wohnzimmer couch 3 sitzer
- he knocked my mom outat the top of the stairs. i could see him comin' down the stairs just dragging here. and she was kind of lifeless,and that's when i got off the couch scared to death, jumped at my father and hebeat the shit out of me. we never went to school hardly at all because we were bruised up. he also believed in just us working
the family business so going to school really didn't happen for me at all. not only did i take a back seat, i also had a learning disability. i'll never forget in third grade there was this teacher thatwas extremely rough on me, and at this time in mylife, i did not need this. and she believed that i neededto be in a special school because of my learning disability.
and this is what i was talking about. people always talk aboutmanage your expectations. this teacher managed my expectations. she saw the learning disability. she saw i was socially inableto survive in this world. she saw i was messed up. so she managed my expectations. she said we need to put david goggins in a special school.
i came from hell andwhen you come from hell not knowing how to fight,this is what happens to you. what happens to you isyou become a fucked up kid that cannot survive in society. i'll never forget one timeduring the basketball game, there was this coach,mr. trout, he knew me when i was a kid in that school where i was in thirdgrade getting set back. mr. trout always loved me.
the white man loved the shit out of me. i don't know why he did. but he was my jv basketballcoach my sophomore year. the visiting team was at our home stadium. it was at the end of thegame and the visiting team start chanting, i wasthe only black person in the whole daggonestadium, they start chanting, "nigger, nigger, nigger." that's all i remember.
at that time in my life,that's all i remember. but now at 42 years old, i can look back on that time with cleareyes and a clear mind and see what mr. trout did for me. he went in that locker roomwhere i was crying and upset and he cried with me. this white man cried withme, but at that time, i didn't see that. all i saw was red.
i saw hate. this whole town hated me. everybody's against me. my mind lost it. and for some reason icouldn't sleep on my bed. until this day i don't know why the floor felt so comfortable. and at 22, 21 years old, i went from 175 pounds to 297 pounds.
fat, out of shape,insecure, i was everything everybody said i was going to be. that's what i was. and it makes you feel like shit. so i got a job spraying forcockroaches at night time. i'm saying that it's a bad job, but i didn't want to do it. so for about six months i went around to local eateries spraying for cockroaches.
this one night i camehome, the first thing i do i walk in my living room, turn the tv on, first thing i do then walkback to take a shower. and i listen to the tv as iwas trying to take a shower. this day changed my life. it held me accountable forwhat i wasn't facing in life. they're going through navy seal training. then i sat down, i came out of the shower and i sat down.
something brought me back to site down and watch these guys go through hell. i saw a ton of themquittin', ringin' the bell. ringin' the bell means you'requitting navy seal training. i saw them putting their helmet down. this went on through the whole show. and it finally got to the very end. there was about 15 to20 guys at the very end. and this one statement changed my life.
they were all sittingthere in their dress whites and the co, this commandingofficer stands up in front of these men. and he looks sharp and i couldtell he stood for something. and he said, "we live in a world "where mediocrity is often rewarded. "these men up here detest mediocrity." when you hear a statement like that, it forces you to think about yourself.
i wasn't even fuckin' mediocre. i wasn't anything. i was at the bottom of the barrel of life. i chose the four-lane highway for my life, the easy route. the route that has gas stations. the route that has fuckin' signs that say, "20 miles to the next service stop." all this shit.
i chose that route. most of us choose the four-lane highway. when i was born, there wasalso a shovel over here in the fuckin' corner. no one wants to go to the shovel. they want to choose thefour-lane fuckin' highway. that's the nice route. the shovel means you'regonna fuckin' hurt. the shovel means you're gonna suffer.
the shovel means you're gonnahit rock a lot of times. we all know what diggin'through rock is like. when you hit a fuckin'root, you gotta fuckin' get some more tools out,but i had no more tools, just a fuckin' shovel. i was choosing the four-lane highway. this is when i decided topick up that fuckin' shovel that we all decide not to take. i had to make a change in my life.
so i said you know what? i have to join the military. i went on a navy seal training. became the only personi believe in history to go through three navyseal hell weeks in one year. i completed two of them. hell week is 130 hoursof continuous training. you might get two hours of sleep. the first few weeks gets you ready
for this hard one week of training. i had to become obsessed. no matter what was in front of me, i had to figure out a way to overcome it. so when things hit you in life that you're afraid ofor you're not good at, the first thing you'regonna say to yourself is, "why am i here anyway?" this isn't for me.
the water's too cold. the sun's too hot. i'm gettin' up too early. why am i doin' this to myself? that's what the normal mind says. i had to start training my mind to think about how the fuck can i get through this. not giving myself a way out. never give myself, create a wall around
all the fucking ways out in my mind. i just slowly start tobuild this fucking wall so my mind knew thismother fucker is not going to give himself a way out of here. in my first hell week,i had a huge setback. i was broken, my legs were broken. i had double pneumonia. i got rolled back to day one, week one of navy seal training.
i got through that second hell week. during that second hell week,i actually broke my knee. i continued to limp aroundfor a couple of weeks. i couldn't make it anymore. got rolled back to day one, week one. i'll never forget standing there in front of captain bowen. he was the co in charge ofnavy seal training at the time. and he had no mercy on anybody.
if you believed inmanaging your expectations, i wouldn't be here today. he challenged me again. i was challenged my whole life not by the mindset ofmanaging expectations, by exceeding expectationsnot by managing them. i'm standing there with crutches. i'm sitting in his office. he looks at me.
he goes, "goggin, this is your last time "we're gonna put youthrough navy seal training. "this will be your thirdhell week in one year. "we're not gonna put you through a fourth, "so this is your last time." i'm sitting there thinking,"how am i gonna get through this?" i'm badly jacked up. my legs are broken.
my knee is messed up. and he goes, "you have a coupleof months to get better." a couple of months isn't going to do it. i won't get healed upin a couple of months. but i realized i'm goingto get through this shit. i'm gonna find a way to get through it because when i put barriers in my mind. so my third hell week, i went in there, with pretty much, i wouldput a black sock on first.
i would get duct tape. then i'd duck tape myankles all the way up to my calf every single morning. then i put another black sock over it. and what that did, that prevented me from moving my ankle so i didn't really, i wasn't flexing my shin as much. and i started runningwith just my hip flexors. in this hell week, it was a bad hell week,
we had a guy die on thursdaymorning of hell week. i went on to become a navy seal. greatness is not somethingthat you meet once. it's something that you meet thousands of fuckin' times in yourlife, and you don't reach it if you're not constantlyin constant fuckin' pursuit of fucking greatness. so if my mind were to say rightnow i'm great, i just lost. we're gonna grow.
we're not gonna tripledown on our strengths. we're not gonna do that crap. we're gonna work on ourweaknesses so we grow. we need friction to do that. without friction there's no growth. without friction, there's confusion. confusion is davidgoggins how did you become who you are today? i put a bunch of fuckin'friction in my life.
and i grew. that's how i did it. yeah you get mentally tough. it's a lifestyle. it's not hittin' thatfuckin' snooze button in the fuckin' morningand not making your bed and not cleaning your house. you don't hit the snooze button. you get up.
you don't want to go run? you go run. you don't want to go swim? you go swim. you don't want to make your bed? you make your bed. you don't want to clean your house? you clean your house. you don't want to study?
you fuckin' study. that's how you start to callus your mind 'til that became my life. if you say you're going to wake up at four o'clock in thefucking morning to go run, wake up at four o'clockand it's gonna suck. it's not going to be fun. do something that sucks everysingle day of your life. that's how you grow.
embrace the suck. (motivational music)