I’m a big believer in doing things that
make you uncomfortable.
So, we live in a world where we want to be
as comfortable as we can.
And we wonder why we have no growth.
We wonder why—when the smallest thing in
our life gets difficult—we wonder why we
cower and we run away.
I mean, our whole life is set up that way.
Our whole life is set up in the path of least
resistance.
We don’t want to suffer.
We don’t want to feel discomfort.
So the whole time we’re living our lives
in a very comfortable area.
There’s no growth in that.
So for me I realized that.
The reason I became 297 pounds is because
that was comfortable.
What was very uncomfortable was running.
What was very uncomfortable was being on a
diet.
What was very uncomfortable was trying to
face things that I didn’t want to face.
And I also realized when I was really big:
I had no growth.
Why?
Because I was living comfortable.
So I realized for me to find growth I had
to face all these different things that made
me very, very uncomfortable.
One thing I faced was running.
I absolutely hated running.
But I knew for me to grow I had to do this
thing every single day.
I wanted to start callus-ing my mind.
I wanted to start becoming a better person.
And how do you become a better person?
How do you gain mental toughness?
How do you become the person you want to be?
It’s by constantly facing the things that
you don’t want to face.
If you constantly run away from things that
you don’t want to face, how is there growth?
How is there mental toughness?
I can give you a class all day long about
self-talk, visualization, “eat an elephant
one bite at a time”, but if you’re never
putting yourself in a situation to actually
practice these things you’re never going
to grow.
We’re all going through a battle in our
mind.
A warrior is not a person that carries a gun.
The biggest war you ever go through is right
between your own ears.
It’s in your mind.
We’re all going through a war in our mind
and we have to callus our mind to fight that
war and to win that war.
So one example I can give you about callus-ing
your mind, about doing things that make you
uncomfortable.
There’s a book out there called 'Lone Survivor'
and there’s a guy named Marcus Luttrell.
He was on an operation where a bunch of guys
died, and I knew all the guys that died.
And I know Marcus Luttrell very well.
This story touched my heart.
And I basically went out there and found a
foundation to raise money for it.
It’s called the Special Operations Warrior
Foundation.
You give 100 percent tuition for—let’s
say your dad died in the war.
He was a special operator.
If that guy had a kid, you get 100 percent
tuition to go to college.
A great foundation, great people working at
the foundation.
“I’m going to do this.”
So I Googled the ten hardest races in the
world.
And at this time of my life I was not a runner.
I maybe ran ten miles the whole year.
I was into bodybuilding, I was into weight
training, and that’s what I did.
So I Googled the ten hardest races in the
world and what came up number one was this
race called the Badwater 135.
It’s a 135-mile race through Death Valley
in the summertime.
So I wanted to get in this race.
I thought it was actually a stage race—I
thought it was a race where you ran like 20
miles, set up a camp, and then ran 20 miles
the next day.
I didn’t know people ran 100 miles, 135
miles at one time.
I didn’t know it was even possible.
I had never even run a marathon.
So I called the race director up, his name
was Chris Kostman, and I called him up on
a Wednesday.
And this is in November.
He said, “David, to qualify for my race
you have to do 100 miles.”
And I said, “100 miles in a calendar year?”
I didn’t know what was going on.
He said, “No, 100 miles in 24 hours or less.”
And I thought that was humanly impossible.
He said, “So you’ve got to do that in
24 hours or less for me to consider you in
my race.”
He goes, “There’s a race on Saturday.”
And I called him up on Wednesday.
That was four days for me to get ready for
this race.
And I ran ten miles the whole year.
And so he said, “If you qualify, if you
do 100 miles in 24 hours or less, I might
consider you in my race.”
So four days later I’m out there in San
Diego and the race was called the San Diego
One Day, where you run around a one-mile track
for 24 hours to see how many miles you can
get.
And so I go out there, I didn’t know what
I was doing: I had my Myoplex and Ritz crackers.
And I had a blue lawn chair.
That’s all I had.
And I was going to see my crew person every
single mile.
And I was going to drink Myoplex and have
a Ritz cracker.
I had no water.
I had nothing.
Went out there, got to mile 20, wasn’t feeling
too bad.
Around mile 30 I started feeling my shins
starting to get extremely sore and I started
to develop stress fractures, shin splints.
I started feeling the metatarsals in my feet
starting to break at around mile 50.
By mile 70 I was totally destroyed.
And I sat down in the blue lawn chair and
I was destroyed.
And when a bigger person sits down—I don’t
know exactly how much I weighed but I was
extremely big, I was a power lifter, I lifted
a lot of weights and I was not an endurance
athlete by any means.
So I sat down on this blue lawn chair, looked
at my crew person, and I literally couldn’t
stand up.
I was destroyed.
And I couldn’t go to the bathroom.
Well I couldn’t stand up to go to the bathroom.
So I sat there and I went to the bathroom
on myself.
I was destroyed.
And I was discolored.
I was pale.
I was dizzy, lightheaded.
I was in the worst shape of my entire life.
I had been in three Hell Weeks, Ranger School,
all these different training programs, and
this was the worst situation I’ve been in
in my entire life.
I thought I was literally dying.
And all I could think about was, “How can
I get out of this chair.
I have 30 miles to go.”
And after everything I had gone through, I
realized that the human mind, if you can put
it in a very quiet, calm place and get it
to calm down and not be so spastic, that you
could possibly make this work out for you.
“How bad are you really?”
So I calmed myself down and I had to make
this enormous thing small.
I had 30 more miles to run and my body was
in the worst shape in my entire life.
The worst pain I ever felt in my life.
So I broke this 30 miles thing down.
I broke it down to small chunks.
I calmed my mind down.
I had to get water, had to get potassium,
had to get sodium.
I had to stop being so dizzy, because I had
to be able to stand up.
So my dizziness went away after about an hour.
I was able to stand up now.
And I was going around this track at, like,
a 30-something-minute mile.
And I’ll never forget my crew person saying,
“Hey.”
I got to mile 81.
They said, “You’re not going to make the
time.”
I had 24 hours and I was going so slow, taking
so much time.
This is when I realized that the human mind,
once everything gets connected, once the mind
knows you’re not going to quit something,
it’s going to try to find more.
It’s going to try to give you more.
Once it realizes you’re not going to take
the path of least resistance—you’re going
to stay here until it’s done—my mind and
my body and my spirit became one for the first
time ever.
For the first time ever it became one.
And I went to a level that I never thought
was humanly possible for myself or anybody
else.
And in that shape that I was in, I was able
to run 19 miles.
And I ran 19 miles and did 100 miles—I actually
did one more mile—I did 101 miles in 18
hours and 56 minutes.
I’d overcome so many obstacles in my life,
and this was the final crucible for me.
And I got through it, and at the end of this
race was such clarity to me.
And it was just the most amazing thing I ever
did in my life.
And it was just the most amazing thing I ever
did in my life.
