FOCUS ON YOURSELF NOT OTHERS – Most Powerful David Goggins Speech Yet
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Life beat me the f*** up 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 that m***er out in the 15th round. So that's my mind about can't hurt me. I was hurt, man. Like, 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.

Yeah, those scars are real. Those scars are proof that your past is real. So they're never going to go away. I own them. But I'm proud of my childhood. I'm proud because without all of these lessons in life, and everybody says this bullshit. I mean it. I mean it. Because 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 on 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

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 learned how to hold myself accountable and I knew I could take a man's soul in the heat of battle.

I had overcome many obstacles and realized that each of those experiences had calloused my mind so thick I could take on any challenge. All of that had made me feel like I dealt with my past demons, but I hadn't. I'd been ignoring them. My memories of abuse at the hands of my father, of all those people who call me n****r, didn't vaporize after a few victories. Those moments were anchored deep in my subconscious, and as a result, my foundation was cracked.

In a human being, your character is your foundation. And when you build a bunch of successes and pile up even more failures on a f***ed up foundation, the structure that is the self won't be sound. To develop an armored mind, a mindset so callous and hard that it becomes bulletproof, you need to go to the source of all your fears and insecurities.

Most of us sweep our failures and evil secrets under the rug, but when we run into problems, that rug gets lifted up and our darkness re-emerges, floods our soul, and influences the decisions which determine our character. My fears were never just about the water and my anxieties toward Class 235 were about the pain of first phase.

They were seeping from the infected wounds I'd been walking around with my entire life, and my denial of them amounted to a denial of myself. I was my own worst enemy. It wasn't the world or God or the devil that was out to get me. It was me. I was rejecting my past and therefore rejecting myself. My foundation and my character was defined by self-rejection.

All my fears came from that deep-seated uneasiness I carry with being David Goggins because of what I've gone through. Even after I'd reached a point where I no longer cared about what others thought of me, I still had trouble accepting me. Anyone who is of sound mind and body can sit down and think of 20 things in their life that could have gone differently, where maybe they didn't get a fair shake,

and where they took the path of least resistance. If you're one of the few who acknowledge that, want to callous those wounds and strengthen your character, it's up to you to go back through your past and make peace with yourself by facing those incidents and all of your negative influences and accepting them as weak spots in your own character. Only when you identify and accept your weaknesses will you finally stop running from your past

then those incidents can be used more efficiently as fuel to become better and grow stronger. Right there on mom's couch, as the moon burned its arc in the night sky, I faced down my demons. I faced myself. I couldn't run from my dad anymore. I had to accept that he was part of me and that his lying, cheating character influenced me more than I cared to admit. Before that night,

I used to tell people that my father had died rather than tell the truth about where I came from. Even in the seals I trotted out that lie. I knew why. When you get beat up, you don't want to acknowledge getting your ass kicked. It doesn't make you feel very manly. So the easiest thing to do is forget about it and move on. Pretend it never happened. Not anymore. Going forward it became very important for me to rehash my life.

Because when you examine your experiences with a fine-tooth comb and see where your issues come from, you can find strength in enduring pain and abuse. By accepting Trinus Goggins as part of me, I was free to use where I came from as fuel.

I realized that each episode of child abuse that could have killed me made me tough as hell and as sharp as a samurai's blade. You don't want to break open that callous, that scar in your mind. You have to break it open, let that blood flow. You have to let blood flow in your brain. You have to let all that stuff flow out. All that toxic stuff that you have trapped in there has to start flowing out now. So like you said, you are doing this to yourself.

Yes, people may have helped you get there, but it's now on you. It's a painful truth, painful truth. Like all those people in high school and everything else, they don't know how you're going to end up. So you got to make sure that you constantly are rewriting your book. You have to constantly rewrite your book every day of your life. You know, and these aren't just words I say. This is how I have to live. Like these are conversations I have with myself. And I say it everywhere I go. The most important conversation when you have it yourself.

You live with it every single day. But most of our conversations are not the right ones. They're not the ones that are going to push us to the place we need to go. They're the ones that are going to keep us sitting in that toxic environment that you've helped create and everybody else helped create. And you just live in it. You live in that muck.

And that conversation just plays in your head. That becomes you. So my first conversation when I was absolutely nobody. And that's one thing you have to say. We live in a world now that's so kind. We find the kind way around everything. Like if you don't look good, I have to find a kind way of saying I don't like your shirt. That's not the approach. If that's the approach you're looking for, that book is not for you.

Can't hurt me is not for you. The approach you have to take, at least I took, you take whatever approach you want. The conversation had to be a real honest conversation in the accountability mirror. Guess what? I was fat. Don't find a kind word to say that, you know what? I've gained some weight. No, you're fat. When I couldn't read, not like, hey, you know, you have a learning disability. No, I cannot read. Of a fourth grade reading level, I'm struggling mentally.

and sometimes I call myself stupid not in a way to put myself down so don't take it like my god those are so hurtful yeah they're hurtful this honest the conversation has to become an honest conversation of where you're at mentally where am I at mentally I look like I feel like I'm not this I'm I'm falling behind in school I'm lazy my house is a mess

You have to look at what it is and call it what it is. Don't find words to make yourself feel better because that's what, so we hang around people that make us feel better, that tell us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. And so we stay away from those people and we stay away from those people. Like our internal dialogue becomes that kind. It's okay. It's not okay.

So that's where it starts. It starts with that accountability of it's not okay anymore. This can no longer be okay. And calling yourself out for exactly what you are and exactly how you need to fix it. That's where it starts. Because the only way we can change is to be real with ourselves. If you don't know shit and have never taken school seriously, then say no.

I'm dumb. Tell yourself that you need to get your ass to work because you're falling behind in life. If you look in the mirror and you see a fat person, don't tell yourself that you need to lose a couple of pounds. Tell the truth. You're f***ing fat. It's okay. Just say you're fat.

If you're fat, the dirty mirror that you see every day is gonna tell you the truth every time. So why are you still lying to yourself? So you can feel better for a few minutes and stay the f*cking same. If you're fat, you need to change the fact that you're fat because it's very f*cking unhealthy. I know because I've been there. If you have worked for 30 years doing the same sh*t, you've hated day in and day out because you were afraid to quit and take a risk. You've been living like a p*ssy.

Period. Point blank. Tell yourself the truth. That you've wasted enough time and that you have other dreams that will take courage to realize. So you don't die a f***ing pussy. Call yourself out. Nobody likes to hear the hard truth. Individually and as a culture, we avoid what we need to hear most. This world is f***ed up. There are major problems in our society.

We are still dividing ourselves up along racial and cultural lines, and people don't have the balls to hear it. The truth is racism and bigotry still fucking exist, and some people are so thin-skinned they refuse to admit that. But if you are the only, and you aren't stuck in some real-world genocidal twilight zone, you better get real too.

Your life is not f***ed up because of overt racists or hidden systemic racism. You aren't missing out on opportunities. Making sh*t money and getting evicted because of America or Donald f***ing Trump or because your ancestors were slaves or because your ancestors were slaves or because some people hate immigrants or Jews or harass women or believe gay people are going to hell. If any of that sh*t is stopping you from excelling in life,

I've got some news. You are stopping you. You are giving up instead of getting hard. Tell the truth about the real reasons for your limitations and you will turn that negativity, which is real, into jet fuel. Those odds stacked against you will become a damn runway. There is no more time to waste.

Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert. That's why it's okay to be cruel to yourself as long as you realize you're doing it to become better. We all need thicker skin to improve in life. Being soft when you look in the mirror isn't going to inspire the wholesale changes. We need to shift our present and open up our future. The morning after that first session with the accountability mirror, I trashed the shack steering wheel and the fuzzy dice. I tucked my shirt in and wore my pants with a belt.

And once school started up again, I stopped eating at my lunch table. For the first time, being liked and acting cool were a waste of my time. And instead of eating with all the popular kids, I found my own table and ate alone. Mind you, the rest of my progress could not be described as a blink, and you'll miss it metamorphosis. Lady Luck did not suddenly show up, run me a hot soapy bath, and kiss me like she loved me.

In fact, the only reason I didn't become just another statistic is because at the last possible moment I got to work. How do I do it? How am I able to do what I do on a daily basis? You know, how do I fight the demons? Because they hear me speak and I'm very raw and real. How do you fight my insecurities? All these things.

And they're there every day. They're there every day. I'm in search for a feeling. I'm not in search for a trophy. I'm not in search for love. I'm not in search for more followers on Instagram or social media. When I started this journey years ago and I realized that I'm going to be somebody and I'm searching for a feeling, a feeling of true victory for myself and only myself. The second I shut out the whole world,

and realize that one thing that I am in this world alone. I'm fighting in this race by myself. Yeah, I'm all about people. I'm all about team. I'm all about that shit. But I'm really all about right now and in my life, no one knows the real truth about me. How hard I really go. I don't care if anybody knows. I don't want anybody to know. I'm an introvert. I live an introverted life. And I love that about me.

That right there is my fuel. I know that there's really no one out there grinding like me. And if they are, so be it. If I know about you, I'll make sure that I up my game. That's what the mentality is all about. My whole thing is a mentality thing. I view myself as the weakest person on the planet Earth. I was just an insecure, scared kid. And the only way I could find myself was to put myself through the worst thing possible.

My goal in life was to, in my mind, believe I'm the hardest man alive. And that's why the whole thing is can't hurt me. That's what it's about. It's about whatever you think you are, you have to make that dream a reality. But that's where the hard part is, is making that dream reality. That's where the hard work comes. That's where people know how do you keep grinding every day?

You have to make those insecurities, those fears. Like when I was 300 pounds, I didn't have any drive. I'm going to go be a Navy SEAL. What kind of stupid shit is that, 300 pounds? There wasn't like a drive to go be a Navy SEAL. I was an insecure, lying kid, afraid. I had to look in my insecurities and in my fear and find drive in that. We're all looking for passion. Passion's all around you. You have a whole stack of it all around you. It's your insecurities, all that shit.

You gotta dive deep in that shit. It's all in there. All the energy and fuel you need is right in yourself. It's all there. You got a lot of stuff to do to overcome. And you know, that's where I found it. I found it right there in my own insecurities. I found drive in my own insecurities. And that's the most powerful thing in the world. When you can find drive in your own doubt, fear, insecurities,

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