99.9% of the shit I did to get to where I'm at today was alone. Alone. Out there running in cold, in heat, suffering, in pools, trying to swim. At home in a room by myself trying to teach myself how to read and write, how to study. You know, no one saw that shit. There was no video camera. There was no podcast. There was no Who's David Goggin. It was me. I was just for me trying to get in the military. Everybody can do. It's easy. Just trying to learn how to read and write with something that blows Rocky away. Because I'm proud of what I've created, but I'm more proud of what I've created without an audience, without a cheering squad, without someone like, Come on, man! You got it! You can do it! You know who you are. when there's no mother out there when you're running and you're at mile 75 150 mile race ain't nobody cheering for you you're broken you're defeated it's you and you alone in your head and i stayed that way for the better part of 30 years trying to figure it out A lot of us are going through hell, maybe not as bad as me, maybe worse than me, but they don't know how to express because we're supposed to live in a world where we have to talk a certain way. We have to walk a certain way, we have to act a certain way. nothing gets handled in that world. You stay stuck in that world. You stay in a world of things will get better because someone said they would and I need to find peace. No, you need to go to war with yourself, man. At the end of that war, you'll sit back all damaged and bruised and scarred up and maybe your soul has muscles so tight that you may lose two inches on it. who knows but then after the war you're going to sit back on the couch maybe have a glass of water drink a beer drink a beer the war may be 30 years but when it ends you will know what the fuck it's all about then and then you'll find your peace I will guarantee you one thing about me is that we all talk about time we don't have enough of it. That's not really the issue. What you don't do right is you don't prioritize what is important in your life. And for me, training and the daily activities I engage in, that's how I started to build my armor. I started finding self-esteem. Once I found that, doors began to open. I stopped caring about what I thought about being judged. What if I say this? Well, they make fun of me. I stopped caring about that and that's when my life began to really change for me, slowly but surely. I saw working out as a way to build calluses on my mind. I developed a resistance to the victim mentality. I always associated training with mental toughening. It always looked brutal, people waking up early and doing all these things. It looked horrible. I thought, wow, I need to start doing that, not to get bigger and stronger, but because it would build me. That looks uncomfortable. I know how it feels to be alone. You have to learn to flip loneliness on its head. I gained a lot of strength from having a sewer mentality. This mentality is about how many people can make it out of the sewer alone with no coach, no trainer, no mentor, just having a straight up killer mentality, a warrior mindset, a no matter what, I'm going to get up mindset. and you have to learn to flip that loneliness into total power. And that's what I managed to do. I thought, if I can come out of this sewer that I'm living in, in my mind, if I can overcome all these obstacles by myself, how much strength will I gain from this? That looks brutal, getting up early. I don't want to do that, long with a long list of other things. but through that, I found myself and I gained a ton of strength. So I stopped focusing on all the bad things that life handed me and started viewing them more as the ultimate training ground for where I want to go. My mental armor begins to build up by doing these things that are uncomfortable for me. I still hate running. You guys getting up at five o'clock in the morning, running here on this golf course. I began to see myself very differently from the average person. I thought, hang on a second, I have something they don't have. I've kept my circle very small. It's been mainly my mom and now my fiance. The more people you have in your life, the noisier it gets, the more distractions arise. True growth comes from a very quiet place in your mind. When you can organize your mind, you must. With so much noise, distraction, there's no organization. So I believe in keeping my circle small. Those people know what they get from me, and I know what I get from them. And it keeps me moving forward, never stagnant. And that's when I began to develop these traits through working out. It became a great never-ending work ethic. And through that work ethic, I developed self-esteem. I always equated working out to struggle and I've struggled my whole life. So I realized that I had to start facing the struggle and be mentally strong for it. So that's where I started coming up with the idea. I'm training for life. Mentally, I'm training for life. I don't care about winning trophies. I don't care about winning anything. All I want to do is go the distance. I found out. on my own, that through discipline, self-discipline, repetition, lots of repetition, the things you don't want to do, that's how you develop a mental armor. Start to armor your mind because the mind's like, okay, we suffer. We suffer every day. It's what we do. We do stuff that sucks every day. So then when the sucky stuff comes, you're ready for it. And that's how I started coming up. I just started being very uncomfortable. Now it's like a way of life. And I am happy because this is my lifestyle. This is what I want to do. But trying to find your best self, you become unbalanced. People always talk about this mythical creature called balance. I think balance is a bunch of bullshit. Yes, I really do. You think for everybody? I think I was for everybody, everything in my life. So I had to learn this ability. And I talked about how my physical training gave me the self-discipline that has literally carried me over to other aspects of my life. It may take some people an hour to study something, but I may have to sit down for maybe 10 hours to learn the same thing. And that's very frustrating. So I always talk about running and swimming and all this stuff I did in the military and pull up breakers and powerlifting, all these physical peaks. Some of the hardest things I do in my life were just learning, but I got that self-discipline from waking up at three and four o'clock in the morning to go out in the cold weather to get my run in, to get my lift in, to get my swim and do those things. It totally transfers over to my learning. It's that self-discipline you gain from feeling good about yourself by overcoming yourself on the physical aspect of life. It's more important to own your weaknesses. you got to really triple down on those, man. Because why? You want to become a full human being. We like to run away from weaknesses. Like for instance, if you're good at running, all you want to do is run. If you're great at reading, you have several books. But we don't do those things that we're not good at. So for me, I realized I keep on running away from these things I'm not good at. I have to dive into these things. I have to become one with these things. And that's what happened. And so I own them both. And I talk very openly about them both. For years, I've lived like a monk. I don't see or spend time with a lot of people. my circle is very tight. I post on social media once or twice a week and I never check anybody else's feeds because I don't follow anyone. That's just me. I'm not saying you need to be that unforgiving because you and I probably don't share the same goals. But I know you have goals too and room for improvement. And I guarantee that if you audited your schedule, you'd find time for more work and less bullshit. It's up to you to find ways to eviscerate your bull. How much time do you spend at the dinner table talking about nothing after the meal is done? How many calls and texts do you send for no reason at all? Look at your whole life. List your obligations and tasks. Put a time stamp on them. How many hours are required to shop, eat, and clean? What's your commute like? Can you make it there under your own power? Block everything at the windows of time. And once your day is scheduled out, you'll know how much flexibility you have to exercise on a given day and how to maximize it. Perhaps you aren't looking to get fit, but have been dreaming of starting a business of your own or have always wanted to learn a language or an instrument you're obsessed with. Fine. The same rule applies. Analyze your schedule. Kill your empty habits. burn out the bull and see what's left. Is it one hour per day? Three. Now maximize that. That means listing your prioritized tasks every hour of the day. You can even narrow it down. to 15 minute windows. And don't forget to include backstops in your day-to-day schedule. Remember how I forgot to include backstops in my race plan at Ultraman. You need backstops in your day-to-day schedule too. If one task bleeds into overtime, make sure you know it. and begin to transition into your next prioritized task straight away. Use your smartphone for productivity hacks, not clickbait. Turn on your calendar alerts. Have those alarms set. If you audit your life, skip the bullet, and use backstops, you'll find time to do everything you need and want to do. but remember that you also need rest. So schedule that in. Listen to your body. Sneak in those 10 to 20 minute power naps when necessary and take one full rest day per week. If it's a rest day, truly allow your mind and body to relax. Turn your phone off. Keep the computer shut down. A rest day means you should be relaxed. hanging with friends or family and eating and drinking well so you can recharge and get back at it. It's not a day to lose yourself in technology or stay hunched at your desk in a form of a damn question mark. The whole point of the 24-hour mission is to keep up a championship pace. not for a season or a year, but for your entire life. That requires quality rest and recovery time because there is no finish line. There is always more to learn and you will always have weaknesses to strengthen if you want to become as hard as woodpecker lips, hard enough to hammer countless mobs. and finish that strong. Would you say you've built this almost like sadistic quality where you almost enjoy the pain? I don't enjoy it. It's necessary. Yeah. It's necessary. So every morning I wake up, it's not just about working out, but for me, working out has been a very big part of my mental growth. So for me, if I am not challenging myself every day, and I swear to God, people will not believe it. I was over almost 300 pounds twice in my life. A person that does that twice in his life does not enjoy cardiovascular activity. Okay? So people can put anything they want to in their head. I did realize one thing. The things I don't enjoy that I still do, that's where growth is at. and that's, for me, the only place growth is at is in that very uncomfortable, you know, in that uncomfortable zone. Yeah. So I have to visit it every single day. The main objective here is to slowly start to remove the governor from your brain. First, a quick reminder of how this process works. In 1999, when I weighed 297 pounds, my first run was a quarter mile. Fast forward to 2007, I ran 205 miles in 39 hours, non-stop. I didn't get there overnight, and I don't expect you to either. Your job is to push past your normal stopping point. Whether you are running on a treadmill or doing a set of push-ups, get to the point where you are so tired and in pain that your mind is begging you to stop. Then push just 5 to 10% further. If the most push-ups you have ever done is 100 in a workout, do 105 or 110. If you normally run 30 miles each week, run 10% more next week. this gradual ramp up will help prevent injury and allow your body and mind to slowly adapt to your new workload. It also resets your baseline, which is important because you're about to increase your workload another 5 to 10% the following week and the week after that. There is so much pain and suffering involved in physical challenges that it's the best training to take command of your inner dialogue and the newfound mental strength and confidence you gain by continuing to push yourself physically will carry over to other aspects in your life. You will realize that if you were underperforming in your physical challenges, there is a good chance you were underperforming at school and work too. The bottom line is that life is one big mind game. The only person you are playing against is yourself. Stick with this process and soon what you thought was impossible will be something you do every day of your life.