I stumbled across a David Goggins podcast earlier today.

It made me face my demons and ask myself some really tough questions.

In this email, I’m going to share what he discussed and give you the sauce on

how to wake up early everyday.

Let’s get into it.

First off, I need to give you a concept that Goggins came up with.

It’s called performance without a purpose .

For example, let’s say you have nothing going on.

In Goggins’ case, he has no races coming up, he doesn’t have to go on any

podcasts and there are no new books to write.

On the face of it, he has no purpose.

Most people in the world need a purpose to perform.

They need something to make them get out of bed in the morning.

They need something that will force them to work hard.

David Goggins doesn’t.

He believes you need to get to a point in your life where there’s nothing on your agenda, and still feel the need to perform.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a race to train for.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any content to create.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have an important exam to study for.

You need to get up anyway.

So you may as well get up with a passion to perform at the highest level.

Why?

Because one day, something unexpected will happen.

Life will always throw a spanner in the works.

It’s unavoidable.

Whether you want to look at it as awful or not is completely in your power.

But when this event does come into your life, you need to be so ready for it that

it doesn’t even bother you.

Why?

Because you’ve been performing at the highest level.

And you’ve been doing it without a purpose.

On the flipside, if you don’t live a life of intensity and perform irrespective of

your lack of purpose, you’re not going to be ready for it.

And when it comes, you’re going to go belly up.

The unexpected event is going to bring you to your knees, and you’re going to be begging for mercy.

Interestingly, everyone on this planet is searching for a purpose.

They think that it’s all they need to finally start living life.

Going back to the Goggins concept, the purpose is the main reason for the

performance.

But Goggins came out with a really powerful insight.

He believes that instead of needing to look for a purpose, you can realise that

it’s already there.

And it always will be there.

Your purpose is something tethered to you.

It’s inescapable.

It’s something that will never, ever leave you.

Because the purpose is you.

Goggins believes you are your purpose.

Your existence is enough of a purpose to perform.

The pursuit of self mastery and inner excellence should be the only purpose worth prioritising.

All the other things are just noise.

People who think getting a cool job or being accepted into a certain university is their life’s purpose are sorely mistaken.

Those things are just temporary pitstops.

Goals to be checked off.

What they don’t realise is, it’s the overarching goal of self mastery that is pushing them to achieve these goals.

But if you don’t realise that you yourself are your purpose, you’ll allow these

goals to become the main priorities in your life.

And this will lead to a bunch of problems.

What happens when you get the job?

What happens when you reach the arbitrary follower count?

What happens when you make the million dollars?

Nothing.

You made a short-term goal the purpose, and once the goal was achieved you lost the will to keep going.

When you become the purpose, there’s no stopping.

When you become the purpose, you realise there is no finish line.

Why?

Because your potential is infinite.

The pursuit of self mastery is an infinite game because there is no end.

There are simply different stages.

Your pursuit for self-mastery is going to be different when you’re 20 compared to when you’re 80.

It’s a game that never stops.

So, how does all this relate to waking up early?

In simple terms, if you don’t feel like getting up in the morning, it’s not because

you don’t care about doing a specific thing.

It’s because you don’t care enough about yourself.

And that’s deep.

Since you’re the purpose, why wouldn’t you want to wake up early?

If you’re not your purpose, why even bother waking up?

You can just stay in bed all day and not do anything.

But you do get up.

Because deep down, you do care about yourself.

And you care about yourself a lot.

If you’re fully dedicated to the purpose of self-mastery, you should be able to rise like a phoenix in the early hours of the morning.

In Goggins’ eyes, he needs to wake up early in the morning for himself.

Not so he can win a race.

Not so he can make some money.

He does it all for himself.

This is essentially Goggins’ philosophy on life:

Life’s purpose is to better one’s self.

And in his eyes, waking up earlier than 99% of people is one of the small habits that signals he’s working on himself.

The reason he can wake up without needing anything to perform for, is because he has pride in himself.

This obviously leads to a lot of assumptions.

The main one being, if you don’t wake up early — you don’t have pride in yourself.

Whether this is true or not is besides the point.

It’s certainly an interesting perspective.

To be blunt with you, I woke up at 11:55AM today.

I originally got up at 6AM, but went back to bed after one of the biggest pisses

of my life.

Does this mean I hate myself?

Not at all.

I love myself.

But I’ll admit, when I woke up and saw that I’d slept another 6 hours, I did get annoyed with myself.

Annoyed because I didn’t need more sleep.

Annoyed because a lot of time in the day had already passed me by.

And annoyed because I know I was being lazy.

With that said, I’m still here — performing.

I’m not allowing the wasted morning to lead to a wasted day.

And this is something I always do.

But is this a good strategy?

Is it smart to constantly be playing catch-up with my bad habits?

Honestly, no.

I think Goggins has a point.

If your main purpose in life is yourself, you should prioritise the improvement of

yourself.

And one of the ways to do this is to wake up earlier.

Does this mean wake up at 3AM every morning?

No.

But it does mean not sleeping in until noon.

See you in the next one,

Godfrey