I'm Not Gifted. I'm Just Driven. - David Goggins

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Welcome to the Resilient Mind Podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to, I'm Not Gifted, I'm Just Driven with David Goggin. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy.

I'm I'm I'm not the best at anything. I'm not I'm not gifted. I'm just driven. I'm a guy that came from nothing. Anybody's capable of doing shit like this. Anybody. And I sat in that tub. She s put the water on me. She called my mom up. And my mom was dating a doctor at the time. The doc the doctor said, You need to get him to a hospital now.

She came back in, all I wanted to do is call Chris Carson on the phone, the restructure of Badwater so I can did it. So she said, I'm taking to the doctor. I said, no, let me sit here and enjoy this pain. She said, What are you talking about? I said, You know, I go, I need to go to the doctor, I realize that, but I never thought. it was humanly possible to do what I did. I went seventy miles, and at seventy miles I was

I was at 100% what I thought, what I thought was 100%. I went 30, I went 31 more miles after being in the worst physical shape I've ever been in in my life. And I sat in that tub and the and the waters hit me, and it was the most amazing feeling of accomplishment. I did that. I over and as crazy as it sounds, it was the most amazing moment of my entire life to overcome such to come from this kid. who was mentally tortured himself and was tortured just all to this kid to this guy now.

who was able to overcome such amazing odds and obstacles. And I called Chris Carson up the race director of Badwater and he said, the idea of a 24-hour race is to run 24 hours. You only ran 19. And he put doubt in my mind that he would let me into Bad Water. Two weeks later, roughly December 5th, was this marathon that we all signed up for. I couldn't walk. I could not walk. I ran a hundred miles before I ran a marathon.

10 days or two weeks after this 100 mile in one race, I did this marathon, December 5th in Las Vegas. That gun went off 2005, 14 days after, I broke myself off, and I qualified for the Boston Marathon around 308. Like the gun went off and that thing came back. Like, all right, man. And then I went to the HERT 100 race in Hawaii, 26,000 feet of climbing over 100 miles, probably one of the top five hardest hundred mile races in the world.

out there and got through the race. Did in thirty three hours. Was a ninth place finisher and I qualified for Badwater and got in. I went on to lose weight and trained hard and I got fifth my first year and went back my second year and got third.

I'm I'm I'm not the best at anything. I'm not I'm not gifted. I'm just driven. Out of the hundred men that go into war, ten shouldn't be there. Eighty of them are just targets. But nine do most of the fighting. One is a warrior. I saw it going through training. I saw it everywhere I went. There's so many people who just show up to life.

There's something about talking to a guy like you that a lot of people hope that you're gonna say some magic thing that's gonna click in their brain. What you're saying is that you have to do those things. You have to suffer. You have to live in it. You have to be comfortable in it. And then maybe some of that shit will help you a little bit along the way.

See me now is the guy that with his shirt off who can do 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours, who can run 205 miles in 39 hours, who can do all this crazy shit. But what they don't understand is they don't understand the journey that it took me to get to this point. And what got me to this point was I was just the opposite of what I ended up I was that guy who ran away from absolutely everything that got in front of me.

I wanted to quit so badly, but I quit everything in my life. I copied through school. I wanted to prove people wrong. And so here I am in this Air Force program starting to get a little more confident. But this water was kicking my ass. And six weeks into the program, the doctor gave me a to read about how we can quickly get somewhere. That's why this six-minute ab is so powerful. You may get some results from it, but they're not permanent.

The permanent result comes from you. I say it all the time. You have to suffer. You have to make that a tattoo on your brain. So when that hard time comes again, you don't forget it. is I'm trying to find more of myself. And the only way I can find more is to silence the world out as much as I can because it's it's it's getting busier every day. It's getting fast.

I put my phone away up and I go dark. I go dark a lot. And it's because I have to find out I'm on a journey of life. And we all have a different journey. I like to take this four-lane highway, the easy highway. We all love that four-lane highway. We always step over the shovel. That shovel, I made my own path. But going through this path of life, this journey over here that you make yourself, that's incredibly difficult, and we're afraid.

It's easier to accept the fact that I'm just not good enough. You have to go into those dark chambers that we often shut off and you gotta open them up. Does not some easy lit up street light path with nice smooth roads. to fail and you're gonna be in your head, you could be saying, I'm not good enough And it's how you get through that. It's how you get through that on a daily basis when that thing is say, man I'm forty-three, I've done so much. You start to become civilized.

The refrigerator gets full. You start getting making money and you start I'm not getting cold anymore. I'm retired. At forty people shouldn't it be playing basketball or football or At 43, I'm still putting 100 mile weeks, still doing thousands of pull-ups, do thousands of push-ups, because I'm not allowing myself to become civilized. The worst thing that can happen to a man is become civilized.

You wanna be uncommon amongst uncommon people. Period. You start putting yourself in situations that suck, you'll find yourself. I'm big on being with yourself. I want to be forever proud of who I was as a man and change who I used to be. the liar, the insecure guy, the guy who can whatever. I want to be proud. But I if I die now, if I die at eight, if I die at 90, 100, I want to look at myself and say, proud of myself. I believe in patience.

I'm a patient dude. I can watch a piece of grass grow for twenty years'cause I know that It is how you get somewhere in life. By being that look-like mentality being able to watch something grow very calmly, patiently. Well, I I can't go any faster. You do that to our brain, we put a governor on our brain, the second we feel pain, discomfort, suffering, all those words that we hate to say'cause we're in this happy, peaceful world we live in now.

We slow down. And if you can get through these different barriers and gain 5%, 2%, 3%, that 40% becomes 60, and 60% becomes 70, 80, and 90. And then you'll hopefully one day near 100. That that dreamer mentality just would always fuel me. It would just fuel me, man. What if I can be, what if I can be a SEAL, man? Now I run 205 miles. What wh what if I can go? What just what if I can go and and and what if how would that feel?

You have to go into those dark chambers that we often shut off and you gotta open them up. I was like I said 297. I was about 32% body fat. And I went my idea was to run four miles for my first run. I ran a quarter mile and walked up. I walked home, sat on my couch, and cried. I sat down, I gave up. You start out on the first day and then w do you start running again the second day?

And the second day went right back after it again. But I started realizing I can't run that far. Right. So what I did was I became damn near a professional cyclist with the miles I put on the bike. I go to the gym and I developed this crazy workout where I was doing volume like two, three hundred reps. And I spent hours in the pool. Hours in the pool. I had to live in the water.

The bike got easier. I was able to run more. I went from like one mile. One mile is a great accomplishment. Two miles and then from two to three was a big one. Then I went from three to six. I failed, I go back to scratch. But I started realizing this is part of the process. This is part of the journey. I'm it's not good enough. I'm gonna make myself good enough. When we have bad times in life, even the hardest person in the world, we forget how badass we are during that hard time.

I have a thing where I take a couple seconds to reflect on, oh hang on man, you've been through been through this, you've been through that, you overcame this, overcame that. I don't ever close my mind to the fact that this can be done. I've quit several things. I know what's on the back end and quit. I wanted to be a man that detests mediocrity.

I started callousing my mind at this point in my life. I lost the weight and I went back to recruiter. I got into that class. I went through three, maybe still hell weeks in one year. Only got it ever being three hell weeks in one year, to my knowledge. The first one I didn't make it through, the next two I did.

And I started opening different doors that I didn't think were even there, that I didn't think even existed. And the more doors I open up, the more I start realizing that my potential is damn near endless. I wanted to feel something besides the feet. I wanted to just go the distance. And that going a distance pushed me to a point of where now I go way past.

I didn't have a motherfucker come wake me up at three o'clock in the fucking morning and say, hey, you gotta get your shit in. I have no trainer. I didn't have a nutritionist. It was this self-discipline that I had to survive, to not survive, survival as weak, to to to to to thrive. No one said, hey man, you're 297 pounds, man. I'm gonna help you out. I had to overcome and

And it it it it it self-disciplines everything. If you don't have it, I I don't look at you right because I know you're capable of more. It's not discipline so much for me. It's all on you. It's all on you. The self part is what's big. We count on people too much to get us through shit. And we look to our right, we look to our left, we're looking for help. And if you can build that self, you can build that total accountability in oneself. We live in a society where mediocrity is often rewarded.

We often forget how hard we are, but you gotta reflect back. Take take a couple seconds, reflect. I've I've been through this, I've been through that. If you don't believe it, you haven't endured shit, you're just blowing smoke, man.

I'm I'm I'm not the best at anything. I'm not I'm not gifted. I'm just driven. It's all about trying to share that message with people. Thank you for listening. Continue strengthening your mind by subscribing and listening to our other episodes. Start your day with Quaker Protein Instant Oatmeal. The instant oatmeal ready to help you tackle whatever your day brings, like wrinkling your toddler into their car seat. That was fun. Coaching your sixth grader soccer team. Little girls!

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