Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness by Steve Magness 

About the Book

• Published in 2022
• The author, Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, coauthor of Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox, and the author of The Science of Running. He has been featured in The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Men’s Health, The Guardian, Business Insider, and ESPN The Magazine, and he has been featured on NPR and CNN International. Magness has served as a consultant and speaker for NASA, the Houston Rockets, Murphy Oil, the Brooklyn Nets, the Cleveland Guardians, the Seattle Sounders, the New Orleans Pelicans, Athletics New Zealand, Canadian Athletics, New Zealand High Performance, and more. He lives in Houston, Texas (Source: Amazon)

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Key Takeaways:

• Your Emotions are Messengers, Not Dictators

Feelings are predictive, not reactive

Feelings may serve the role of informing or nudging us toward a behaviour, but they are also subject to distortion.

The better we understand the interoceptive signals reaching our awareness, the better our interpretation – and ultimately the decisions that come from them – will be.

In two studies out of Europe, a group of psychologists found that individuals who were clear about their feelings, understanding where they came from and what they meant, were more likely to thrive under stress, anxiety, and pressure.

They turned anxiety into excitement and pressure into information and motivation. All thanks to the clarity on the message their body was sending.

• Turn the Dial So You don’t Spiral

When we are faced with fear or any other form of discomfort, our coping strategy influences our experience and our behavioural approach. We can turn the volume up, diving into the experience, or we can turn the volume down, directing our attention away or reframing it, reminding ourselves that “it isn’t real.”

It’s not that either strategy is right or wrong.

The question is whether it matches the situation and our goals.

• Build the Foundation to do hard things

… first few years of parenting… requires all the patience in the world. How can I meet them at their level, explain it, and use it as a teachable moment. Yelling at them, exerting excessive control, all that does is teach them to be afraid of you… Fear is easy to install. Trust is much harder. Instead of relying on fear and control, real toughness is linked to self-directed learning, feeling competent in your skills, being challenged but allowed to fail, and above all, feeling cared for by the team or organization.

.. Toughness comes from the same building blocks that help create healthy, happy humans. Contrary to decades of ingrained ideology, toughness isn’t developed through control or punishment; it’s developed through care and support.