DON'T WASTE YOUR LIFE. DO IT FOR YOURSELF - Life-Changing Motivation by David Goggins
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Bad. I mean, I was knocked out in the 12th round of a 15-round heavyweight bout. I was knocked out. But what happened was, in the 12th round, when the challenger turned his back on me, I was getting the f*** up.

and i got up and won the next three rounds and knocked them up got in the 15th round so that's my mind about can't hurt me i was hurt man like he literally i had to overcome so much those first 26 years of my life and i still do every day today you know it's not over but the mentality of can't hurt me is just that no matter what's in front of you man you have to face you have to confront

You have to overcome and move forward. So my father, you know, some of the kids that bullied me, my learning disabilities, all these things I went through in life, stuttering, you know, had so many different issues, failing and failing and failing. I had to overcome them or they would have overcame me. I was able to look at my childhood and how I grew up as the ultimate training ground for my life.

Someone there has to be some people in this planet Earth who have my mentality as gross as it is to some people and as far off as it is and not understood. There has to be some people like me on this planet Earth.

has to be some warriors out there that are able to take this mindset and do something with it. So that right there, once you are able to look at your life and realize that all these bad things are actually the ultimate training ground for what you're going to encounter in life, you start looking at your past very differently. I'm still examining human potential. How far can the mind go? How far can we go as human beings?

But it's amazing that once you get control of that thing, how far you can go. I honestly want to be considered one of the hardest men to walk the planet Earth in the history of the world. And by hard, I'm not talking about the guy who does the most pull-ups, most sit-ups, runs the most. Just a person who's able to overcome any adversity in front of him. And figure out a way. Hardness isn't about all this physical, man. Yeah, it helped me get to where I'm at.

But all I was doing in the whole process, the process wouldn't be ripped. I wouldn't walk around with my shirt off. That wasn't it. I knew through the physical challenges, through the physical suffering, my mind was getting stronger. I was literally doing that for a reason. I had a weak mind. All the rest just happened to come with it. I was trying to strengthen the mind to handle things.

All the judgment that's passed on me. Perceived and not. Sometimes you make it up in your own head. You know, I just want to be able to handle all of that. Everything. Physical, mental. I want to be perceived as that. Like an old school barbarian. An old school guy that's like, God, dog, man. Nothing can hurt the guy. Which is why the book is titled, Can't Hurt Me. I want people to have that mantra in their life. Take that with you. Take it. Everywhere you go in life.

If you believe that and you work towards that, callous in your mind, strengthen yourself. Can't hurt me is strong. In any situation, like when I was in Buzz, they beat the shit out of you. I'd be the first one to get up and say, can't hurt me, mother. And they were beating the hell out of me. But you say that enough to you. False motivation becomes real motivation after a while. They can't see themselves doing it. They can't see themselves doing it. It's one big reason. The other reason is a lot of it is jealousy.

When you set these humongous goals and they see that you're getting at it. And every morning I'm getting up training for a 200 mile run. And you see me give a four o'clock in the morning and all you are sleeping. And by the time I get done running my 30, you come, I come home just getting up. How are you going to feel about yourself? A lot of times when you're overachiever, a lot of our family members, a lot of our friends, they're mediocre. There's always those couple of guys who are uncommon, who want to be better.

But you make that mediocre mother feel like shit. Whether it's your mom, your dad, whoever. You make them feel horrible. I've been there. I'm speaking from experience. You got somebody around you, man, who's trying to be better and you don't have the drive that they have. It's a constant reminder of how fucked up you are. You have to know that that's what it is. Anybody in your course not saying, man, get after it, brother. I'm so proud of you. They have a problem with themselves because all you're trying to do is achieve more. If that's a problem for somebody,

You have to look at them and say, man, you really have a problem with yourself, huh? It's much deeper than what you think. It lies deep in your soul. How I was able to fix myself was I saw how ugly I was towards other people who were great. I was able to look back and say, man, you don't hate that for any reason because he's great and you're lazy. You're lazy. He makes you feel like shit every single day.

it's where it comes from you gotta know you have to know where it comes from to be able to solve it this structure anterior mid cingulate cortex has inputs and outputs from a bunch of places but you'll probably not be surprised to learn that it's strongly activated when we move our body when we don't want to move our body

I feel like it's like the David Goggins structure, right? It is. And it also has strong connections to the dopamine reward pathway. And everyone goes, yay, dopamine reward. Everyone loves dopamine. I'm partially responsible for people knowing a bit more about dopamine. But dopamine is badly understood. Everyone thinks dopamine, dopamine hits. It's about reward. It's about motivation and drive.

And there are pain inputs to the dopamine centers of the brain. No one talks about that. Everyone's like, oh, you want the chocolate, you know, chocolate, sex, cocaine. Yeah, that's all true. Right. You release dopamine. Pain releases dopamine. The anterior mid-singulate cortex can trigger the release of dopamine in response to this thing that we're calling friction. And that's a learned thing.

That's something that no animal or human being comes into the world learning. We all are averse to pain and like pleasure, like sugar, fat, don't like hot surfaces. Right. But this is a structure that learns.

It has neuroplasticity, the ability to change throughout the entire lifespan. And here's the part that I think, again, this is just neuro nerd speak for what you already know and have done and exemplify is that people say, oh, it has plasticity. You can change it. Guess what? It has plasticity in both directions. It can grow, but just as easily as it can grow. It's like silly putty. It can shrink. Right. So.

it requires constant upkeep. And that answer isn't one that people are going to like. They're like, give me the energy drink. Give me the supplement. Give me the sauna protocol that's going to make my anterior mid-singulate cortex. Someone out there right now is going, wait, if I took transcranial magnetic stimulation and I stimulate, yeah, you probably, actually they've done that. They stuck a little wire during neurosurgery into this structure. This is actually discovered by a colleague of mine, Joe Parvizzi.

stimulate and the patients go, I feel like there's a storm coming and they go, oh, is it scary? And they go, no, I want to go through it. They come off the stimulation and people are like, this is the seat of what we're talking about. Right, exactly. And it learns. So the fact that you've kept this brain structure, I'm convinced if we image your brain, it'd be large and it would be larger in two years, a year. But this is the no days off rationale.

because it can grow and it can shrink. I know what you're saying right now. I didn't know any of this. And I never, and I always talk to people. I wish I could just put this on paper. And you're saying it in a way that people can understand. I can never put into words on what I built and the power that is within all of us. But you put it so like in a scientific way. Most people like for me, he's just crazy. That's why I don't like talking about it, man.

I know I'm not crazy. I know what I had to do to get where I had to go. People look at it as crazy because they're people that just, if you can't imagine yourself doing something, if you can't imagine yourself doing something, the person that's doing it is crazy because in your mind, the logic behind it, it doesn't compute. Therefore you have to give somebody a title and a title for me is usually he's crazy. He's this, he's that. No, no.

For some reason, we wanted to be somebody so bad in my life. I created that and I've been trying to figure out years of my life trying to explain to people. But even though you're explaining it now, this is the easy part. Them listening to this is the easy part. The part that why there will always be the ones of ones is because putting that practice, putting that into actual work,

No, man. No, no. That's where the demons come in. That's where you like. I don't want to be better. I don't want to be better. This is what it takes to be better. I don't want to be better. So everybody's that's why there's a lot of average. And it makes me so fucking mad. Every day I walk this earth and I see average all over the place and they want to ask me, how did you do it? I can't tell you how because you're not going to you're not going to do it.

You're not going to do it. You're going to continue being happy because every day you wake up, like he says, get the coffee, make the pancakes, kiss the girl, kiss the kids. You wake up, right to work. Immediately your mind is in action. No one wants to do that. No one. And I don't blame them. But don't be mad when you're laying there in your fucking bed and you're in the fucking hospital and you're 70, 80, 90 years old and you're thinking, man, I feel like I can do something.

Because you did. You didn't do it. You didn't do shit. You may live a great life, man, but you're always going to feel empty inside. I don't feel empty. So call me what you want. There's not one empty bone in my fucking body because I have figured out that really the magic potion, at least to my life, and it's very rewarding. All your excuses are lies. Little lies that you think makes life easier, but they don't.

Now I know in the morning, got that blanket giving you a warm hug. You got the pillow, which is whispering in your ear, telling you it's okay. Telling you to stay just a little longer. But don't listen to them. They're lying to you. Listen to your alarm clock, which is telling you to get up and get something. Listen to the weight room, the pull-up bar, which is telling you to face reality. And listen to your will.

which is telling you to get up and crush everything, regardless of how you feel. Don't negotiate with weakness. Kill it. Easy doesn't pay well. Choose the hard path, the path of responsibility, hard work and sacrifice that ultimately leads to freedom. Some of you are not successful because you think effort is success. You think

because you put in 40 hours that you're supposed to get some because you put in 40. It don't work like that in the school of hard knocks. They don't care how many hours you put. They just want to see the execution. So you're feeling in your spirit like, yo, but I did just as much as he did. I studied just as much as he studied. It doesn't matter. You just got to execute. If you want to take the island, burn the boats. Because if there's no way to go back, it's amazing what happens when it's a must for

versus the should. Clarity is power. The more clear you are about exactly what it is you want, the more your brain knows how to get there. Don't stop. Narrow your focus to one idea. One. Make it your priority and stick with it no matter what. Your mind was safe. Okay.

We're going to figure it out because he is not going to stop. Every day I demand more from myself than anybody else could possibly expect. I don't compete with other people. I compete with what I'm capable of. A person that's obsessed and wants to just get there. Who are

They don't give a what the temperature is. They no longer care because they know no matter what's out there, no matter if it's snowing, if it's a damn tropical storm, if it's 20 below, they don't care. They're going to run. It doesn't matter what the fuck's out there, what's in front of me. I'm just going to go. And that's how you want to get your mind. You have to train your brain by doing things that make you uncomfortable consistently to build this mindset that when things get hard, we don't shy away. We don't quit. We attack constantly.

I'm seeing through all those walls. I'm getting to where I want to go. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. If you do what is easy, complain about your situation, your circumstances. Stand around and be a volunteer victim like everybody else. Surrender and give up on your dreams. Become depressed and bitter and angry. Anybody can do that. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. But if you do what is hard, keep coming back again and again and again.

Get up dressed every day knowing some way, somehow, with a spirit of expectation, I can do this. If you do that over and over and over again, your life will be easy. When you master yourself, you put yourself in a position that a lot of people can't do what you do, and then you become rare, and diamonds are rare. That's why they cost so much. You have to be willing to grid it out.

You have to be willing to push through discomfort. Nothing that you're about to try or do that is worthwhile is going to be comfortable for you during the process of creating it. Stop with this "hope shh", stop with this "I wish shh" and start replacing those terms with "I will f*cking do no matter what". There are two parts to positive self-direction. Part one is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is knowing who you are and what you want to do with your life. It is knowing how you feel about yourself.

Self-knowledge has a lot to do with your philosophy and your philosophy has a lot to do with shaping your attitude. It helps determine how you feel about yourself, about life, about your direction and about others around you. You've got to gather up enough knowledge and information to know what's right for you. How do you gather up this information? Well, you can start with your own experiences. The best way to know if something works for you to find the right way is to do it the wrong way.

You can't keep doing it the wrong way. You've got to be smart enough to say, "Hey, this isn't working," and change it. Start doing it the right way. Then search for the knowledge and apply what's right for you to your life. Develop your own attitudes and philosophies around your own experiences and the experiences of others. Take all of the information you have gathered and compile it. Consider it. Debate it. Tear it apart. Turn it upside down. Look at it from your own perspective.

and refine it to suit you. Rearrange it, throw some of it out, keep what you think will work for you. And most importantly, make sure that what you end up doing is the product of your own conclusion. Make sure that the knowledge that you are building is your own self-knowledge. The second component of positive self-direction is preparation. Being ready for the opportunities when they show up in your life. Being ready for the sales call that may make you a fortune. Being ready for the meeting that may positively affect your career. Being ready for it all,

in expectation that it will come. For those of you who are parents, when you found out that a new member of the family was going to come along in nine months or so, what did you do? You started getting ready. You started reading the books on how to best handle a baby. You started buying everything you needed to care for the baby. You started asking advice from friends and relatives who've already had a baby or two.

You asked questions, defined your parenting style, got ready for a major change in how you live, the hours you keep, and the financial obligations you have to live up to. You started getting ready. Preparing for your own life is pretty much the same. With enough planning, dedication, and hard work, you'll meet your goals. You know that it will be tough for the first few years, but the sacrifice is well worth it. In the meantime, you've got to be ready for it. If you wish to be ruler over many, you've got to be faithful with few.

If you wish to have power and influence over many, be the leader of many and get the return from many. Be faithful and disciplined when there's just a few and do it in your own enlightened self-interest because that gives you the best chance to have power, influence and a place of honor among the many. Be faithful when there's just a few. Someone says, if I had a big organization, I'd really be on top of things. But I've just got a few employees and I don't know where they are. Come on.

When you've just got a few employees, you should know where all of them are. Let's say we were interviewing the parents of a fairly large family whose children have all grown up and gone. What if we said to them, "What happened to all of your children?" And they answered, "I don't know, they just all wandered off." We'd ask, "Well, where did they all go?" If they say, "Who knows? They're just all gone. We're just gonna have some more." That's clearly not an acceptable attitude.

If you've got a few employees, if you've got a few distributors, if you've got a few people you deal with, that's the time to sharpen your communication skills of being in touch, getting prepared, giving the most of your heart and soul. In your own enlightened self-interest, give it your all when there's a few. Be totally absorbed when there's just a few. Improve your reputation and skills so when a leadership position opens up, you'll be called. The same thing goes with your money.

Someone says, "Oh, if I had a fortune, I'd really take good care of it. But I've only got a small paycheck and I don't know where it goes." Nobody would ever respond to the person who says, "I don't know where it all goes" with, "Oh, we'd love to have you run our company." Or, "You don't know where it all goes. Wow, you should be in charge of the world. Come on." Positive self-direction means paying very close attention to every dollar you have. Really keeping track of where they come from and where they go.

Create the discipline when the amount is small, and you'll be on your way to handling your money when the amount is large. Be ready for tomorrow by doing all that you can today. That's positive self-direction. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Evglyss.

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