BE CONSISTENT - David Goggins Motivational Speech to Keep You Focused
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Everything I had gone through, I realized that the human mind, if you can put it in a very quiet, calm place and get it to calm down and not be so spastic that you could possibly make this work out for you. How bad are you really? So I calmed myself down and I had to make this enormous thing small. I had 30 more miles to run and my body was in the worst shape

in my entire life, the worst pain I ever felt in my life. So I broke this 30 miles thing down. I broke it down to small chunks. I calmed my mind down. I had to get water, had to get potassium, had to get sodium. I had to stop being so dizzy because I had to be able to stand up. So my dizziness went away after about an hour. I was able to stand up now and I was going around this track at like 30 some minute mile. And I never get my crew person saying, hey,

I got to mile 81. They said, "You're not going to make the time." I had 24 hours and I was going so slow, taking so much time. This is when I realized that the human mind, once everything gets connected, once the mind knows you're not going to quit something, it's going to try to find more. It's going to try to give you more. Once it realizes you're not going to take the path of least resistance, you're going to stay here until it's done. My mind and my body and my spirit became one for the first time ever.

For the first time ever, it became one. And I went to a level that I never thought was humanly possible for myself or anybody else. In that shape that I was in, I was able to run 19 miles. And I ran 19 miles, did 100 miles, actually did one more mile. I did 101 miles in 18 hours and 56 minutes. I'd overcome so many obstacles in my life. And this was the final crucible for me.

And I got through it. And at the end of this race was such clarity to me. And it was just the most amazing thing I ever do in my life. I was at the very edge of my capability and wasn't sure that I could take one more step. I felt like I drained 99% from my tank at least. My gas light was on, my engine shuttering, yet I knew I had to find more if I was going to finish this race and get myself into bad water. But how do you push yourself when pain is all you feel with every step?

when agony is a feedback loop that permeates each cell in your body begging you to stop. That's tricky because the threshold for suffering is different for everybody. What's universal is the impulse to succumb, to feel like you've given everything you can and that you are justified in leaving a job undone. By now, I'm sure you can tell that it doesn't take much for me to become obsessed. Some criticize my level of passion,

But I'm not down with the prevailing mentalities that 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. F*ck that shortcut bullsh*t. 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.

in 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 and 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. The governor can easily be removed. And if you disable yours, watch your car rocket beyond 130 miles per hour. It's a subtler 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 in an engine, ours can't stop us unless we buy into its bullshit 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. Once you know that to be true, it's simply a matter of stretching your pain tolerance

letting go of your identity and all your self-limiting stories so you can get to 60% then 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 tempted 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 like we have no more to give when we haven't tapped even half

of the truer buried deep in our minds, hearts and souls. I know how it feels to be approaching an energetic dead end. I've been there too many times to count. I understand the temptation to sell short, but I also know that impulse is driven by your mind's desire for comfort. And it's not telling you the truth. It's your identity trying to find sanctuary, not help you grow. It's looking for status quo, not reaching for greatness or seeking wholeness.

But the software update that you need to shut your governor down is no supersonic download. It takes 20 years to gain 20 years of experience. And the only way to move beyond your 40% is to callous your mind day after day. Which means you'll have to chase pain like it's your damn job. Imagine you're a boxer and on your first day in the ring, you take one on your chin.

it's gonna hurt like hell but a year 10 of being a boxer you won't be stopped by one punch you'll be able to absorb 12 rounds of getting beat the down and come back the very next day and fight again it's not that the punch has lost power your opponents will be even stronger the changes happen within your brain you've calloused your mind over a period of time your tolerance for mental and physical suffering

will have expanded because your software will have learned that you can take a hell of a lot more than one punch. And if you stay with any task that is trying to beat you down, you will reap rewards. Not a fire. Say you like to run, but have a broken pinky toe. I'll bet if you continue running on it, pretty soon you'll be able to run on broken legs. Sounds impossible, right? I know it's true, because I've run on broken legs.

that knowledge helped me endure all manner of agonies on the ultra circuit which has revealed a clear spring of self-confidence that I drink from whenever my tank is dry but nobody taps their reserves 60% right away or all at once the first step is to remember that your initial blast of pain and fatigue is your governor talking once you do that

You are in control of the dialogue in your mind and you can remind yourself that you are not as drained as you think, that you haven't given it your all, not even close. Buying into that will keep you in the fight and that's worth an extra 5%.

Of course, that's easier listened than done. It wasn't easy to begin the fourth lap of the Hurt 100 because I knew how much it would hurt. And when you are feeling dead and buried, dehydrated, wrung out, and torn the f**k up at 40%, finding that extra 60% feels impossible.

I didn't want my suffering to continue. Nobody does. That's why the line fatigue makes cowards of us all is true as sh**. Mind you, I didn't know anything about the 40% rule that day. The Hurt 100 is when I first started to contemplate it, but I had hit the wall many times before.

I had learned to stay present and open-minded enough to recalibrate my goals even at my lowest. I knew that staying in the fight is always the hardest and most rewarding first step. Of course, it's easy to be open-minded when you leave yoga class and are taking a stroll by the beach. But when you're suffering, keeping an open mind is hard work.

The same is true if you are facing a daunting challenge on the job or at school. Maybe you are tackling a hundred question test and know that you bricked the first 50. At that point, it's extremely difficult to maintain the necessary discipline to force yourself to keep taking the test seriously. It's also imperative that you find it because in every failure, there is something to be gained.

Even if it's only practice for the next test you'll have to take because that next test is coming. That's a guarantee the one-second decision is I had to live through that one-second decision several times during this race So this race took me a hundred and some hours Okay, and this is what people don't get for you to finish that race even though I DNF I still finished in the time and

So there's a lot of pride in that. So what I do in that one second, because we all think about quitting is hard. But what you have to do in that one second is hard to process information during pain because that pain takes over and you can't think rationally. You're thinking about fight or flight. Save yourself. That's not a rational thought. It's not a thought that's going to get you through hard times.

Most people fail that one second. So what happens, what I do in that one second, and there's a bigger process to all this, but in that one second, I physically stayed in that water because if I get out of the water, I quit. So I physically stay in the water, but mentally, I'm on the beach with the instructors. And the instructors, it's cold outside, so they got these parkas on. They got their cup of Joe, and they're warm because they've already been through it. So now it's your turn to go through it.

So mainly I get back with them. I'm still in the water physically, but mainly I'm back with them. I'm chilling. I got my parka on and now I'm thinking logically because I'm warm now. Mentally, I'm warm. I've taken that one second. Let's not quit yet, guys. Let's think about your options. Where are you going to end up if you quit this? Where are you going to go? Where are you going to say to yourself? Because you know you're going to get warm. The second you get out of this water, you're going to take a shower.

And you could be warm and you could be in five days. You could be out. So I start thinking logically. I calm my brain down because your brain wants to get to ring the bell, push your helmet down, get warm. And then you're really. And these are the things you have to think about the one second decision. So that's that's all about. It's about gaining control of your mind, putting things back in the proper perspective and then saying, I really do want to be here.

And I'm going to have a bunch of these one seconds through this 130 hour journey. And I have to learn to control these because if I fail one of these one seconds, I will not be a SEAL. I will not be a doctor. I will not be a lawyer. I will not be whatever the f**k it is. So that's how important that one second decision is. It's all about your mind takes control of you. You have to say, f**k you. I run this m*****.

And that's what that's all about. We must create a system that constantly reminds us who the f*** we are when we are at our best. Because life is not going to pick us up when we fall. There will be forks in the road, knives in your f***ing back, mountains to climb. And we are only capable of living up to the image we create for ourselves. Prepare yourself.

We know life can be hard, and yet we feel sorry for ourselves when it isn't fair. From this point forward, accept the following as Goggins' laws of nature. You will be made fun of. You will feel insecure. You may not be the best all the time. You may be the only black, white, Asian, Latino, female, male, gay, lesbian. There will be times when you feel alone. Get over it.

Our minds are f*cking strong. They are our most powerful weapon, but we have stopped using them. We have access to so many more resources today than ever before and yet we are so much less capable than those who came before us. If you want to be one of the few to defy those trends in our ever-softening society,

you will have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity, which requires an open mind. It's funny, being open-minded is often tagged as new age or soft. F*** that. Being open-minded enough to find a way is old school. It's what knuckle-draggers do. And that's exactly what I did. Failure is just a word. For me, failure was me...

having more information on how to succeed. That's all failure became to me. So I failed so much. Pull-up records, running events, had to quit this, buds, ranges, all this crap I had to go back through. All that was was, oh, I failed because of these reasons here. Go back to the drawing board, figure out the right equation, put it together, go back, fail again. Oh, but I got more information. So everything I was afraid of, I made sure to meet it right in the face and overcome it.

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