DO IT ALONE – David Goggins' Powerful Motivational Speech

0:00Get in the game with the college branded Venmo debit card. Record your team with every tap and earn up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash, a new rewards program from Venmo. No monthly fee, no minimum balance, just school pride and spending power. Get in the game and sign up for the Venmo debit card at Venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo master card is issued by the bank court bank NA, select schools available. Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Max $100 cash back per month. 5 a.m. I'm up with a crisp Celsius energy drink. Running 12 miles today. Grab a green juice, quick change and head to work. Meetings, workshops. One more Celsius, no slowing down. Working late but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Celsius, live, fit, go. Grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com. Only those people who have been there a million times in their minds

1:01and have lived in that water and have suffered a million times in realize my legs may break. My knee may break. My bones will hurt. I will be the quotas I've been in my life. I will be miserable and accept that when you're getting a horrible situation in life. If you're mine, I call my one second decision. When you get a horrible situation in life, your mind immediately says get the fuck out of here. It starts to have all these different questions in your mind in that one second. And it says, okay, why are you here? Why are you doing this? Why this? Why that? And then you start to say yourself, if you don't want to be there that bad, I'm a beautiful wife at home. Why the fuck am I doing this? This is stupid. This is going to get these guys injured. They're going to pay for this for the rest of their lives. I'm not going to break my body up to do this. Your mind starts to say, yeah, this is stupid. But if you are already knowing that this is going to happen to you, you have all the answers to these questions.

2:01That your mind starts to give you when you're in suffer mode. I've always been drawn to stories of overcoming great adversity, growing up. I was obsessed with movies like Rocky and Platoon. Films that portrayed people facing and fighting through extreme challenges. But there was a specific moment that truly transformed my mindset. Two minutes and 13 seconds of a Rocky film. I remember it vividly. One day, I was at a friend's house. He was one of those guys who had two VCRs and would tape all sorts of movies. That day, Rocky was on, specifically during the dramatic 14th round of Rocky first. I saw Rocky get knocked down. His corner yelling for him to stay down. But then, the music swelled. And despite everyone telling him he was beaten, Rocky struggled to his feet. I watched Apollo Creed. The champion turned around after celebrating, thinking he had secured his victory.

3:03The look on his face when he saw Rocky standing again. It was a mix of shock and defeat. It was this exact moment that left a deep impression on me. Not many people might focus on Apollo's reaction like I did. But to me, his expression said it all. He saw something in Rocky at that moment that I wanted for myself. This scene, those brief two minutes and 13 seconds, reshaped my vision of success. It wasn't about winning for me. It wasn't about resilience. I wanted to embody that spirit of never giving up, of persisting despite being knocked down, of standing up even when everything seemed against me. I wanted to develop that kind of heart, that kind of grit. To do that, I knew I had to embrace this comfort to challenge myself continuously. Inspired by Rocky, it wasn't about becoming a boxer or emulating him exactly.

4:06I simply wanted to cultivate that same determination and strength of character. I aspired to be someone who, like Rocky, could take life's hardest hits and still stubbornly get back up. That moment instilled in me a desire for a profound sense of pride. Not from victory, but from the sheer perseverance and resilience shown in the face of overwhelming odds. This is where my journey began, with a newfound purpose to embody that relentless spirit. Man, I've trained 99% of my life alone. No one had me on the back. I did all of the work alone. Life isn't fair at all, at all. So we could do about it. I knew that no one was coming back to help me. No one was going to miracle me to be somebody special. Everybody that called me, my dad, my mom, all my situations were all me now. It's only on me.

5:07So I had to start developing an indestructible mental toolbox. So I sat there in that couch, and I realized that I am a piece of shit. And even though the world helped me get here, my false reality helped me even more. We had nobody anyway, motherfucker. So see, I'm talking stuff for now. That's me. That shit fires me to fuck up. That shit makes me fucking nuts. You had nobody anyway, motherfucker. Look around you. There was no fucking team. It was you. There was no weight loss programmer. My mom and dad, waking you up saying you can do it. You can be better, trying to build belief. You build belief when you had nothing. Rock bottom. You did this, and I had so many bad days in my life. So many bad days from growing up, even now. Well, nobody fucking there, but David Goggins. God was there. But God said, hey, motherfucker, I'm testing you today.

6:09I'm gonna test you tomorrow. I'm gonna test you again. I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna let you alone, man. Pray all the fuck you want. Pray. Go your knees, boy, pray. I'm gonna still kick your ass. So the more I realized this is my journey, and the more I realized, where's all my friends? They ain't fucking nowhere around. It was you. So you better figure out who the fuck you are. I had a starting point. And the starting point was this very scared, immature, fragile kid. But through figuring out this fragile kid, I found out. Through all this muck, this can come out the other end. Person has 4,030 pull-ups. She runs miles and miles and miles at a time. But we all have these abilities, not just to run and do pull-ups, but these abilities that once we go back into our dark holes, that a lot of us have.

7:09A lot of us come from, you know, insecurities, a lot of issues. But we don't want to visit that place. Places scary, places something that we want to forget about. I had the courage, finally, to go back in there and organize it. Get it organized in my mind and figure out where to start from. But the journey led me to the so-called superhuman stuff that I do now. For me, my routine is every night I stretch out. I stretch out for two or three hours every single night without fail. And while I'm stretching out, I'm thinking about my plan for the next day. I'm thinking about all these different obstacles that may come up. So basically, a lot of us aren't prepared for life. We get up really nearly and his whole life is going to happen. It is going to happen. What's going to happen with the prepared mind or unprepared mind? Most people attack life with the unprepared mind. What I do is I try to account for all things that could happen,

8:09might happen, probably will happen, and then the unknowns. So basically, I can't account for everything, but I do know there could be some things that come up in life that you need to be ready for. I know for a fact I'm not going to want to work out tomorrow. Therefore, I'm going to be preparing my mind for that. I want to do that. I know tomorrow will come with some difficult decisions to make. It may come with a getting a phone call saying someone died. This happened, that happened. I'm always preparing myself not in a morbid way, but just like, look, man, be ready for life. Don't let life just start attacking you left and right. Make sure that you start to build a mental armor. So then you're ready for life. I didn't have a motherfucker waiting me up at 3 o'clock in the morning and say, hey, you got to get your shit in. I had no trainer. I had a nutritionist. It was this self-discipline that I had to survive. It's not survived. It's about a week to thrive. No one said, hey, man, you're 297 pounds, man.

9:11I want to help you out. I want to help you out. Hey, man, you're fucking, you're not smart. I'm going to help you out. I had to work at all this shit. I had to overcome and self-discipline is everything. If you don't have it, I don't look at you right, because I know you're capable of more. It's not disciplined so much for me. It's all on you. It's all on you. The self-part is what's big. We need someone to hold people accountable. Fuck that shit, man. Fuck that shit. 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 one self. And it's not about being selfish. I'm trying to create a better me. And that's all about yourself. And that's where it all comes from. Some criticize my level of passion. But I'm not down with the prevailing mentalities.

10:12That tend to dominate American society these days. The ones that tell us to go with the flow or invite us to learn how to get more with less effort. That shortcut boost. The reason I embrace my own obsessions and demand and desire more of myself is because I've learned that it's only when I push beyond pain and suffering past my perceived limitations. That I'm capable of accomplishing more. Physically and mentally. And endurance races, but also in life as a whole. And I believe the same is true for you. The human body is like a stock car. We may look different on the outside. But under the hood, we all have huge reservoirs of potential in a governor, impeding us from reaching our maximum velocity. In a car, the governor limits the flow of fuel and air so it doesn't burn too hot, which places a ceiling on performance. It's a hardware issue.

11:12The governor can easily be removed. And if you disable yours, watch your car rocket beyond 130 miles per hour. It's a solar process in the human animal. Our governor is buried deep in our minds intertwined with our very identity. It knows what and who we love and hate. It's read our whole life story and forms the way we see ourselves and how we'd like to be seen. It's the software that delivers personalized feedback in the form of pain and exhaustion, but also fear and insecurity. And it uses all of that to encourage us to stop before we risk it all. But here's the thing. It doesn't have absolute control. Unlike the governor and an engine, ours can't stop us unless we buy into its bullet and agree to quit. Sadly, most of us give up when we've only given around 40% of our maximum effort. Even when we feel like we've reached our absolute limit, we still have 60% more to give. That's the governor in action.

12:13Once you know that to be true, it's simply a matter of stretching your pain tolerance, letting go of your identity in all your self-limiting stories. So you can get to 60% than 80% and beyond without giving up. I call this the 40 rule. And the reason it's so powerful is that if you follow it, you will unlock your mind to new levels of performance and excellence in sports and in life. And your rewards will run far deeper than mere material success. The 40 rule can be applied to everything we do. Because in life, almost nothing will turn out exactly as we hope. There are always challenges and whether we are at work or school or feeling tested within our most intimate or important relationships, we will all be temps to walk away from commitments, give up on our goals and dreams and sell our own happiness short. At some point, because we will feel empty,

13:13like we have no more to give. When we haven't tapped even half of the treasure buried deep in our minds, hearts and souls. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsor jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate seat. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and conditions apply. It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that serves a purpose. Proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously and we do too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours

14:13with purpose in every detail and crafted with intention. Timberland, built on craft, visit Timberland.com to shop. On December 12th, Disney Plus invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six episode docu-series. I wanted to give something to the fans that they didn't expect. The only thing left is to close the book. The end of an era. And don't miss Taylor Swift, the era's tour, the final show featuring for the first time the torture poets department. Streaming December 12th, only on Disney Plus. Music