Persistence 2: Goggins, Jocko Willink & Eric Thomas

0:00Where are you gonna end up if you quit this shit? Where are you gonna go? I can't get out of this. I'm gonna go forward, not gonna quit, so I'm gonna go forward, bring it on. Don't go to sleep until you succeed! Your mind tastes control of you. You have to say, you... I run this mother. Keep pushing... through things that suck. As long as you don't quit, then you haven't failed. I'm telling you, don't give up. Play to the clock knows out. And if you lose, at least you can say... you went down, fighting! When I got my head on my ass and realized that we have more left, we can still push harder. We're not there yet. So if you're in the woods and you don't know where to go, start walking. You gotta start walking because the perspective is not gonna change. You have to start moving forward. I can always take one more step so I choose not to, that's on me. Unless you're dead, you are not defeated. And you have not failed. This is why I'm always pushing that limit. Because I know that there's always more.

1:02And you're gonna fail. And you're gonna fail. And you're gonna fail. And you're gonna fail. And then you're gonna win. And that's life. Life without those challenges. It's just existence. Don't just exist. Go live. Eventually, in action will cost you. But your default setting should be, I'm gonna do something. Just get up, move towards that challenge, and go attack it. Go do something that's hard. Struggle sucks. Depends on how you frame it. If you want freedom in your life, you have to have discipline. Move towards that challenge, whatever that challenge is. And you may be successful, and you may not be successful, but you will be better. And the next challenge, you can be more prepared for.

2:06Because we're gonna have wins, we're gonna have losses. We're gonna have successes, we're gonna have failures. We're gonna have good nights, we're gonna have bad nights. We're gonna have good relationships, we're gonna have bad relations. We're gonna have good ideas and bad ideas. We're gonna make money, we're gonna lose money. All these things are gonna happen. And if you oscillate emotionally, up and down drastically, it's gonna be problematic. Embrace those emotions. But don't let those emotions embrace you. Keep pushing through things that suck. This is a very difficult thing to do because it hurts. I'm gonna go forward, not gonna quit, so I'm gonna go forward, bring it on. Don't complain. Don't marmer. Don't talk negative. Average people talk normal. Average people use their time to whine and complain. Average people talk problem. The greats talk solutions. I'm taking ownership. Michael Jordan, when he was a kid, dreamed about making the last shot.

3:08Kobe dreamed about making the last shot. In the greats, they just don't put up the first, the second and third. But what I've learned about the greats is that they understand it's a sense of urgency. That once the clock goes out, it's a W or L. There is no middle ground. You either win or you lose. It's a different mentality and the greats are the greats because they have a different mentality. The greats don't play for themselves. The greats understand that they play as a team. When they ask Michael Jordan, who's the best MJ? You or LeBron? Who's the best? You or Kobe? He says, no, no, you're gotta twist it. It's not who's the greatest player. It's who's the greatest team. Stop being average. Average people can't forgive. Average people can't let go. The greats, we do whatever it takes. We do whatever it takes to be happy. It's our time. I can't. I can't. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will.

4:09I will my way through every situation, every trial, every trible. I will my way through it. You're not finished. If you're alive, you're not finished. No, no, you got another gear in you. You get to face a lot of young man. You got a long journey ahead of you. Because you're going to find out that while your dad did a lot of stuff to you, you're going to have to make it on your own. Because this world we live in is tough. It will beat you down. The world in the life they were living is the ultimate competitor. The world's tough. The world's tough. It will try to take you out. It will find your weakness. And it will hammer you. So it's time to get back to work. Get back to work. Stop hearing yourself talk. Get off the podcast. Don't be on social media too much. Cut out all the fucking noise. Get back to the mental lab. Because that's where the knowledge came from.

5:10You need to get to a point in your life where there's nothing can hurt you because you know exactly who you are. You've faced your demons. You were able to hear all your past traumas. You were able to listen to them. You were able to say, okay, now I can now talk to people about what I went through. I'm no longer embarrassed. I'm no longer ashamed. Being ashamed is one of the biggest things that kill people nowadays. In their minds, kill them from moving forward. I'm ashamed of myself. Don't ever be ashamed of anything you've done in your life. Face it, fix it, make it better. Everything I need is in my mental lab. Everything. Because I'm in constant study of myself. And I know what needs to be conquered. Because I'm constantly going through what I don't like. What I'm not comfortable with. I know. And only I can fix these problems. Because I have to face these problems. Undenchosen suffering is going to happen, right? So the only thing that you can do is have some shows and suffering to prepare for it.

6:13It's the only thing you can do. That's the only thing you can practice for the undenchosen suffering. It's have chosen suffering. Do something that sucks every day. I'm not trying to send a message of run 200 miles. Be the best motherf***er in the world. But be tough. You better have a part about you that's tough. A part about you that can break down situations and get better. And break down situations very quickly. Within some trauma in your life. Some devastation in your life. Because it's going to come. The devastation, the trauma is going to come. And you can't allow that to become a jersey barrier. It can't be a jersey barrier. It has to be something that you can maneuver through very quickly. And move forward. That takes a lot of toughness. To a lot of people, when you die, they figure out why you die. They figure out how you die. It's been the autopsy. But we never do a live autopsy. They figure out why we're dying, why we are alive.

7:13And I was dying. I was living every day. But I was really dead. And so I figured it out. And once I figured it out, I was able to be born. I was able to be reborn. You must take this knowledge that you learn from all this shit is knowledge. So I'm just trying to give people that strength to go in the archives of your life. Because while you're probably... It's probably something happened to you in your life. Go through the archives. Dig it up. Study it. And then use it for yourself. That's the main purpose for me right now. You need to be better here. You need to be better here. You need to overcome this, overcome that, and I... You know, people need to have purpose to get up. They need purpose to perform. You need to get to a point in your life where there's nothing on the docket. There's no 5K. There's no... I'm going to get into school to be this or that. And still perform. To the highest level. Because what people don't get is one day that thing's going to come up.

8:14And if you're not constantly performing without purpose, you're not going to be ready when a time comes. It's this magical thing of purpose that we're all looking for. But what's funny about it all is that we need these things to perform. But we don't take a second to realize the purpose is always there. The purpose never leaves us. Because the very purpose is you. You are always the purpose. There may be another purpose, like being a seal or going to college or whatever. But the main purpose in life is you. So if you wake up in the morning and you don't want to do something, you don't care enough about yourself. And that's what you need to really research is why am I not doing this for myself? Because that is the number one purpose in life. It's to better oneself. So that's the only purpose I can need. So the reason I give every day, even though there's no race, there's no school, there's nothing in front of me, is because I have pride in myself.

9:16I was born David Goggins. David Goggins wasn't good enough. He was a scared, bullied, abused kid who struggled in life. And that kid, whenever something got tough, you're like, how hard I trained? Remember how ready I was? Whenever something got tough for me, David Goggins, the real David Goggins, would come out and he would quit. So I realized this over a pretty time. So I had to build Goggins. And in that process, that's where I get better. I get better when I'm digging holes in the ground, when I'm waking up early, knowing I don't have to do these things. That's where I get better. So it's important to stay hungry. It's important to stay hungry, but it's important more to stay humble within that hunger. So while you're hungry, a lot of people are hungry, but humility is everything.

10:18What was that story about William Crawford, the janitor? Yeah. So this guy won the Medal of Honor. So he won the Medal of Honor, and which is the highest award in the military. And this guy went to the Air Force Academy, and he was a janitor. And no one knew who this man was. He had the highest award in all the military for heroics. For heroics, saving lives, putting his life in a line, you know, could have been killed. And he is now basically, you know, cleanishers for young kids. And we can all imagine how that probably went. You know, there's probably some, you know, a little bit of taunting here and there. He is that cleanisher. So that's why he's in my trained humility part, because for this man to be at the level he was and have that kind of humility to go, I'm a Medal of Honor winner, but I'm going to put that in my closet. And I'm going to pick up my broom and dust pan.

11:19And I'm going to pick up, you know, this rag and clean this for these young men. That right there is amazing for me, man. That's where you grow. That's growth, huge growth. And also it shows that he was doing his job. He was a servant. He didn't look at himself, anybody else. The second you do that, you totally lost. You cannot look at yourself like people with me, even. I always look at people. I know where you are. I know where, because I've been there. That's why I helped so many people out. I've never been above you. I've always pretty much been beneath you and that's where my knowledge came from. So I know how to reach those people who are in the dungeon. Because I've been there so many times. You have to be your best self and your least motivated. And that's the tricky part about all that. Motivation is just a word. You have to have these different things in your mind on where you want to go. And know that motivation is not going to get me there.

12:19Because I'm not going to always be motivated. Chaka said the exact same thing. You said that discipline eats motivation for breakfast. And discipline is good too. But without a clear headspace, there's no discipline. What do you mean? So let's say we have a circuit breaker. Okay? And I'm loading everything up to one circuit. Just loading it up. It's going to blow. What's that thing blows, man? The circuit's all fucked up. You got to have each thing plugged into the right spot like a crowded garage. You can't put anything in it. Once your brain is crowded, discipline is great. Motivation is great. But if you can't fit in your brain because it's all can clutter with shit. There's no discipline. You may have it sometimes when it fits in that crowded garage of your mind, but you don't have the consistency that you need to have it at discipline.

13:19I call it mental zones. It's your organizing your mind. So you can put that discipline. So a lot of people talk about discipline. Okay, great. Why do you fall off the wagon? Why can't I continue with this routine going to the gym of being better, waking up early, eating the right foods? It's because maybe it's your kids. Maybe it's your wife. Maybe it's your job. And it's all just stuffed in your brain. You don't have it compartmentalized and organized in these nice shelves. A lot of people who's brain... Hey, where's my dentist? Let me look. You're looking through toe to toe. So where am I going to put discipline? In that mind, if I can't find others, you got to be able to find all these different things in your mind. Oh, I can put discipline right there. If your life is not organized, in your life being everything around you. Because it takes one little... the piece of an outside interference

14:21to cut your whole mind. Your mind has to always be clear. That's why I meditate two hours every single night. Because I refresh, I reorganize the garage. Which is my mind every night. So then, discipline's in there, organization. Everything's in this right spot. I'm waking up and I'm giving myself all this armor. So when I come out in the world, I'm ready. I'm not waking up late. I'm not rushing around. I'm not disorganized. So if I wake up, I'm ready to go. Every day when I wake up, I got all kinds of demands. You got all kinds of demands. And the reason why you're not where you want to be is not because you're not great. But you're taking all other people's stuff before you spend enough time with yourself to get to know you and get to know what you want and what you should do. And so please raise your hand with me. If you're saying E from this day forward, I make a commitment to myself in a way I've never made a commitment to myself before. Let me see your hands.

15:21I said, I'm gonna grind. I'm going to fight. I'm going to work. I'm going to press toward. I'm going to learn. I'm going to do everything in my power. Every single day, I'm going to do everything in my power to become a victor and not a victim. I didn't get here making excuses. You got to get to the point where it hurts. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. But I'm not going to cry about it. No, I'm not a part of the country club. No, I'm not, I don't hang out with them. But I'm still going to be successful. I'm still going to get to where they are. Why? Because I owe it to myself. And can't nobody stop me but me. You will not destroy us. You will not defeat us to the day I die. It's your mental toughness. Your mental strength. We can. We will. And we must get through this.

16:21This is what's so sweet about success. That as long as you stay in failure, that like, you know, you get satisfied with that. When you actually come over to success. It's the same thing. Like, you got to have more and more and more. Just like when you're in poverty, you can keep doing it. When you become successful. So I went with the master degree. Then when I went with the PhD, I just kept. We came up with an album. I wrote three books. Are you hearing what I'm telling you? Now I'm at a point where I have this sensational desire for more success. So after I finished with the degree, now I start working out. I'm ready to hit this marathon. Now I got another book coming. Now I'm trying to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Now we're trying to do a reality show. Telling you what you would get from the dark side. You'd get from being a loser. Low self esteem. Die with it. Hit fear. And you can find your way on this side, guys. It's sweeter on this side. Many of you have not activated who you are

17:22because you don't know what you want. Execution is worshiped. Execution is worshiped. Execution is worshiped. Execution is worshiped. You get away with a lot of stuff when you start executing. And I'm telling you, if you execute, you're going to be on the whole of the level. What do you want? And there are those of you in this room. You are great. You are phenomenal. And you're not walking in it. Acceptance. And now let's walk in it. The dream is yours. But you're saying, I'm not worthy of the dream. You're probably not. But you've been given to you anyway. I really don't know what I want. I am not walking in my greatness. My esteem is not where it should be. I am accepting things that I probably shouldn't accept. And when I leave today,

18:22I'm ready to embrace the true me. Listen to me as you're trying to get to that next level of success. You legitimately have to know what that is if somebody's going to be able to help you out. Listen to what I'm saying. I knew what I wanted. And the first thing some of you in this room have to do, you've got to get to the place where you know what you want. And then once you find out what you want, spend the rest of your natural life waking up and going after it. That's what I do. I wake up every single day. And I go after what I want. But if you don't know what you want, what are you even waking up for? E.T. Why am I not fired up? E.T. Why am I sleeping in? Because you don't have a reason to get up. You don't have a reason to wake up early in the morning. You don't have a reason to work out. But you better stop making excuses and find a way to win. Because once you start winning, I'm telling you, I can't explain it to you. For doors start opening. Opportunities start happening.

19:23But what you cannot do is you cannot quit doing the process. You cannot give up because it ain't what you see. You cannot give up. And when you become a winner, they start seeing you with winners. That's why I need you to create a culture of winning. And do me a favor. You don't have to win at a whole bunch of stuff. Just win one day at a time. You cannot give up. What you got to do is you heard it. You heard it. The champions keep going when they don't have anything left in their tank. That's the difference between the greats. That's what separates them. When they don't have no more. When it's over. When they're tired. When they're frustrated. When they're ready to give up. When they spent their last dime. That's when they get started. Are you hearing me? It's when you have nothing left. It's when you depleted all your money. When all your energy go. When you have nothing left. That's when they show time. Find the way out of no way. When you find breath that you don't have. When you find energy that did not exist. When you want this thing as bad as you want to breathe.

20:25That's when you find a way. I wish I could tell you you tired. Go take a break. I wish I could tell you what's going to get easier. I wish I could tell you that. And you just keep going. It's going to get lighter. The weight is going to get lighter. I wish I could tell you that. But that's not the truth. The truth is you've got to find something within. So I need you to be in favor, guys. I need you to, I need you to win. And tell you know what you want. You will not, you will not get good rest. If you don't know what you want. Then you've not begun to live yet. You've got to find something within. And that's got to push you. And that's got to elevate you. And that's got to drive you. And that's got to move you. And when you find out what your why is. And your why got to be deeper than you. When you find your why. You don't hit snooze no more. When you find your why. You find a way to make it happen. There is no excuse for not living up to your fullest potential.

21:28No excuse. And I can't explain it. But you better feel me. Winners win and lose us lose. I can't explain it any better than that. What changed? I changed. And I stopped being a victim. I stopped saying I've got to wait for good things to happen to me. And I said I'm gonna grind. I'm going to fight. I'm going to work. I'm going to press toward. I'm going to learn. I'm going to do everything in my power. Every single day. I'm going to do everything in my power to become a victor and not a victim. You not say this is going to be a part of my life because somebody told you was going to be a part of your life. You need to start rejecting some of the stuff people telling you. You need to stop embracing it. Just because they said it. It doesn't mean it's true for you. Just because you don't believe. Just because you're going to be a poverty.

22:28Just because your marriage ain't going to work out. Just because your kids aren't going to be successful. I'm not only that. That's not my life. And the reason why I say it's my fault. Even when it's not my fault. Because when I say it's your fault, I give you power. I give you control over my life. And I will never give another human control over my life. It's my fault. It's my problem. I'm coming up with a solution for you. Can we try? Are you here when I'm saying something? You're not even trying. You don't even try to do it. You've given up before you even tried. I'm taking ownership. You get to determine how you live. You live life on your terms. Go again. Will you wait for it? Some things you can scale yourself through. Some stuff you got to will you wait for. And where there is no struggle. There is absolutely no progress.

23:30I will. Come on. I will. I will. I will. I must. I must. We all look for toughness. We all want it. But we look for it in a comfortable environment. You will not find toughness in a comfortable environment. Those of you who are listening to this, you will not find it. The only way you find it is to drown yourself in a position where you're just out of sorts. When you can't swim and you're drowning. You're drowning. When you say, you know what, man? Dad. Once you come face to face with who you are, you have a starting point. It's in our heads saying, you know what, man? Dude, you're not. You're not doing shit.

24:30You're wasting a bunch of percentage here. In this other 80% is suffering. Pain. Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure. Self-doubt. Darkness. And then a whole bunch of light. But to get to this light, you got to go through all of this shit. You're not succeeding. You're not achieving. It's because you're pretty going that dark place to find yourself. You're setting goals. You know you can reach. And when you do that, that fear, and insecurity, that doubt, that's where you grow. You must always set goals. And you think you cannot achieve. And then there you get better. When that long clock goes off at four or five in the morning, your mind says no. You just say, this is what we do. It's what we do now. Because to get to where you want to go, the amount of pain involved,

25:31the amount of mental pain, of how many times you're going to have to do something that you don't want to do, to get to where you want to go. Every day, you must ask yourself, did I do enough? And then once you do this over, and over, and over again, it becomes like breathing. I don't want to live this lifestyle, but to get to the other side of this, I have to. So if you really want it, you realize what trying is, and what trying is not. Your brain is the most powerful weapon in the world. Once you put away your phones and your computers and all that shit we have nowadays, your brain is the only thing you have when you're going through depression, when you're going through hard times,

26:32you're going through death, real life shit. You can't Google that shit, man. You're alone. You're alone. You may have a shrink, you're going to, you may have a best friend you're going to, but there's 24 hours in the day where you're alone in this brain. And your brain is talking to you in all kinds of ways. And it wants to control you, and pull you in these different pockets. If you can't control your own brain, and your brain controls you, you're fucked. You got to tell your brain where you want to go and how you want to go and how you want to get there. You got to control it. If not, it's over. All I knew back then was hard work. You got to work hard. You got to work hard. I can't get this paragraph. I can't remember what the fuck's in this paragraph to pass this test to get the military. Read it again. Still not getting it. Read it again. But if not getting it, write it out. And that's how I started learning. I realized if I keep going back,

27:34and going back, and going back, until the shit just becomes your mind will say, fuck, okay? We're going to figure it out. It'll find a way. Because he is not going to stop. It's not, I'm going to try one more time. No! You want to go from? Boop! We're going back. I can't read right. We're going back. I gave myself no way out. And my mind realized that. It's okay. We're going to adapt and overcome now. That was my mindset. And that's how you get through things. You put yourself, you immerse yourself wherever it is. You become that. I became health. And that became my new norm. I gave myself no way out. There was nothing outside these walls of hell. Nothing. I watched this segment on TV about these guys going through Navy still training.

28:35And I couldn't even, I won a great swimmer. I was afraid of the water. All this crap, man. I saw these guys as quitting. And at the very end, it says 22 guys. This command officers up there. And it gives this great speech. So I saw the visualizing. Me being the 23rd guy. Sitting there with these guys. I said, man, if I could feel it there, that would change my life. And what was that feeling you wanted so bad respects? Because I was mean, victory. I wanted to win. Not like beat somebody else. It wasn't about that. I just wanted to go the distance. Everything in my life was something got hard. I quit. I had to work harder than you. So I quit. Like, man, if I could just go that distance. That extra mile. To just go, it's just to finish. I want to finish. I want to feel victory. And victory for me wasn't winning.

29:35It was just finishing. So I said, you know what? If I could feel like these guys feel, like, and literally I started feeling victory just by putting myself in the battle. I started realizing, man, just by going to war with myself every day. And putting these challenges and these goals and these obstacles, these insurmountable obstacles. Now we can move from there. If you look at it as, man, I'm broken and I'm still here. Now I'm fighting. Now I'm going to find a way to get through this. Because I have no other place to go. It gives you a lot of power. And no one really finds himself without going through trials, tribulations, suffering, accountability. And accountability is suffering. Being accountable every day for doing right.

30:38For yourself, for the people next to you. It's miserable. The more I just, the more I gain confidence. And the more I gain confidence, the more I realize, fuck these Navy seals, man. These guys can't do what I'm doing right now. I had no coach, had no trainer, had no money. I didn't know how to lose weight. I had no knowledge of what I was doing. I was just working. I was just sacrificing. But I would have never found these tools. If I didn't put myself in a very uncomfortable place, and your true self is found in that very uncomfortable zone. When you talk to people that went to seal training, that didn't make it, most of the time it's some reason. There's a medical reason. There's a family problem. There's very few people that look at you and say, oh, I quit because it sucked. Which is what happens to the vast majority of people.

31:39The vast majority of people that don't make it through seal training, they didn't make it through because they quit. Your excuses will destroy you and take everything that you ever wanted from you if you left them. When your excuses make you feel a little bit better about the fact that you didn't execute on what you needed to execute on, then they can make you feel better, but they're not helping you. They're not helping you at all. This went wrong. This failed. Didn't accomplish this. And it's not the fault of my boss. It's not the fault of my girlfriend. It's not the fault of my parents. It's not the fault of the weather. And I'm going to take ownership of it and I'm going to fix it. That's what extreme ownership is. Because when you look around at your life and you look around at your job and your financial situation and your relationship and your physical health, and when you look at all those things and all the problems that you may have with those things,

32:41and you say the reason I have all those problems is because of me, that can hurt, that can sting. And a lot of times our ego rejects that and makes excuses and lies. And then we don't have to change anything. And then nothing changes. When the excuses all go away, and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, it hurts, but is also unbelievably empowering. Because the more discipline you have in your life, the more freedom you will end up with. So if you lack the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up being a slave to disease. If you lack the discipline to work hard, save your money, you will end up a slave to finances.

33:41If you lack the discipline to manage your time correctly, you will end up with no free time. If you have self-discipline, if you have the discipline to save your money and work hard and invest your money properly, if you have the discipline to manage your time correctly and not waste a bunch of time, if you have the discipline to exercise and eat healthy, you will end up with freedom. And you're going to start to progress in every aspect of your life. And you'll see that if you have that kind of discipline right now, you're going to end up with freedom. If you have discipline, you will attain freedom. Go try and accomplish something that's hard. You may win, you may lose, you may succeed, you may fail. I'll tell you what, you'll be better. And if you don't have that kind of discipline and you don't work hard and you don't exercise and you don't apply yourself, you're going to end up shackled.

34:45So if you're in the woods and you don't know where to go, start walking. You've got to start walking because the perspective is not going to change. You have to start moving forward. But standing there lost and not doing anything is just waiting to die, waiting to starve to death. Don't let that happen. It's really important because as men, we don't get conflicting messages about emotion and how to express it and what that looks like. And there's a lot of men struggling right now. Every human face is challenges and you don't know what they've been through. It's suppressing them isn't going to help and nor is letting them run your life. Because you're sad, now you're going to make a bunch of bad decisions because you're sad, no, no, it doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that. You're sad, okay. You get emotional sometimes, okay. Got it. Now, get control of your emotions

35:46and carry on with your life. And sometimes you're going to get hit with those waves. And that's okay. Oh, I'm having an emotional moment right now. There's something wrong with me. No, there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. The other extreme is, oh, I'm letting my emotions run my life and I'm making a bunch of bad decisions and my excuse is, well, you know, I lost from friends or I had this traumatic experience happen to me. That's why I'm doing, that's just an excuse. And it's a very easy excuse. Guess what? It's time to carry on. Remember, don't dwell. I'm in control. This is my life. If you are in the problem, you won't see the solution to the problem. Take a step back. Detach from the chaos. Detach from the mayhem. Detach from your emotions. Detach from your ego. And be able to assess the best way to execute. That is the job of a leader.

36:48If you take any trait of a human being and you take it to an extreme, masculine or feminine or otherwise, you take it to an extreme. It's going to be a problem. Is it good to have no emotions whatsoever? No, that's called a sociopath. Is it good to let your emotions run your life and make your decisions based on your emotions? No, that's not good either. What do you want to be as a human? As a man? Want to be balanced. It's much easier to be extreme. It's much easier to say, oh, no emotions cool and turn them off. That's easier. Or a total emotion mayhem, that's easier. It's harder to find balance. It's harder to find balance. In business, it's harder to find balance. Life is hard to find balance. But you have to be balanced. Because what I want is for the team to win. So be balanced.

37:49You're going to be okay.