How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance

Summary

Podcast Summary: The School of Greatness Episode: How To Start Your Day For Peak Mental & Physical Performance
Release Date: May 30, 2025
Host: Lewis Howes
Guest: David Goggins

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Introduction

In this empowering episode of The School of Greatness, host Lewis Howes sits down with David Goggins, a renowned Navy SEAL, ultra-endurance athlete, and motivational speaker. They delve deep into the routines and mindsets that propel individuals toward exceptional mental and physical performance. Skipping over advertisements and promotional segments, the conversation focuses on actionable insights and personal anecdotes that inspire listeners to optimize their daily lives.

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Morning Routines and Discipline

Key Topics:

• Non-Negotiable Morning Practices: Goggins outlines his three foundational morning habits: waking up early, engaging in physical exercise, and seeking solitude.
• Building Morning Habits: Emphasis on training oneself to become a morning person through consistency and gradual adjustment.
• Impact of Routine on Daily Success: Discussing how missing these morning rituals can lead to feelings of being behind and playing catch-up throughout the day.

Notable Quotes:

• "There are three things I talk about that are non-negotiables for my morning. One, it's wake up early. Two, it is move your body in sweat. And three, it's search for solitude." ([02:56])
• "You have to become a morning person. You wake up at 5am for 30, 60, 90 days. That just becomes routine, that becomes habit." ([04:58])

Insights: Goggins emphasizes the significance of establishing a disciplined morning routine to set a positive tone for the day. By waking up early and exercising, individuals can achieve a "win" before their day even begins, fostering a sense of accomplishment and preparedness.

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Overcoming Challenges and Personal Obstacles

Key Topics:

• Military Training and Leadership: Goggins shares his experiences as an infantry platoon leader, highlighting lessons in leadership, resilience, and adaptability.
• Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life: Adapting disciplined routines to civilian entrepreneurship and personal goals.
• Personal Struggles with Eating Disorders: Goggins opens up about his battle with an eating disorder during his teenage years, detailing the path to recovery and self-awareness.

Notable Quotes:

• "I was in and out of the hospital. They diagnosed me with all these different things multiple times." ([18:00])
• "That was a pivotal point in my life. It was very long ago, but I still can remember a lot of those moments like they were yesterday." ([21:09])

Insights: Goggins candidly discusses his early life challenges, including severe eating disorders and the impact of military training on his personal development. His story underscores the importance of confronting personal demons and the transformative power of resilience.

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Mental Toughness and Personal Growth

Key Topics:

• The 40% Rule: Goggins introduces his concept that when the mind believes you've reached your limit, you're only at 40% of your potential.
• Facing Insecurities: Importance of confronting and overcoming fears to build authentic confidence.
• Intentionality and Discipline: The role of deliberate actions and consistent effort in achieving greatness.

Notable Quotes:

• "You're putting a title on me to make yourself feel better about yourself." ([30:22])
• "If you want to gain more confidence, it starts with yourself. You got to start diving into those things that you are afraid of." ([32:49])

Insights: Goggins advocates for pushing beyond perceived limits and embracing discomfort as a catalyst for growth. By consistently challenging oneself and maintaining intentionality, individuals can cultivate deeper self-confidence and achieve extraordinary feats.

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The Role of Sleep in Performance

Key Topics:

• Sleep Architecture: Exploration of different sleep stages, including REM and deep sleep, and their effects on physical and mental restoration.
• Pre-Sleep Practices: Strategies to enhance sleep quality, such as maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, managing body temperature, and avoiding stimulants.
• Nutrition and Sleep: Impact of dietary choices on sleep quality, emphasizing the timing and composition of meals.

Notable Quotes:

• "There's some really interesting data from a guy named Chuck Charles Zeisler, who is at Harvard Medicine, beautiful studies on sleep in humans for many decades." ([47:12])
• "You have to create an environment around your sleep where it's dim lights in the evening, you've had your meal, maybe a couple chamomile tea towards sleep." ([75:17])

Insights: The discussion highlights the critical role of sleep in cognitive function, emotional regulation, and physical health. Goggins provides practical advice on optimizing sleep environments and routines to enhance overall performance and well-being.

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Concluding Insights

Throughout the episode, David Goggins and Lewis Howes weave a narrative of relentless self-improvement, discipline, and mental fortitude. Goggins' personal anecdotes serve as powerful testimonials to the efficacy of structured routines and unwavering determination. The conversation serves as a compelling guide for listeners seeking to elevate their daily habits and achieve peak performance in all aspects of life.

Final Quote:

• "You are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great." ([81:02])

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Key Takeaways

1. Establish a Consistent Morning Routine: Prioritize waking up early, exercising, and finding moments of solitude to set a productive tone for the day.
2. Embrace Mental Toughness: Push beyond your perceived limits and confront your fears to build authentic confidence and resilience.
3. Optimize Sleep for Peak Performance: Implement strategies to enhance sleep quality, including managing pre-sleep activities and creating a conducive sleep environment.
4. Reflect and Adapt: Regularly assess and adjust your routines and habits to align with your personal and professional goals.

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This episode of The School of Greatness offers a wealth of strategies and personal wisdom from David Goggins, providing listeners with actionable steps to harness their inner strength and achieve unparalleled success.

Transcript

[Lewis Howes]

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[David Goggins]

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[Lewis Howes]

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[Unknown Speaker]

So there's three things I talk about that are non negotiables for my morning. One, it's wake up early. Two, it is move your body in sweat. And three, it's search for solitude. So when I was in the military, you don't have an option to press, sneeze or sleep in.

[Lewis Howes]

You got to wake up early.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

They don't let you just kind of relax in the mornings and just do what you want.

[Unknown Speaker]

Unfortunately not. When I got to Fort Hood in 2014, I was a infantry platoon leader and I lived about 30 minutes away from Fort Hood. So I had to be at work by 6am so I'm waking up 4:30am every morning and I'm getting to work at 6 for a quick meeting. And then by 6:30 we're stretching out for morning PT and we do that for an hour and then be from 6:30 to 7:30 or 6:30 to 8. And then I would eat my breakfast in my truck, shower, change, be in the office by nine.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

That was my morning routine. And I lived that for, for four years when I transitioned out of the Army.

[Lewis Howes]

So that was rotc. Is that what that is?

[Unknown Speaker]

That was actual active duty military.

[Lewis Howes]

Okay, but that was in the U.S. or in South Korea.

[Unknown Speaker]

That was in the U.S. in the U.S. gotcha. Yeah, that's when I was stationed at Fort Hood.

[Lewis Howes]

Yep.

[Unknown Speaker]

I was in South Korea for a nine month rotation. 2016.

[Lewis Howes]

Got it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Morning routine was very similar. When I transitioned out of the army. There was never really the thought of, well, let's change this morning routine up. Because it worked for me. It was proven successful that it, it allowed me to achieve a lot of things that I wanted to do throughout the day through backwards planning, backwards planning and forward thinking. Now my morning routine, I still wake up early, move my body in sweat, and search for solitude. Solitude for me, it is a form of meditation that's running. So I'll wake up every morning 5am and people ask the question all the time, like, well, if I'm not a morning person, how do I wake up at 5am? Sometimes you have to train the body.

[Lewis Howes]

You got to become a morning person.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right. You wake up at 5am for 30, 60, 90 days. That just becomes routine, that becomes habit.

[Lewis Howes]

Well also, if you're gonna wake up at 5am, you have to start sleeping earlier. So you are awake as opposed to exhausted at 5am so you probably don't go to bed at 2am, right?

[Unknown Speaker]

No, I'm trying to get at least seven hours of sleep.

[Lewis Howes]

Exactly.

[Unknown Speaker]

So I wake up at 5am and first thing I do is I go out in the kitchen, I make my coffee and I'll check my emails, I'll go through kind of things I have to do to prepare for business that day. I check my schedule and as soon as I'm done drinking my coffee, I lace up my shoes, throw my shorts, throw my hat, go out for my morning run. Right now it's anywhere from five to seven miles. And for me that morning, five to seven miles at a aerobic pace, you know, it's, it's below my max aerobic heart rate, I can really sink in. And what happens during those five to seven miles is absolutely transformational where if there's problems in my life, they will find me. During that run, I will navigate issues that I'm experiencing. I will, I will solve problems I'm experiencing. I'll get emotional. During these five to seven miles, there's this dopamine dump and rush that I experience unlike anything else in my life. And then when I get back from that, that run, it's eat breakfast, shower, get into the office. But I've already started my day with a win. I've accomplished those three things. Waking up early, move my body in sweat, and then solitude.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, it's beautiful, man. What happens when you don't follow that morning routine? Can you still have a great day or do you feel like you're not as successful?

[Unknown Speaker]

It's off. I feel like I'm behind. Really? Yeah. I mean, even days that I, I might wake up early and not run if it's not a run day. But regardless, I'm waking up at 5am, I'm moving my body in some capacity. I just feel better when I move and I'm searching for solitude. Whether it's sitting on the couch drinking my coffee. Right. Or giving our baby girl a bottle, you know, to put her back to sleep. But if I don't achieve those, those things, the day's off or I feel like I'm behind and I'm playing catch up where I need that, that 5am wake up call to set the day up for a big win.

[Lewis Howes]

Now you, you know, obviously you were trained in the army to prepare for the worst case scenarios. Right? To prepare for what could go wrong and when this happens, because it will go wrong at certain times, how to react and respond from a place of focus and clarity and calm, essentially under stress. Let's say someone isn't able to get their morning routine in or they Weren't able to wake up early for whatever reason. Life happens. They plan for perfection, but life happens once in a while. How can they mentally stay in a focused, present mindset and not feel behind even when they miss their morning routine?

[Unknown Speaker]

I think you have to detach yourself from the issue you're experiencing. Go big picture. So to kind of paint a picture of a story, that kind of wraps that all up. I remember I was in Fort Benning, Georgia for training. This was 2000 and 2014. Probably it was before I got to my unit in Fort Hood. I was a brand new second lieutenant and we were being mentored by the 75th Ranger Regiment for a few days in training. And these were all captains in the captain's career course. And I was talking to this one officer and I said, sir, when I get to my unit, what's gonna set me up for success? How do I become the best officer possible? And he pointed across the room to this other officer. He said, you see that guy over there? When shit hits the fan, when chaos strikes, that guy is as cool as the other side of the pillow, really, because he detaches himself. He's not reactive, he is proactive. He has a plan. But he pulls back from 10,000ft in the air, looks at all the moving pieces, and then makes a plan. So what happens with a lot of people, myself included, it used to happen a lot is something goes wrong, your plan isn't working. Well, now you're in fight or flight, you're reactive, you're trying to just put things back in place. It's often better to just take a step back, take a deep breath, look at what's going on. And how do I deliberately make a plan to adjust and execute?

[Lewis Howes]

How does someone train to do that? Like what? You know, when you've never done that before and you need to be in control and life feels out of control for these moments. How do you train and prepare to be that cool and calm like that officer was?

[Unknown Speaker]

I think it's awareness and then repetition.

[Lewis Howes]

So was the things you guys did in army to train for that, I.

[Unknown Speaker]

Think it was just through like mentorship, you know, like you always, throughout training have a non commissioned officer who has years of experience or an officer who has years of experience. But when I got to my platoon in 2014 in Texas, I was an infantry platoon leader. I was the platoon leader of these 40 soldiers and non commissioned officers. I had the least amount of experience out of all of them.

[Lewis Howes]

You were the leader.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. New officer. My platoon sergeant had 18 years of experience in the army with multiple combat deployments.

[Lewis Howes]

But he was reporting to you?

[Unknown Speaker]

Technically.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

My squad leaders, my team leaders, they had multiple deployments, Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of experience. And then I had junior enlisted soldiers in the platoon. But for me, I was being mentored by my platoon sergeant, my squad leaders, my team leaders. So the biggest piece of advice I got when I first arrived at platoon was don't make any changes. This is not your platoon. Yeah. Allow them to let you in. Just come in, observe. And when they start asking for some advice, in your opinion, that's them letting you in. And I learned so much through and from these non commissioned officers and soldiers during my four years. A lot of it was just having awareness, you know, reading the room, like do these people trust me? Do they want me to lead them? Will they work alongside of me? Having that awareness? And then repetition, consistent repetition will help you get better.

[Lewis Howes]

Now, how long you been married?

[Unknown Speaker]

A little over two years now.

[Lewis Howes]

Two years. Does your wife have a morning routine and was it different before you guys had your child or after?

[Unknown Speaker]

My wife has a morning routine, it was definitely different.

[Lewis Howes]

It wasn't 5:00am Wake up.

[Unknown Speaker]

It was never 5:00am wake up. But for her it was always we are routine people, it was wake up. She would go through her like green supplement and then water and then coffee and then go work out and train. And both of us, we need to move our bodies to be, to be sane. Having the baby has changed life pretty significantly. But we found ways to still implement our plan to achieve our routine throughout the day where we both have to adapt and make some changes. But it's difficult, it's challenging, but it's doable.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Why do you think morning routines or creating your own routine that works for you is a common trait of successful people in general versus those that don't have a morning routine?

[Unknown Speaker]

It goes back to. I'm a huge fan of what the military taught me about setting your not day, but a mission. A week, a year, five years up for success. It's backwards planning. So it's okay in this amount of time for me to get from point A to point B, I now need to go backwards. What do I need to do at this time away and this time away, how do I set myself up for success to get from point A to point B? So it's backwards planning while you're forward thinking. And anyone who has some sort of routine allows you to execute and complete your non negotiables while still achieving your day, your week, your month, your plan. And for me, that's why I believe it's so important for myself. But a lot of other successful people, it's because if you don't have a routine, especially a morning routine, you're playing catch up. And especially if you have a lot of responsibilities and obligations. Because for me, as soon as the day starts in the office at 8am, I don't know what fire I'm fighting. But if I didn't do my three things early on, I don't know when I'm getting to it. Especially now, having a child, you just.

[Lewis Howes]

Don'T feel as prepared probably.

[David Goggins]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

If you're not waking up early, if you're not moving your body and sweating some way, and if you're not searching for solitude, which could be running or processing problems or finding solutions in your mind, essentially, then you're getting to the office and you're not feeling ready for the day. Is what I'm hearing you say, correct? Yeah. And you just could be more on edge or triggered or reactive, right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

I've heard a lot of people saying, kind of being like the anti morning routine talk online lately where people are like the morning routines are, you don't need them, just wake up and start working. What's your thoughts on that? For the opinion of people just saying, why waste an hour of your day in the morning when you can wake up, start getting to work and start making progress?

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, if it works for you, if it's not broke, don't fix it.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

I've never been the type of person that says like you need to, you have to, you should. A lot of the content that I put online is this is what works for me. And it might work for you, but I can tell you right now, if I didn't have a morning routine, you'd be a mess. I'd be a mess, my day would be chaotic, I would be behind. I'd be. I hate being in a reactive space and state. I'm a very proactive, deliberate, strategic, intentional person. One of my favorite things I've ever heard, it was from Jordan, my media director. I walked in his office one day and it was, it was his note on his computer and it said, lack of intentionality leads to a repetition of what is easiest for me. I want to be intentional with everything I do. And if I'm not being intentional with a routine or my day or the things that I say and do, I'm falling into a, a rhythm and routine of easy. And I don't want easy. I want challenging I want hard. I want deliberate, intentional, strategic.

[Lewis Howes]

Why do you want challenging and hard versus easy and comfortable?

[Unknown Speaker]

Because I've grown in every aspect of challenging and hard. I can't tell you one moment in my life where I've grown in easy. And it drives my wife insane.

[Lewis Howes]

She's like, take a break quite often.

[Unknown Speaker]

But I know that when the pressure is there and it's challenging and it hurts and it brings stress and discomfort, I know it's on the other side of that. And the only reason I know it's on the other side of that is because I've gone through it so many times. You know, bootstrapping a business is tough. I've gone through a decade of. Of hurt and struggle and pain, but to see where it's put me, there's no way I'd be there now if it was easy and comfortable.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And regardless, I want to work for what I achieve. You know, it's often choosing the hard right over the easy wrong. And wherever I get to when I die one day, I want to know, I've worked for this. I've earned this.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. I'm curious, what was the hardest obstacle you had to overcome growing up?

[Unknown Speaker]

So I had an eating disorder when I was younger. I was 13, 14 years old. To this day, I can't tell you what caused or created it, really. I just remember I slowly wanted to restrict more food. I wanted to be able to feel more bones really over my skin. I wanted to be lighter. I wanted to see the scale decreasing. I wanted to be hungry. I wanted to be frail. I don't know why to this day.

[Lewis Howes]

You wanted to be weak.

[Unknown Speaker]

I wanted to be weak.

[Lewis Howes]

How old were you?

[Unknown Speaker]

13, 14 years old. And I mean, it started getting pretty severe to the point where my parents were taking me to the hospital on a regular basis and they were running tests. I was in and out of the hospital. They diagnosed me with all these different things multiple times. I internally knew I was starving myself.

[Lewis Howes]

So what were you. What did they diagnose you as and what were you telling people?

[Unknown Speaker]

At one point, they thought I had a pain, parasite and a worm from Mexico, from a vacation. They thought I had celiac disease. So they had me eat no gluten for a period of time. And one of the last tests they did on my body was they put me under and they put a tube down my throat to look into my stomach. And what they realized was the food from the day before was still sitting in my stomach. So my organs weren't working. They weren't Digesting this food. And, I mean, I was essentially killing myself through this process. And I remember one day my mom would take me out of school, and she'd take me to the doctor's appointment at the Hershey Medical Center. What it felt like on a weekly basis at this point. And we would drive into the medical center, and we turn towards the clinics and the emergency room section. But this last trip we ever took, we pulled into the Hershey Medical Center. Instead of turning left, we turned right on this one day, and it was the outpatient clinic. And we pulled into this building, and on the building, it read eating disorder clinic. And at that moment, I knew I'm caught. Ooh.

[Lewis Howes]

Because they did everything else, and they're like, oh, he doesn't have this stuff. He's doing it himself.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yep.

[Lewis Howes]

How long did that take? A year, six months?

[Unknown Speaker]

It's probably a year.

Really?

It was a year.

[Lewis Howes]

So you were essentially lying. You knew the whole time, but you were doing all these tests, but you just didn't want to say, I'm doing this intentionally.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

So I remember that day where we walk up. I mean, I can picture it like it was yesterday. We walk up these set of stairs into this outpatient clinic, and I sit down with this doctor, and he literally just confronts me right away. We know what you've been doing. We know you've been starving yourself.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I broke down, just crying. And I turned to my mom, said, I'm done. I'll fix it right now. I was that embarrassed that I didn't want to be in that room. I didn't want to come back to this place. I'll make a conscious effort to get better. We wrapped up this session, and we went home. And I remember opening up the pantry, thinking, I need to start eating again. And I grabbed this box of Pop Tarts, and I pull out a package, and there's two Pop Tarts per package. And I turn it around, and it says, 400 calories in two pop tarts. And I'm thinking, this is probably more than I've been consuming on a day.

[David Goggins]

Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

For most days. And I ate these two Pop Tarts, which was, at the time, relatively one of the most challenging things I've ever done. And I had a very. You know, I started eating and putting weight on after that moment. To say it was like a switch flipped. It wasn't that by any means. For years, I had unhealthy relationships with food that slowly got better. That's what made me want to study nutrition in college. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to know more. But that for me was. It was a pivotal point in my life. It was very long ago, but I still can remember a lot of those moments like they were yesterday. But it was, I think, fundamental and a foundation for who I am today and what I'm doing. Interested in what I'm passionate about, Possibly a reason I want to and enjoy helping others, especially in health, fitness, nutrition. Yeah, but that was. That was challenging for me when I was younger.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

For years.

[Lewis Howes]

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[Unknown Speaker]

No. I mean the only thing that I can really pinpoint it to is and this is this might have correlated and transformed who I am today is I enjoyed having control. I enjoyed having control of what I was able to put in my body and how much I would work out, how much I would sweat to lose weight. And I loved having that control, this obsessive, controlled mindset and motivation. I do think I have funneled that level of obsessive control into building a business, into chasing and working towards success. I think I still have that in me, but I've just funneled it into.

[Lewis Howes]

Something else, into a healthier version of yourself. There's a safe pain and then there's probably an unsafe pain of just like jumping off a building and whatever and trying to land on 20 floors or something. It's probably not not the safe way to do things, but doing 200 miles of endurance running is like a different way of pain, looking at pain. And that's what I've been looking for my whole life is like finding the pain. And I talk about, like, do something every day that's painful.

[David Goggins]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

In a good structured environment. You've been doing that for the last couple years now. It's like you work out every day. You haven't missed a day.

[David Goggins]

I did it for the last 20 years of my life.

[Lewis Howes]

20 years.

[David Goggins]

20 some years. No, 20 some years of my life.

[Lewis Howes]

Every day you work.

[David Goggins]

So I used to take one day off a week. I used to take one day off.

[Lewis Howes]

A week for the body recover. Right. Makes sense.

[David Goggins]

But that one day off was an active recovery day where I would get on a trainer and ride for like two hours.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[David Goggins]

But at a zone one heart rate, very low heart rate. And I replace the carbohydrates in my body while I rode. Because the best way to recover for me is to do something at a very low heart rate. Because therefore, your blood's flowing through your body. As your blood's flowing through your body, refuel it with the nutrients. Because then your blood's flowing, the nutrients is going through all your cells in your body. All that glycogen is now flowing at a low heart rate. So it's not burning it, it's refueling it.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[David Goggins]

So every Sunday used to be that. And it kind of snowballed into. As human beings, we believe, like so many people, before I give them a workout plan, they're talking about recovery. Everybody, everybody that hears me speak, they want to go straight to recovery. Work out first. Work out first. Before you talk to me about recovery.

[Lewis Howes]

How to recover.

[David Goggins]

Yeah, work out first. We are always looking for. Like whenever I talk to people, people take my words and they put it in a way to where they want to feel comfortable. This guy, you know, they want to put you in a box. They want to put a title on you. No, you're putting a title on me to make yourself feel better about yourself. If you read this book of mine and you see where I came from, this person was not built. This person was not made by God. This person.

[Lewis Howes]

Sorry.

[David Goggins]

This person was built. I made this person. I made this person by diving into the insecurities that life gave me. Because now they're yours. They're yours to own. If you're not smart, call yourself dumb. It's okay, because you are. But take that knowledge of putting yourself down. If you're fat, call yourself fat. I used to be £300. We want to talk so soft to ourselves. We're looking for that recovery day. And that recovery day is everything in your life. Everything in your life is a recovery day. We're looking for it. It's not coming. It's not coming. Get over that recovery day. And that's the mentality I took with me. And what happened through that process was all the frivolous things of life started to float away. I used to tell people lies so they would like me because I was so insecure. When you start to build yourself up and start to have the one thing that we don't have is confidence, real confidence, authentic confidence from hard work, everything else goes away. You no longer look to other people.

[Lewis Howes]

For your self esteem validation.

[David Goggins]

You now know I walk in a room now and I know the hours and years and decades I put into David Goggins.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's something.

[David Goggins]

It's not on the wall, it's not a trophy on the wall. It's not a medal around your neck. It is actually a feeling in your heart and people. Why don't you ever smile? I don't have to. Yeah, I do have a stoic look on my face. I'm a very focused person. But the thing I have in my soul and in my heart, that's why I don't need to smile. I don't need to smile. I don't need you to look at me and say, oh my God, you look happy. Because half of us aren't happy. We're giving you something that we think you want to see. I don't do that anymore. I don't care how you perceive David Goggins. Because through my journey, I figured out the one piece I was missing. I thought it was cars, I thought it was women. I thought it was. I thought it was money. I thought it was everything. The one piece I was missing was me having the courage to face myself. And once you do that on a daily basis, it's not about the running people you talk about working out. Where I got my work ethic from was the hours I had to spend learning this. When you sit down and you're not smart and you have a disability and you still want to be at the top of your class, I didn't want to just get by when I realized that I can learn through hard work and I can beat the valedictorian in school, but I got poured in 10 hours more a day than he does. Know what kind of strength comes from that when you're sitting down? That guy, that valedictorian study for an hour and you know, I caught you I caught you, and I am dumb, but I have the work ethic to catch you. That's where David Gaga's got really invented was at a kitchen table with 20 spiral notebooks that were empty and then three months later down, yeah, they were full. And when you can go through that, I still have them in my storage unit. You go through these spiral notebooks of your life and you realize, this is how I learned. This is unbelievable. There's no miles. It's not about the miles. It's that having a discipline every day to say for me to learn this one math problem, it's gonna take me 10 hours.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[David Goggins]

And that's where it. And you realize through hard work.

[Lewis Howes]

You.

[David Goggins]

Can outwork anybody no matter how bad they are. But that's the part people don't want to dive into.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. When someone's lacking confidence in themselves, what's the answer you would give them if, like, how do I gain more confidence?

[David Goggins]

It starts with yourself, man. You got to start diving into those things that you are afraid of. You don't gain confidence by going to a spot that makes you feel good. It could be a false reality. And the second life gives you that challenge. All you want to do is go back to what made you confidence or what gave you confidence. Is that happy spot? No, what gives you confidence? What gave me confidence? When spending years at a kitchen table trying to learn how to read and write on my own, realizing I can't learn the way you learn. I can't, but I can learn. What gives you confidence? Not being afraid is overcoming the fear. I used to stutter severely bad. So right now, I don't know how many people are going to watch this. You know what gives me confidence is knowing I no longer care if I sit here and start stuttering to you. Yeah, that's what gives me confidence is facing these things, overcoming them. And maybe not overcoming them every day, but facing them and facing them and facing pretty soon like this. You know what, man? This is where it's at. It's not in that comfort zone. It's in the discomfort zone. Is where my confidence is getting built. That's where it's getting built. But people want to. They want an easier answer. There has to be an easier way. There's not. I'm sorry. I searched for it my entire life.

[Lewis Howes]

You cheated, you lied.

[David Goggins]

I lied. I did everything, and I still felt empty. I coach a lot of people nowadays. Billionaires who call me on the phone and say, man, I'm still missing something. It's because they did what they were good at. And they had this beautiful family, two, three houses, cars, everything. Has everything in the world on the outside looking in like, my God, man, how can you be unhappy? I walk around with the backpack with all my stuff in it, no car. And I walk around, happiest person in the world, have nothing. Happy as hell. It's because I found out the whole key to life. It's not in all that you have to face yourself. So many people live to be 100 years old and they die miserable having everything because they never examined. I call it my live autopsy. You never examine this. Happiness, peace, enlightenment. It's all up here, man. It's all up here. If I start talking like this, people go, man, you know, I don't know. It's the truth, man.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, it is true.

[David Goggins]

It's all up here. You just gotta be willing to go and face it. And that's the hard part.

[Lewis Howes]

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[Unknown Speaker]

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[Lewis Howes]

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[Lewis Howes]

What's your biggest insecurity today?

[David Goggins]

Not to be arrogant. I Don't have one.

[Lewis Howes]

What was the last one you had and when was that?

[David Goggins]

The last one I had was probably still me. Me still living. Because I. I always talk about. I. I pay rent.

[Unknown Speaker]

So we live.

[David Goggins]

We used to live in a $7 a month place when I was growing up. This is in Buffalo or is this in Indiana? So, like, we had a lot of money in Buffalo. And when my mom left my dad, we went to nothing for a period of time before she got on her feet. Right. And that $7 a month place used to be. It was my. It was who I was. I was no one. I was in the sewer. My mom wasn't there. I had nothing. And you always feel like you have nothing. I achieved so much. I was a Navy seal. I'd gone through Ranger school. I've gone through Delta Force selection training. I'd done so much. I run 200 miles, pull up records, everything. Learned to read and write. Became pretty intelligent. I still was like, man, what is wrong with me? It wasn't until I got real sick and I talked about. In the last chapter of that book, I got real sick. And I was about 38 years old. I'm 43 now. And my life got real quiet. I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours to couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. But once again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

[Lewis Howes]

Why is that?

[David Goggins]

In that moment where my whole life changed, I went from a guy who worked out every day, trained every day, to a guy who couldn't get out of bed. My life was taken from me. The one thing that kept me going was my training.

[Lewis Howes]

Now you didn't have.

[David Goggins]

I didn't have anything.

[Lewis Howes]

Now you just had to sit alone. Alone and not train.

[David Goggins]

And that's what changed me. And that's when I realized I hadn't thought, hadn't taken time to think about what I'd done in my life.

[Lewis Howes]

You hadn't reflected yet.

[David Goggins]

I hadn't reflected. I'd done all these things, but there was no finish line. I still believe that. But you must have time to reflect. Yeah, I was just going. I wouldn't even. I finished a race of life, and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I go on.

[Lewis Howes]

You're like, on to the next.

[David Goggins]

I get in the car and I.

[Lewis Howes]

Go, you won't even take the medal.

[David Goggins]

Dawn. Don't care about.

[Lewis Howes]

Like, I'm not gonna waste an hour sitting around for this ceremony.

[David Goggins]

Most people sit around and that's what they like. They, they need the ceremony.

[Lewis Howes]

If I accomplish something, validation.

[David Goggins]

I haven't done anything. Let's go, let's go, let's go.

[Lewis Howes]

Just getting started.

[David Goggins]

I'm just getting started. Right when I started figuring out life that I was leaving so much in the tank, I called my 40% rule. Yeah, I was leaving so much in the tank. Once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb fat kid being bullied. And Now I'm a 180 pound person who lost 106 pounds in less than three months. Learned to read, learn to do this, learn to do that. I was like, I need more. I was fueling my mind with everything. I never took time to say, my God, you came from this hell and you're here. So those insecurities, and this is how I explain it the best way. SEAL training became pretty hard and a lot of guys weren't getting through it. So they designed a SEAL pep prep program.

[Lewis Howes]

Like a boot camp for the boot camp.

[David Goggins]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[David Goggins]

And it was two months in my last two years before I retired from the military. They sent me there to train these kids.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow. To get ready for 18, 19, 20 year olds.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[David Goggins]

Young kids. So when they get to Navy SEALS training, man, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming. I mean they were, they were hybrids.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[David Goggins]

But they get the buds. And the same amount of people would quit.

[Lewis Howes]

Why is that?

[David Goggins]

This is why we were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.

[Lewis Howes]

Hmm. It's not about not the mind.

[David Goggins]

That's right. We weren't diving into the sewer. Everybody's got a story. We don't share it on social media. We share our nice life on social media. We all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine. Yeah, most of us aren't willing to talk about it. I want to talk about my dungeon. I wasn't getting into the dungeon of these guys minds. I wasn't building that so called mental toughness. Mental toughness isn't something that you sample. It's something that you live in every day. So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure. And they look for comfort whenever hardness comes. And you know what it is? It may be different for you than it is for me, but you go back to your insecurities, and then when you go back to your insecurities, you then look for comfort within those insecurities. And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to Give you when you were sad, when you were sick. We look for our wife or our husband. We look for comfort. It's in those moments you must retrain your mind to think differently. In hell. I wasn't training them to do that.

[Lewis Howes]

Why weren't you training?

[David Goggins]

I wasn't training myself yet because at that time, I was doing what I was told. These guys need to meet a standard.

[Lewis Howes]

Physical standard.

[David Goggins]

A physical standard to the physical standard is not what they need to meet. It's a mental standard you must meet in life. So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards. I wasn't meeting the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[David Goggins]

I wasn't. I had come 8,000 miles from where I started. But if you never know that, you're still in the $7 a month place. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life and in that bed. And I thought I was dying because that story is long. That sick portion of my life is long. I didn't care if I died or lived because I was, for the first time in my life, happy.

[Unknown Speaker]

Wow.

[David Goggins]

And at peace because I reflected back on where I started.

[Lewis Howes]

You said, wow, I have come a long way.

[David Goggins]

That's right. And no one saved me. It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self respect you have. That's why I walk around the streets with a backpack and just like, I don't need anything else. Yeah, you figure it out by going inside yourself, by callousing over the victim's mentality. You're always a victim. Even if you have everything in life until you realize what you've achieved. You have to first realize what you've achieved. And my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father, but she hasn't done that one step, really.

[Lewis Howes]

She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect on it.

[David Goggins]

She continues to go back to the.

[Lewis Howes]

Dungeon of her past life and live in that space.

[David Goggins]

Live in that space versus living the space that she's in now and reflecting back on, my God, this is what I've done with my life.

[Lewis Howes]

So have you talked to her about this?

[David Goggins]

We talk about all the time. And you have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing to really go there. Not. Not surface. I don't. I don't live on the surface of anything. Yeah, surface is what got me where I was at it got me from £175 to £300 telling everybody I'm good. I don't give a. I'm good. No, they're hollow words. A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore. Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance, is real. And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds and our souls. I act on mine. A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose the path of least resistance. So we go a different route. I'm afraid of something is telling me you must do this thing, you must do that. Yeah, you have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality. We go left and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives. It's because we continue to take the, the journey that is mapped out. And how I look at it is I, I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four lane highway that has road maps and all this other stuff on it. Man tells you where to go, gas stations. The next 10 miles up you're gonna see a McDonald's, a cracker barrel. Yeah, it's the easy route. Very few of us want to go to the right side.

[Lewis Howes]

That cracker barrel is that Midwest life?

[David Goggins]

That's right. That's right. That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm from Ohio.

[David Goggins]

It's all about it, man. Indiana, everywhere.

[Lewis Howes]

Dude, that's amazing. Bringing back memories. This is powerful because I've been telling people this. I've been living that way unknowingly my whole life of like, whatever the thing is I'm afraid of. When I was in high school I started doing those things and it was just like I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid. So I need to do the things that scare me the most.

[David Goggins]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

Is there something we should be thinking before we shut it off to set our sleep up for success mentally and then to really build into the next day where we wake up feeling like clear minded and without this brain fog, where we have more motivation, where we have more energy and excitement towards the next day and then doing that in a pattern every night. Is there any science around that? Is it like listening to a hypnosis?

[Unknown Speaker]

That could be very helpful which will.

[Lewis Howes]

Help you clean out whatever is going on through the day and get clear and ready for the next day. But also fall asleep so you're not thinking about it. Is there anything that can help you have better Dreams so that you sleep better. What have you found there in the neuroscience?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, sure. So glad you asked this question. There's some really interesting data from a guy named Chuck Charles Zeisler, who is at Harvard Medicine, beautiful studies on sleep in humans for many decades and a really fantastic physician and researcher. They observed something interesting which is that about 90 minutes or so before your natural bedtime, there's a spike in alertness, planning and almost anxiety that all people undergo. And it's a normal, healthy pattern. The idea, and it's a just so story because we don't really know. I, nor Chuck Zeisler nor anyone else was consulted at the design phase, as we say. But we assume this came about because prior to going to sleep we need to shore up everything for safety. We need to lock things down, make sure everything's in its place because we are very vulnerable in sleep nowadays. This might manifest as you need to go to bed at 10:30 because you have to get up at 6, etc. And then right around 8:30 or 9 you start finding yourself running around doing various things. Many people worry about that and they think, oh, I'm really stressed because I actually need to go to sleep and here I am wide awake. It tends to subside very quickly. So just the knowledge that that's a normal, healthy spike in alertness and activity I think can help a number of people. I want to make sure I mention that. Yeah, the other thing is preparing the mind. As you said, turning thoughts off. Turning thoughts off is a skill. We've talked before, gosh, almost a year or more now ago about Yoga Nidra.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Which is. There are many, many yoga nidra scripts available on YouTube free of cost. The ones I particularly like are the ones by Kamini Desai. K A M I N I D E S A I Kamini Desai. I just really like her voice. I don't know Kamini. Never met her. These are free scripts. They're yoga nidra scripts that last about 20 minutes. They involve some breathing, some meditation type stuff. They. But they teach you to turn your thoughts off, which is really wonderful because a lot of people, they just get stuck in this rumination. Now, is there an ideal protocol prior to sleep? It depends, because some people find they have their greatest clarity after the kids are asleep and they're sitting there. So I wouldn't say don't work or do work. You know, you do want to avoid strong stimuli before sleep. So do you really want to watch a politically charged or a violent movie right before sleep? Well, that Depends on how triggered you tend to be by politics or violence. Some people aren't triggered, other people are. But you know, that aside, you don't want to go to bed either too hungry or too full because that can inhibit your sleep. So for most people, that's going to be finishing your last bite of food about two hours before bedtime. But I confess, there are days when I work, work and you know, arrive at a place, a hotel, order some food and just, you know, eat a massive meal and then pass out right again, 80, 20, try and get it right 80% of the time.

[Lewis Howes]

What's harmful of being too hungry or being too full before you go to.

[Unknown Speaker]

Bed, you'll have trouble falling asleep and you'll wake up in the middle of the night.

[Lewis Howes]

Both extremes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Both extremes. And I'm not a nutritionist or nutrition expert, but what I found works for me personally is I tend to, I fast until about noon ish each day and then my lunch is low carb, so I tend to eat some grass fed meat, some, some veggies, maybe some starches if I trained and a piece of fruit if I didn't. I don't. And then I also have an afternoon snack. But then in the evening my meals tend to be relatively low in meat and protein because. And higher in starches which activate the tryptophan system and the serotonin system which makes it easier to fall asleep. You can repack glycogen during the night so you can do muscular work the next day. Training of any kind, but also thinking your brain uses glucose. So at night I tend to eat pastas and vegetables and rice and risottos and things like that, not in huge volumes, but I tend to eat less protein. It's not that I don't eat any, but I don't tend to eat big steaks right before going to sleep again, 80, 20, 80% of the time. So foods, certain foods stimulate the neurotransmitter pathways like serotonin that facilitate the transition to sleep. Now what could you take? Well, some people will drink chamomile tea. Chamomile tea is enriched in something called apigenin. Apigenin is, I take it in supplement form, 50 milligrams of apigenin. But it's really just chamomile extract and it tends to make you a little drowsy. And many people experience excellent sleep when they take apigenin and normally they struggle with it. Again with supplements. I don't have a relationship to an apigenin company or anything. Like that. I want to be clear. And also supplements. Check with your doctor, of course, all that. But the one thing I don't recommend is that people take melatonin.

[Lewis Howes]

You've probably heard me say this before, but taking care of your health should be your number one priority. What you put in your body directly impacts how you think, how you feel, and how you show up in the world. And whether you're training for a marathon, you're running a business, or just trying to get through a busy day with energy and clarity. Nutrition is fundamental. And when I fuel my body right, I perform better.

[Unknown Speaker]

Period.

[Lewis Howes]

And that's why I'm a big fan of RX Bar. RX Bar is all about simple ingredients and honest nutrition. They lead with transparency. Just look at their packaging. It says no bs. Just real ingredients like egg whites for protein, dates to bind, and nuts for texture. Whether you're on the go or in between meetings, they've got something that fits. The original 12 gram protein bar, the nut butter and oat bar. Soft, crispy and packed with 10 grams protein of or the mini, just 100 calories with 6 grams of protein. RXBar is the proud sponsor of no BS and they want you to say NO to what's holding you back and yes to what fuels your greatness. Use code greatness on RXBar.com for 25% off. RXBar proud sponsor of no BS. Subject to full terms and conditions and to change. Valid until September 30, 2025, and may not be combined with other offers. See rxbar.com for full details and limitations. When I got injured playing football, my whole world collapsed and my dream of being a professional athlete was gone. Just like that, I was broke, sleeping on my sister's couch, feeling sorry for myself. But at some point, I had to make a choice. Stay stuck in that pain or embrace a no Bull mentality and build something new. And that decision changed my life. We're all works in progress, but only you can decide to embrace the process of growing stronger inside and out. And no Bull is here to help. No Bull is a footwear brand for training and for daily life, built to support you in your pursuit of physical, mental and emotional strength. And if you're in need of an extra push in the gym, you can do hard things with the no Bull outwork. No Bull's first training shoe. And the no Bull All Day is the perfect shoe for everyday life. And whether I'm heading to the studio, running errands, or just staying on, they're built for comfort, durability and that clean, versatile look. I am a big fan of the all days. I'm wearing them right now actually, and they're so comfortable to walk around in. And I love that. No Bull isn't just a brand, it's a mindset. No shortcuts, no excuses, just commitment to being better every single day. And that's what we're here to do. On the School of Greatness as well, no Bull is offering our listeners an exclusive offer. 30% off your first order. Visit no bullproject.com/greatness for 30% off your higher order. That's www.n o b u L-L-P-R-O-J-E-C-T.com greatness for 30% off don't take melatonin I.

[Unknown Speaker]

Am not a fan of melatonin for the following reasons. First of all, melatonin does many more things besides just cause the transition to sleep. It also is involved in regulating some of the other hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and so on. Most of those studies are animal studies, but some of the data on humans indicate that as well. In kids, melatonin is one of the hormones responsible for suppressing puberty. And then melatonin rhythms change and then puberty happens. So, you know, if your kid has already been taking melatonin, I wouldn't be alarmed. But just be aware. And if you talk to your physician, most physicians aren't really aware of this. I would talk to an endocrinologist, frankly. Also most Matt Walker would also support this statement because I'm lifting it from him. So which is that most melatonin supplements contain anywhere from 15% of what's listed on the bottle to 300% of what's listed on the bottle. The regulation of supplements is an issue even from a trusted brand. If you were to take, say 3 milligrams or 6 milligrams of melatonin, it's a pretty standard dose. Out there you are taking supraphysiological levels of melatonin. Your system does not see those levels of melatonin.

[Lewis Howes]

So chamomile tea is okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Chamomile tea or apigenin, it's a little hard to find, but apigenin is a great it's chamomile extract, essentially. There are a few other things. Again, margins for safety will depend. Magnesium threonate, which is T H R E O N A T e threonate, you know, 142 milligrams or so of magnesium threonate Again, you could just shop for cost. I don't want to name brands even though my podcast is associated with one. I don't want this to become about that. The magnesium threonate many people take in 30 to 60 minutes before sleep with apigenin, many people find great benefit. Yes, I am not a fan of taking serotonin or serotonin precursors. 5 HTP L tryptophan prior to sleep for the following reason. The architecture of sleep, as Matt probably discussed here, I need to watch that episode. He's so good. Includes a lot of slow wave sleep early in the night, repair and recovery of motor circuits in the brain and muscular tissue and connective tissue that might have been worked with or damaged during the day. And the second half of sleep tends to be enriched in so called REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, more dreams that are very intense, et cetera. That architecture is exquisitely controlled by levels of serotonin at one point and not having serotonin at others. Having acetylcholine release, being very tuned to particular times in the night when you start messing with the serotonin system, you disrupt that. So my experience with 5 HTP I took it to go to sleep or L tryptophan is I fall asleep like I got clubbed over the head by a grizzly bear and then I wake up an hour and a half later and I cannot fall asleep for me for two days. Very intense. Now, I'm pretty sensitive to these things, but that's why I'm not a fan of those. And I rely on magnesium threonate, apigenin and some people also take theanine. But for the time being, I think magnesium threonate and apigenin or chamomile are great. If people don't want to take supplements. Chamomile tea is a terrific mild sedative to just kind of turn off some of that thinking.

[Lewis Howes]

Relax. Okay. And what about working out and sleep okay?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Should you work out in the morning, afternoon, night? How does that affect the sleep when you work out and how you work out?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, well, I want to be fair to the fact that people have different schedules and different constraints and that work. You know, getting that 150 to 180 minutes of zone two cardio per week is essential. People should be doing some resistance training regardless of of goals or in order to maintain muscle because it's so important to avoid injury and maintain metabolism, et cetera. So you need to get it in somehow. But you then have to ask yourself what's happening around that workout. So are you going into a brightly lit gym at 11 o' clock at night and blasting music and are you drinking three espresso energy drink before you go? You're going to be awake, you're going to have a hard time going to sleep. It's not just the workout, it's the context around the workout. My preference is always to work out as early in the day as possible. That's my preference. I don't always accomplish that. People should also know that if you work out at the same time for three or four days, your body builds in an anticipatory circuit. You will feel an energy increase a few minutes before that workout. So if you are working out at 10pm at night and you're finding it hard to go to sleep, if you can shift that workout earlier in the day, you will soon become a morning person. You won't. It might not be this as natural as somebody who naturally wakes up at 4:30 or 5 in the morning, but let's say you're. You want to get on an earlier schedule. You want to get that morning light, but also force yourself to work out in the morning. And then by the second or third day of doing that, you will start to feel more alert as you arrive to the workout. Because there are these anticipatory circuits.

[Lewis Howes]

That's cool.

[Unknown Speaker]

Working out late at night. Some people say cardio okay, but not weight. Some people say, I think it's highly individual. And I don't think there's ever been a really good study addressing that. Regularity is key. I think for me the best times to work out are three hours after waking up, 11 hours after waking up just based on body temperature rhythms. Or immediately like get up and just put the shoes on and just go. And I don't tend to do that last thing very often these days. I tend to wake up and move through the morning a little bit like a lazy bear sunlight and wait for my caffeine, caffeine. But every time I do that early morning workout, I feel much better and more alert all day.

[Lewis Howes]

And you fall asleep probably easily.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I fall asleep much more easily. And the other thing you can do to fall asleep is this might seem a little counterintuitive. I said that you need to lower your body temperature by 1 to 3 degrees. You can take a hot shower or a do sauna, which you would think, well, it heats you up. But when you actually heat the surface of the body, your brain cools off your core body temperature. Unless you stay in that heat for A very long time. So you take a brief, you know, I want to say how long people should shower. Get in the sauna or whatnot, and then. Or hot shower, and then, you know, maybe rinse off with some cool water for not cold, but cool water, lukewarm water for 10 seconds, and dry off and get into bed. Your body temperature will drop. If you get into an ice bath or a cold shower, you'll stay awake. It's very jolting. So I don't recommend people do that late in the day unless they want to be awake for some reason at night. But the other thing is when. This is a little counterintuitive, but my colleague at Stanford, Craig Heller, works on thermoregulation. If you want to cool down and you put a cold towel or ice around your neck, you're cooling the surface of the body, just like you would put a cold pack on a thermostat. What's going to happen? Your brain's going to start to heat you up. So I would avoid cold exposure right before sleep, especially if it's very stimulating, like to the point, cold enough that you get that adrenaline.

[Lewis Howes]

So cold air is key to drop the temperature down, keeping the room cool.

[Unknown Speaker]

Cool, yeah. But you don't want like an ice.

[Lewis Howes]

Box where you're shivering.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. The acute cold exposure, as we call it, of an ice bath or something, rather a sauna or. A lot of people don't have access to sauna. Maybe a warm or hot shower. Shower before sleep. But people tend to be very specific about this, too. Some people like to shower in the morning, some people in the evening. I like to shower whenever I have an opportunity to shower. Generally, I try and shower after I work out, because if I don't, everyone suffers. But I think that if people don't have access to a sauna, that hot shower or warm shower before sleep can be very beneficial because the body will naturally start to dump heat and cool off as you get into bed.

[Lewis Howes]

Gotcha.

[Unknown Speaker]

And then in terms of the actual architecture of sleep and dreams, with dreams, you know that dreams in the beginning of the night tend to be kind of mundane and seem kind of ordinary. And the dreams toward morning tend to be more intense. This is the.

[Lewis Howes]

You wake up and you remember, like, what just happened.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

Not what happened hours before.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right. And the early part of the night, in very broad strokes, the early part of the night tends to be when we release growth hormone, when we tend to repair motor circuits and damaged tissues. And there's a real lack of emotional context. To those dreams. Now, the dreams toward morning tend to have much more emotional enrichment and be very intense. Often if people see visual hallucinations, that's in the so called REM sleep dreams.

[Lewis Howes]

Why is that?

[Unknown Speaker]

It's interesting, great question. Well, two things. You're also paralyzed during REM sleep. You can breathe, but you cannot move. And there's this interesting thing that happens in sleep where when we are in REM rapid eye movement sleep, we have high degree of emotionality of dreams, but we are unable to release adrenaline. This is very much like trauma treatment where there's a desensitization. You're coupling an intense experience to an inability ability for your body to move or to have a reaction to that. Now if you suddenly wake up, which I often do, you'll notice that the adrenaline kicks in. But this is kind of like therapy in your sleep or trauma release in your sleep. And if you deprive people selectively of this rapid eye movement sleep, a number of bad things happen. But one of the primary things that happens that's bad is that when you don't get enough REM sleep, you are more emotionally labile during the day. Little things bother you more, you feel more irritable. Yeah. Anytime I see a comment on, on Instagram, to me or anyone else and someone seems kind of prickly, like, I always just think to myself, I'm not getting enough room to sleep.

[David Goggins]

Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Or I tell myself that.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

Because I want to have some empathy for them. They're just not neurologically up to snuff you, meaning they're not working as well as they could. Now, there are other reasons why people can be combative, but I think lack of, lack of REM sleep is one of the main reasons that we feel irritable, easily set off. There are a number of very powerful things that happen in REM sleep that we should all be seeking. So if you wake up in the middle of the night, you really do want to try and get back to sleep. And then as the night goes on, you're spending more, a greater proportion, excuse me, of your sleep in that rapid eye movement sleep. And those are when you have your very rich dreams and when you wake up, oftentimes spending some time with a pad and paper, maybe while you're getting your afternoon. Your outdoor sunlight is a great thing because you'll remember components of your dreams. The meaning of dreams has had, you know, has been debated for thousands of years, I would say, and I think you, I think Matt would agree, Matt Walker would agree that some dreams do have tremendous significance. Others do not. There seems to be a very powerful effect of having a dream that makes people want to tell someone else their dream. Like we have this need. I think we just have this need to want to put structure on something that seems very unstructured. It is a way, in a sense, when we're dreaming, we're, we're crazy. Like space and time are completely fluid. Everything's. Anything could happen. And when we have a dream that feels powerful to us, I think we, we understandably want to put some sort of interpretation on meaning behind it. Yeah, I've had great insights through dreams. I've also had a lot of dreams that got me nothing. I wake up in the middle of the night and I tend to write things down that come to mind. I achieve my greatest clarity for kind of psychological and relational things when I wake up first, you know, immediately I'll have a solution in my head or I'll think I'm, you know, the other day this happened. I've been, as we were talking about before the recording, I've been working through a very complex set of personal interactions. And these are not traumatic or anything like that. But I've been working with somebody to try and resolve a really hard problem that we have. And we are both committed to solving this problem. And I'll chip away at this and chip away at this and they are much smarter than I am. So I'm struggling and then I will go to sleep, sleep, and I'll wake up at three in the morning and boom. The answer, at least to whatever it is that I'm trying to resolve is right there. And I think it's because in sleep you're trying, you're getting those repeats of the different circuits. You're rehearsing things you learn during the day. You're dumping the emotional load through this trauma release type mechanism of REM sleep. And then answers just kind of geyser up to the top. But again, I'm speculating. What we do know at the neural level is that there's a replay of the neurons that were active during the day in sleep, but at much more rapid rates.

[Lewis Howes]

A lot of stuff we won't remember is what you're saying.

[Unknown Speaker]

Much of sleep is there, much of the dreaming and sleep is designed to get you to forget things that are meaningless.

[Lewis Howes]

What is happening to the brain as you're sleeping? Is it just connecting neurons? Is it flushing? Is it, you know, creating these images for you to remember what's like the, what's the actual mechanics of It, Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

So several things are happening. One is this glymphatic washout. There's this literally like a spin cycle on the brain of dumping all the junk. That's why you want your legs elevated, right? That's why you want your sleep. That's why you want your feet elevated. The glymphatic washout is one. The other is adenosine, this molecule that accumulates the longer that we are awake, that actually gets reduced during sleep so that we can wake up feeling rested. In other words, if you've been up for a day and a half, you've got tons of adenosine in your system. Caffeine of any kind is an indent, blocks adenosine function. I want to be careful because it's not actually an antagonist, it's a competitive agonist for the aficionados. But you're basically reducing adenosine function with caffeine. When you sleep, you reduce adenosine, which is why I delay my caffeine 90 to 120 minutes after waking up. So you've got adenosine getting pushed back down. You've got the glymphatic system washout. You have reordering of nerve neurons and creation of new connections so that what you couldn't do previously, you can do the next day. And the next day you're learning. The trigger for learning occurs during wakefulness through focused, alert, motivated states. The actual rewiring of neurons, meaning the changes in the connections, occurs during sleep, in particular deep sleep. So a lot's happening in there. And during rapid eye movement sleep, the brain is incredibly metabolically active. It's just that the body is paralyzed. And some people experience this invasion of that sleep paralysis into, into the wakeful period. It's really scary. I've had this happen. You wake up and you're still totally paralyzed and you jolt out, terrifying.

[Lewis Howes]

You can't move. I feel like I'm screaming, but nothing's coming out.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's really terrifying.

[Lewis Howes]

Terrifying.

[Unknown Speaker]

Terrifying.

[Lewis Howes]

That's called what, sleep paralysis?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, essentially. But that's an invasion of sleep paralysis into the waking.

[Lewis Howes]

It's like wake paralysis.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And I know you're not a pot smoker, but many pot smokers experience that more often than non pot smokers for reasons that probably relate to the serotonin system and the so called atonia, the inability to move. Interesting. So there's that. What else happens during sleep? Well, there's all sorts of interesting resetting of the digestive system, the microbiome.

[Lewis Howes]

Are your muscles growing or muscle Growth.

[Unknown Speaker]

Probably occurs throughout the 24 hour cycle. But a lot of repair of muscles and triggering a muscle growth probably occur during sleep. He's passed now. He was 11 years old when I had to put him down. But I had this bulldog, Costello. He was a 90 pound English Bulldog mastiff. When he was a puppy, I would take a picture of him and then the next day I'd take a picture of him and he was larger the next day. That's crazy. Well, they're just growing at such a tremendous rate. Right. And that's growth hormone. And during puberty sometimes kids will be kind of locked up during sleep. You'll go in and see a kid sleeping, they'll be in some weird position, they'll get growing pains. Because actually the bones, you know, it's a lot to orchestrate the growth of the bones and the connective tissue and the brain and all that. It's not always perfect. And so sometimes there's a few days where things are a little out of whack.

[Lewis Howes]

I remember for months my knees would hurt when I was a teenager.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And kids, my dad used to come in and push my knees down because he was worried that something was going on. That's the growing. You're growing, you're growing, you're growing.

[Lewis Howes]

Bones are like spreading.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's right. They're psychological growing things and they're physical. And in your case there was a.

[Lewis Howes]

Lot of growing, a lot of physical growing.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm not short, I'm 6:1.

[Lewis Howes]

But you're 6:4.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. You're taller, maybe 6:5 maybe.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

So there's a lot of stuff going on in sleep.

[Lewis Howes]

And are you burning a lot of fat too, during sleep?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, a lot of metabolism is happening during sleep. There's a beautiful paper that just came out. Gosh, I forget all the micro details, so I'm only going to say a little bit about it. But a lot of the removal of fat from the body from when we burn fat is actually done through the breath we exhale. There's a carbon dioxide component.

[Lewis Howes]

Isn't that interesting? It's a sweat and the breath. Right. And then what?

[Unknown Speaker]

Just not so much sweat, not so much fecal elimination, but more your breathing.

[Lewis Howes]

Breathing burns more fat than.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, no, no. Sorry. Elimination of fat from the body if it's going to occur. Because I have to be careful because the nutrition crowd online, they have claws, pitchforks, and they like come after you and they're. And they're ready, fire, aim, type, trigger.

You said this.

Exactly. So I want to Be very clear. I believe in calories in calories out.

[David Goggins]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

As a basic principle. There, you know, there are people out there arguing different. But basically, if you ingest more calories than you burn, you're going to gain weight. If you keep them more or less equal, you're going to maintain. And if you burn more than you ingest, you're going to lose weight. Okay. Whether or not you lose from muscle fat or other body compartments is a different story. But the utilization of fat as an energy source and the elimination of adipose tissue of body fat eventually boils down to something where, yes, indeed, you are exhaling the eventual molecules. Okay. But among other. There are some other routes as well.

[Lewis Howes]

How much fat are we exhaling a week?

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, it depends on whether or not you're in a caloric deficit or not.

[Lewis Howes]

If we're in a deficit, then we're exhaling that fat, essentially.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, but it's been broken down into a number of different metabolic components.

[Lewis Howes]

That's crazy, isn't it?

[Unknown Speaker]

It's really wild to think about. Well, if you think, yeah, and you might think, well, why not just remove it through the digestive tract? But it's part of a whole lipolysis, meaning the utilization of fat for energy. Lipolysis cycle and an energy cycle, those of you that enjoyed or suffered through college or high school, the Krebs cycle and ATP and ATP production and the mitochondrion cells and so forth, that was a whole business there. So in sleep, this paper shows that each stage of sleep is actually associated with a different mode of energy utilization and carbon dioxide offloading and so forth. Or in the last episode we talked about, ideally you are nose breathing during sleep. You are not mouth breathing. So some people actually will shut their mouth with a little bit of medical tape. Huge benefits to that for getting enhanced oxygenation of the brain and body. You do not want to have sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is associated with sexual side effects in men and women. It's associated with cardiac arrest. It's associated with a number of bad things. A lot of people who are carrying a lot of extra weight, who sleep on their back, or even just who are carrying a lot of extra weight, unfortunately, they have a buildup of carbon dioxide in their system at night, especially if they're mouth breathing and they wake up not feeling rested. In all individuals, regardless of phenotype, as we say, their genotypes and their phenotypes, regardless of phenotype, the kind of droopiness and the bagging of the eyes that can Occur from sleep apnea and the effects on. So become a nose breather. We talked about that in the last episode. How to become a nose breather. But you want to nose breathe during sleep if you can. Yes. And your partner will thank you too, because you're not snoring as much.

[Lewis Howes]

Do you nose breathe and sleep?

[Unknown Speaker]

I think I do.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

I think I do. I'm told I snore a little bit from time to time. And a lot of people, even people who aren't carrying a lot of fat, but people who are carrying a lot of muscle, who sleep on their back, oftentimes they're kind of suffocating during sleep. Every time I hear about a bodybuilder or a very large athlete dying, it's almost always a heart attack during sleep. They're on their back or their side, but they're asphyxiating. And there's a beautiful relationship between breathing and heart rate. Simply when you inhale, your heart rate goes up and when you exhale, your heart rate goes down.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Unknown Speaker]

This has to do with the movement of the diaphragm and the change of the shape of the heart and signals from the brain. I won't go into all that. But when you inhale, your heart rate speeds up and when you exhale it slows down. And that's respiratory sinus arrhythmia for the. For the aficionados. So, you know, you want to create an environment around your sleep where it's dim lights in the evening, you've had your meal, maybe a couple chamomile tea towards sleep, maybe use supplements. Maybe you don't. You wake up, get sunlight in your eyes. This is the kind of landscape you want to create.

[Lewis Howes]

Sure.

[Unknown Speaker]

Cool room. You want to avoid very stimulating stuff, conversations and activity, you know, right before sleep.

Yeah.

Now some stimulating activities before sleep, we won't go into details, have a rebound effect afterwards. Matthew Walker's actually talked about this, how certain types of activities cause a rebound in. Relax.

[Lewis Howes]

You know, they're very sort of sexual activities.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes. I'm not trying to be vague here.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm just what does that do for.

[Lewis Howes]

Sleep if you have sexual activities before sleep?

[Unknown Speaker]

So sexual activity includes a. It's really remarkable at the level of autonomic nervous system. So sexual activity involves an increase at first in the so called parasympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system, the relaxation system. But then it involves increases in the sympathetic arm of the. Of the. Of the autonomic nervous system and orgasm in men and women. Is actually purely driven by the sympathetic nervous system, the stress system.

[Lewis Howes]

Huh.

[Unknown Speaker]

And then the post coital period is when the parasympathetic nervous system kicks back on and there's a deep relaxation.

[Lewis Howes]

So is it good to have sexual activity before bed or.

[Unknown Speaker]

Not that good, according to the architecture of what I just described. Yes.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes, it's good.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, it's good. Yes, it's good. Yes, it's good. It helps people sleep. And Matt, actually, when Matt Walker came on my podcast, we talked a little bit about some of the data on this. Now even then, you know, so there are all sorts of questions about this that are now coming out. Now the interesting thing about studying sex in the laboratory is very hard to do, right? I mean, there are ethical reasons, they're complicated reasons. And good studies have to be done in laboratories or by self report. And with self report, people lie and make up stories in one direction or the other. They're doing more of what they would like to be. They're either reporting more of what they'd like to be reporting of or less of what they would like to be reporting less of. But doing those sorts of studies in the laboratory is very difficult. There are sleep laboratories, but it's not often that couples are coming in and staying in those sleep laboratories together. Although that does happen from time to time. But yes, after sex there's a rebound in the parasite sympathetic nervous system, which is a deeply relaxing component of the nervous system. And the reasons for that aren't clear. I mean, one idea is that it's designed to put people in close proximity, not just run off and look for another mate immediately and to smell each other and pair bond through some of the pheromonal systems. Yeah, powerful. Yeah. Yes, very powerful. An interesting form of pre sleep biology for sure, and one that, let's be fair, as we were talking about during the break, every species has two main goals. To protect its young and to make more of itself. And while not all sex is designed for reproduction or used for reproduction, I mean, the, the whole architecture of the reproductive axis, as we say, from brain down to genitals, is designed for that arc of parasympathetic sympathetic and then parasympathetic sympathetic.

[Lewis Howes]

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great. Okay, we each owe 15 bucks. Can you cover me?

[David Goggins]

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[Unknown Speaker]

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[Unknown Speaker]

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