DG Mental Toughness

The speaker discusses the impact of their book, highlighting the educational value of sharing their personal history. They talk about the challenges they faced, including running eight 100-mile races in eight consecutive weekends. The speaker emphasizes the importance of honesty and vulnerability in their storytelling, as it allows readers to relate to their struggles. They discuss the psychological warfare of life and the importance of overcoming one's own insecurities. The speaker also reflects on the purity of physical pursuits, which dissolve social order and perceptions. They recount their own journey of overcoming personal hardships and the transformative power of physical training. The speaker emphasizes that working out is not just about physical fitness but also about mental toughness and building resilience. They share how they found self-esteem and stopped caring about others' judgments by focusing on personal growth. The book is outstanding and you know it's it's it's more than just sitting with like sitting across you and you telling your story is one thing but this long detailed history of how you became to be the person you became I think it's very educational for people because they can realize like oh he wasn't always this guy right this is what's fucked up about people like you see a guy who's like you who runs I mean how many ultra marathons did you run in a row you were at some I think I ran eight hundreds and eight weekends in a row to stop and think about that ladies and gentlemen eight hundreds means eight 100 mile races eight weekends in a row a hundred mile race will put you out for fucking six months right you know when you ran eight of them eight weekends or what the fuck it's a fucking insane accomplishment it was nuts you think about a person like that you think of them as in this like static fully formed version right you don't usually get to see and especially someone like you who you went into so much depth about your rise and fall and rise and fall it wasn't like a straight linear process now between you getting inspired and you becoming this bad motherfucker no it wasn't like what that show called that that Will Smith plays that that black guy who kind of makes it in in the financial world Pursuit of Happiness I never saw that yeah it's a great movie it wasn't like Pursuit of Happiness man like like where the guy struggles and he gets over it and he makes it yeah I fell on my ass I thought I'd got the top Mount Everest and Mount Everest just fucking slide right underneath me man I was like god dog I start from scratch again scratch became my friend literally man so you know that's that's how you put in the book man just going up going down going up just a real raw version of how my life was in it was so in-depth to go back through your life with a fine-toothed comb that I almost got embarrassed even put it out there to people yeah that's what I understand man like even me right now to talk to you I'm in the car for a fucking hour getting pumped up because I'm a shy introverted leave me alone type of guy like I'm still that motherfucker who is six years old you know at a play who can't say his line because I'm no longer stutter in front of five people so I walk off the stage that's still me so every day I'm fighting that dude so people think oh my god man you're in a podcast look so crazy so evil no I'm trying to be locked into Joe so my mind isn't rough thing let's run out the damn door because people are watching me on the fucking podcast I want to open this damn door and get out of here man so that's a real me so I'm not sadistic man focused on what I have to do to stay locked into the game of life and that's what and that's why I tell people man I I go there I go there that's one of the reasons why this book is so good is because you're so honest about your vulnerabilities and how you overcome them and for people that see someone who's a beast who's done great things you just assume that they're different than you right but then you hear about your insecurities and your pitfalls and all the things that went wrong with you and you realize what god damn it those are the same things that go wrong with me like maybe I have that inside of me and I've just never summoned it right and I'll tell you this I started really realizing that when I started overcoming myself I started getting around these real alpha males these hard hard men and I always put people way above me when I was growing up like my god they had to have a lot more than me to get to where they're at and a lot of them did but once you get around the the best of the best of the best people you can kind of start breaking them down and realize the man you you're just as fucked up as me like like we all have but all you did was you hit it better your your your upbringing your mom and dad your society the way you were raised it hit it better than mine you weren't the only black kid or there was like five in a school you know I can't hide going through buzz I was only black you can't hide but I started realizing just because I look different than you a lot of you my first cannot either so I started giving me courage to watch some people that were all have a story we all have a jacked up life in one way or another some of us don't have the guts to talk about it though and that's where I found the guts to talk about mine well there's some there's purity in physical pursuits right because it doesn't matter what your social status is it doesn't matter how people perceive you when it when it comes down to how long can you stay in that pool when it comes down to how far can you run when it comes down to how much can you push yourself past the part where you want to quit how far can you keep going there's a purity in that that it dissolves social order all that bullshit all the what people think about you goes out the window it's what who are you right now that's right who are you right now that's a true statement man and I look at it as psychological warfare and that's where I started learning that that life is one big psychological warfare that you play on yourself you play on yourself man the most important conversation ever had my is with myself and the shit I'll tell myself was so fucked up it was so wrong it was so misguided and other people start to write that dialogue for you also and start to be what you say to yourself every single day and I started creating a whole nother warfare a whole another battle started becoming I think oh hang on a second guys you have these tools you have these tools your life was basically the perfect the perfect grounds for training for where you need to go in your life all the beatings all the all the bullying all that you know you going through learn disabilities all the struggles it was the absolute perfect training ground for you to go to where you need to go and that's how I started looking at my life versus what was me poopy pants kick a rock down the street mentality it was not God just hooked you right the fuck up he hooked you right up man with the perfect place you were training for the first 18 19 20 so you were training for this stuff man you have the advantage of everybody else versus my god they're so above me they came from a great family mom and dad love them they didn't have a learned struggle no man your struggle is what made you who you are now so I started flipping this into a whole different I thought of being a master of what I was scared of I was scared of my mind and I became a literally a master of that mind and that's what now from now on it sets me apart from most people I started diving into that well that is a big part of the stories when you go over your childhood and you know your abusive father and then having this great guy that was going to become your stepdad and then he gets murdered it's like right when you're about to get out of it everything looks good boom and then he gets murdered it's like these things really did sort of set you up to start from scratch again and just go okay Roger that we start from scratch and now you have that attitude you developed it through all of these horrible personal experiences all the trials and tribulations all the evil shit that people try to do to you that sort of set you up to be able to deal in a way that a lot of people can't well I used to look at my life from a different vantage point and when you're when you're in all the muck and you're just walking in muck and walking in muck and walking in muck you don't see that if you look off to the fucking left of the muck there's a sidewalk brother get off get off of it you have your head down looking in this muck once I saw the sidewalk got the sidewalk I got a little break and I got different vantage point and then from the sidewalk I found a cliff then I found a mountain I got way up high on top of my life and look back down on it and said okay I gotta figure this out man I'm not going anywhere I'm starting to lie I'm starting like so we have a messed up foundation I started lying about everything I wanted people to like me I wanted to be accepted in some society of life some social society and I I say man this isn't the right way I messed up here I messed up here I messed up everywhere and so I realized the worst thing that happened to me is I lost myself I never had myself never found myself had no self-esteem so I knew through working out and through learning God it took a lot for me to learn also I started finding self-esteem once I found that that's when doors start opening up I started I stopped caring about people that what they thought being judged wow if I say this if I started right now are you make fun of me I stopped caring about that and that's my life started really changing for me slowly but surely that you know it's such an important point when you're talking about the working out because a lot of people when they think about working out they think of it as being a physical thing right no no I did it for mental yeah people are saying my god like no don't don't look at it like I didn't care about losing weight I keep up being the fastest person I keep up I wasn't making the Olympics I wasn't going to pros I could barely read and write when I was in a junior in high school I wasn't going anywhere I saw working out as a way for me to build calluses on my mind I had to callous over the victims mentality so I watched these movies I you know I talked about Rocky last time I was on here I always equated training to mental toughening like it was a brutal people waking up early and doing all these things they look it looks horrible I'm like wow I gotta start doing that not to get better bigger and stronger but that is what's gonna build me that looks uncomfortable that looks brutal and getting up early I don't want to do that some of this long list of things I don't want to do and through that I found myself I sort of get like I'm like you guys aren't doing this shit in high school you guys are getting up at five o'clock in the morning we're running over here in this golf course so I started seeing myself very differently than the average human being I was like hang on a second I have something they don't have and that's how I started to develop these things through working out it was this great never-ending work ethic and through work ethic I developed self-esteem now is this something that you learn is this something you learn yourself from from exercise yourself or is it something you had read or heard about like what made you equate this doing this and doing these difficult things physically to mental toughness to being this is the discipline that you need in order to get your life out of the situation you're in so I never read anything you know I could barely read you know so I wasn't reading back then I just saw I watched a lot of movies and I was really big into visualization and I always equated working out to struggle and I struggled my whole life but I ran from it so I started realizing I gotta start facing the struggle and I gotta be mentally strong for the struggle so that's why I started coming up like I'm training for life mentally I'm training for life I'm not training for like you said to lift 400 pounds and I found out on my own pretty much is that through this through through discipline through self-discipline through repetition through tons of repetition the same thing that you don't want to do that's it that's the key thing through repetition the things you don't want to do you develop mental like like an armor for your mind start to armor your mind you might say okay we suffer we suffer every day it's what we do we do stuff that sucks every day so then the suck stuff comes you're ready for it and that's how I started coming up you know I just started being very uncomfortable now it's like a just a way of life it's a crazy thing to figure out though it's like the you figured it out and you didn't just figure it out you embraced it like when you were talking about your senior year of high school when you're talking about your mirror being your accountability mirror like you had a radical shift like you just decided to not be a fucking loser and to start tightening up and start holding yourself accountable and and get ready for things so I had this my whole life and I mean I don't know if people believe in God or what I don't care what you believe in there's been this unrelenting voice in my head we all have this voice it's the right or wrong voice and a lot of times that voice guides us into comfort and my voice guided me to comfort a lot but I had this other voice I heard my whole life say hey motherfucker what are you doing no man we gotta go over here we gotta go over here to that rock pile over in the fucking corner where nobody's at that's that's where victories at we're over that corner so this voice was giving me all these answers not I wasn't real smart kid growing up but I had this crazy voice in my head saying over there is where the fucking answers are and I won't listen to it cuz over there was pain over there was me looking in the mirror over there was me being accountable for all these things I went through my life you know people put them on me it's not mine to own and I don't want to go over there by myself but I had to and this voice was guiding me there now it's God would everyone call it but that's what that's what it was in me do you think that's just what you when you separate yourself from your ego and what you were your insecurities and all you like if you were giving yourself advice you would say that's what the thing is to do so do you think that's what it was like your subconscious or so you stripped away from all the bullshit when you couldn't lie to yourself because it's a voice in your head it's exactly it it's exactly it cuz it knew it knew I was a character I was trying to find myself through a character I was making different hairstyles and sagging my pants and I was off I was off man I was I was a clown I was a clown and I was like this is not this is not where you're supposed to be in life man it's ugly when you look in that dirty mirror and you're trying to do a new hairstyle to go to school you know I had a hairstyle one time where I shaved the top of my head you know how old men had the hair like leaving their head yeah yeah so I went to school with hair on the side of my head and in my back and I shaved the whole top of my head I just I went to school like that you know and then I had like what did the kids say I wanted I don't remember they said but it was I was just a funny dude oh you know so that was my thing I was a funny dude that came into school like crisscross came out when I was in high school so my pants were backwards that's you know I'm gonna pass backwards sag down past my ass crack shirt turned backwards with a toothbrush in my mouth with the reverse part reverse part is your head is shaved and you have some hair on top just a little piece of hair versus like a like a part right hair the part was on a bald head so it was just I would sit at home instead of studying I would think about what can I do to impress a motherfucker at school and that became my life and that is it's a long road to hoe to get to the guy who says now you don't ever smile on any podcast look so serious I look at that shit like you motherfuckers have no idea who I am who where I've come from to get here today you could have probably been an entertainer like you probably because you were doing all that kind of shit I have some jokes Joe so what people read in this book can't hurt me it's a sad story it's a horrible story it's a tragic story it's a story that made me who I am today but you have to learn to laugh at yourself too once you once you go through that shit now so there's a lot of parts in there was a lot of me against a lot of white people you know and I have a routine that I won't do so people who hire me to speak I'm not gonna do the routine I often do it sometimes think about it I was a 36 black guy to go through SEAL training okay not how many people out of probably looking at probably 11 12 to make it through probably 13,000 SEALs I was probably the 36 I was a 36 black guy to make it through and over just like the like the 1940s you know you're looking at almost 70 years Wow yeah so you know you know you know do the math on that so there's not a lot of black guys and so I take that and I make a nice comedy skit out of that shit you know like like like the first time they tied me up and threw me it's called drown proofing yeah so I'm negative boring as hell you know me too oh I'm related to that big time yes you want a few white boys man they're that negative boy you sit like a rock like a rock and that's hard so imagine them getting your hands and feet tying your ass up and throwing the fucking water say swim ah it was like throwing a cat in the water with fucking a brick on him so I was just losing my fucking mind so it's something I had to get over you know and I found humor I found humor in my suffering I'm like motherfuck what are you doing out here goggins like this is crazy like you're you're literally trying to reinvent the wheel I was trying to reinvent my mind I was trying to reinvent my mind and I used every single tactic possible to do that I didn't want to live you know live in this world where I was a fake human being anymore and I was tired of blaming everybody for all that my dad beat me this happened only my dad ran prostitutes man my dad literally snatched the soul out of my mom like my mom is still battling like that's my mom left my dad and this one I'll talk about in the book she got married three times for a total of six months you know I don't go there and I'm going to talk about the guy she married so this woman was she's beautiful she's she's so smart all this stuff man this guy literally stripped her soul away and I was a young kid watching it and I had no soul to begin with in my in my brother he has a story that he could write eight books you know my dad just came through and just washed us all clean so to to to come out around he died about four years ago four or five years ago not for sure I didn't go to the funeral but I forgave him so I saw my dad through an eight-year-old's eyes so we left when I was eight and then at 22 I went back to see him through a grown man's eyes knew the same person I remembered but I had to you can't live with hate you cannot move forward as much as that guy tried to ruin all of our lives that's where I came from I had to figure out the origin of where I started from so when I was going back through my life trying to fix who I am the fucked-up person I was like if your knee hurts is usually not your fucking knee that's hurting there's something else man like it could be a tight quad it could be the right leg if it's a left leg you gotta find out the origin of where all this shit began and it was him so I had to go back to where you know my roots in the origin of all this happened and it's hard to do that did you make peace with him I'm a big piece with so we didn't have a peaceful conversation we you know we we left very granimal he's a he's a he's a vicious man he was a vicious man I mean medieval motherfucker so I had become a medieval motherfucker at that time I was 22 and I was a big boy and so I was no longer the guy who was afraid it was now like hey I want to kill you type of shit and we were sitting at Denny's after an all-night skate or whatever help but no he owned bars and skating rinks like that and so we were sitting down and we kind of got into it and I was kind of left and I had to make peace with it in myself I could not hold on to that hate cuz hold on to that hate was half the reason why I kept falling into the same pattern of failing I had to get I had to start dumping off some baggage I had to start figuring out me through him and that's all he was there for he was the origin I had to figure him out figure out why he was so evil to my mom to me my brother and I had to start studying him like a lot of people have situations where someone does something and we all attack that person like back on the media if someone does something wrong everybody now it's fucking perfect and we now judge this guy I don't judge him I don't judge anybody what I do is I start studying them why did they do that not in a judging way I want to learn from you and what'd you get out of your dad I got that he was he grew up rough he had he was very insecure had a lot of kids and his insecurities just trickled over onto us so yeah he jacked us up real good but he never fixed himself so if you never fix yourself the next person in line is gonna get the wrath and we were next in line you know his his first wife you know killed herself or whatever happened and you know got burned up in a house or something some craziness and there's a lot of stuff that goes on there that I didn't put in the book cuz I don't feel like going to court yeah but um yeah this it was it was locked up