Joe Rogan & David Goggins - Building Mental Toughness

The book is outstanding and you know it's it's it's more than just sitting like sitting across you and you telling your story is one thing but this long detailed history of how you became to be the person you became. I think it's very educational for people because they can realize like oh he wasn't always this guy right this is what's fucked up about people like you see a guy who's like you who runs. I mean how many ultra marathons did you run in a row you were at some I think it was I ran eight hundreds and eight weekends in a row to stop and think about that is gentlemen eight hundreds means eight one hundred mile races eight weekends in a row a hundred mile race will put you out for fucking six months right you know when you ran eight of them eight weekends or it's a fuck it's a fucking insane accomplishment it was not you think about a person like that you think of them as in this like static fully formed version right you don't use. Usually get to see and especially someone like you who you went into so much depth about your rise and fall and rise and fall wasn't like a straight linear process between you getting inspired and you becoming this bad motherfucker no it wasn't like. What's that show called that will Smith plays that that black guy who kind of makes it in the financial world pursuit of happiness I never saw that yes a great movie it wouldn't like pursuit of happiness man like like with the guy struggles and he gets over it and he makes it yeah I feel on my ass I thought got the top mon Everest and my never just fucking slide right underneath me miles like God dog I start from scratch again scratch became my friend literally man so you know that's that's the story put in the book managed going up going down going up just a real raw version of how my life was in it was so in depth to go back through your life with a fine tooth comb that I almost got embarrassed even put it out there to people yeah that's what I'm saying man like even me right now to talk to you I'm in the car for a fucking hour getting pumped up because I'm a shy introverted leave me alone type of guy like I'm still that motherfucker who is six years old you know at a play who can't say his line because I'm going to stutter in front of five people so I walk off the stage that's still me so every day I'm fighting that dude so you think oh my God man you're in a podcast looks so crazy so evil no I'm trying to be locked into Joe so my mind is it very often let's run out the damn door because people are watching me on the fucking podcast I want to open this damn door and get the hell out of here man so that's the real me so I'm not sadistic man I'm focused on what I have to do to stay locked into the game of life and that's what and that's why I tell people man I go there I go there that's one of the reasons why this book is so good is because you're so honest about your vulnerabilities and how you overcome them and for people that see someone who's a beast who's done great things you just assume that they're different than you but then you hear about your insecurities in your pitfalls and all the things that went wrong with you and you realize what God damn it those are the same things that go wrong with me like maybe I have that inside of me and I've just never summoned it right and I'll tell you this I started really realizing that when I started overcoming myself I started getting around these real alpha males these hard hard men and I always put people way above me when I was growing up like my God they had to have a lot more than me to get to where they're at and a lot of them did but once you get around the the best of the best of the best people you can kind of start breaking them down and realize that man you you're just as fucked up as me like we all have but all you did was you hit it better you're you're you're upbringing your mom and dad your society the way you were raised it hit it better than than than mine you weren't the only black kid or there was like five in a school you know I can't hide going through buzz I was only black you can't hide but I started realizing just because I look different than you a lot of you my first can hide either so it started giving me courage to watch some people that were all have a story we all have a jacked up life in one way or another some of us don't have the guts to talk about it though and that's where I found the guts to talk about mine well there's some there's purity in physical pursuits right because it doesn't matter what your social status is it doesn't matter how people perceive you when it when it comes down to how long can you stay in that pool when it comes down to how far can you run when it comes down to how much can you push yourself past the part where you want to quit how far can you keep going there's a purity in that that it did dissolve social order all that bullshit all the what people think about you goes out the window it's what who are you right now that's right who are you right now that's the truth statement man and I look at a size as psychological warfare and that's where I started learning that that life is one big psychological warfare that you play on yourself you plan yourself man the most important conversation ever had my is with myself and the shit I'll tell myself was so fucked up it was so wrong it was so misguided and other people start to write that dialogue for you also and start to be what you say to yourself every single day and I started creating a whole nother warfare a whole nother battle started becoming I said oh hang on second Goggins you have these tools you have these tools your life was basically the perfect the perfect grounds for training for where you need to go in your life all the beatings all the all the bullying all the you know you going through a learning disabilities all the struggles it was the absolute perfect training ground for you to go to where you need to go and that's how I start looking at my life versus what was me poopy pants kick a rock down the street mentality it was not God just hooked you right to fuck up he hooked you right up man with the perfect place you were training for the first 18 1920s you were training for this stuff man you have the advantage of everybody else versus my God they're so above me they came from a great family mom and dad love them they didn't have a learned they didn't start they didn't struggle nah man your struggle is what made you who you are now so I started flipping this into a whole different I started being a master of what I was scared of I was scared of my mind and I became a literally a master of that mind and that's what now from now on it sets me apart from most people I started diving into that well that is a big part of the stories when you go over your childhood and you know your abusive father and then having this great God that was going to become your step dad and then he gets murdered it's like right when you're about to get out of it everything looks good boom now and he gets murdered it's like these things really did sort of set you up to start from scratch again and just go okay Roger that we start from scratch and now you have that attitude you developed it through all of these horrible personal experiences all the trials and tribulations all the evil shit that people try to do to you that sort of set you up to be able to deal in a way that a lot of people can't well I used to look at my life from a different vantage point and when you're when you're in all the muck and you're just walking in muck and walking in muck and walking in muck you don't see that if you look off to the fucking left of the muck there's a sidewalk brother get off get off of it you have your head down looking in this muck once I saw the sidewalk got the sidewalk I got a little break and I got a different vantage point and then from the sidewalk I found a cliff then I found a mountain I got way up high on top of my life and look back down on it and said okay I gotta figure this out man I'm not going anywhere I'm starting to lie I'm starting like so when you have a messed up foundation I started lying about everything I wanted people to like me I wanted to be accepted in some society of life some social society and I said man this isn't the right way I messed up here I messed up here I messed up everywhere and so I realized the worst thing that happened to me is I lost myself I never had myself I never found myself had no self-esteem so I knew through working out and through learning God it took a lot for me to learn also I started finding self-esteem once I found that that's when doing doors start opening up I started I stopped caring about people that what they thought being judged well if I say this if I started right now are you make fun of me I stopped caring about that and that's my life started really changing for me slowly but surely that's such an important point we're talking about the working out because a lot of people when they think about working out they think of it as being a physical thing right no no I did it for mental yeah people are saying my god like no don't don't look at it like I didn't care about losing weight I care about being the fastest person I keep out I wasn't making the Olympics I wouldn't go into pros I could barely read and write now since a junior in high school I wasn't going anywhere I saw working out as a way for me to build calluses on my mind I had a callus over the victim's mentality so I watched these movies I you know I talked about rocket last time I was on here I always equated training to mental toughening like it was a brutal people waking up early and doing all these things and look it looks horrible wow I got started doing that not to get better bigger and stronger but that is what's gonna build me that looks uncomfortable that looks brutal and getting up early I don't want to do that some of this long list of things I don't want to do and through that I found myself I started like I'm like you guys aren't doing this shit in high school you guys are getting about five o'clock in the morning running over here in this golf course so I started seeing myself very differently than the average human being I was like hang on a second I have something they don't have and that's not start to develop these things to working out was this great never ending work ethic and to work ethic I developed self-esteem now is this something that you learn is this something you learn yourself from from exercise yourself or something you read or heard about like what made you equate this doing this and doing these difficult things physically to mental toughness to being this is the discipline that you need in order to get your life out of the situation you're in so I never read anything you know I could barely read you know so I wasn't reading back then I just saw I watched a lot of movies and I was really big into visualization and I always equated working out to struggle and I struggled my whole life but I ran from it so I started realizing I got start facing the struggle and I got be mentally strong for the struggle so that's why I started coming up like I'm training for life mentally I'm training for life I'm not training for like to live 400 pounds and I found out on my own pretty much is that through this through through discipline through self discipline through repetition through tons of repetition the same thing that you don't want to do that's the key thing through repetition the things you don't want to do you develop mental like like an armor for your mind start to armor your mind can I say okay we suffer we suffer every day what we do we do stuff that sucks every day so then the suck stuff comes you're ready for and that's how I started coming up you know I just started being very uncomfortable now I'm it's like a just a way of life it's a crazy thing to figure out though it's like that you figured it out and you didn't just figure it out you embraced it like when you were talking about your senior year of high school when you're talking about your your mirror being your accountability mirror like you had a radical shift like you just decided to not be a fucking loser and to start tightening up and start holding yourself accountable and and get ready for things so I have this my whole life I mean I don't know if people believe in God or what I don't care what you believe in there's been this unrelenting voice in my head we all have this voice it's the right or wrong voice and a lot of times that voice guides us into comfort and my voice guided me to comfort a lot but I have this other voice I heard my whole life saying hey motherfucker what are you doing nah man we gotta go over here we gotta go over here to that rock pile over in the fucking corner where nobody's at that's that's where victory is at we're over in that corner so this voice was giving me all these answers not I wasn't real smart kid growing up but I had this crazy voice in my head saying over there is where the fucking answers are and I won't listen to it because over there was pain over there was me looking in the mirror over there was me being accountable for all these things I went through my life you know people put them on me it's now a mind to own and I want to go over there by myself but I had to and this voice was guiding me there out it's God whatever you want to call it but that's what that's what it was in me do you think that's just what you when you separate yourself from your ego and what you were your insecurities and all you like if you were giving yourself advice you would say that's what the thing is to do so do you think that's what it was like your subconscious or you stripped away from all the bullshit when you couldn't lie to yourself because it's a voice in your head it's exactly it's exactly it because it knew it knew I was a character I was trying to find myself through a character I was making different hairstyles and sagging my pants and I was off I was off man I was I was a clown I was a clown and I was like this is not this is not what you're supposed to be in life man it's ugly when you look in that dirty mirror and you're trying to do a new hairstyle to go to school you know I had a hairstyle one time where I shaved the top of my head you know how old men had the hair like leaving their head yeah yeah so I went to school with hair on the side of my head and in my back and I shaved the whole top of my head I'm just I went to school like that you know and then I had like what did the kid say I wanted I don't remember they said but it was I was just a funny dude I know so that was my thing I was the funny dude that came into school like crisscross came out when I was in high school so my pants were backwards I see no pants backwards sag down past my ass crack short-term backwards with a toothbrush in my mouth with the reverse part reverse part is your head is shaved and you have some hair on top just a little piece of hair versus like a like a part right here the part was on a ball head so it was just I would sit at home instead of studying I would think about what can I do to impress the motherfucker at school and that became my life and that is it's a long road to hold to get to the guy who says now you'll never smile on any podcast looks so serious I look at that shit I'm like you motherfuckers have no idea who I am who where I've come from to get here today you could have probably been an entertainer like you probably because you were doing all that kind of shit I have some jokes Joe I got some jokes that you do so what people read in this book can't hurt me it's a sad story it's a horrible story it's a tragic story it's a story that made me who I'm today but you have to learn to laugh at yourself to once you once you go through that shit now so there's a lot of parts in there was a lot of me against a lot of white people you know and I have a routine that I won't do so people who are hiring me to speak I'm not gonna do the routine I often do it sometimes think about it I was a 36 black guy to go through seal training okay how many people out of probably looking at probably 11 12 to make it through probably 13,000 seals I was probably the 36 I was a 36 black I'd make it through and over since like the like the 1940s you know you're looking at almost 70 years yeah so you know you know you know do the math on that so there's not a lot of black guys and so I take that and I make a nice comedy skit out of that shit you know like like like the first time they time me up and threw me it's called drown proofing yeah so I'm negative boy in his hill you know me too Oh related to that big time yes you want a few white boys man or that negative boy you look like a rock and that's hard so imagine them getting your hands and feet tying your ass up and throwing the fucking water and say swim ah it was like throwing a cat in the water with fucking a brick on them so I was just losing my fucking mind so it's something that had to get over you know and I found humor I found humor in my suffering I was like mother what are you doing out here Goggins like this is crazy like you're you're literally trying to reinvent the wheel but I was trying to reinvent my mind I was trying to reinvent my mind and I use every single tactic possible to do that I didn't want to live you know live in this world where I was a fake human being anymore and I was tired of blaming everybody for where I was at my dad beat me this happened I mean my dad ran prostitutes man my dad literally snatched the soul out of my mom like my mom is still battling like after my mom left my dad and this one talked about in the book she got married three times for a total of six months you know I don't go there and I'm not even gonna talk about the guy she married so this woman was she's beautiful she's she's so smart all this stuff man this guy literally stripped her soul away and I was a young kid watching it and I had no soul to begin with and my and my brother he has a story that he could write eight books you know my dad just came through and just washed us all clean so to to to come around he died about four years ago four or five years ago not for sure I didn't go to the funeral but I forgave him so I saw my dad through an eight year old's eyes so so we left when I was eight and then at 22 I went back to see him through a grown man's eyes and he's the same person I remembered but I had to you can't live with hate you cannot move forward as much as that guy tried to ruin all of our lives that's where I came from I had to figure out the origin of where I started from so when I was going back through my life trying to fix who I am the fucked up person I was like if your knee hurts it's usually not your fucking knee that's hurting there's something else man like it could be a tight quad it could be the right leg if it's the left leg you gotta find out the origin of where all this shit began and it was him so I had to go back to where you know my roots and the origin of all this happened and it's hard to do that did you make peace with them I made big peace with so we didn't have a peaceful conversation we you know we we left very garandimal he's a he's a he's a vicious man he he wasn't a vicious man I mean medieval motherfucker so I had become a medieval motherfucker that time I was 22 when I was a big boy and so I was no longer the guy who was afraid it was not like hey I want to kill you type of shit and we were sitting at Denny's after an all-night skate or whatever hell you know he owned bars and skating rinks like that and so we were sitting down and we kind of got into it and I was kind of left and but I had to make peace with it in myself I I could not hold on to that hate cuz hold on to that hate was had the reason why I kept falling into the same pattern of failing I had to get I had to start dumping off some baggage had to start figuring out me through him and that's all he was there for he was the origin I had to figure him out figure out why he was so evil to my mom to me my brother and I just start studying him like a lot of people have situations where someone does something and we all attack that person like back on the media if someone does something wrong everybody now is fucking perfect and we now judge this guy I don't judge him I don't judge anybody what I do is I start studying them why did they do that not in a judging way I want to learn from you and what'd you get out of your dad I got that he was he grew up rough he had he was very insecure had a lot of kids and his insecurities just trickled over onto us so yeah he jacked us up real good but he never fixed himself so if you never fix yourself the next person in line is gonna get the wrath and we were next in line you know his his first wife you know killed herself or whatever happened and you know got burned up in a house or something it's some craziness man is lost up that goes on there that I didn't put in the book is I don't like going to court yeah but yeah this was it was lost up