Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are doing something
a little different today. Usually we take a topic,
a historical event, a tech trend, a complex scientific
concept, and we try to make sense of it. Right.
But today we're trying to make sense of a person.
And honestly, I'm not sure if person is even
the right word for what we are looking at today.
No. We are looking at a phenomenon. We are talking
about David Goggins. It is a case study in the
extremes of human physiology and psychology.
That's really the only way to frame it. That
is putting it mildly. I mean, if you've been
on the Internet in the last decade, you know
the caricature. Oh, absolutely. You know the
memes. You know the guy screaming at you to stay
hard. The guy posting videos of himself sweating
through a shirt at 3 a .m. while you're still
hitting snooze. Right. It's easy to look at that
and just dismiss it as performative or just insanity.
Which, to be fair. is a natural reaction. When
you see someone operating so far outside the
standard deviation of normal human behavior,
the brain tries to categorize it. It tries to
label it as other. We think, oh, he's just built
different, or he's a genetic freak. Right, it
protects our own ego. Exactly, it protects our
own ego to think that way. It lets us off the
hook. Exactly. If he's a mutant, then I don't
have to feel bad about skipping the gym. But
that is why we're here. We have a massive stack
of sources today. A really deep stack. We have
the biographical data, the military service records,
which are, I mean, they're thicker than a phone
book, and race results ranging from the early
2000s all the way up to August 2025. And the
memoirs, of course. And we are also pulling heavily
from his memoirs, Can't Hurt Me and Never Finished.
And the mission for this deep dive is to strip
away the meme and look at the mechanic. We want
to understand the architecture of this transformation
because on paper this story is statistically
impossible. It really is. You have a man who
describes his childhood home as hell on earth.
He grew up with a severe learning disability
a speech impediment massive social anxiety and
he faced overt violent racism in a way that most
people can't even conceptualize. And yet this
same person ends up inducted into the International
Sports Hall of Fame and becomes the only member
of the U .S. Armed Forces to complete SEAL training,
Army Ranger school, and Air Force tactical air
controller training. It's the ultimate contradiction.
How do you go from a terrified, abused kid in
Buffalo, New York, to a man who runs 200 miles
for fun? Yeah. We're going to unpack the 40 %
rule. We're going to look at the neuroscience
of endurance. And we're going to look at his
recent feats as a 50 -year -old man. But you
have to start at the beginning. But to understand
the end result, we have to understand the starting
point. And the starting point is a place that
sounds lovely. Paradise Road. It really is a
master class in irony. Right. Paradise Road.
Williamsville, New York. 1981. It sounds like
the suburbs. It sounds like the American dream.
White kicket fences, green lawns. And for the
neighbors, it probably was. But inside the Goggins
house, the reality was a nightmare. His father,
Trennis Goggins, was a businessman. A successful
one at that. He owned a roller skating rink called
Skateland in East Buffalo. And this wasn't a
passive investment. This was the center of their
universe. The whole family's life revolved around
this place. Now, when I think of a six -year
-old, I think of Legos. I think of Saturday morning
cartoons. Learning to ride a bike. Exactly. What
was David Goggins doing at age six? He was working
the night shift. And I don't mean he was helping
out on weekends. I mean, he was effectively an
employee. An employee. His father had him down
at Skateland every night. His job was to organize
the roller skates. Hundreds of sweaty, heavy
skates. He was managing the concession stand.
He was cleaning toilets. Wow. And this would
go on until midnight, 1 .0 a .m., sometimes later.
A six -year -old. Until 1 .0 a .m. And then he
was expected to go to school the next morning.
So you have a first grader who is chronically
sleep deprived. Chronically. But the fatigue
was actually the least of his problems. The primary
environment at Skateland and at home was fear.
Trenas Goggins was extremely abusive. And the
sources are very clear on this. Yes. The sources
describe beatings that were not just discipline,
but distinct violent assaults on David and his
mother. There's a detail in the memoir where
he talks about the sound of the garage door opening.
Just that mechanical hum of the door going up
was enough to trigger a panic attack because
it meant his father was home. And this is where
we need to stop and get technical because people
hear abuse or rough childhood and they think
of it. In emotional terms. Right. They think,
oh, that's sad. That's sad. Exactly. But we need
to look at the biology. We need to talk about
the HPA axis. The HPA axis. Break that down for
us. The hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis.
It's the body's central stress response system.
In a healthy scenario, say, a saber -toothed
tiger jumps out at you. Your hypothalamus signals
the pituitary, which signals the adrenals to
dump cortisol and adrenaline. Fight or flight.
Right. Your heart rate spikes, your focus narrows,
you fight or you flee. The tiger leaves, the
hormones drop, and you return to baseline. That's
how it's supposed to work. Like a thermostat
regulating itself. It gets hot, the AC kicks
on, it cools down. Exactly. A perfect analogy.
But for Goggins, the tiger never left. He was
living in a state of what we call... Toxic stress.
Toxic stress. When a developing brain, and you
have to remember he is six, seven, eight years
old, is bathed in cortisol for years on end,
it physically changes the architecture of the
brain. Oh, so? What does it do? The amygdala,
which is the fear center, becomes enlarged and
hypersensitive. It's like a smoke detector that
goes off if you light a candle. Constantly on
high alert. Constantly. And the prefrontal cortex.
That's the logic center, right? That's the part
responsible for executive function, learning,
impulse control. That part actually shrinks or
has impaired development under chronic stress.
So when we read that Goggins had a severe stutter.
Or that he was failing in school or that he had
this, you know, nervous energy. That wasn't a
character flaw. It wasn't that he was dumb. It
was that his hardware had been rewired for survival,
not for algebra. His body was prioritizing staying
alive over learning multiplication tables. That
reframes everything. He wasn't just a kid who
wouldn't pay attention. He was a kid whose brain
was screaming, danger, 247. Precisely. And eventually
his mother found a way to escape. She took David
and his brother and they fled to Brazil, Indiana.
So they got away? They got away from the father.
But the damage to the brain doesn't just undo
itself because he moved zip codes. The stutter
remained. The anxiety remained. And the education
gap. A huge gap. Because he had missed so much
school working at the rink, he was functionally
illiterate. When he enrolled in third grade in
Indiana, he was diagnosed with a learning disability.
So you have a kid who's... traumatized, can't
speak without stuttering, feel stupid because
he's years behind. And on top of all of that.
And then you drop him into Brazil, Indiana in
the 1980s. Which brings us to the next layer
of the crucible, racism. The sources are pretty
graphic here. And again, I think we have a tendency
to sanitize history. To think of the KKK as something
from the 1920s or 1950s. Not at all. But we're
talking about the 80s and early 90s here. Yes.
There was a visible active Klan presence in the
area. Goggins wasn't just dealing with microaggressions.
No, this is explicit. He was dealing with explicit
threats. He recalls finding a note on his Spanish
notebook, a notebook he needed for class, that
had a drawing of a person hanging from a tree
and said, Nigel Sick, we're going to kill you.
Imagine being a teenager walking into a classroom
and seeing that on your desk. The psychological
weight of that is immense. And at age 16, he
walked out to his car and found a racial slur
spray painted across the door. So it's just an
accumulation of obstacles. A mountain of them.
Poverty, illiteracy, the trauma of the abuse.
And now... The constant threat of violence just
for existing in his own skin. Most people in
that scenario is essentially collapse. They fall
into substance abuse or they drop out of society.
It's a survival mechanism to just go numb. So
what is the lifeline? Where does the shift happen?
Because he didn't just drift. He didn't end up
a statistic. The sources mentioned his grandfather.
Right. His grandfather had served in the Air
Force. He was a cook, but he carried himself
with this immense dignity. What was it about
him? He kept his house spotless. He had discipline.
And I think for a young David Goggins who was
drowning in chaos, that military order looked
like a life raft. It was structure. It was structure.
It was respect. And before his freshman year
of high school, Goggins attended a pararescue
jump orientation course. And that feels like
the first glimpse of the future. The first little
spark. A tiny spark. But it wasn't a straight
line, was it? I think that's the movie version.
He sees the military. He joins up. Credits roll.
But the reality was way, way messier. Oh, it
was a disaster. A complete false start. Let's
move into part two then, the military transformation.
Because the story we usually hear is David Goggins,
Navy SEAL. But he didn't start in the Navy. No,
not even close. He originally applied to the
Air Force Pararescue PJ training. PJs, yeah.
These are the elite of the elite in the Air Force.
Absolutely. Their job is to drop into combat
zones and rescue downed pilots. Incredibly demanding.
He got accepted into training. He was pushing
through. But then he hit a medical wall. What
happened? He was diagnosed with sickle cell trait.
Now, I want to pause here. Because I've heard
this story before. And people often gloss over
sickle cell trait like it's just a minor allergy.
It's not. In a high -intensity training environment,
this is serious business. It is potentially lethal.
Sickle cell trait means that while you don't
have the full -blown disease, you carry one gene
for it. Under extreme conditions, dehydration,
high altitude, intense physical exertion, your
red blood cells can deform. They turn into a
sickle shape instead of a round disc. And round
discs flow through blood vessels. Sickles get
stuck. Exactly. They clog the capillaries. This
can lead to ischemia, lack of oxygen to the muscles,
and eventually rhabdomyolysis. which is where
the muscle tissue breaks down and poisons the
kidneys. So when the doctors flagged him, it
wasn't a suggestion. It was a safety stop. It
was a full stop. For his own safety, they pulled
him. So he's pulled from pararescue. But this
is interesting. He didn't leave the service.
He didn't quit. He pivoted. He went into the
TACP, the tactical air control party. He served
there from 1994 to 1999. Can we define TACP for
the listener? Because the military loves its
acronyms. Is this a desk job? Not at all. A TACP
is essentially the guy on the ground who is embedded
with army or marine units. And his job is to
coordinate air power. He's the guy on the radio.
He is on the radio calling in airstrikes. I have
enemies at these coordinates. Drop the bomb here.
It's a serious combat role. But for Goggins,
it wasn't the elite role he had envisioned. He
felt like he had settled. Deeply. He felt like
a failure. Okay, so he serves his time. He gets
out. And this is the part of the story that I
find most relatable, honestly. It's the most
human part, for sure. He leaves the Air Force.
And where does he end up? He isn't running marathons.
He isn't fighting bad guys. He is working as
an exterminator. It's the definition of rock
bottom for someone with his ambition. He's driving
around spraying for cockroaches in restaurants
at night. And physically. What did he look like?
He had let himself go completely. He was powerlifting
a bit, but mostly he was eating. The source says
he was around 300 pounds at his heaviest. 300
pounds? He was drinking chocolate shakes. He
was eating boxes of donuts. He was living a very
comfortable, very standard life of consumption.
And then the moment happens. He sees a documentary
about Navy SEALs on the Discovery Channel. He
sees guys suffering in the mud, carrying boats
on their heads. And something clicks. He decides,
I want to do that. Which is an insane thought
for a 300 -pound exterminator to have. Right.
I mean, he goes to the recruiter. And then a
recruiter probably takes one look at him and
thinks he's joking. Most of them did. They laughed
him out of the office. He went to several. But
he found one. He found one who checked the regulations.
The recruiter said, look, you are way over the
weight limit. The cutoff for your height is 191
pounds. Goggins was 297. So he has to lose 106
pounds. That's 38 kilograms. And here's the kicker.
Due to age restrictions and training class start
dates, he had three months to do it. Okay, wait.
I have to call time out here. 106 pounds in three
months. 90 days. That's over a pound a day every
single day. For 90 days straight, that sounds
fatal. Sounds impossible. Or fatal. How is that
physically possible? It borders on fatal. Honestly,
if a doctor looked at his regimen, they would
have hospitalized him. We actually have his daily
routine from the logs. Let's hear it. He was
waking up at 4 .30 a .m. He would eat a banana.
That was breakfast. A banana. That's it. Then
he would get on a stationary bike for two hours.
Just off a banana. Just a banana. Yeah. Then
he would study for the ASVAB test because remember,
he had to retake the academic test to qualify.
Right. He was still dealing with the learning
disability. Exactly. Then he would drive to the
local pool and swim for two miles. Then he would
go to the gym for a high rep, low weight session.
We're talking sets of 100 reps on the bench press
just to burn glycogen. Just burning calories.
Purely burning. Then another run in the evening.
His calorie intake must have been practically
zero compared to his output. It was a massive
deficit. He was metabolizing his own body. He
wasn't building the Goggins body we see on Instagram
today, the ripped muscular physique. He was deteriorating.
He describes it as being physically broken. He
was depressed. He was crying daily. But he viewed
the suffering as the tuition fee. What do you
mean by that? He believed that he had to kill
the old David Goggins, the soft, undisciplined
one, to build the new one. The suffering was
the price of admission. And miraculously, he
makes the wait. He gets into Buddy's basic underwater
demolition SEAL training. And he graduates with
Class 235 in 2001. He gets through Hell Week.
He gets his trident. He's assigned to SEAL Team
5 and serves in Iraq. Now, for 99 .9 % of people...
That is the end of the story. That's the mountaintop.
You became a SEAL. You reached the pinnacle.
You write a book about being a SEAL and you retire.
But Goggins keeps looking for other walls to
run through. This is a detail that often gets
overlooked in the Running Man narrative. In 2004,
after already being a combat -tested SEAL, you
went to Army Ranger School. Why? I mean, why
would a SEAL go to Ranger School? It's a leadership
school. It's considered one of the toughest in
the world. But culturally, you have to understand
the rivalry. Navy SEALs and Army Rangers. They
respect each other, but they are competitors.
For a SEAL to walk into Ranger school, he has
a target on his back. Well, for sure. The Ranger
instructors, the RIs, are going to ride him harder
than anyone else. They want to see if the SEAL
guy breaks. They probably wanted to see him quit
so they could brag about it for the next 10 years.
Exactly. But he didn't just pass. He won the
Enlisted Honor Man Award. Whoa. And even more
impressive, he received a 100 % peer evaluation.
That is huge. Explain how peer evils work in
that environment, because it's not like a corporate
performance review. Not at all. In elite military
schools, peer evils are everything. At the end
of a phase, everyone in your squad ranks everyone
else. Okay. If you're a gray man, someone who
just blends in, or if you're selfish, or if you're
physically fit but you don't help your buddy
carry his rucksack when he's struggling... Your
peers will torch you. They will torch you. They
will rank you low. To get 100 % means that every
single person in his squad ranked him as the
number one guy they would want to go to war with.
That destroys the idea that he's just... A selfish
individualist who's only in it for himself. Completely.
You don't get 100 % pure evils if you aren't
carrying the heavy end of the log for the team.
Precisely. It shows that his transformation wasn't
just physical. It was a character transformation.
He had become a leader. So he's a SEAL. Yeah.
He's an Army Ranger Honor Man. He has served
in Iraq. By 2005, he has built this incredible
resume. Unbelievable. But then tragedy strikes.
And this seems to be the catalyst for the second
life of David Goggins, The Runner. Yes. This
is Operation Red Wings. June 2005. Most people
know this from the movie Lone Survivor. A SEAL
reconnaissance team was ambushed in Afghanistan.
A rescue helicopter, a Chinook, was shot down
trying to save him. 19 Americans were killed.
And many of those men were Goggins' friends.
He had gone through training with them. He knew
their families. He knew their kids. So that news
hits? When that news hit, grief can manifest
in many ways. For some, it's paralysis. You shut
down. Right. For Goggins, it was mobilization.
He wanted to do something for the families of
the fallen. He focused on the Special Operations
Warrior Foundation. Right. It's a charity that
provides college scholarships and grants to the
children of special ops soldiers who die in the
line of duty. And Goggins wanted to raise money.
Significant money. And he figured the best way
to get people to open their wallets was to do
something so extreme, so impossible, that they
couldn't look away. So his brain went to, I should
run an ultramarathon. Had he run a marathon before?
No, he had never run a marathon. He hated running.
Hated it. Loathed it. He was a power lifter at
this point. He weighed over 200 pounds again,
but this time it was pure muscle. He was built
for kicking down doors, not running for 24 hours.
But he finds a race to San Diego one day. A 24
-hour race on a one -mile looped course. And
he enters. With what training? He enters with
no training, no run strategy. He basically just
burned a lawn chair, some water, and a box of
crackers. You're kidding me. No, that was his
nutrition plan. And this is where the physiology
of just toughing it out hits a wall. You can't
just willpower your way through 100 miles without
consequences. No. The source material is brutal
on this race. By mile 70, he was destroyed. But
we need to be specific about the damage. He wasn't
just tired. What was happening to his body? He
had broken all the small metatarsal bones in
his feet due to the stress of carrying 200 pounds
of body weight that far. Wow. His kidneys were
failing. He was peeing brown, the color of Coca
-Cola. That's rhabdomyolysis again. Yes. His
muscles were breaking down and myoglobin was
clogging his kidneys. He was in full organ distress.
And this is the part that defies medical logic.
He didn't stop. He sat in his chair for a bit
and then he got up. He walked. He shuffled. He
finished 101 miles in 19 hours and 6 minutes.
He destroyed himself. He did. But he qualified
for the Boston Marathon. And more importantly,
he put himself on the radar for the Badwater
135. The Badwater 135. We need to explain this
race because 135 sounds like a nice, crisp number.
But the context is insane. It is widely considered
the toughest foot race on the planet. Where is
it? It starts in Badwater Basin in Death Valley,
the lowest point in North America, and ends at
the trailhead of Mount Whitney. It's 135 miles
nonstop. In July. In Death Valley. What are the
temperatures? It can hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's 54 Celsius. The heat is so intense that
the asphalt reaches 170 degrees. You could cook
on it. If you stand still. Your shoes will literally
melt and stick to the road. Runners have to run
on the white line of the highway because the
blacktop is too hot. And Goggins decides, I'm
going to do that. In 2006, he gets invited. He
finishes fifth overall. Which is absurd for a
rookie in a race like that. It is unheard of.
These are professional ultra runners he's competing
against. Skinny, efficient running machines who
have trained for years for this one race. And
he's this hulking seal. Right. Then he comes
back in 2007 and finishes third. He took a long
break, came back in 2013 and finished 18th. And
through all of this, through these events, he
raised over $2 million for the Warrior Foundation.
But he didn't stop at running. He did the Ultraman
in 2006, a 320 -mile triathlon in Hawaii, and
placed second. But the one that always gets me,
the one that makes my hands hurt just thinking
about it, is the pull -up record. Ah, yes. The
Guinness World Record for the most pull -ups
in 24 hours. I can do maybe 10 on a good day
if the wind is at my back. Goggins wanted to
break the record, which was 4 ,020 at the time.
Now, this wasn't a one and done. He actually
failed his first two attempts. Really? I didn't
know that. Yes. The first time, he tore his hands
apart so badly he couldn't grip the bar. The
skin just ripped off. The second time, he got
ribdomyolysis again and had to stop. His body
just shut down. But on the third attempt? On
the third attempt in 2013, he did it. He completed
4 ,030 pull -ups in 17 hours. 4 ,030. Just imagine
the friction, the sheer repetition. Up. Down,
up, down, a thousand times. The skin on his hands
was gone. He had to have his hands taped and
re -taped constantly. It's a level of monotony
that would break most people's minds before their
bodies gave out. And that brings us to the why.
We've covered the biographical what. He ran this.
He lifted that. Right. But the reason Goggins
resonates with millions of people, the reason
we're talking about him today, isn't just because
he's fit. It's because of his philosophy. Exactly.
Let's dive into part four. the philosophy he
has distilled his life experience into a few
core concepts primarily in his books can't hurt
me and never finished and the centerpiece is
the 40 rule The 40 % rule. I love this concept,
but I want to make sure we aren't just reciting
a motivational poster. Break down what this actually
means. Okay. The 41 % rule states that when your
mind tells you that you are done, that you are
completely exhausted, that you cannot take another
step, you are actually only at 40 % of your total
capacity. Only 40%. So that feeling of, I'm dying,
I have to stop. That's a lie. It's a protective
mechanism. It's not a lie in that you feel it,
but it's not an accurate reflection of your physical
reserves. So what's happening scientifically?
In sports science, this aligns with something
called the central governor theory, which was
pioneered by Dr. Tim Noakes. Central governor
theory. Is that different from your muscles just
running out of fuel, like glycogen depletion?
Completely. There is peripheral fatigue, where
your muscles literally have no glycogen left.
You bonk. You collapse. But central fatigue is
your brain telling you to stop to preserve a
safety margin. It's a preemptive shutdown. Precisely.
Think of it like a car. A sports car might have
an engine capable of doing 180 miles per hour,
but the manufacturer puts an electronic governor
on it to limit it to 120. Why? To save the engine
from stress and keep the driver safe. So the
car can go faster, but the software won't let
it. Exactly. Our brains are the software. They
want to preserve energy for survival. They want
to prevent injury. So they send pain signals,
doubt and fatigue signals way before we are actually
empty. Goggins is arguing that the governor's
calibrated way too conservatively for most of
us. So the low fuel light comes on when you still
have half a tank. Right. But most of us pull
over the second the light blinks, Noggins is
saying. Ignore the light. Find out what's really
in the tank. Keep driving. OK, but. Playing devil's
advocate here. Pain exists for a reason. Of course.
If I touch a hot stove, the pain tells me to
move my hand so I don't burn off my skin. If
I'm running and my knee feels like it's going
to explode, isn't that a valid warning? How do
you distinguish between the governor and actual
injury? That is the controversy and that is the
danger. And it's a critical distinction. Goggins
argues you have to callous the mind. Callous
the mind? You have to expose yourself to small,
controlled doses of suffering, taking a cold
shower, running an extra mile when you want to
stop, doing the dishes when you're tired, so
that you learn the difference. You learn to recognize
the voice of discomfort versus the signal of
real structural damage. But he's crossed that
line. But he admits he has broken his body many
times finding that line. He doesn't recommend
that for everyone. The point is to push the boundary,
not obliterate it. There is a fascinating outside
perspective on this, too. We have the source
Living with a Seal by Jesse Itzler. This is a
great sanity check on the Goggins mythology.
Right. Who is Jesse Itzler? Jesse Itzler is a
billionaire entrepreneur. He co -founded Marquis
Jet. He's married to Sarah Blakely, who founded
Spanx. He's a very successful guy. And he saw
Goggins at a race. He saw Goggins at that San
Diego 24 -hour race. He saw this guy with broken
feet. duct taped up, peeing blood, eating crackers,
and just keeping on moving. And his reaction
was? Itzler thought, I need some of that energy.
I'm too comfortable. So he hired Goggins to live
in his house for a month. And it wasn't a vacation.
No. The condition was that Itzler had to do whatever
Goggins said whenever he said it. Run in the
middle of the night, do burpees until he puked,
jump into frozen lakes in winter. So what does
that book tell us? It verifies the authenticity.
Goggins isn't just turning it on for the Instagram
camera. He lives this lifestyle of constant discomfort
24 -7. The book says he would sometimes just
sleep on the floor of the guest room instead
of the bed just to not get soft. Which brings
us to the question of... Sustainability. You
hear all this and you think, OK, the guy's going
to burn out. He's going to have a heart attack
at 45. You can't keep that up. The adrenaline
will wear off. The body will break. But if we
look at part five of our deep dive recent feats
in legacy, the data implies he's actually getting
better at managing it. It really does. He didn't
peak in his 30s during his SEAL career. No. In
2016. Post -military career, he won the Infinitis
88K. He won the Music City Ultra 50K. He won
the Strolling Jim 40 miler. And then in 2020,
he ran the Moab 240. 240 miles. That is almost
400 kilometers through the desert and mountains
of Utah. He placed second. His time was 63 hours
and 21 minutes. Wait, 63 hours? He ran for two
and a half days straight with almost no sleep,
maybe an hour or two total. And now looking at
the most recent data. we have from August 2025.
David Goggins was born in 1975, so he is 50 years
old. 50 years old, half a century. And he completed
the Bigfoot 200 mountain run in Washington State.
This is a brutal course, 46 ,000 feet of elevation
game. That's like climbing Mount Everest one
and a half times from sea level. The stats are
incredible for his age group. He finished in
66 hours, four minutes. He placed 23rd overall.
At 50 years old. At 50 years old. Competing against
20 -somethings and 30 -somethings who do this
professionally. It proves that his mindset isn't
just a short -term burst of adrenaline. It's
a sustainable operating system. He calls it the
old man game now. What does he mean by that?
He has found a way to manage the wear and tear.
He spends hours every day stretching. He's meticulous
about recovery. He takes care of the machine
so he can continue to torture it. And the recognition
has followed. He was inducted into the International
Sports Hall of Fame in 2019. Runner's World named
him a hero of running. Which is ironic because
he often says he hates running. That is the best
part. He doesn't do it because he enjoys the
runner's high. He doesn't do it for the endorphins.
No, he does it because he hates it. And doing
what you hate builds the callus on your mind.
Explain that. He believes that if you only do
what you enjoy, you are weak. You are unprepared
for life because life will inevitably force you
to do things you hate. Pay taxes, go to a funeral,
deal with a difficult boss. So by choosing his
suffering, he's training for the suffering he
can't choose. And that connects back to the beginning.
The scared kid in Buffalo. The kid who was abused.
The kid who was told he was stupid. He built
this armor, this David Goggins persona, piece
by piece, rep by rep, by doing things he was
afraid to do. He took the toxic stress that...
broke him as a child and transmuted it into fuel.
Yeah. He took the fight or flight response that
was haywired in his brain and just decided to
fight every single time. So what does this all
mean for us, for the person listening who isn't
going to run 200 miles through the mountains
of Washington? Right. Who isn't going to tape
their hands and do 4 ,000 pull -ups? I think
the takeaway is about the governor. We all have
one. It may not be screaming at us during an
ultramarathon, but it's there. It's the voice
in our head. It's the voice that says, this is
too hard, or I'm not smart enough, or I've done
enough for today. The voice that says, I'll do
it tomorrow. Right. Goggins is living proof that
the voice is a liar. It is a safety mechanism,
sure, but it is holding you back from your actual
potential. So it's not about being a SEAL. No.
The 40 % rule applies to a boring spreadsheet
you have to finish for work. It applies to having
a difficult conversation with your spouse that
you've been putting off. It applies to staying
patient with your toddler when they're having
a meltdown. When you think, I have nothing left.
When you think, I am absolutely done, I cannot
give another ounce. Goggins is arguing you actually
have 60 % left in the tank. It's about recalibrating
your baseline. What you think is your max is
probably just your comfortable. Exactly. And
once you realize that, the world opens up. Because
the barriers are mostly in your head. That brings
us to our final thought. We always like to leave
you with something to chew on. Right. If we accept
the premise of the 40 % rule, that we leave massive
amounts of potential on the table every single
day, then the question isn't about running. It's
about capacity. So here is the question for you
listening. What is the one thing you gave up
on this week? A task, a conversation, a workout,
because you told yourself you were done because
you hit a wall. And if you knew for a fact that
you were only 40 % of the way to your actual
limit, would you have stopped or would you have
found that other gear? That is the question to
ask yourself the next time you feel like quitting.
As always, all the sources, the race results,
the medical breakdowns of Rabdo, and the book
details are in the show notes. Go check them
out. And stay uncomfortable. We'll see you in
the next Deep Dive.