FOCUS ON YOU EVERY DAY. WORK YOUR ASS OFF – Brutal Motivation by Goggins
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Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/specialoffer. You know why people connect with my book so well? For some reason, God put me in almost every situation on the planet Earth. So when I talk to people, it's not sugar-coated because I'm not saying it from I was 175 pounds my whole life. I don't say much to those people. Maybe you're a piece of shit. Maybe you want to be nobody. Maybe you're happy exactly where you are in life because obviously you are.

Maybe you don't have the determination to be somebody better than who you are. And if you want to live with that, I'll support you in that. If you're good with being who you are, that every day you wake up and every day you smell like shit because you can't wash your body well, and your skin's messed up because your health's so bad, and you can't put your clothes on right, you need help with that. You need help like, when I was trying to, I need help wiping my ass. That makes you feel good? Nothing I can say to you. If every day you wake up with this, see people are haunted.

but they obviously like horror films because they keep watching the same movie i don't like horror films a lot of people like horror films so i don't say much to them i say exactly what i said to you right there because i was once you i didn't like horror films so i changed it some people are just they become like you said it gets real small when you're lazy and you're fat your will their will is so small that they don't have any and you can't give it to them

There has to be something. This is what I'm talking about now because this isn't a hack. This has to be in you. Something in you has to wake up. And usually the only person that can wake it up is you. Sometimes you can read a David Goggins book because I was all this and then a lot more of up. But if you don't have a little flame, you know, just that just barely you're done. I can't I can't light it for you.

And that's the harsh reality of this life that I want to get across so f*cking bad. You can watch me, you can watch you, you can watch f*cking Rogan and Cameron Haynes, all these motherf*ckers. You can go to Tony Robbins and his f*cking bullsh*t. All this sh*t. You can do all this sh*t. If you, you could keep going back and keep spending money and spending money and spending money with no results. You can wonder, "Wow, maybe let me go try out David Goggins." He ain't gonna f*cking help you.

You have to explore, examine the insides of yourself and what do you really want out of life. Your friend, a lot of people out here just don't want it. So guess what? Have fun with your life. Go from three to 350 to 400 to 450 to 500 because you don't want it. And that's the harsh reality. I can't give you, you can't give them. We can give you ideas. But in the day when I was losing the weight,

I had to miserably wake up every morning in the cold because it was Indiana, November when it started. I was miserable. This is your new life. Take it or leave it. There's no happiness about it. There's no peace behind it. It sucks. It just fucking sucks. And that's the one thing if I could teach anybody anything, it just fucking sucks. And it's going to continue to suck.

And then one day you get to a special part in your life that it might get a little bit better. But to lose the weight, you have to lose my friend. Sorry, it's going to suck every day. Because when you're 300 pounds, you're going to go out to lose weight. You'll probably get injured. So then you got to work on the injury and then you get even more depressed. This is what I went through. And then you're hungry because now you're depressed. It's just a vicious cycle. And if you're not strong mentally and you have no willpower mentally,

You're gonna continue falling back in this hole versus a man that sits back and goes, "Alright, motherfucker." This is why I cuss, because this is what is in me. This is what it took for me to be me. Sorry. It didn't take, "Hey, okay, we're gonna do this today." No, this really sucks. This is real, dude. This is real. And every day, I'm set back, I'm set back, I'm set back, I'm set back. So this is what I would tell your boy.

This is exactly what I tell them. Every day you wake up, you're going to probably be set back for the first four weeks before you lose to significant weight because the mind is going to be f***ing with you the whole time. There's no dopamine. There's no dopamine in there at 300 pounds. You got nothing. Your hormones are shot. You have to envision something that is more powerful than you. Something has to get you out of bed and you have to create it. It has to be false because you're not it.

you're a fat piece of sh*t and that's the reality of it. So you have to create a false reality to live in that just to get to work on yourself. That's the reality. In pararescue training, water confidence is part of the 10-week program and it's filled with specific evolutions designed to test how well we perform in the water under stress. One of the worst evolutions for me was called bobbing. The class was divided into groups of five.

lined up from gutter to gutter in the shallow end and fully kitted up. Our backs were strapped with twin 80s made from galvanized steel and we wore 16 pound weight belts too. We were loaded the f*ck down, which would have been fine except in this evolution we weren't allowed to breathe from those tanks. Instead, we were told to walk backward down the slope of the pool from the three foot section to the deep end about 10 feet down and on that slow walk into position.

My mind swirled with doubt and negativity. "What the f*** are you doing here? This isn't for you. You can't swim. You're an imposter and they will find you out." Time slowed down and those seconds seemed like minutes. My diaphragm lurched, trying to force air into my lungs.

Theoretically, I knew that relaxation was the key to all the underwater evolutions, but I was too terrified to let go. My jaw clenched as tight as my fists. My head throbbed as I worked to stave off panic. Finally, we were all in position and it was time to start bobbing. That meant pushing up from the bottom to the surface without the benefit of finning, getting a gulp of air, and sinking back down. It wasn't easy getting up fully loaded, but at least I was able to breathe.

and that first breath was a salvation. Oxygen flooded my system and I started to relax until the instructor yelled "Switch!" That was our cue to take our fins from our feet, place them on our hands and use one pull with our arms to propel ourselves to the surface. We were allowed to push off the floor of the pool

But we couldn't kick. We did that for five minutes. Shallow water and surface blackouts aren't uncommon during water confidence training. It goes along with stressing the body and limiting oxygen intake. With the flippers on my hands, I barely get my face high enough out of the water to breathe.

and in between I was working hard and burning oxygen. And when you burn too much too fast, your brain shuts down and you will black the f*ck out. Our instructors called that meeting the wizard. As the clock ticked, I could see stars materializing in my peripheral vision and felt the wizard creeping close. I passed that evolution and soon, fending with my arms or feet became easy for me. What stayed hard from beginning to end was one of our simplest tasks.

reading water without our hands. We had to keep our hands and our chins high above the water, using only our legs, which we'd swirl in a blender-like motion for three minutes. That doesn't sound like much time, and for most of the class it was easy. For me, it was damn near impossible. My chin kept hitting the water

which meant the time would start again from triple zero. All around me, my classmates were so comfortable their legs were barely moving, while mine were whirring at top speed, and I still couldn't get half as high as those white boys who looked to be defying gravity. Every day, it was another humiliation in the pool. Not that I was embarrassed publicly. I passed all the evolutions, but inside,

I was suffering. Each night, I'd fixate on the next day's task and become so terrified I couldn't sleep. And soon my fear morphed into resentment toward my classmates, who, in my mind, had it easy, which dredged up my past. I was the only black man in my unit, which reminded me of my childhood in rural Indiana, and the harder the water confidence training became, the higher those dark waters would rise, until it seemed I was also being drowned.

from the inside out while the rest of my class was sleeping. That potent cocktail of fear and rage thrummed through my veins and my nocturnal fixations became their own kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. One where failure was inevitable because my unchecked fear was unleashing something I couldn't control, the quitting mind. It all came to a head six weeks into training with the buddy breathing exercise.

We partnered up, each pair gripped one another by the forearm and took turns breathing through just one snorkel. Meanwhile, the instructors thrashed us, trying to separate us from our snorkel. All of this was supposed to be happening at or near the surface, but I was negatively buoyant, which meant I was sinking into the middle waters of the deep end, dragging my partner down with me. He'd take a breath and pass the snorkel down to me.

I'd swim to the surface, exhale and attempt to clear the water from our snorkel and get a clean breath before passing it back to him, but the instructors made that almost impossible. I'd usually only clear the tube halfway and inhale more water than air. From the jump,

I was operating from an oxygen deficit while fighting to stay near the surface. In military training, it's the instructor's job to identify weak links and challenge them to perform or quit. And they could tell I was struggling. In the pool that day, one of them was always in my face, yelling and thrashing me while I choked, trying and failing to gulp air through a narrow tube to stave off the wizard.

I went under and remember looking up at the rest of the class, splayed out like serene starfish on the surface. Calm as can be, they passed their snorkels back and forth with ease while I fumed. I know now that my instructor was just doing his job, but back then I thought, "This fucker's not giving me a fair shot." I passed that evolution too, but I still had 11 more evolutions and 4 more weeks of water confidence training to go. It made sense.

we would be jumping out of airplanes over water. We needed it. I just didn't want to do it anymore. And the next morning, I was offered a way out.

I hadn't seen coming. Weeks earlier, we'd had our blood drawn during a med check and the doctors discovered I carried the sickle cell trait. I didn't have the disease, sickle cell anemia, but I had the trait, which was believed at the time to increase the risk of sudden exercise-related death due to cardiac arrest. The Air Force didn't want me dropping dead in the middle of an evolution and pulled me out of training on the medical.

I pretended to take the news hard as if my dream was being ripped away. I made a big act of being pissed off, but inside I was ecstatic. Later that week, the doctors reversed their decision. They didn't specifically say it was safe for me to continue.

but they said the trait wasn't yet well understood and allowed me to decide for myself. When I reported back to training, the Master Sergeant informed me that I'd missed too much time and that if I wanted to continue, I would have to start over from day one, week one. Instead of less than four weeks, I'd have to endure another ten weeks of the terror, rage, and insomnia that came with water confidence. These days, that kind of thing wouldn't even register on my radar.

"You tell me to run longer and harder than everyone else just to get a fair shake, I'd say, 'Roger that and keep moving.'" But back then, I was still half-baked. Physically, I was strong, but I was not even close to mastering my mind. The Master Sergeant stared at me, awaiting my response. I couldn't even look him in the eye when I said, "You know what, Master Sergeant? The doctor doesn't know much about this sickle cell thing and it's bothering me." He nodded, emotionless.

and signed the papers pulling me out of the program for good. He cited sickle cell, and on paper I didn't quit, but I knew the truth. If I had been the guy I am today, I wouldn't have given two f**ks about sickle cell. I still have the sickle cell trait. You don't just get rid of it.

But back then an obstacle had appeared and I'd folded. I moved on to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, told my friends and family that I was forced from the program on a medical and served out my four years in the Tactical Air Control Party, which works with some special operations units. I trained to liaise between ground units and air support, fast movers like F-15s and F-16s.

behind enemy lines. It was challenging work with intelligent people, but sadly, I was never proud of it and didn't see the opportunities offered because I knew I was a quitter who had let fear dictate my future. I buried my shame in the gym and at the kitchen table. I got into powerlifting and layered on the mass. I ate and worked out, worked out and ate,

In my last days in the Air Force, I weighed 250, five pounds. After my discharge, I continued to bulk up with both muscle and fat until I weighed nearly 300 pounds. I wanted to be big because being big hit David Goggins. I was able to tuck this 175 pound person into those 21 inch biceps and that flabby belly. I grew a burly mustache and was intimidating to everyone who saw me.

but inside I knew I was a pussy and that's a haunting feeling. The morning I began to take charge of my destiny started out like any other. When the clock struck 7:00 a.m., my Ecolab shift ended and I hit the Steak 'n Shake drive-thru to score a large chocolate milkshake. Next stop, 7-Eleven for a box of Hostess mini chocolate donuts. I gobbled those on my 45-minute drive home to a beautiful apartment on a golf course in pretty Carmel, Indiana.

which I shared with my wife Pam and her daughter. We couldn't afford that life. Pam wasn't even working. But in those credit card debt loading days, nothing made much sense. I was doing 7:00 AM on the highway, mainlining sugar and listening to a local classic rock station when the sound of silence poured from the stereo. Simon E. Garfunkel's words echoed like truth. Darkness was a friend indeed. I worked in the dark, hid my true self from friends and strangers.

Nobody would have believed how numb and afraid I was back then because I looked like a beast that no one would dare with but my mind wasn't right and my soul was weighed down by too much trauma and failure I had every excuse in the world to be a loser and use them all my life was crumbling and Pam dealt with that by fleeing the scene her parents still lived in Brazil and

just 70 miles away. We spent most of our time apart. I arrived home from work around 8:00 AM and the phone rang as soon as I walked in the door. It was my mother.

She knew my routine. "Come on over for your staple," she said. My staple was a breakfast buffet for one, the likes of which few could put down in a single sitting. Think eight Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, a half dozen scrambled eggs, a half pound of bacon, and two bowls of Fruity Pebbles. Don't forget, I had just decimated a box of donuts and a chocolate shake. I didn't even have to respond. She knew I was coming.

Food was my drug of choice and I always sucked up every last crumb. I hung up, flipped on the television, and stomped down the hall to the shower where I could hear a narrator's voice filter through the steam. Navy Seals. Toughest. The world. I wrapped a towel around my waist and rushed back into the living room. I was so big the towel barely covered my fat ass

But I sat down on the couch and didn't move for 30 minutes. The show followed basic underwater demolition seal. Training class 224 through Hell Week. The most arduous series of tasks and the most physically demanding training in the military. I watched men sweat and suffer as they tore through muddy obstacle courses. Ran on the soft sand holding logs overhead and shivered an icy surf. Sweat burled on my scalp. I was literally on the edge of my seat as I saw guys. Some of the strongest of them all.

ring the bell and quit. Made sense. Only one third of the men who begin BUDZ make it through Hell Week and in all of my time in pararescue training I couldn't remember feeling as awful as these men looked. They were swollen, chafed, sleep deprived and dead on their feet and I was jealous of them. The longer I watched the more certain I became that there were answers buried in all that suffering. Answers that I needed.

More than once the camera panned over the endless frothing ocean and each time I felt pathetic. The seals were everything I wasn't. They were about pride, dignity, and the type of excellence that came from bathing in the fire, getting beat the fuck and going back for more. Again and again, they were the human equivalent of the hardest, sharpest sword you could imagine. They sought out the flame, took the pounding for as long as necessary.

longer even, until they were fearless and deadly. They weren't motivated. They were driven. The show ended with graduation. 22 proud men stood shoulder to shoulder in their dress whites before the camera pushed in on their commanding officer. In a society where mediocrity is too often the standard and too often rewarded, he said,

There is intense fascination with men who detest mediocrity, who refuse to define themselves in conventional terms, and who seek to transcend traditionally recognized human capabilities. This is exactly the type of person Butts is meant to find. The man who finds a way to complete each and every task to the best of his ability. The man who will adapt and overcome any and all obstacles. In that moment, it felt as though the commanding officer was talking directly to me.

but after the show ended I walked back to the bathroom, faced the mirror and stared myself down. I looked every bit at 300 pounds. I was everything all the haters back home said I would be, uneducated with no real world skills, zero discipline and a dead end future. Mediocrity would have been a major promotion. I was at the bottom of the barrel of life, pooling in the dregs but for the first time in way too long

I was awake. I barely spoke to my mother during breakfast and only ate half my staple because my mind was on unfinished business. I'd always wanted to join an elite special operations unit and beneath all the rolls of flesh and layers of failure, that desire was still there. Now it was coming back to life

Thanks to a chance viewing of a show that continued to work on me like a virus moving cell to cell taking over. It became an obsession I couldn't shake. Every morning after work for almost three weeks, I call active duty recruiters in the Navy and told them my story. I called offices all over the country.

I said I was willing to move as long as they could get me to SEAL training. Everyone turned me down. Most weren't interested in candidates with prior service. One local recruiting office was intrigued and wanted to meet in person, but when I got there, they laughed in my face. I was way too heavy, and in their eyes, I was just another delusional pretender.

I left that meeting feeling the same way. After calling all the active duty recruiting offices I could find, I dialed the local unit of the Naval Reserves and spoke to Petty Officer Steven Shaljo for the first time. Shaljo had worked with multiple F-14 squadrons as an electrician and instructor at NASMIRMAR for eight years before joining the recruitment staff in San Diego where the SEALs trained. He worked day and night

and rose quickly in the ranks. His move to Indianapolis came with a promotion and the challenge of finding Navy recruits in the middle of the corn. He'd only been on the job in Indy for 10 days by the time I called.

and if I reached anyone else, you probably wouldn't be reading this book. But through a combination of dumb luck and stubborn persistence, I found one of the finest recruiters in the Navy, a guy whose favorite task was discovering diamonds in the rough, prior service guys like me who were looking to reenlist and hoping to land in special operations. Our initial conversation didn't last long. He said he could help me and that I should come in to meet in person.

That sounded familiar. I grabbed my keys and drove straight to his office, but didn't get my hopes too high. By the time I arrived a half hour later, he was already on the phone with Bud's administration. Every sailor in that office, all of them white, were surprised to see me, except Shaljo. If I was a heavyweight, Shaljo was a lightweight at 5'7", but he didn't seem phased by my size, at least not at first. He was outgoing and warm like any salesman, though I could tell he had some pit bull in him.

He led me down a hall to weigh me in, and while standing on the scale, I ought to weight chart pinned to the wall. At my height, the maximum allowable weight for the Navy was 191 pounds. I held my breath, sucked in my gut as much as I could, and puffed out my chest in a sorry attempt to stave off the humiliating moment where he'd let me down easy. That moment never came.

"You're a big boy," Shaljo said, smiling and shaking his head as he scratched 297 pounds on a chart in his file folder. "The Navy has a program that allows recruits in the reserves to become active duty. That's what we'll use for this. It's being phased out at the end of the year, so we need to get you classed up before then. Point is, you have some work to do, but you knew that." I followed his eyes to the weight chart.

and checked it again. He nodded, smiled, patted me on the shoulder, and left me to face my truth. I had less than three months to lose 106 pounds. It sounded like an impossible task, which is one reason I didn't quit my job. The other was the ASVAB,

That nightmare test had come back to life like Frankenstein's monster. I'd passed it once before to enlist in the Air Force, but to qualify for BUD/S, I'd have to score much higher. For two weeks, I studied all day and zapped pests each night. I wasn't working out yet. Serious weight loss would have to wait. I took the test on a Saturday afternoon. The following Monday, I called Shaljo. "Welcome to the Navy," he said.

He downloaded the good news first. "I'd done exceptionally well on some sections and was now officially a reservist, but I'd only scored a 44 on mechanical comprehension. To qualify for BUDS, I needed a 50. I'd have to retake the entire test in five weeks. These days, Stephen Shaljo likes to call our chance connection fate. He said,

He could sense my drive the first moment we spoke and that he believed in me from the jump, which is why my weight wasn't an issue for him. But after that ASVAB test, I was full of doubt. So maybe what happened later that night was also a form of fate or a much needed dose of divine intervention. I'm not going to drop the name of the restaurant where it went down because if I did, you'd never eat there again and I'd have to hire a lawyer.

Just know, this place was a disaster. I checked the traps outside first and found a dead rat. Inside, there were more dead rodents, a mouse and two rats. On the sticky traps and roaches in the garbage, which hadn't been emptied, I shook my head, got down on my knees under the sink, and sprayed up through a narrow gap in the wall. I didn't know it yet, but I'd found their nesting column, and when the poison hit, they started to scatter.

Within seconds, there was a skittering across the back of my neck. I brushed it off and craned my neck to see a storm of roaches raining down to the kitchen floor from an open panel in the ceiling. I'd hit the mother load of cockroaches in the worst infestation I ever saw on the job for Echolab. They kept coming. Roaches landed on my shoulders and my head. The floor was writhing with them. I left my canister in the kitchen, grabbed the sticky traps, and burst outside.

I needed fresh air and more time to figure out how I was going to clear the restaurant of vermin. I considered my options on my way to the dumpster to trash the rodents, opened the lid, and found a live raccoon hissing mad. He bared his yellow teeth and lunged at me. I slammed the dumpster shut. What the f- I mean, seriously, what the f- When was enough truly gonna be enough? Was I willing to let my sorry present become a f-ed up future?

How much longer would I wait? How many more years would I burn? Wondering if there was some greater purpose out there waiting for me. I knew right then that if I didn't make a stand and start walking the path of most resistance, I would end up in this mental hell forever. I didn't go back inside that restaurant. I didn't collect my gear. I started my truck, stopped for a chocolate shake, my comfort tea at that time, and drove home.

It was still dark when I pulled up. I didn't care. I stripped off my work clothes, put on some sweats and laced up my running shoes. I hadn't run in over a year, but I hit the streets ready to go four miles. I lasted 400 yards. My heart raced. I was so dizzy I had to sit down on the edge of the golf course to catch my breath before making the slow walk back to my house where my melted shake was waiting to comfort me in yet another failure. I grabbed it

slurped and slumped into my sofa. My eyes welled with tears. Who the f*** did I think I was? I was born nothing. I'd proven nothing and I still wasn't worth a damn thing. David Goggins, a Navy SEAL. Yeah, right. What a pipe dream. I couldn't even run down the block for five minutes. All my fears and insecurities I'd bottled up for my entire life started raining down my head.

I was on the verge of giving in and giving up for good. That's when I found my old beat to this copy of Rocky, the one I'd had for 15 years, slid it into the machine and fast forwarded to my favorite scene. Round 14, the original Rocky is still one of my all-time favorite films

because it's about a no-nothing journeyman fighter living in poverty with no prospects. Even his own trainer won't work with him. Then, out of the blue, he's given a title shot with the champion, Apollo Creed, the most feared fighter in history, a man that has knocked out every opponent he's ever faced. All Rocky wants is to be the first to go the distance with Creed. That alone will make him someone he can be proud of for the first time in his life.

The fight is closer than anyone anticipated. Bloody and intense. And by the middle rounds, Rocky is taking on more and more punishment. He's losing the fight and in round 14, he gets knocked down early but pops right back up in the center of the ring. Apollo moves in, stalking him like a lion. He throws sharp left jabs, hits a slow-footed Rocky with a staggering combination, lands a punishing right hook and another.

he backs rocky into a corner rocky's legs are jelly he can't even muster the strength to raise his arms in defense apollo slams another right hook into the side of rocky's head then a left hook and a vicious right-handed uppercut that puts rocky down apollo retreats to the opposite corner with his arms held high but even face down in that ring rocky doesn't give up as the referee begins his 10 count rocky squirms toward the ropes mickey his own trainer

urges him to stay down but rocky isn't hearing it he pulls himself up to one knee then all fours the referee hits six as rocky grabs the ropes and rises up the crowd roars and apollo turns to see him still standing rocky waves apollo over the champ's shoulders slump in disbelief the fight isn't over yet i turned off the television and thought about my own life

It was a life devoid of any drive and passion. But I knew if I continued to surrender to my fear and my feelings of inadequacy, I would be allowing them to dictate my future forever. My only other choice was to try to find the power in the emotions that had laid me low, harness, and use them to empower me to rise up, which is exactly what I did. I dumped that shake in the trash, laced up my shoes, and hit the streets again.

On my first run I felt severe pain in my legs and my lungs at a quarter mile. My heart raced and I stopped. This time I felt the same pain. My heart raced like a car running hot. But I ran through it and the pain faded. By the time I bent over to catch my breath, I'd run a full mile. That's when I first realized that not all physical and mental limitations are real and that I had a habit of giving up way too soon.

I also knew that it would take every ounce of courage and toughness I could muster to pull off the impossible. I was staring at hours, days, and weeks of non-stop suffering. I would have to push myself to the very edge of my mortality. I had to accept the very real possibility that I might die because this time I wouldn't quit no matter how fast my heart raced and no matter how much pain I was in. Trouble was there was no battle plan to follow, no blueprint.

I had to create one from scratch. The typical day went something like this. I'd wake up at 4:30 a.m., munch a banana and hit the ASVAB books. Around 5 a.m., I'd take that book to my stationary bike where I'd sweat and study for two hours. Remember, my body was a mess. I couldn't run multiple miles yet, so I had to burn as many calories as I could on the bike.

After that I drive over to Carmel High School and jump into the pool for a two-hour swim. From there I hit the gym for a circuit workout that included the bench press, the incline press, and lots of leg exercises. Bulk was the enemy. I needed reps and I did five or six sets of 100 reps each. Then it was back to the stationary bike for two more hours. I was constantly hungry.

Dinner was my one true meal each day, but there wasn't much to it. I ate a grilled or sauteed chicken breast and some sauteed vegetables along with a thimble of rice. After dinner, I'd do another two hours on the bike, hit the sack, wake up and do it all over again, knowing the odds were stacked sky high against me. What I was trying to achieve is like a D student applying to Harvard or walking into a casino and putting every single dollar you own

on a number in roulette and acting as if winning is a foregone conclusion. I was betting everything I had on myself with no guarantees. I weighed myself twice daily and within two weeks I dropped 25 pounds. My progress only improved as I kept grinding and the weight started peeling off.

10 days later I was at 250 light enough to begin doing push-ups, pull-ups and to start running my ass off. I'd still wake up, hit the stationary bike, the pool and the gym but I also incorporated 2, 3 and 4 mile runs. I ditched my running shoes and ordered a pair of Bates lights, the same boot seal candidates wearing buttons and started running in those. With so much effort you'd think my nights would have been restful.

but they were filled with anxiety. My stomach growled and my mind swirled. I dream of complex ASVAB questions and dread the next day's workouts. I was putting out so much on almost no fuel that depression became a natural side effect.

My splintering marriage was veering toward divorce. Pom made it very clear that she and my stepdaughter would not be moving to San Diego with me if by some miracle I could pull this off. They stayed in Brazil most of the time and when I was all alone in Carmel, I was in turmoil.

I felt both worthless and helpless and now endless stream of self-defeating thoughts picked up steam. When depression smothers you, it blots out all light and leaves you with nothing to cling onto for hope. All you see is negativity. For me, the only way to make it through that was to feed off my depression. I had to flip it and convince myself that all that self-doubt and anxiety was confirmation that I was no longer living an aimless life.

My task may turn out to be impossible, but at least I was back on a motherfucking mission. Some nights, when I was feeling low, I'd call Shaljo.

He was always in the office early in the morning and late at night. I didn't confide in him about my depression because I didn't want him to doubt me. I used those calls to pump myself up. I told him how many pounds I dropped and how much work I was putting in, and he reminded me to keep studying for that ASVAB. Roger that. I had the Rocky soundtrack on cassette, and I listened to Going the Distance for inspiration.

On long bike rides and runs, with those horns blasting in my brain, I'd imagine myself going through bud, diving into cold water, and crushing hell week. I was wishing I was hoping, but by the time I was down to 250, my quest to qualify for the SEALS wasn't a daydream anymore. I had a real chance to accomplish something most people, including myself, thought was impossible. Still,

There were bad days. One morning not long after I dipped below 250, I weighed in and had only lost a pound from the day before. I had so much weight to lose, I could not afford to plateau. That's all I thought about while running 6 miles and swimming too. I was exhausted and sore when I arrived in the gym for my typical 3 hour circuit.

After rocking over 100 pull-ups in a series of sets, I was back on the bar for a max set with no ceiling. Going in, my goal was to get to 12, but my hands were burning fire as I stretched my chin over the bar for the 10th time. For weeks, the temptation to pull back had been ever present, and I always refused. That day, however, the pain was too much, and after my 11th pull-up, I gave in, dropped down, and finished my workout.

one pull-up shy. That one rep stayed with me along with that one pound. I tried to get them out of my head but they wouldn't leave me the f*** alone. They taunted me on the drive home and at my kitchen table while I ate a sliver of grilled chicken and a bland baked potato. I knew I wouldn't sleep that night unless I did something about it so I grabbed my keys.

You cut corners and you are not gonna make it, I said out loud as I drove back to the gym. There are no shortcuts for you, Goggins. I did my entire pull-up workout over again. One missed pull-up cost me an extra $250 and there would be similar episodes. Whenever I cut a run or swim short because I was hungry or tired, I'd always go back and beat myself down even harder. That was...

the only way I could manage the demons in my mind. Either way, there would be suffering. I had to choose between physical suffering in the moment and the mental anguish of wondering if that one missed pull-up, that last lap in the pool, the quarter mile I skipped on the road or trail, would end up costing me an opportunity of a lifetime. It was an easy choice. When it came to the seals, I wasn't leaving anything up to chance.

On the eve of the ASVAB with four weeks to go before training, making weight was no longer a worry. I was already down to 215 pounds and was faster and stronger than I'd ever been. I was running six miles a day, bicycling over 20 miles and swimming more than two, all of it in the dead of winter.

My favorite run was the Six Mile Monon Trail, an asphalt bike and walking path that lays through the trees in Indianapolis. It was the domain of cyclists and soccer moms with jogging strollers, weekend warriors and seniors. By then, Shaljo had passed along the Navy SEAL warning order. It included all the workouts I would be expected to complete during first phase of Buddies, and I was happy to double them. I knew

that 190 men usually class up for a typical SEAL training and only about 40 people make it all the way through. I didn't want to be just one of those 40. I wanted to be the best, but I had to pass the damn ASVAB first. I'd been cramming every spare second. If I wasn't working out, I was at my kitchen table memorizing formulas and cycling through hundreds of vocabulary words. With my physical training going well,

all my anxiety stuck to the ASVAB like paper clips to a magnet. This would be my last chance to take the test before my eligibility for the SEALs expired. I wasn't very smart and based on past academic performance, there was no good reason to believe I'd pass with a score high enough to qualify for the SEALs. If I failed, my dream would die.

and I'd be floating without purpose once again. The test was held in a small classroom on Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis. There were about 30 people there, all of us young. Most were just out of high school.

we were each assigned an old school desktop computer in the past month the tests had been digitized and i wasn't experienced with computers i didn't even think i could work the damn machine let alone answer the questions but the program proved idiot proof and i settled in the asvab has 10 sections and i was breezing through until i reached mechanical comprehension my true serum

Within the hour I would have a decent idea if I've been lying to myself or if I had the raw stuff necessary to become a SEAL. Whenever a question stumped me, I marked my worksheet with a dash. There were about 30 questions in that section and by the time I completed the test, I guessed at least 10 times. I needed some of them to go my way or I was out. After completing the final section,

I was prompted to send the entire bundle to the administrator's computer at the front of the room where the score would be tabulated instantly. I peeked over my monitor and saw him sitting there, waiting. I pointed, clicked, and left the room.

Buzzing with nervous energy, I paced the parking lot for a few minutes before finally ducking into my Honda Accord, but I didn't start the engine. I couldn't leave. I sat in the front seat for 15 minutes with a thousand yard stare. It would be at least two days before Xiao Zhou would call with my results.

but the answer to the riddle that was my future was already solved. I knew exactly where it was and I had to know the truth. I gathered myself, walked back in and approached the fortune teller. "You gotta tell me what I got on this test, man," I said. He peered up at me, surprised, but he didn't buckle. "I'm sorry, son. This is the government. There's a system for how they do things," he said.

I didn't make the rules and I can't bend them. Sir, you have no idea what this test means to me, to my life. It's everything. He looked into my glassy eyes for what felt like five minutes, then turned toward his machine. I'm breaking every rule in the book right now, he said. Goggins, right? I nodded and came around behind his seat as he scrolled through files. There you are.

"Congratulations, you scored 65. That's a great score." He was referencing my overall, but I didn't care about that. Everything hinged on my getting a 50 spot where it counted most. "What did I get on mechanical comprehension?" He shrugged. Clicked and scrolled. And there it was. My new favorite number glowed on his screen. "50." "Yes!" I shouted.

Yes! Yes! There was still a handful of others taking the test, but this was the happiest moment in my life and I couldn't stifle it. I kept screaming yes at the top of my lungs. The administrator damn near fell out of his chair and everyone in that room stared at me like I was crazy. If they only knew how crazed I'd been. For two months, I dedicated my entire existence to this one moment and I was damn well going to enjoy it. I rushed to my car and screamed some more.

On my drive home, I called my mom. She was the one person aside from Shaljo who witnessed my metamorphosis. I f***ing did it, I told her. Tears in my eyes. I f***ing did it. I'm going to be a SEAL. When Shaljo came to work the next day, he got the news and called me up. He'd sent in my recruitment package and had just heard back that I was in. I could tell he was happy for me.

and proud that what he saw in me the first time we met turned out to be real. But it wasn't all happy days. My wife had given me an implied ultimatum, and now I had a decision to make: abandon the opportunity I'd worked so hard for and stay married, or get divorced and go try to become a SEAL. In the end, my choice didn't have anything to do with my feelings for Pam or her father. He'd apologized to me, by the way. It was about who I was and who I wanted to be.

I was a prisoner in my own mind and this opportunity was my only chance to break free. I celebrated my victory the way any SEAL candidate should. I put the f*ck out. The following morning and for the next three weeks I spent time in the pool strapped with a 16 pound weight belt. I swam underwater for 50 meters at a time and walked the length of the pool underwater with a brick in each hand.

all on a single breath. The water would not own my ass this time. When I was done, I'd swim a mile or two, then head to a pond near my mother's home. Remember, this was Indiana, the American Midwest, in December.

The trees were naked. Icicles hung like crystals from the eaves of houses and snow blanketed the earth in all directions. But the pond wasn't completely frozen yet. I waded into the icy water dressed in camel pants, a brown short-sleeved shirt and boots, laid back and looked into the gray sky. The hypothermic water washed over me. The pain was excruciating and I f***ing loved it.

After a few minutes, I got out and started running, water sloshing in my boots, sand in my underwear. Within seconds, my t-shirt was frozen to my chest. My pants iced at the cuffs. I hit the Monon Trail. Steam poured from my nose and mouth as I grunted and slalomed speedwalkers and joggers. Civilians. Their heads turned as I picked up speed and began sprinting.

like Rocky in downtown Philly. I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could from a past that no longer defined me toward a future undetermined. All I knew was that there would be pain and there would be purpose and that I was ready. The first step on the journey toward a calloused mind is stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis.

Dig out your journal again and write down all the things you don't like to do or that make you uncomfortable, especially those things you know are good for you. Now go do one of them and do it again. This is not about changing your life instantly. It's about moving the needle bit by bit and making those changes sustainable.

That means digging down to the micro level and doing something that sucks every day. Even if it's as simple as making your bed, doing the dishes, ironing your clothes, or getting up before dawn and running two miles each day. Once that becomes comfortable, take it to five, then ten miles. If you already do all those things, find something you aren't doing. We all have areas in our lives we either ignore or can improve upon. Find yours.

We often choose to focus on our strengths rather than our weaknesses. Use this time to make your weaknesses your strengths. Doing things, even small things, that make you uncomfortable will help make you strong. The more often you get uncomfortable, the stronger you'll become and soon you'll develop a more productive, can do dialogue with yourself in stressful situations.

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