real like oh my god fucking did this shit And so like the fucking journey becomes so real then but so many people aren't willing to fucking chip away At that stone that is them to start chipping off those fucking rough edges That's the fear.
It's so painful reading about your childhood and the experiences with your father.
And then when you went back and met your father as an adult and got with him and watched him get drunk and then watch him get belligerent and experience it all over again.
And then think about what happened to him to make him who he is.
Every time shit got hard, like I said, I didn't have talent.
You know, I fucking didn't have shit.
Whenever shit got hard for me, I thought I was on my way out and I got sucked back in.
I become a loser again, real quick.
And I see them all the time.
There's a lot of fucking losers out here that won't face it.
I was like, oh man, gotta go back and visit this motherfucker.
I haven't seen my dad in fucking years, man.
Years.
But I knew where I came from.
I knew where my mindset came from.
I knew where my demons were.
So my whole idea when I went back to see my dad was I was hoping that I could just fucking call myself illusion that it's because of you, dad.
So I was hoping to go back and get the confirmation that I always wanted.
That wasn't my fault.
That voice in my head was so loud.
It's not your fault, David.
It's not your fault you can't read and write.
It's not your fault that people call you fucking niggers.
It's not your fault.
It's not your fault this.
It's not your fault that.
It's not your fault that you're fat.
It's not your fault that you quit shit.
It's not your fault.
So I was like, okay, man, I'm going to go back and visit this motherfucker so I can just squash it and I can just go on and be a fucking loser because you fucked me up.
When I got there, I drove to Buffalo, saw my dad.
Same routine as it was when I was eight years old, man.
Walked in.
What's up?
Went to Skateland.
I sat on that fucking couch that he would cheat on my mom with.
I sat on that couch in the corner, and I was like, God, what the fuck, man?
It was a whole normal day.
And the more I was around him, now he started getting drunk, and I won't go through the whole thing.
But I started seeing, man.
I started having a conversation.
I always had these conversations with myself.
I'm like, man, this motherfucker.
He came from hell.
His dad would put him in front of a furnace.
And like, if he moved, he'd get burnt.
So when my dad got beat, his dad would put him in front of a furnace.
And if he would have moved, he'd fucking get burnt up.
So my dad said, I sit there and take it.
So he never dealt with his fucking demons.
So his demons became mine.
His demons became mine.
Motherfuckers think you die and the demon goes with you, man.
Don't be a fucking fool, bro.
You know, like, that's why I'm proud of myself.
I took his demons and mine.
And people are always looking for some great fucking apology.
You know, oh my God, like, you know, my dad needs to say sorry to people who fucking called you out your name.
Nobody's going to come back and say sorry to you, motherfucker.
Nobody's saying shit to you.
You've been a fucking man to fuck up.
So I looked at him.
He didn't face his demons, but I'm gonna face mine.
So on that drive back home, that's what I started doing.
And to achieve the standards that you've achieved, to become the person that you are today and to have the influence that you have, this global influence on people.
Do you know how many people have laced up their shoes because they heard your voice?
How many people have just moved into action and changed their life because they've heard you talk or seen you talk?
There's a thing that happened and it happened out of hell.
And I don't think it ever happens without that.
It's like you had to go through that in order to empower all these other people, in order to become who you are and that as an example.
And then your words as an example and your describing of it and then your description of your own shortcomings and failures that give people confidence that it's not like you're this superhuman person that is like a character in a book.
No, you're a real human being who has real insecurities and real failures in your past and real demons.
And you've figured out a way to harness that energy and just keep going forward and not quit.
And the whole time she's talking, man, she's on the cusp of, like, losing it.
Like, I'm in the other room, so I'm interviewing her.
And I'm hearing this shit, so I knew a lot about it, obviously.
I lived it.
And that's what fucked me up the most, man.
When you see...
Like I said, I wasn't a smart kid growing up, but whatever made me, whatever the fuck made me, I'm so fucking...
My mind is sharp, man.
Like, it's...
It's crazy.
I was so aware of so much shit.
I was so bright in that way.
And to see your mom go through that shit as that young kid, I was going through it and she was going through it right beside me.
When I got my ass beat, she got her ass beat.
It's fucked up, man.
People like to judge who you are, man.
Why you cuss so much, man?
My life wasn't fucking PG, motherfucker.
You can't just turn who the fuck you are off.
When you see your mom going with that kind of shit, And then I'm coming to her defense at seven or eight years old and she's getting her fucking ass beat by a 220 pound man.
And I'm fucking some little kid.
You know what kind of courage it takes to muster that up to go help her out and see her fucked up like that.
And the time she would cry and be bruised up and shit.
It was just, it was a fucking nightmare.
And then to hear her talk about it, like the part where my dad says, I brought this belt from Texas.
This belt came all the way from Texas to whip your ass with.
It was like, where am I at right now?
Because I knew no other households were fucking living like this, man.
And I knew it.
I knew it.
And then she was shut off.
She was shut off from the world.
And when I wrote Can't Hurt Me, she refused.
She said, fuck, don't put my shit in there.
She was so embarrassed.
Like I put her there, man, she fucking married a fucking prisoner.
So my mom was so fucked up.
She was so fucked up by the shit and people go...
And people go, man, you're a mama's boy.
Motherfucker, I ain't no mama's boy, man.
See your mom go through this shit.
You're going to make sure she's taken care of.
So she came out and one of the people that, you know, she got married a few times because she was looking for something that my dad stripped from her.
And she was out.
She was gone for years.
She's just now coming back.
She's 70. She's 75. But in that book I talk about, man, she's like, don't put that, you know, and can't hurt me.
But now she's getting better and she's allowing me more to talk more about my life, which was also some of her life.
It's hard for me to talk about because it's almost like...
I had a front row seat at a horror show.
So when my mom left my dad, she went to Wilmoth and he got murdered.
I talked about that and can't hurt me.
He got murdered.
So that took her all the way over the edge.
I mean, he got shot fucking six times.
And the last shot, this motherfucker got right up on his head and made sure he was dead.
Like, forehead shot.
And so she didn't cry.
She didn't cry.
It was over.
A whole other person became.
And so I'm fucking now like 12, 13, 14, whatever the fuck I was.
I'm watching this woman every day.
Front row seat, just watching her, just going through life, fucked up.
And then I'm about to go in the military, into the Air Force.
And like two years out, man, you know, I'm like a sophomore in high school.
Phones ringing every night.
She tell me don't get on the phone.
Don't get on the phone.
Don't get on the phone.
15 minute calls.
Hang up.
15 minute call.
Hang up.
What the fuck is going on?
But see, the way I was growing, like the way I was raised, you don't ask your mom what's going on.
It ain't like now like conversations and shit with the parents.
You shut the fuck up.
And that's I didn't ask shit, but I knew something was fucked cuz like three four hours a night 15 minute hangout cuz he was in prison This guy was in prison.
But the thing about it was like I Was right in front of her and needed so much fucking help And that was fucked up for me for a long time, but she helped out so many people.
But I guess since I was with her through the journey, I didn't count.
But it's all good, man.
It's what life's about.
You got to understand what your mom went through so that I can be good with it.
I saw that.
So I had to man up a lot more.
So she saw people needed help.
So she started teaching in the prison.
So she had a full-time job at DePaul University in Greencastle, Indiana.
And then she started teaching in a prison.
And she met this prisoner.
This prisoner, obviously, I don't know, slitter or node or some bullshit like that.
She was looking for anything.
She was looking for anybody that loved her because my dad beat the fucking life out of her.
And my dad...
So my dad wouldn't marry my mom, but ended up marrying a woman that was tied to like...
I'm not even going to go there.
I'm not trying to get fucking sued and shit right now, man.
But he married somebody that was fucked up.
That's fucked up.
So, anyway, she met him in prison, and the phone was ringing every night.
She didn't tell me about it, because I could tell your son, hey, David, I'm in love with a prisoner.
So I'm fucking now about a week out, or whatever the fucking was, from leaving for boot camp.
And she lets me know what's up.
And so I'm about to leave for boot camp.
And I'm so protective of my mom.
And she lays this on me.
Yeah.
Sit down.
Let's have a talk.
And she never does this shit, man.
She's like, there was nothing ever hidden from me.
That's why I grew up so fast.
That abusive life and what she was going through, it was front and center.
Her being broke, everything.
This was the only secret she kept from me.
Those phone calls, you know, I've been seeing someone in prison.
Alright, cool, whatever.
But I'm thinking, what the fuck is this, man?
So, you know, I didn't want to ask, how the fuck do you get to prison?
So, I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there, and I'm like, okay, man, I gotta fucking ask this fucking question.
How the fuck, you know, what happened?
You know, she's like, well, does one of those things, you know, because she knows it's fucking bad.
Well, he was into drugs and stuff like that.
I'm thinking, okay, maybe drug dealer, something like that.
He was into drugs, that's for sure.
But he literally, I don't know how it went down, but he choked a woman to death over some drugs.
And I don't know the ins and outs of all this other shit and That's who she was gonna fucking be with and he was getting out of prison Literally in a few weeks after I was going to Air Force boot camp So I'm in fucking Air Force boot camp thinking about my mom is about to fucking marry a Fucking dude who got sent to prison marry him right away to right away So the first time I meet this motherfucker dude is at my fucking Air Force graduation My
fucking Air Force graduation.
And she was like, you ain't putting that shit in can't hurt me.
She was embarrassed about it.
And then she saw how I went totally like fucking vulnerable.
And she was like, fuck it.
Go ahead.
So there's so much more to it.
But he ended up...
I think it was last year or maybe this year.
He OD'd.
So my mom divorced him, obviously, after it didn't work out.
And she was telling me a story one time.
We were talking about this book.
She started opening more up about the relationship with this prisoner.
And she said one night they got into a fight, you know, not not physical.
No, he never hit her like my dad did so many times.
But he said one night she was sleeping and had had her back to him.
And all she thought about all fucking night was because she started slowly realizing like I'm fucked up.
I just married a fucking guy from prison that killed somebody.
And she started realizing it more and more, but she's laying in bed, and she was like, is this motherfucker gonna fucking kill me tonight?
And she started telling me these fucking stories, man, and I'm like, And I'm just like, what the fuck, man?
Like, you know, it was tough.
It was a tough way to grow up, man.
It was a tough way to grow up.
So, yeah, he ended up, so they got divorced, I think it worked, maybe two years, whatever the fuck it was, whatever, it doesn't matter.
It fucked me up every night Every night I'm sitting in the fucking in my bunk thinking and then I I knew the date he was getting out of prison And like, you know, you can't just get on the phone and call.
Hey mom.
What's going on?
You don't know you're in boot camp you get like Every now and then they say okay.
You have like a phone call once a week or some shit I think every Sunday was a phone call And I'll never forget, when he got to the house, man, I actually got...
I was fucking not right.
So I got recycled.
So a week in boot camp.
So, like, I fucking...
I don't know, I fucking did something in boot camp.
I tried to be supportive because that's what I always did.
My mom would never make her happy.
That was my fucking number one priority.
I never cared about myself.
Never.
Never.
Ever.
Which makes what I do now for people...
I understand.
Because I care about people.
Even though I'm an introvert, I'm an introvert because my fucking life sucked.
But what I do for people, I really do.
That's why I want to make sure that fucking book and things I do, that's why I don't fucking...
Why don't you sell shit?
Why don't you always...
Why aren't you promoting this and that?
No, man.
No, I care that you understand that I fucking want to see you fucking kill shit.
I want to see you better.
So, you know, when I met him, I was supportive, and I sat back and looked at him, and I wanted to fucking beat this motherfucker down so bad because I knew, like, you're not a good egg, bro.
You're not a good egg, man.
I'm not saying, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not saying prisoners are bad.
They can be rehabilitated.
But I always had these feelings about people.
If I get around you, I can fucking...
I mean, I tell you, but when you grow up the way I grow up, man, you have these ways of knowing pieces of shit.
I became an expert in pieces of shit.
I used to be one.
My dad was one.
So you can fucking pick him out.
You can pick out liars and all kind of con artists from a mile away because, motherfucker, I studied it.
Study myself.
I know who you are.
So you can't come around me, bullshit me, man.
You can't.
So it was horrible.
It was horrible.
So, you know, like the one woman I cared about more than anything in the world, because I saw her hell.
I'm looking at this shit now.
And now I have to go to fucking pararescue school and all this other shit while she's fucking with this guy.
So there are a lot of things in my mind that just made it hard that I studied.
I studied my mind during these times.
I started this process to become who I am today of learning life and how hard life is.
That's why I don't speak about the good times.
Everybody gets so, man, why don't you speak about the good times?
I don't need to help you through those, brother.
I do not need to help you.
You don't turn on David Goggins for the good times.
You turn on David Goggins when you don't feel like doing shit.
Oh, they know better, but what makes people feel good, like when you become successful, when you become successful, and I had to realize this, and this guy made me realize this, I had to study them.
When you become successful, especially within a fraternity like that, like this is a fraternity, bro.
This isn't like a fucking like, oh, like in the Air Force, you know, this is a very different world.
So several SEALs, I'm going to say, there's a lot that would like to see me fucking a lot.
They like to see a lot of people not do well and them do great.
And so when you're in these kind of communities like this, man, people are like, oh no, there's no way he was trying to do that.
Man, I wish I could get Jennifer here right now.
We have all the screenshots and I had to get a fucking lawyer.
I mean this guy went so far and then what happened was over a period of time he fucking literally apologized, went away, fucking took all this shit down.
I mean, but he came out and but what happened was that rumor mill spread like wildfire.
See, man, you're going to get me to the point where I say his fucking name because I swear to God.
So I deployed with his ass.
That's why I put the fucking write-up.
So I got a medal over there in Iraq.
I got a medal in Iraq, so I did go to war.
And I put it in the book because Jennifer started getting all this shit.
And she goes, you got to put that fucking award in there because this motherfucker is just lying his ass off.
I didn't go to ranger school, all this shit.
So I put the ranger school, everything he said.
I put in Can't Hurt Me because he was just literally lying, trying to literally ruin who I was because I'm the world's toughest man.
That doesn't sit right with some fucking alpha motherfuckers, dude.
And these motherfuckers, dude, some of them, and you don't know unless you've been in a fraternity like this.
Unless you've been in a fraternity like this, you don't fucking know.
I don't fucking care about them.
I have some great friends in there.
But anyway, the reason, this guy actually helped me out.
So when I came out, there's a few guys that came after me in the SEAL teams, trying to make sure that I fucking wasn't going to be who I am.
And they still talk their bullshit lies.
Lies!
So many fucking lies, dude.
And what's great about it is my proof is it can't hurt me.
So everything they say, my proof is it.
And that's why it's designed that way for the liars.
But this guy came out and what I do is I studied him.
So Jennifer got a lawyer.
I'm about to sue the fuck out of this fucking guy, man.
Like I had all this defamation.
I mean, it was fucking a thick.
I was going to sue the fuck out of him.
And every night I fucking woke up.
I was like, man, I started thinking about myself.
When I was a piece of shit.
When I had no character.
When I had no pride, no dignity.
That's because only people that do shit like that, you're not a man.
You're no fucking man, dude.
I started thinking about what kind of pussy you are, man.
How you must have so many fucking demons in your life that you spend this kind of time just trying to take another just trying to take another man and not It'd be different if it was truth behind it, right lies Fucking lies.
Yeah, just because we didn't get along motherfucker It don't mean I wasn't who I am.
We didn't get along motherfucker cuz I fucking I'm like a lie detector Cuz I'm so fucking honest with myself I had such a hard time in my life that I fucking so forthright when you get even near me and Because I fucking, you know my shit is real.
It's fucking real as fuck.
It makes you feel bad.
If you got something going on in your fucking life, I ain't gonna open my fucking mouth.
You know my shit is fucking real.
Yeah, I may not have deployed as many times as you motherfucker because of my heart issues and the other issues that I won't talk about because the fucking news wants me to fucking talk about this shit so bad.
They want to take some SEALs down so bad.
I ain't no bitch like that.
Whatever happened to SEAL teams with me, it happened to SEAL teams.
That's why I don't fucking mention the names, but I saw these little bitches come out here.
It was in the fraternity.
It happened in the fraternity.
Leave it there.
Don't be a fucking bitch come out here fucking spreading lies about me, motherfucker.
But I studied all these little bitches who try to come out and ruin my life.
Studied all of them.
Like, man, what you must be going through is fucking evil.
I even took it a step further.
I had to mature myself because I was so fucking mad.
And I looked at his family.
This guy who was talking this shit, I'm going to say his name so bad, but I never will.
Because that's a fucking bitch move on my part.
You can take food out of this fucking, his family's mouth.
You're going to have this guy in a courthouse.
You can have him in a courtroom, spending money on lawyers.
And I fucking just fucking dropped it.
I said, I'm good.
I said, who the fuck I am?
I said, you can wake up every fucking morning being the bitch that you are, but I'm not going to fucking take money out of your pocket and money out of your fucking kid's mouth.
What happened was he got on, and I don't want to go too deep because they'll be able to figure it out, but he ended up Basically saying he had a fucking...
He wasn't right in his head.
He wasn't good.
And I can tell he wasn't good.
Because he was literally DMing people.
And I wish I had Jennifer in here, man, so she can show you the DMs.
He was DMing people.
And talking all this shit.
And then he would delete it.
And this guy, so Jennifer found it.
And so, because this guy DMed Jennifer.
And was like, hey, can you, do you know this guy?
And I was like, yeah, I know him.
And then Jennifer's like, hey, we gotta fucking shut this shit down.
But he was DMing several people just saying that I was just, I'm gonna be discharged.
I was kicked out of the SEAL teams.
I refused to go to combat.
He just went on and on and on.
And so this guy was taking screenshots of what this guy was saying and sending them to us.
And so at this time, now we have a lawyer.
And so we're getting all this shit, dude.
And then he had a YouTube site set up that he took down, just trying to literally ruin who I was.
And I looked at all this shit and I studied them.
I was like, man, you got...
And what came out later on was he did have some demons.
I think part of the problem with some of those guys is when guys are seriously alpha, and they think they go above and beyond, and they push harder than anybody, and then they meet you.
And you're the guy that's getting up at 3.30 in the morning yelling at them while you're running.
Like, I know you're sleeping.
I know you're still in bed.
Motherfucker, I'm out here running 10 miles before you eat breakfast.
You know that email I sent to you a while ago about this guy who wrote that email about the SEAL teams, and I shared it with you about, he's talking about like only 13% of you actually, it's like, anyway, I sent you an email.
You ever heard when people talk about some union work?
One of the things that happens when you're in some unions is like if you're working too hard, someone will come along and go, hey David, slow the fuck down.
And when you're a person who prides yourself on your ability to go very far, and then someone is willing to go far farther than you, you have to decide...
Do I want to look at that as the new standard?
Do I want to judge myself?
Do I want to admire him?
Or do I want to try to take him down?
Because I feel bad.
Because I can't do what he does.
Or I haven't done what he does.
Or what he does makes me look bad.
Because I like to think I'm a hard worker.
I like to think I'm disciplined and hard.
And then I see this fucking dude out there that's just making me look soft.
Instead of a smart person, we'll look at that person as fuel.
But you have to make your own decisions, too, because what you do requires a dedication that will eliminate a lot of things from your life that some people enjoy and think are important.
There's also a thing about you being a public person.
Being a public person, now you have access to way more haters than the average.
The average person knows a few haters.
Maybe if you're a good-looking woman, and you got some bitches in the office that like to talk shit about you, or if you're a guy who's getting after it early and being disciplined, and you make people intimidated by your ambition, you're gonna have some haters.
You're gonna have people lying about you.
But you have no idea what it's like to be a public person like yourself.
The kind of haters that you must experience because if you paid attention to them all day long, you would have no time for anything else.
No, I never get in 2013 when I was first, you know, Jennifer knows about this shit.
I cussed everybody.
We had this fucking roundtable and everybody was like, man, you have such a great story.
You need to tell it.
You need to get on social media and blah, blah, blah.
I cussed everybody out.
Fuck you.
I'm not fucking going on that fucking shit.
That's a bunch of bullshit.
Fucking lying.
It's the devil.
And the second I fucking got on that shit, dude, it is the fucking devil.
Instagram and social media, man.
I had this fucking kid, man, who fucking literally, the reason I talk about haters so much is this little boy, his parents reached out to me, and he was getting so much hate at school.
And we get so many emails, I can't check them all.
But I get to him, but later on, much like two or three months later.
So this guy wrote us and this kid was having a hard time with bullies.
And when I got to his email, I got to it, called his family up, said, hey, what's going on?
You know, it was David Goggins.
They were all happy to hear it.
He had killed himself.
So, like, in the back of my fucking mind, and what hurt me the most was when I read the fucking email...
Woo, shit!
Get my shit together.
I wasn't going to bring this shit up.
I read the email and they said, you can help our son.
Our son really admires you.
That's why I'm very vocal for a lot of reasons.
But I have to be strong because I know a lot of people aren't.
So, you know, that's why I don't cower from shit, you know, at all.
You want to fucking, you know, I take on whatever.
Whatever challenge is in front of me, I take it on because a lot of people don't have that courage.
And it's hard to be brave.
It's fucking hard to speak up for what you believe in.
And they wrote this great email to me.
And they want me to talk to their son.
His son was a big follower of mine.
And so I called and he's like, yeah.
And it was a silent, very silent pause.
And they told me what happened.
And he hung himself.
And I was like, it was fucked up.
So, you know, that's why another reason I hate being a public figure because it's not a public figure that I am.
Like, it's funny.
I hang around some people who are real public figures, you know, like celebrities.
And I have people coming to me first.
Like, I'm talking about famous motherfuckers.
People come to me first and they want to share their story in their life with me about how they changed.
That's a massive responsibility that people don't understand.
They come to you and they share the demons that they've gone through and the hardships that they've gone through.
And they say, you and your book and what you've done and your social media page.
That's why I make sure...
I want to go at people so hard, Joe, sometimes, man, for fucking talking their shit to me, man, and lying and shit.
I make sure that my social media only has, like, let's fucking get it today.
Let's fucking get it.
They go, man, why don't you follow anybody, man?
I'm not into that shit, dude.
I want you fuckers to understand, dude.
For you who aren't bitching and whining and complaining, I'm your biggest fucking cheerleader.
I want to see you do great.
And a lot of that shit comes from that fucking email from that kid who killed himself that I got two or three months too late.
And that fucking shit, every day I fucking wake up, I'm like, fuck, man.
Fuck.
I gotta be honest.
I gotta be right.
I gotta be better.
And that's when you know that when you're trying to do your best, your life sucks.
And people don't get that.
When you're trying to have the best character, when you're trying not to fucking lie, you're trying not to fucking put people down, you're trying to live, you're trying to set the standard.
When you're trying to be the standard, There's so much going wrong and going off in this world that if people can focus on themselves being better versus throwing hate and fucking all this shit that happens out there and people talking shit, that's why I won't mention no motherfuckers names.
I'm not trying to hurt you, man.
But I'm trying to be the standard.
And sometimes life is just not fun when you're like, can't do that.
Can't say that.
Gotta watch out for that.
I gotta wake up today.
I gotta grind.
Because there may be a motherfucker out there that sees me in their fucking car that says, alright, I'm gonna go home and be better today.
So all these things are in my fucking mind.
Every fucking day I wake up.
Every fucking day.
And, you know, so, you know, I try to get to emails.
It's me and Jennifer.
But yeah, you know, people fucking, it's crazy, man.
People come up to me and tell me their stories, man.
It's fucking very humbling that this kid that came from fucking nothing is now helping people who, you know, Like, you know, it's just funny and people call me crazy a lot.
Man, you're so fucking crazy, but what you do?
And I look at him straight in the eye and I say, man, I'm not crazy.
I'm just not you.
I'm just not who you are, who you want to be.
I have a responsibility, man, and I gotta fucking take that seriously.
But that feeling of getting through this, because the last cycles, when you're doing, like, and you look, like, because the Rogue bike will show you, like, you've done three.
You just gotta get through the suck and then life is better.
But the thing that gets me is the level of I don't give a fuck and the lack of anxiety that comes after you work out every day is so worth the workout.
I've incorporated a new thing that I was telling you where I get up first thing in the morning, I get in the cold plunge.
Because I was doing the cold plunge after I did the sauna, and it's a little easier because the sauna sucks, but when that 20 minutes is up or 25 minutes is up and then you get in that cold, the cold sucks, but it doesn't suck as much as when you're cold and then you get in the cold.
So when I wake up in the morning, I don't dress warm, I wear my fucking underwear, and I go outside, and it's 40 degrees this morning, and I walk out, and I lift the lid on that Merazgo cold plunge, and I see the fucking ice floating up in there, and every day I climb in.
Yeah, because there's a benefit after you work out in terms of reduction of inflammation, but what they're saying is you shouldn't do it right after you lift weights.
Because then it actually decreases the hypertrophy, so you don't gain as much mass or gain as much strength.
But there's some benefit to doing it before you work out.
I think there's a link involved in that too.
So anyway, this is a guy who's talking about prostate-specific antigen blood tests came back very high, and everyone said that he had to get a biopsy.
And he said, the story I've heard about older men getting biopsies in prostatectomies sounded like nightmares to him, so he decided to try to manage his PSA with ketosis and ice baths.
So it worked.
His PSA dropped from over 7 to less than 1. And along the way, a funny thing happened to his testosterone.
It went through the roof to 1140, which is crazy high.
He said, my urologist didn't believe me.
He thought I must be juicing.
So he had my luteinizing hormones tested, too.
Sure enough, 8.9 is off the charts for a fat guy in his 50s.
He said, then I did a research and discovered a Japanese study from 1991 that showed the secret was exercising after your ice bath.
It's the opposite of what everybody says to do, which is exactly how I got this far in the first place.
He said, now I'm stuck with the T levels of an oversexed 19-year-old.
But part of it is just the fact that you have to do it in the morning.
I'm not giving myself any mornings off.
That's how I start my day now.
Whereas before, I was working out, so the workout, I eased myself into the workout, get on the bike, warm up, jump a little rope, start the kettlebell routine, do all the things you gotta do.
Being in cold water, ice water, it literally is the one thing that makes you question everything.
When you're going through hard training and shit like that, I've been through a lot of different training in the military, and that cold water, it definitely, many dreams die while suffering.
The best ever in MMA? Ever in MMA. It's hard to say.
There's a lot of candidates.
You know, I've always said Mighty Mouse is one of my best bets.
Because he was so goddamn good, and he's still so goddamn good.
But now he's fighting in one FC. But he was a flyweight champion for a long time, and he was the highest level of expression of mixed martial arts ability that I've ever seen.
But he's also fighting guys that are much lighter.
They're 125 pounds.
You know, everyone's very quick, but he was just so skillful.
He kind of fell apart in many fights early in his career, and then he had the birth of his daughter, and then changed his fucking entire life.
Changed the way he fought, changed his mentality, changed his discipline and his focus, and then became this motherfucker who was just dominating everybody.
Jan Bojovic, Glover Teixeira just lost the light heavyweight title at 42. He won it at 42 and then lost it to Yuri Prohovska in a very, very close fight.
There's a lot of speculation, and one of the things they say is that they believe that at a certain point in time, your brain tries to protect you from the punishment, and just shut off.
Like, that your body realizes, like, this dude is too strong mentally.
He's too tough, and he'll just absorb shots, and it's just ruining our brain.
The other less optimistic perspective is that you're destroying your mind and that your mind is simply not resilient anymore and you can't take a shot anymore because you've damaged all the connective tissue that's holding the fucking brain in place and you've also created so much CTE and so much swelling and so much that one shot can take you out.
There's also, on top of that, one of the big problems with MMA is the weight cutting.
So the weight cutting is what everybody does, they drain themselves 24 hours before the fight, weigh in, say, oh, he weighs 170 pounds.
Guys like Kamaru Usman, who's giant for 170, he's 170 for like 20 minutes.
So if you're 35, 37, 39, all these guys that have been doing that their whole life, every time you cut that weight, it takes a little chip off the old block.
Every time.
Every time.
It's another chop into the tree trunk.
It just weakens your foundation.
And it's just little minor things.
Every training camp you go through, you know, can you do another one?
You know, your back is fucked up.
You get out of bed like this, like, ah!
It's like little micro-injuries that are constantly piling up.
You know, we were talking about Hicks and Gracie earlier.
Hicks can't really even roll hard anymore.
He's in his 60s, and he's got these injuries all over his back.
Well, it's like motherfuckers going to the circuit breaker, man, and they just go in there and start rewiring their brain.
They go in and say, like that motherfucker right there with the snorkel and shit.
Oh, no, man.
I gotta put this over here.
This circuit needs to be there.
It needs to be there.
You're totally rewiring how the whole brain works to not feel sorry for yourself, to ignore pain, to ignore discomfort, to push your mind in a place that people don't even fucking want to talk about.
It is, because for that man, I mean, Volkanovski, he walked out of there with his fucking belt, with the victory, the cheers, the roars, the crowd, goes back home.
There's something about the way you describe things and the way you're so honest and so personal about it.
Especially the audio version of it and then when you do the podcast so the way the audio is a special treat because it's the book and then with each individual chapter you have a small podcast where you and your co-writer break down what it was like for you and what was happening and what you were feeling and it allows you to do it in an unscripted way so you could really and you're so honest about it It just gives
you an understanding of that discomfort is unavoidable.
And that trying to avoid discomfort just brings you more discomfort.
And you don't realize it, it just brings you this long-term dull discomfort.
As opposed to this searing pain of like mid-struggle discomfort, which is what everybody's trying to avoid.
But you're still gonna get discomfort.
You're just gonna get this, I coulda, shoulda, woulda been, Discomfort, which is maybe worse.