r/davidgoggins

What do you all think about his mental state? Do you all think he has ever really come to terms with his past? I think this is all something that is not really addressed about him and to me it is quite clear... just my opinion thought. I think self help is great and I have followed David Goggins for years and his voice has got me through some extremely hard times but I recently came to an insight within myself which has shifted something within me and it made me think of his situation.

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Whilst he says is the 'master of his own mind', that doesn't mean he is an integrated person who has 'individuated' from his trauma, rather it means he has mastered his ability to remain in a position that he cannot get out of (he has learnt to thrive in prison). He has taken up the role of the aggressor (his father) in order to not be the victim (the child). In taking up the role of the aggressor essentially has remained a imprisoned to his childhood abuse. He has essentially convicted himself to a lifetime of punishment for... being abused. In continuing to push himself to the limit of his own capabilities he will never actually be free from prison. His key to freedom is to face the parts of himself that has been frozen in time (imprisoned) he must come to terms with what happened to him, 'Integration'.

Throughout his life he seems to have numbed his pain in different roles, the fat pest worker spraying for cockroaches (the disassociated child) or the character he has created, 'Goggins' (Trunnis 'Goggins'). What is so fascinating is that people usually speak out what they are enacting (textbook example of a freudian slip). He routinely tells his audience that he had to BECOME another character yet that character is not him, it is the aggressor (his father). He is attempting to become 'the baddest man on the planet' who in his eyes is Trunnis. If you look at how he talks about himself when he was spraying for cockroaches there are multiple insights. When he would act of trying to self sooth through binge eating he labelled that person a 'weak, worthless, piece of shit' but now he is attempting to soothe himself through action and this is what is profoundly beautiful about his predicament. He has become the 'higher version of himself' to prove to himself that he is not 'worthless'. But simultaneously he is also pushing himself to such extremes because he subconsciously thinks that in doing so it would make his father finally see his worth and thus, stop hitting him.

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My point being... whilst we can all strive to become our 'higher self', David's message does not address the fact that we cannot achieve full peace, full integration with our highest self without going to the route of our pain (which I do not believe he does).

I want to be specific about what unrecognisable actually means here because I think people throw that word around loosely and I want to be honest about what actually changed.

I’m 24. two months ago I was someone who woke up and opened instagram before my eyes had fully adjusted to the light. someone whose entire sense of how their life was going was being calibrated daily against the highlight reels of people I barely knew. someone who was always slightly dissatisfied in a way I could never quite trace to a source.

the source was in my hand every morning before I had said a single word.

what my life actually looked like before

seven hours of screen time daily. not sitting and scrolling for seven hours straight but constantly, compulsively, picking up my phone dozens of times an hour in a loop that had become completely automatic. instagram, tiktok, twitter, repeat. finding nothing, feeling worse, doing it again.

my mornings were gone before they started. my evenings were just a different room to scroll in. my attention span had deteriorated to the point where I could not sit with anything difficult for longer than a few minutes. my mood was volatile in a way I had attributed to everything except the actual cause.

I was consuming other people’s lives so constantly that I had almost stopped living my own.

the decision

I deleted everything on a Monday morning rather than the usual Sunday night reset because I wanted to prove to myself it did not need to be a special occasion. just a normal morning, delete the apps, see what happens.

what happened in week one

uncomfortable in a way I had not anticipated. the reflex to reach for my phone fired constantly and landed on nothing. I counted one morning and picked up my phone eleven times in forty minutes with nothing to open each time. that number told me everything I needed to know about how automatic the habit had become.

I used an app called Reload, a 60 day habit reset app, to deal with this properly. Reload blocked everything I had deleted from being accessed through browsers too so I could not quietly cheat my way back in during weak moments. it built me a full personalised 60 day plan to fill the hours the apps had been occupying, workouts, reading, focused work, proper sleep structure, all of it mapped week by week with progressive targets.

the ranked community inside the app gave my brain something competitive to engage with which helped enormously in the first week when everything felt uncomfortable and my motivation for doing literally anything was low.

what changed and when

week two the mornings came back. without instagram to open the moment I woke up my mornings became genuinely mine for the first time in years. I was starting my days with my own thoughts rather than other people’s content and the difference in how the rest of the day felt was immediate and significant.

week three the comparison stopped. this was the change I had not anticipated and it hit me harder than anything else. I had not realised how much of my daily dissatisfaction was rooted in constant passive comparison until the comparison just stopped entirely. without seeing everyone else’s curated highlights every day I stopped benchmarking my life against them. I just existed in my own life and it turned out my own life was genuinely good.

week four the anxiety reduced significantly. the low level background hum of stress that I had accepted as just part of being alive at 24 just quieted down. I had not connected my social media use to my anxiety levels until they dropped and then the connection was obvious.

week five the focus came back properly. reading for hours without interruption. working through difficult things without reaching for my phone. thinking deeply about problems in a way that had felt impossible for years.

week eight my screen time was under 40 minutes daily. I had reclaimed roughly six and a half hours of my life every single day and filled them with things that were actually building something.

what unrecognisable actually looked like

my body had changed because I had time and energy to train consistently. my output had changed because I had focus and motivation that social media had been quietly consuming. my mood had stabilised because the comparison and the algorithmic anxiety were gone. my relationships had changed because I was actually present in them rather than half there and half on my phone.

the people around me noticed before I said a word about what I was doing. that is the version of unrecognisable that actually matters. not a dramatic announcement of transformation but people who know you well picking up on something different in how you carry yourself and move through the world.

for anyone who has been telling themselves they do not have a problem

look at your screen time number honestly. not the version you justify to yourself but the actual number.

then ask yourself what you have built with those hours. what you remember from them. what they gave you that was real.

60 days of reclaiming those hours is enough to become someone you actually recognise as who you were supposed to be.

start today.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I've posted here numerous times. Think I'm starting fresh yet again at 27. I've never had a girlfriend let alone much exprerience with women tbh, own a house but got broken financially and had to move back to my parents for a while. Trying to get other jobs but feel I picked the wrong career path. Intended to box but now thought what is the point am I just proving it to others so I'm now thinking BJJ and weights. I've lied alot about my past tbh. Going to try start fresh yet again.

3 years ago I joined college and got addicted to gaming. Wasted a huge amount of time and now I’m at probably the lowest point academically in my class. My CGPA is terrible and placements start next sem, but most companies probably won’t even let me sit because of cutoff.

Started DSA seriously 1 month ago, but I still struggle to solve even the 2nd question in LeetCode contests. Seeing everyone ahead of me with internships, skills, and good grades is crushing my confidence.

People keep mocking/comparing me and honestly I feel lost. Feels Like I am cooked. And everything is over for me.

IDK what to do . Recentaly know

I wanted to introduce Arda Saatci to this subreddit.

He’s an endurance runner from Germany who takes on a new extreme challenge every year. Last year, he ran the full length of Japan. He’s pretty well known in Germany, but I’m not sure how many people here have heard of him. You could describe him as a German version of David Goggins.

This year, his challenge is to run from Badwater in Death Valley to the Santa Monica Pier in under 96 hours. He’s basically running almost non-stop, only taking short 30-minute naps along the way.

Since he’s a sponsored Red Bull athlete, the whole thing is being livestreamed on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/live/l0X5R1hRw8g?is=THkwVVtP9dpTavaM

You can also just search for “Arda Saatci” on YouTube and the livestream should come up.

So, a few years ago I was REALLY struggling mentally, I was 21y, completly alone and my mental health was getting worse

During those days, I really dove into goggin mindset, and I would post everyday here seeking for help about my mental health( thank you btw, there are some lovely people here).

Goggins and reaching out to people here made my life less miserable and made me TRY to be alive, made me want to seek an alternative for what eventually I would try to do.

So, long story short, one day I tried suicide and one friend of mine was in a call with me during this, trying to avoid that.

Fast foward a little bit, I survived and when I left the hospital I was playing online with this same friend and I said to him "man, you really need to know david goggins, he's awesome" then my friend said that he already knew about him because during our call that I tried you know what, he said that I literally spent the whole call talking about goggins until I blacked out, this was kinda funny to me, I had no memory of saying anything about him, but anyway, just wanted to share this story

This subreddit has a warm place in my heart.

Also, feel free to correct grammar mistakes if you want, I dont write very well in english, so I appreciate any comments that can help me improve.

I am currently down about 7 pounds. Looking to hopefully lose close to another 30 by end of August. I have a good cardio routine but not a good strength and weight training routine. Has anyone tried the 100+ reps of a light weight? If so do you think it’d be better for weight loss and building muscle than something like 3 sets of 10-12 reps of a medium weight. I have some loose skin on my arms I want to fill in so I know I’ll need to definitely gain some muscle there. I’ll take any advice from yall, thanks in advance!

I’m in a situation where I have a very difficult competitive exam coming up in just a few months. I know most people say you need a year to prepare, but I don’t have that luxury anymore.

I’m looking for real life stories from people who were in the same boat , starting late, maybe working full time and had a huge syllabus to finish in a very short time.

If you actually cleared the exam (like IBPS, GATE, UPSC, or any major technical exam) under these conditions, please share your experience:

The Reality Check: What was your daily schedule like? (Especially if you were working 9-5).

The Sacrifice: What did you stop doing to make time?

The "Smart" Way: Did you skip certain parts of the syllabus? How did you use mock tests to catch up?

The Moment of Doubt: Was there a point where you felt like giving up? How did you push through that final month?

I really need to hear that this is possible and see some practical ways to manage the pressure. Any advice or personal stories would mean a lot.

Thanks!