EMBRACING TRUTH AND OVERCOMING ADVERSITY - Best Motivational Speech by David Goggins
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And it's kind of hard to almost separate that. I'm almost not in a way I'm kissing my own ass, but I'm amazed at what a human being can actually do. So when I start talking to myself in the third person, it's strictly because I know that I literally made this human being out of just like a whole bunch of scraps. And I wasn't, you know, I wasn't a mechanic. I wasn't a carpenter. So I didn't know how to do any of this shit.

You know, I wasn't trained in how to build a human being from nothing. You know, like my mom didn't train me. My dad didn't train me. Life didn't train me. Well, life did train me. Correction. And I started putting this scrap metal together. I'm like, I wonder what the fuck's going to happen. You know, the first year I tried to do it was all fucked up. And after a while, I started learning more and more and more through pain and suffering. I started learning so much about stuff. Before I knew it, man, I built this beautiful car. And I'm like, how the fuck did I do that? And I knew how to do it because I have all the tools, right?

through all the failure I went through trying to build this person who's Goggins. When I was growing up, I was being bullied and all kinds of shit. My grandfather looked at me and he says, you know what, man, you're not going to amount to shit because of how you hang your head and it's true and as real as it was. It hurt. And a lot of us, what we do is we hide from the truth. We don't want to tell people the truth. We see people every day

loved ones, friends, family members. We see them walking around. Everybody has seen them gain weight. They're not going to school, but we live in a kinder, gentler world. So we don't say to them. We just watch them fail because why we don't know what to say or how to say it, or we may lose them as friends, or they may not love us anymore. You're watching someone fail.

The best thing you may ever do for someone is to say, "Hey, guess what, brother? You're a piece of right now." You may not say it just that way. That's what you may want to say to somebody. "Look, man, I love you to death, brother.

But your life sucks. You're not. You are so much better than this, man. You're so much better. I'm watching you fail and I can't do it. So the best advice I ever got was a negative comment from my grandpa. You ain't going to amount to shit. And he didn't mean it in like a mean way. He meant it as honestly, you're allowing this world to kick your ass and it's going to keep on letting it do it. And it stuck with me.

It stuck with me for a long time. The one thing that made me who I am today is being vulnerable. It's breaking myself down to the absolute rock bottom and being able to tell people who I am. And that's how I fixed it. Literally, you know, look somebody in the eyes. You know what, man? I have a whole bunch of character problems, character flaws.

I've lied about this. I've cheated here. I'm insecure here. This isn't the real me. I lied to you about that. I wanted your acceptance in life. All those things happen. But the thing about it is that we get judged so quickly by who we are. We don't know. We don't go to the to where it happened. You know, life created this person, me, life, life created me to be this person that was back in the day.

And I had to realize, man, that's okay, man. It's not my fault. Now I can go back and fix this shit though. So a lot of this isn't your fault. Why you do some things you do, why you feel the way you feel, but no one's coming back to save your ass. You have to go back to where this started, wherever that place is for everybody and have the courage to go back there and start fixing what broke you. And that's, and that's why I was like, Hey, I'm fucked up. I'm gonna go back and fix this. Mediocrity is everywhere right now.

and we're all trying to find an easy way out and we're judging ourselves. Let's say there's 10 people in this room and we're all mediocre. I'm the best of the mediocre people. I now think I'm great. Best of the mediocre people. We surround ourselves around people that make us feel great. They tell us what we want to hear.

The second we put ourselves amongst the uncommon people, we don't like that feeling, that challenge and feel of that person's waking up at 3:30 mornings. Hey, push your shit on. We're going for a run. We don't like that challenge. We like that person who says, hey, you know what, man?

I don't feel good today, man. And they say, oh, it's okay, brother. We'll take a day off. Maybe we'll get a pizza and watch the game. We like that. Why? Because you understand, man, we don't want that in our lives. We don't want that person who's constantly challenging our weaknesses. Stop being a punk. We want that person who's constantly, you know, making us feel nice and good and secure in our lives.

That's the mediocrity of life. As you're trying to fix yourself and dig yourself out of this deep hole that life, society, and you helped, you helped also. Those people who you saw down there in that hole who were there with you, who are your friends and people who you counted on, because you meet the people in the same situation that you're in in life.

Those people become your friends. And the second you try to get out of that situation and become better, those people in that grave and that dungeon is yanking at your heels, man, saying, get the f*** back. Oh, no, get out. Come on back here, mother f***er. You ain't gonna make me feel like s*** by you getting out of this hole. People would constantly remind me of who I used to be back in the day. And they always come out of the woodworks, man. When you come from a small, small town,

And you come from a place that a lot of people don't want to come out of it and get out of it. And all you want to do is become somebody. When you have small town mentality is a real mentality. You've got to be able to get out and let your mind see open mindedness because a small town, what it does to you is it closes your mind.

Completely closes your mind. Not everybody. This isn't everybody. A lot of people. You have to be able to go out there and create open mindedness. You need space. You need space to see the world. Like a lot of racism, a lot of a lot of ignorance in the world. It comes from people not being out and seeing other things, seeing other people, seeing all kind of shit. That's why we judge so harshly because our minds are so close to the reality of of life.

Period. We want to be the best we can be amongst the average people. People wonder, how do you stay hungry all the time? Because after I accomplish something, I don't sit back like a lot of guys who graduate, buds. Graduate this, graduate that. They get comfortable. They wonder why I'm getting weak, man. What's going on? Because once you hit the top of the mountain,

Guess what happened? I'm good. So you wonder why you're falling down now because once we get on the top of the mountain, you got to put up another one. That's mediocrity. There's a lot of people in mediocrity who have a nice resume, but they're one-timers, man. They hit, they hit a one-time deal. They busted it open, got a lot of money, but they're good. You're mediocre now, man. What are you doing today, tomorrow, the next day? That's what I'm listening to theorists.

I don't listen to all that bullshit. That's the person who's gained knowledge. You gain knowledge through suffering. And on the other end of suffering is a world that very few, very few have ever seen. It's a beautiful world because that's where you find yourself. You don't find yourself in over here. You find yourself on the other end, like the 100 mile race I was on.

I ran it for 24 hours. I found myself on the other end of that race. That 19 hours I found, wow, there's a whole another world out here that I've never even saw. The world is in your mind and that's what all that mediocrity is about. Mediocrity is contagious. It's funny how our goals are only as elastic as our sense of self.

of who we are and what we think we can accomplish. If all you've ever done is run three miles at a clip, then a 10 mile run can feel as far as the moon. Your mind will compile reasons why that distance is beyond you. And you may believe them. If 10 becomes the new normal, then a half or full marathon may be the next step after a marathon comes ultra. Each time you level up, your mind will step in

like an overbearing chaperone and try to shut down the party. That very dynamic was playing out in my own mind on the long drive. I flashed to a 30-mile run I'd done with Cameron Haynes in Oregon back in December 2018. While we hammered the trails around his hometown, he gushed about a brand new race he'd finished two months earlier. It wasn't a 100-miler. It was a 240.3-mile trail race with nearly 30,000 feet of elevation gain.

That's more than the elevation of Mount Everest among the Red Rock Formation's sheer drop-offs and desolated peaks of Moab. 240 f***ing miles? Was that the new deep end? When I was learning to swim as a teenager, I spent all my time in the shallow end of the pool because there was no fear there.

Even after I'd become proficient, I swam laps in the shallow end because it soothed me knowing that with each stroke, I damn near scraped bottom. If I got too tired or wanted to quit, I could simply stand up, and that gave me both comfort and confidence. It allowed me to work on my stroke without fear getting in the way. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as we are clear that the shallow end work we put in is all about preparation for the deep end.

But that was not my mindset at that point in my life. The way the pool complex was laid out made it impossible to ignore the deep end. Each day, I left the locker room. I had to walk by the 10-foot section. Occasionally, I stepped to the ledge and looked down. That 10-foot floor felt bottomless to me. So I tucked tail and strolled toward the cozy little three-foot marker. With each step, my dread faded while my comfort swelled.

and that f***ed with my psyche. I did my best to clear it out of my mind as I swam, but it lodged in there like a thorn, lap after lap, day after day. When something continually looms in the back of your mind like a taunting, that's an alarm. It's a signal that you need to evaluate and address that issue, or it may become a lifelong fear, looming larger each day until it morphs into an obstacle you may never overcome. There is nothing wrong with being afraid or hesitant.

We all have our reasons for remaining in the shallow end, but we must make our shallow end a training ground. We lay back, get comfy, and then have the audacity to wonder why our lives aren't getting any better while we do the same sh*t we've always done. I should have been using my time in the shallow end as mental preparation, imagining deep water with every stroke. You have to train your mind as if you are already there. If you get tired while swimming laps in the shallow end,

Don't give yourself the option of standing up in the middle of the lane. Your only resting point should be the gunnel at the other end of the pool. That way, when you get to the 10 foot end, you know from experience that you can make the distance. But back then, I was merely a survivor. I wasn't a warrior capable of thriving in discomfort. So I chose to bury my dread and log my pool hours in the shallows with no end in sight.

A lot of us grow out of life shallow in but stay there because we fear the unknown. I'm thinking of those who remain in a secure job they hate instead of cutting ties, starting up their own business or applying for a new position elsewhere. Most are intimidated by an unknown future filled with variables and consequences they can't control or foresee.

I know a person who ran other people's thriving businesses for 20 years, but was afraid to run her own. She knew every aspect of what it took to become a successful entrepreneur, but rather than acknowledge her experience and use it as a confidence supply.

She let her irrational fears keep her running in place for someone else. You need to evaluate what you are feeling. Not every emotion deserves to be ratified.

Remember, if you stay where you've always been, you will never learn if you have what it takes to venture into the deep water. I honestly want to be considered one of the hardest men to walk the planet Earth in the history of the world. And by mean 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 them. To 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. It wouldn't walk around 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 all the judgment that's passed on me perceived and not sometimes you make it up in your own head you know i 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 old school god it'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. And 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 up you are. You have to know that that's what it is. Anybody in your course not saying, man, get after it, but 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 much for any reason because he's great and you're lazy.

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