- It sounds like friction is something you're very familiar with. I just, it's a word just as I feel like it's like cast above us right now in bold face, highlighted, underlined letters. - Friction is growth. - Friction. - Yes. - Like you're up in the morning and I imagine David Goggins going to the coffee maker, stretching out, good morning, sunshine.

And you're telling me from eyelids open, there's friction. - Yes, and that is the thing that people don't, they don't fucking get. The biggest misunderstanding about David Goggins of all time. It's like, whether you believe in God or not, I do. He put this lab rat, which is me, on this planet.

And said, let me fucking see what a beat up abused kid who has, who can barely learn, barely learn, who has a twisted body, messed up, messed up genetics, sickle cell, this and that. Let me give him everything that pretty much disqualifies you from the military. But back then, it wasn't as stress, and let's put him in this and see what comes out of it.

So to do that, friction, you don't wake up in the morning time and go to the coffee maker. Matter of fact, sometimes you don't even sleep. What it requires is when I'm at two o'clock, it's two o'clock in the morning, and my brain is thinking about a fucking drug.

And I got to get up and look in my book to see what that drug is, how I remember it. And this is every day of my fucking life. That's why when I train a fighter or I train someone, I'm like, you have no fucking idea how great you really are.

Because you are using such minimal, minimal of what you have. And if people can learn to focus, this is what's possible. While it may not be pretty, like people want to do a documentary on me. I go, no, I don't want you to do a documentary on me. Because I will have normal everyday people picking me apart on his life is miserable.

Who wants to live like that? He looks, it's crazy how he's, it's almost like he's sick, he's psychotic. The most frustrating thing in the world for me is when normal people judge a man like myself on what it really takes to extract greatness from nothing. It takes every bit of who you are.

If you choose that route, if you don't, Merry Christmas, do what you got to do. But yeah, all these things for me, like I told you, I'm going to keep it real. I'm not coming here to talk about like, you know, perform without purpose. 'Cause I go through, when I write these books, I go through and I try to dumb down David Goggins.

How can I give normal people, and I'm normal, but I found something that most don't want to find. How can I speak to people and give them something from this crazy psychotic brain that I've developed? How can I give them that? So I sit down with Jennifer for years and write down perform without purpose, callous your mind, armor your mind, the cookie jar, the accountability mirror, shit that people can fucking use in their lives.

No, no, I'm glad it helps you. But the barbaric life that I live, that you have to live, the almost obsession that you must have to be great, you can't put that shit in a fucking book, bro. You can't put in a book, you can't. You can't write about it.

- It has to be experienced. - It has to be experienced. And you can't even, after you experience it, to write it in a book, it would seem like he needs to be locked up. - Too gory. - It's too gory, it doesn't make sense for a guy that everything, every second of the day, he is trying to extract more from something.

He's constantly thinking, he's constantly disciplined, never going off the path. Whatever is injured on him, he figures away. It's a conqueror's mindset. And very few people, if any, can really understand what that is. Like, I'm almost 50 and I've been this way for almost 30 years. Like, what do you do for fun?

You would never, like these questions, I don't get 'em, I don't understand 'em, I don't. So, yeah. - I get asked that sometimes. What do you do for fun? I start listing off all this stuff like podcasting, reading, working out. But, so some of that resonates, but I think what's so truly unusual about what you're describing, your process, is that, you know, from go, it's hard.

And I have to ask, was being 300 pounds, having, I'm using the words you've described, you've said it before, you had a tendency at one point in your life, early on, tell lies, try and get people's approval. - Fly my ass off. - Crazy haircuts, attention seeking, and yet, all of that triggered something that now is, you know, is extraordinary.

- Right. - Do you think those hardships were necessary to flip the switch? - I don't know if they were necessary, but it was something that made me feel, I didn't feel good, it was easy. The brain that I was given as a child, it was easy to go home and think about what, how do I want to be a freak today?

How do I want to show up to school today and be a freak? It didn't require me going home and opening a book up saying, it's going to take me all year to learn this fucking page. So instead of learning that page, I learned how to become a character.

And maybe that character that I created, that 300 pound insecure guy that used to fake, fake it 'til I make it type of guy, you know, let me become your friend, let me lie to you until you like me type of guy, when you have any kind of, any manhood, womanhood, a human being, a soul, a spirit, any, I had no, I must have just this much pride, 'cause that's exactly what opened the door for me.

'Cause every day you were a character, every day you were a clown, every day you opened that Spanish book or that science book or English book. And you like, you looked at it, it was like, it looked like a foreign language. And you're saying, where do I start? Well, who do I start?

And obviously it was necessary. The more I talk about it, it was necessary. 'Cause what happened is I became haunted by the mere fact that this is my existence. And you gotta live with that. I lived with it for a lot of years. And so I sat back and said, okay, all right, I know what this takes.

And when you sit back as fucked up as I was, and I had a laundry list, a table like this of what I have to do to become just a human being that can make ends meet, that can make a thousand dollars a month just to get there. Was like, oh my God, dude.

Like, I'm 16, 17, I can't read, I can't write. And I, oh my God, I'm so behind the power curve. And my brain is about being depressed. And my dad beat, my mom's not home. And kids are calling me nigger at school. And I'm like, oh my God, man, what the fuck do I do?

And it wasn't like someone came around and said, hey man, you can do this. This is all me. So people know, where's this cold man come from? I'm not trying to be cold. It's the reality of my life. It's the reality of a lot of people's lives. And so, yeah, that had to happen for me to be haunted, to be haunted, to pull out, to extract the guy I am today.

That haunting is something that's still there today. Because no matter how much you improve, no matter how much you change who you are, it's not permanent. You'll just wake up and say, oh my God, man, you're David Goggins. You break records, you do this, you do that. People don't know, how are you able to just be so hard?

'Cause I never turned the fucking thing off. 'Cause once it turns off, I go right back to the David Goggins that is. And that's the guy that I'm constantly fighting every day. And it's a choice. And that choice makes you misunderstood. It makes you crazy. That's why I hate fucking social media.

In 2013, people wanted me to write my book. I did it in 2018, took five years. And the reason why I didn't do it, I set a table and Jennifer was there. This is before she started working for me, I started dating her, whatever. And all these people were there.

And they're like, man, you gotta go on social media. And I was like, fuck you, man. Like, I'm not, it's poison. It's poison because I knew what I did to get where I am. And I'm gonna have these people, these normal everyday people, fat, lazy, is exactly who I was, judging me.

'Cause I know it, 'cause I was once them. All my hard work, all my dedication, I'm gonna have some normal dude, get his little brownies, little ding-dong, ho-ho Twinkie, sit there with his coffee, picking me apart. Oh, he must be unhappy. He's just, do you know how hard it is to put these shoes on every damn morning?

And I'm gonna have you pick me apart? So yeah, there's so much that goes into this that I was like, fuck this. I never want anything to do with it. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)