Biography of David Goggins

What is “mental toughness?” For retired navy seal David Goggins, it's doing things that suck on a day-to-day basis and enjoying the pain.

His morning starts before the sun comes up at 3:00 AM and he runs anywhere from 10 to 15 miles depending on if he is training for a marathon or an event. If not, he is going to start his stretching routine that lasts 2 hours and then puts on his 25-pound backpack and cycles over 20 miles to work. For anyone else, that run would take someone out for days, but for Goggins it's a different story. At 11:00 AM he goes for his mid-morning run, usually around 5 miles. In the afternoon Goggins can usually be seen in his office prepping for motivational speeches that he presents all around the country. His workday ends around 4:00 PM and he makes the over 20-mile bike ride again to get home, but his day does not end there. Even after all the work= he has done so far, he goes for another run ranging anywhere from 5 to 6 miles. Goggins has stated he is not on any special diet, just clean eating, and he makes sure to get his carbs, fats, and proteins in. After all of this, Goggins gets ready for bed, ending his day around 10:00 PM.

Some people can't imagine living like this every day. Some people call him superhuman, some call him gifted, but he's not gifted, he's just driven, as he states on the Joe Rogan podcast. David Goggins is a retired navy seal and has completed Army Ranger School and was an Air Force tactical air controller training member that served in the Iraq war.

But life wasn't always so easy growing up. Goggins' father was not the best of men as he stated on the Joe Rogan podcast: ”everything bad about a person he was that.” He later states that he and his mother would get beaten by his father. He remembered being 6 years old and how afraid he was of his father: “I had this voice, this conscience that would always be battling me saying: ‘hey you gotta get up and do something’ I didn't wanna do nothing you know I was just afraid¨. Goggins explains how even at that young age he would try and fight with his dad,and get beat up for it. This went on for several years. Goggins states in interviews and lectures thathe has a learning disability because his father did not believe in his childrengoing to school: “I had social anxiety I was just a jacked-up kid from living in this tortured home.”

When Goggins was 8 years old, his mom left his father and took Goggins to Brazil, Indiana. For Goggins this was no “new beginning” but rather the beginning of something not so great ¨That's when the real war started for me,” he said.

Goggins later explains how there were only about 10 black families out of 10,000 people in town, and in 1995 the KKK marched in the 4th of July parade “Not everyone was racist there was a lot of good people some of the best people I knew was there but there was also a lot of racism there.” He talks about how he would get death threats from people saying they were going to kill him; outwardly, he showed it didn't hurt him, but on the inside it was haunting him. Goggins also confessed to all throughout school, copying on every test and homework assignment. “It's kinda humble to talk about my story sometimes but it's also embarrassing but it's real it's who I am it's what I am and it's what created me.”

During his senior year, he decided to join the Air Force and he took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB test.”The guy gave me an ASVAB, it's like a watered-down SAT and I couldn't copy on it.” He got a 20 out of 99 his first time but he wanted to be a Pararescueman. His score was so low he had to retake it, this time getting an 18 when he needed a 50. Around this time Goggins’ family were living off food stamps and were pretty poor. His mom saved up enough money for him to get a tutor for 1 hour a week, 4 hours a month, and he had 6 months to study for his last test and pass it.“You can only take the test 3 times and I studied my [censored] off and passed it. I got into the Air Force and realized there were more things in front of me.”

In all special operative training there is a course called “the water confidence course” where they you, and that's what gets everyone.”All our lives we've been breathing and they take that from you and they wanna see how comfortable you are underwater.” He wanted to quit so badly but he kept going. Six weeks into the program he took a blood test and found out he had sickle cell anemia, which kills people. He was pulled out of training for a week and he didn't want to get back into the water. Goggins thought that he could just go back into training, there were only 3 weeks left and he said, “you know I can do this, I can tough this out.” He talked to the the commanding officer of the program and was told he had to start from day 1. He broke. ”I broke, I couldn't imagine going back through that again.” He lied and said that the sickle cell was scaring him, but it was the water, and he quit.

From the age of 19-22, he did a job called a Tactical Air Control Party, or TAC-P, where you control fast movers behind enemy lines. A TACP Officer directs lethal and nonlethal joint firepower anywhere, anytime the battle calls for it. The reason he picked that job was because there was no water, he was afraid of the water so he avoided it. During that time frame, Goggins gained 125 pounds, going from 175 to 297.

After his contract was over with the Air Force he left and got a job with a company called Eco Lab spraying for cockroaches. He did this from 11 o'clock at night to 7 o'clock in the morning. ”I came home from Steak and Shake and got a big 42oz shake and walked across the street and got a box of mini doughnuts from 7-11 and I would drive home for 45 minutes hating life.” Goggins talks about how he came home and turned on his TV and took a shower. When he got out, he heard guys and watched a show and it made him reflect on how he was. ”It made me reflect big time on the piece of [censored] that I am and I am exactly what people said I was going to be.” Goggins talks about how he saw people in the water on the TV and how scared he was because that was his fear. He realized that people have fears that they don't want to face and they live with that their whole life and it's meaningless to live that way. He saw people going through “hell week class 224” and he said in the interview with Joe Rogan that: “I saw these guys just quitting and putting their helmets down and leaving and it made me reflect on my fears and insecurities.”

After that night he was motivated, so he called up the recruiters. He had prior service, so that did help, but once he said how much he weighed, they hung up. "[T]hey had a conversation to see if I was even qualified, and by the time I got to my weight the phone would hang up.” He tried getting into the Reserves, calling a recruiter up and even going to his office. The recruiter told him that he had to lose 106 pounds in less than 3 months. Discouraged, he said: “I can't do that,” and grabbed his chocolate milkshake shake and went back to Eco Labs. “I went to work and I hate cockroaches and I hit the motherload of cockroaches that night.” Goggins had a realization. ”I just sat there and said this is my life you're exactly what the [censored] everyone said you were going to be.”

That night he told himself he was not going to be this way anymore. He left all his stuff in the restaurant,got in his Eco Labs truck and went home. ”I started working out and I became the most obsessed person on planet Earth. I had to invent a guy that didn't exist, a guy that can take any pain, any suffering, any kind of judgment and be able to stand up and say go [censored] yourself.” Goggins talks about building a callous mind, he built that mind through suffering. “Everything that was inhuman to most people, I had to go do it.” He lost the weight and went back to the recruiter, eventually doing three Navy Seal “hell weeks” in one year. To this day is the only person to be in three “hell weeks” in one year. “The [censored] mind is what you created and I started opening different doors I didn't even know were even there I didn't know they even existed and the more doors that opened up I realized that my potential is damn near endless.”

And that's the story of how David Goggins became “Goggins.”