Speaker 1: When when Goggins lived with me, his rule is we
Speaker 1: had to do something every day that sucked.
Speaker 2: That was his rule.
Speaker 3: He's the master that hyeah tell.
Speaker 4: Me about it, and what did you make you do.
Speaker 2: Every day? Sucked?
Speaker 1: He didn't tell me that we're gonna do that five
Speaker 1: times a day, that you know. No, I mean I
Speaker 1: remember one day. Well, the first thing we did was
Speaker 1: he came in and he he wanted to see how
Speaker 1: many pull ups I could do so we could map
Speaker 1: out the month. He lived with me for a month.
Speaker 1: And I went to the pull up bar and I
Speaker 1: got like maybe eight pull ups, which is an exaggeration,
Speaker 1: and probably got like four pull ups. A lot of
Speaker 1: people are listening.
Speaker 4: Eight uh.
Speaker 1: And then he said, I wait thirty seconds, go and
Speaker 1: do it again. And I went up on the pull
Speaker 1: up bar and I did maybe like three or four.
Speaker 1: He said, I wait thirty seconds. I want you to
Speaker 1: do it again. And I got up on the pull
Speaker 1: up bar and I did maybe like one kipping, you know,
Speaker 1: getting my damn chin over the bar barely, and I
Speaker 1: dropped down. I was all jacked up, and I said,
Speaker 1: all right, well, what's next? He said, well, what's next
Speaker 1: is we're not leaving here until you do one hundred more.
Speaker 1: We're not leaving the gym till you do one hundred
Speaker 1: more that day now, like right.
Speaker 3: Now, right now, so you I was like seven.
Speaker 1: I did like probably seven or ten, and I was like, man, gods,
Speaker 1: that's impossible. And he said, you know, I already know
Speaker 1: what your biggest problem is. And it's like the limitations
Speaker 1: you're putting on yourself are self imposed back on the bar,
Speaker 1: and you know, Roger, that man. And I got up
Speaker 1: on the bar and I over the course of an
Speaker 1: hour or two, I did him. And that started our
Speaker 1: journey of like you're about to go in a place
Speaker 1: where you've never been.
Speaker 5: I graduated mentally and physically exhausted, but felt almost nothing
Speaker 5: when I was awarded the wings. I thought would annoy
Speaker 5: me as a made man around Fort Campbell, I was
Speaker 5: still too puzzled and irritated by Captain Colly's level of effort,
Speaker 5: which felt almost confrontational. It wasn't a lot of fun
Speaker 5: to be around him, Yet I relished every second he
Speaker 5: made me uncomfortable because he exposed my lack of dedication
Speaker 5: to give him my best effort each and every day.
Speaker 5: Being around people like that forces you to try harder
Speaker 5: and be better. And while that is a good thing,
Speaker 5: when you are inherently lazy, what you really want are
Speaker 5: some days off.
Speaker 4: The Captain Connolly's of the world don't give you that option.
Speaker 4: When they are in your foxhole, there are no days off.
Speaker 5: His conditioning was clearly off the charts, and I'm not
Speaker 5: talking about the physical aspect alone. Being a physical specimen
Speaker 5: is one thing, but it takes so much more energy
Speaker 5: to stay mentally prepared enough to arrive every day at
Speaker 5: a place like Air Assault School on a mission to
Speaker 5: dominate the fact that he was able to do that
Speaker 5: told me it couldn't possibly have been a one time thing.
Speaker 5: It had to be the result of countless lonely hours
Speaker 5: in the gym, on the trails, and in the books.
Speaker 4: Most of his work was hidden, but it is within
Speaker 4: that unseen.
Speaker 5: Work that self leaders are I suspect the reason he
Speaker 5: was capable of exceeding any and all standards consistently was
Speaker 5: because he was dedicated at a level most people cannot fathom,
Speaker 5: in order to stay ready for any and all opportunities.
Speaker 5: Those who have not learned to self lead show up
Speaker 5: to their lives like I did. Air assault school. They
Speaker 5: don't prepare or have a plan of attack. They wait
Speaker 5: get shotgunned into something a school, a job, a physical tests.
Speaker 4: Then wing the mother.
Speaker 5: Think about how much information is out there on the internet.
Speaker 5: Any place you want to build your skills, from boot
Speaker 5: camp to Harvard Business School, from im certification to an
Speaker 5: engineering degree is described online in granular detail. You can
Speaker 5: study the prerequisites and start on the coursework before you
Speaker 5: are even admitted. You can prepare as if you are
Speaker 5: already there, so when the time comes and you do land.
Speaker 4: That opportunity, you are ready to smash it.
Speaker 5: That's what a self leader does, no matter how busy
Speaker 5: their lives are, not because they are obsessed with being
Speaker 5: the best, but because they're striving to become their best.
Speaker 4: Self leaders rarely rest in the heat of battle.
Speaker 5: They become dolphins who sleep with one side of their
Speaker 5: brain on alert and one eye always open, so they
Speaker 5: are ready to outsmart, outswim, or battle their predators, and
Speaker 5: they are awake enough to float back to the surface
Speaker 5: and take another breath. In order to sustain that amount
Speaker 5: of energy output. Self leaders return again and again.
Speaker 4: To the organizing ideals of their lives.
Speaker 5: They live for something bigger than themselves, and because of that,
Speaker 5: their lives swell and glow with an energy that others
Speaker 5: can feel. It can also start a chain reaction that
Speaker 5: challenges and awakens people to the untapped power coreled within themselves,
Speaker 5: the power that they are wasting with each passing day.
Speaker 5: Setting an example through action rather than words will always
Speaker 5: be the most potent form of leadership, and it's available.
Speaker 4: To all of us.
Speaker 5: You don't have to be a great public speaker or
Speaker 5: have an advanced degree. Those things are fine and have
Speaker 5: their place, but the best way to lead a group
Speaker 5: is to simply live the example and show your team
Speaker 5: or classmates, through dedication, effort, performance and results.
Speaker 4: What is truly possible.
Speaker 5: That's where I'm at now, thanks in part to the
Speaker 5: example Captain Connolly said, and because I was aware enough
Speaker 5: to recognize that he was a rare breed and humble
Speaker 5: enough to learn from him. However, as you know, the
Speaker 5: transformation didn't take right away. Sadly, once Air Assault School
Speaker 5: was over and Captain Connolly was out of my life,
Speaker 5: the spark faded and I fell back into my old way.
Speaker 5: While I never stopped thinking about that ten day experience,
Speaker 5: I didn't have it within me to self.
Speaker 4: Lead just yet.
Speaker 5: I should have taken the lesson from those ten days
Speaker 5: and applied it to the next fifty years of my life.
Speaker 5: I should have imagined Captain Connolly watching me each and
Speaker 5: every day. Believe me, if you think you're being watched,
Speaker 5: you live differently. You're more detailed and squared away. That's
Speaker 5: not how it went for me. It would be another
Speaker 5: three years of slippage before I exhumed the Connolly files
Speaker 5: for my personal archives and studied them to become a
Speaker 5: self leader. When you talk about the importance of having
Speaker 5: the right people and the foxhol with you, how do
Speaker 5: you know who the right people are?
Speaker 2: You know what that was supens to me a lot
Speaker 2: of years to figure out.
Speaker 6: You know you the right people in your foxhoul when
Speaker 6: you're waking up at three o'clock in the morning, You're
Speaker 6: going to bed at midnight, and you wake it up
Speaker 6: at three and.
Speaker 2: No one says is this smart? To do? You need
Speaker 2: some time off? You need to break. When I start
Speaker 2: hearing that, well, I know what I'm doing to myself.
Speaker 2: I was behind the power curve man.
Speaker 7: When everybody starts off in first grade, I had them
Speaker 7: negative grades.
Speaker 2: I started off in the dungeon, but.
Speaker 7: I had to dig out of the damn grave to
Speaker 7: get the first grade.
Speaker 6: So now you're twenty years old, where everybody graduated high.
Speaker 2: School and offic ear man. I gotta make time up.
Speaker 2: So while people think twenty four hours is one day,
Speaker 2: for me, it's three, four or five days. I gotta
Speaker 2: make up time. I'm behind. I gotta go to summer
Speaker 2: school in my mind. When a who's with me realizes this,
Speaker 2: gotta go to summer school.
Speaker 6: In his mind, he's got to make up time. He
Speaker 6: needs twenty two hours of the twenty four and they
Speaker 6: just get it. He's trying to go somewhere. You are
Speaker 6: the right person for my foxhoul. I don't want to
Speaker 6: hear no about resting. I can't rest right now. I
Speaker 6: will hear what I'm doing, my sa I know what
Speaker 6: I'm doing to myself. Did you see how I came up?
Speaker 6: I got to catch up now. And that's what life
Speaker 6: is about. Sometimes you are raised in a position where
Speaker 6: you are behind. We have to make that time up.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry. It may be inhumane, you may be unbalanced.
Speaker 6: It may not look right to you.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 7: It's the situation that life put me in and I
Speaker 7: need people to say what I don't want to give
Speaker 7: at three in the morning.
Speaker 2: I need my life that seeing.
Speaker 6: Me go to bed at twelve and wakes me up
Speaker 6: at three saying you need to get done.
Speaker 7: That's the foxhole. I don't need critiquing, I need pushing.
Speaker 7: I need pulling. I need anger, I need passion, I
Speaker 7: need to drive.
Speaker 2: I need man those bad days. I don't need.
Speaker 7: Somebody in my ear saying man, because then all a
Speaker 7: person needs is that support.
Speaker 2: Can go a lot of ways, ma'am.
Speaker 4: Almost nothing in life is constant.
Speaker 5: Conditions and circumstances are perpetually influx, like the winds and
Speaker 5: the tide, which is why my mind is never fixed,
Speaker 5: attack and adjust forever searching for my new age health
Speaker 5: and the responsibilities we carry can be limiting. That doesn't
Speaker 5: mean we should give into those limitations or use them
Speaker 5: as excuses to let ourselves or our dreams go. But
Speaker 5: we can acknowledge them as long as we are committed
Speaker 5: to finding out what we can still do given those limits,
Speaker 5: whether they be temporary or indefinite.
Speaker 4: And maximizing that.
Speaker 5: Every day, thousands of people wake up to a life
Speaker 5: defined by newfound limitations that are difficult to accept. Maybe
Speaker 5: they've been diagnosed with a terminal disease or suffered a
Speaker 5: spinal injury. Could be they lost a limb or are
Speaker 5: suffering from PTS. More often, the shifting circumstances are not
Speaker 5: nearly so dire. Sometimes it's good news that changes the equation.
Speaker 5: Maybe you are a new parent or landed a lucrative
Speaker 5: gig that demands ten to twelve hour workdays. Could be
Speaker 5: you recently got married, which means you have to consider
Speaker 5: more than just your own goals. No matter the variables,
Speaker 5: you're new one is out there waiting for you to
Speaker 5: find it. The thing is, most people don't want to
Speaker 5: because whenever you're trying to find you're new anything, it
Speaker 5: means you're not who you used to be, and that.
Speaker 4: Can be depressing enough to give up the search.
Speaker 5: Some people use their new circumstances to dial down their
Speaker 5: effort level, instead of adjusting their approach and still giving
Speaker 5: it their all to achieve their goals.
Speaker 4: You've got to work with what you have.
Speaker 5: I couldn't run a ruck, but that didn't mean I
Speaker 5: was out of the fight. No matter what you are
Speaker 5: dealing with, your goal should be to maximize the resources
Speaker 5: and capabilities you do have. If you've suffered a freak
Speaker 5: injury or received diagnosis that changes everything, what does your
Speaker 5: new maximum effort level look like? A lot of people
Speaker 5: by their time and wait to see what happens next,
Speaker 5: But a year or two later they find they are
Speaker 5: still waiting. With every unfortunate turn in life, no matter
Speaker 5: how heavy the weight, you have to be committed to
Speaker 5: pushing back against that pressure with effort.
Speaker 4: No matter your age.
Speaker 5: Abilities, disabilities, or responsibilities, we must all stay committed to
Speaker 5: finding our new benchmarks, because not only does that keep
Speaker 5: your mind engaged and your demons at bay, you actually
Speaker 5: might achieve things the old you never could have conceived. No,
Speaker 5: don't take it like go out there and run through
Speaker 5: a brick wall as many times you can. No, I'm
Speaker 5: not saying be me, don't run towards in five miles
Speaker 5: at one time.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying do that.
Speaker 5: I'm saying, start to learn. The mind is powerful. It's powerful, man,
Speaker 5: it's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: But if people need, they need a thing to get
Speaker 3: them going right, they need a thing right, They need
Speaker 3: a gold, they need they need a like it's well.
Speaker 3: Sometimes the first step is the hardest, Like it's hard
Speaker 3: to take that one million step too, But sometimes the
Speaker 3: first step is the most. There's something about the what
Speaker 3: do I do? How they start going over the phone,
Speaker 3: they start calling people, they don't get out of the house.
Speaker 3: It's and there's something about procrastination. It's like, you know
Speaker 3: it's painful, you know you should be doing things, but
Speaker 3: you just keep doing it.
Speaker 4: You keep itching that scab. I procrastinate, like man, every
Speaker 4: day I would.
Speaker 2: That's what's so funny.
Speaker 5: Man, People looking like I'm some damn superhero that came
Speaker 5: down from the gods, from the heavens of earth.
Speaker 2: No, man, I don't want.
Speaker 4: To do.
Speaker 5: I'm looking at my shoes for thirty minutes sometimes thinking. Man, Man,
Speaker 5: people people look up to your goggins.
Speaker 2: Damn I want to I'm like, I want to do
Speaker 2: this shit, man, But guess what you do it.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna do it as long as you do it.
Speaker 4: And that's what I know about it.
Speaker 5: Man, That's why I stopped doing I'm thinking, Oh, man,
Speaker 5: you sit here, you look at your shoes for thirty
Speaker 5: forty minutes, you go go.
Speaker 4: You gotta think about it all day long.
Speaker 3: You go do it anyway and sometimes you don't have
Speaker 3: the time and look at issues for thirty minutes. No,
Speaker 3: those are the those are the beautiful days, yes, because
Speaker 3: you know you just have to go, that's right, and
Speaker 3: so like there's no room for procrastination.
Speaker 5: And that's when I when I was in the military,
Speaker 5: I loved my schedule because I knew how to be
Speaker 5: work at seven o'clock. So you better get your ass
Speaker 5: up at four o'clock. Man, yeah, brother, because I had
Speaker 5: to go before, right, you know. So that was my
Speaker 5: mentality back then. Man. You know, like I had to
Speaker 5: get the miles and get everything in man and get
Speaker 5: to work. Man, I'm competing with the alpha males.