How to Build Willpower | David Goggins & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | I'm going to share a little neuroscience tidbit, but I think it's one that you'll appreciate.
00:00:07.780 | Most people don't know this, but there's a brain structure called the anterior mid-cingulate
00:00:12.960 | cortex. As we pointed out before, that's a noun, it's a name, it doesn't mean anything.
00:00:16.840 | We could call it the cookie monster. But what's interesting about this brain area is there
00:00:22.480 | are now a lot of data in humans, that's a mouse study, showing that when people do something
00:00:30.280 | they don't want to do, like add three hours of exercise per day or per week, or when people
00:00:37.140 | who are trying to diet and lose weight resist eating something. When people do anything
00:00:42.920 | that they, and this is the important part, that they don't want to do. It's not about
00:00:46.800 | adding more work, it's about adding more work that you don't want to do. This brain area
00:00:52.000 | gets bigger. Now here's what's especially interesting about this brain area to me, and
00:00:56.040 | by the way, I'm only learning this recently because it's new data, but there's a lot of
00:01:00.840 | it. The anterior mid-cingulate cortex is smaller in obese people. It gets bigger when they
00:01:08.920 | diet. It's larger in athletes. It's especially large, or grows larger, in people that see
00:01:18.200 | themselves as challenged and overcome some challenge. And in people that live a very
00:01:25.260 | long time, this area keeps its size. In many ways, scientists are starting to think of
00:01:34.000 | the anterior mid-cingulate cortex not just as one of the seats of willpower, but perhaps
00:01:40.840 | actually the seat of the will to live. Now we're talking. And when I learned about the
00:01:45.960 | anterior mid-cingulate cortex, I was like almost out of my seat. And I've been in the
00:01:49.720 | neuroscience game since I was 20. We're the same age. And I was so pumped because I've
00:01:53.880 | heard of the amygdala, fear, prefrontal cortex, it's planning and action. I could tell you
00:01:58.300 | every brain area and every, I teach neuroanatomy to medical students, but when I started seeing
00:02:03.520 | the data on the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, I was like, whoa, this is interesting. And
00:02:11.920 | all the data point to the fact that we can build this area up, but that as quickly as
00:02:17.340 | we build it up, if we don't continue to invest in things that are hard for us, that
00:02:22.080 | we don't want to do, that's the part that feels so Goggin-esque to me that we don't
00:02:27.860 | want to do. Like if you love the ice bath, yeah, I love the ice bath, and you go from
00:02:31.640 | one minute to 10 minutes, guess what? Your anterior mid-cingulate cortex did not grow.
00:02:36.960 | But if you hate the cold water, if you're afraid of drowning and you get into water
00:02:42.380 | and put your head under and survive, then the anterior mid-cingulate cortex gets bigger.
00:02:49.840 | But if you don't do it the next day, or if you do it the next day and you enjoy it because
00:02:53.960 | hey, I did it yesterday, woo-hoo, happy me, Merry Christmas, as you would say, guess what?
00:03:00.120 | The anterior mid-cingulate cortex shrinks again. To me, this is one of the most important
00:03:05.180 | discoveries that neuroscience has ever made, because it's that I don't want to do something
00:03:11.200 | but do it anyway that grows this area. And it's almost like I have a friend, he's
00:03:16.160 | been sober 30 years from alcohol, and he always says, you know, the amazing thing about addiction
00:03:20.840 | is there's a cure. The problem is it only works one day at a time. And so you have to
00:03:26.520 | renew it every day. So the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, to me, when I learned about it, two
00:03:32.120 | things went off in my head. Whoa, this is super interesting. And two, I got to tell
00:03:35.560 | David Goggins about this. And I waited until now to tell you, because I felt like, well,
00:03:41.640 | for obvious reasons, I wanted to tell you and I wanted to tell you here.
00:03:44.320 | Well, I love that because that's how I've lived my entire life. I didn't know anything
00:03:48.880 | about that. But people go, man, you have such a strong will. It's something that you build.
00:03:55.640 | Like, I never forget, I was on a podcast one time, and this dude goes, you were blessed
00:04:01.120 | with a strong mind. Like, what the hell are you talking about? I was blessed with a strong
00:04:08.760 | mind. That's something that you have to develop. You develop that over years, decades of suffering
00:04:19.000 | and going back into the suffer. That's why a lot of people who graduate Navy SEAL training,
00:04:24.200 | they want to know, like, I talk about very openly all the time. A lot of guys don't want
00:04:33.600 | to go back into that water. Don't want to go back into the hard stuff. Anything hard.
00:04:40.280 | Anything hard in life, once you get through it, it's like you become a POW. How many POWs
00:04:46.640 | you know want to go back to POW camp? None. When something sucks so bad in life, this
00:04:52.200 | is on this, that we're talking about now, very few people want to go back. They're happy
00:04:59.200 | they graduated. I realized, I'm the same way. I don't want to go back. I have to go back.
00:05:09.640 | I must go back. Because that is exactly where all the knowledge of my life exists, was back
00:05:16.880 | there, and what you're exactly talking about. Well, I didn't know anything about this, but
00:05:21.560 | how I grew a will, was constantly doing these things, to now, it's just life. I wake up,
00:05:30.800 | while it still sucks, it's just life. You don't sit back and like, oh my God, like,
00:05:35.600 | I have days I don't want to do it, but I know I'm going to do it. I know from years of just
00:05:41.040 | doing it. So, that's beautiful. And this is why I came on here with you today. And I'm
00:05:46.600 | glad that you're talking about this, because human beings need to hear this. They need
00:05:51.640 | to stop hearing these hacks on this and that. There's no fucking hack, bro. There's no fucking
00:05:59.520 | hack. Yeah, you may, this and that, and saunas, and all this shit that they, yeah, it's great.
00:06:06.640 | There is no fucking life hack. To grow that thing, how do you grow it? Do it, and do it,
00:06:14.680 | and do it. That's the hack. The hack is going to fucking suck. And that's what I realized.
00:06:21.580 | That's what I realized. That's why I wanted to come on here today. I didn't want to come
00:06:24.840 | on here and talk about no fucking passion, and purpose, and how to get the fuck out of
00:06:29.520 | bed, and how to hit a fucking alarm clock, and all this catchphrase bullshit. Because
00:06:35.760 | that wasn't how I lived. It wasn't how I lived. I lived, I woke up, like every human being
00:06:40.840 | does, and goes, "Fuck, man, I'm a fucking piece of shit today. How the hell is this
00:06:44.960 | going to work out for me?" And you fight that. And you fight that. You don't override it.
00:06:50.400 | There's no override button. It's the conversation in your fucking, in your head. So how you
00:06:56.120 | do that? We don't have enough of these conversations about the real conversation that every human
00:07:02.240 | being is having. And they have no idea how to get out of it, but they do. It's that shit
00:07:07.760 | right there, man. You got to build your will. How do you build your will? Exactly what you
00:07:13.560 | said, man. Exactly what you said. Well, I feel like knowing the name of something,
00:07:19.280 | anterior mid-cingulate cortex, doesn't fundamentally change us. But one thing I like about biology
00:07:24.880 | is that willpower, if somebody feels they don't have it, feels like this thing that
00:07:30.200 | other people have. But everybody, unless they're brain damaged, like a hole through their head,
00:07:36.760 | has two anterior mid-cingulate cortex, one on each side of their brain. Everyone has
00:07:41.880 | one. They have two. So I feel like it's just a question of opening the portal. And the
00:07:49.160 | portal, what I, again, I'm just going to say 10 times and forgive me, is I think people
00:07:53.360 | go, "Oh, I do hard things. I do sets to failure. And then I do four streps." I love training
00:07:58.560 | with weights. I love doing sets to failure. I even like four streps. But guess what? I
00:08:02.640 | like four streps. So I'll tell you, they don't build my anterior mid-cingulate cortex because
00:08:07.840 | I like to do it. Anything you like to do is not going to enhance this aspect of willpower.
00:08:13.860 | And it seems so obvious once you hear it. You kind of go, "Oh, yeah, of course." But
00:08:17.680 | I think you really close that loop for people when you share what you're sharing today and
00:08:26.080 | what you've shared elsewhere before as well when you're trying to explain the friction
00:08:29.160 | as the critical ingredient. And I think people think, "Oh, if it's effort, well, then I'm
00:08:34.120 | getting better." That's part of it. Necessary but not sufficient, as we say in science.
00:08:38.940 | But the suck part, the being haunted, the stick, they're really unpleasant terms. These
00:08:46.960 | are probably the most unpleasant terms we've ever used on this podcast. Those are the levers.
00:08:54.520 | Those are the gears. And without those, this thing that you're talking about, David Goggins,
00:09:00.360 | as a verb, I sometimes make the joke, but it's not a joke. Goggins is a name, and it's
00:09:07.920 | a verb. People go, "I'm going to Goggins that." But that's, I think, again, I'm not a psychologist,
00:09:14.120 | but I think that's what you're talking about. The stick, the friction, being haunted, it's
00:09:19.480 | the suck part that grows this anterior mid-cingulate cortex. So now you know why there's so many
00:09:25.960 | people that fail in this world to figure out their purpose in life. Where do I go? Because
00:09:34.920 | to grow that, while you may not look like me, how my daily life looks, it don't look
00:09:44.200 | fun. It don't look fun. So it's a choice that people have to make in life. But what's so
00:09:53.320 | funny about it is even the richest of rich, who have everything, they always ask me this
00:09:57.880 | question. I feel like I'm missing something. I don't feel like I'm missing shit. I don't
00:10:06.800 | have what you all have, but you'll never in my life hear me tell you I'm missing something.
00:10:14.920 | Everybody is. They're missing this feeling. I found it a long time ago. I found it right
00:10:23.520 | there in that willpower thing. When you're nothing, nothing, and change yourself into
00:10:30.000 | something like me, you call it happiness, peace, whatever the fuck you want to call
00:10:37.960 | it, people are missing exactly what went on with David Goggins. Why don't you smile? I
00:10:45.640 | do. I do. But I figured something out. That's why I am never, you'll never hear me say I'm
00:10:52.520 | missing something. I found it years ago. You find it in the suck. You find it in the suck
00:11:00.240 | and you find it repeatedly in the suck to the point where you know exactly who you are.
00:11:05.520 | Most people are missing something because they don't know who they are. They never examine
00:11:11.640 | themselves. They've never done this experiment on themselves. The lab rat, we're all lab
00:11:17.560 | rats, but you're also the scientist. You create your own self. Most people are missing something
00:11:25.160 | because there's so much trapped in there. I don't even want to say potential. I think
00:11:30.560 | that word is used out too much too. There's so much in you that God or wherever the hell
00:11:34.800 | you believe in, or if you're an atheist, in you that you have not unlocked, that you walk
00:11:41.480 | around with this gorgeous wife or great husband and all this money. You're like, "God, I feel
00:11:45.880 | like I'm missing something." Yeah, because it's about 75% of you is still fucking in
00:11:52.040 | there, still chained up because you just didn't want to find your willpower. Didn't want to
00:11:58.960 | find your soul, your will, your heart, your determination, your guts, your courage. What
00:12:03.680 | that looks like, it looks scary. Like your little scary lab I went in, scary to wake
00:12:09.200 | up every day and say, "I'm stupid, but I want to figure out a way to be smarter," versus
00:12:14.520 | saying, "Man, I just can't do that." You limit this box. Your box becomes so small of things
00:12:21.640 | you can do. My box wasn't even a box. It was a fucking little pinhole. Then through examining
00:12:30.080 | myself, getting some willpower, some courage, it became bigger than this table. That's what
00:12:36.040 | we all do. That's why I wanted to come here today and talk to you about real shit, not
00:12:40.120 | no fucking hacks. There's no hacks, bro. It's you against you. You against you. If you misunderstand
00:12:48.440 | that, you have a real problem. I can understand you misunderstand me running down the street
00:12:54.440 | shirt off, "Fuck this. No, yeah." I can get it. I get it. If you misunderstand what I'm
00:13:00.080 | saying right now today, the problem is you, and you don't want to fix it.
00:13:05.920 | [music]