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

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Steve Magness, a performance scientist who coaches Olympic athletes, rebuilds our broken model of resilience with one grounded in the latest science and psychology. In Do Hard Things , Magness teaches us how we can work with our body – how experiencing discomfort, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action can be the true indications of cultivating inner strength. He offers four core pillars to cultivate such resilience: Generate a feeling of competency by constantly feeling like you’re making progress. Reflect on the work you’ve completed in the past few days to get you to where you are today. Then, focus on one tiny thing you can do to continue making progress in the next 5 seconds. For a runner mid-marathon, that means reflecting on the miles she’s completed and then executing the next few steps as well as she can. The problem is, the Harris brothers wrote about things everyone has already heard a million times before. There's the message "if you're too scared to ever do anything, your life will waste away" pumped into just about every motivational book and movie, yet the Harris brothers acted like they were the ones to come up with it.

From beloved performance expert, executive coach, and coauthor of Peak Performance Steve Magness comes a radical rethinking of how we perceive toughness and what it means to achieve our high ambitions in the face of hard things.This book is a wake up call to a generation that is down in the dumps. It's like a coach screaming from the sidelines, 'You can do it!!!'. I'd recommend it to anyone, young or old." And I'm sorry, but I could hardly take the authors seriously when they couldn't write the word "sex." They discussed drugs and drinking, but when it came to the s-word… err… inappropriate behavior… err… bad stuff… err… sexual activities… They sounded like a couple of embarassed twelve year olds. At least it made me laugh. Completing a hard and worthwhile endeavor requires a high level of toughness. People associate toughness with complete confidence, brute force, and bravado. But real toughness is none of those things. Author Steve Magness has explored the science of toughness, and he’s found surprising differences between the traditional toughness maxims and the science of toughness. For starters: The way to greater confidence is not to reassure ourselves of our own dignity; it’s to come to peace with our inevitable ridiculousness

There is one point early on which reflects a misunderstanding of the Catholic faith, when they relate a story of certain German monks who seek to always choose the hard way, sleeping on the cold floor, eating tasteless food once a day, etc. The authors consider that these monks believe that the harder they are on themselves, the more God will love them, and the authors strongly disagree. But what they don't understand is that love can be shown even in this way, and though God doesn't call most people to this kind of life, it is a valid and fruitful path for those he does. Tough people are able to adjust and pour their ability to persist into a new worthwhile goal; it’s switching from trying to write a chapter to simply outlining your thoughts Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, coauthor of Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success and The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life, and the author of The Science of Running: How to Find Your Limit and Train to Maximize Your Performance. Collectively his books have sold more than a quarter-million copies in print, ebook, and audio formats. They point out society's low expectations of teenagers nowadays, how it's considered "good enough" just to make it through school with decent grades and not get involved in drugs. As I said, it has a good premise. Who doesn't think that teenagers need to work harder and have more expectations of themselves. I'll be the first to admit that most of the time, I don't really expect anything of my kids other than they just exist. But, these guys were just over-the-top and so full of themselves and their accomplishments. Some of the descriptions just went on and on. If I had been reading the book at least I could have skipped ahead and not gotten so impatient with all of their superior explanations.If you don't want a book that sits on your shoulder and whispers "do hard things" every time you are faced with a difficult challenge or situation, then I suggest you don't read this book. It will do it. I promise you. Perhaps you’ve projected false confidence but failed to deliver. Perhaps you’ve pushed through physical pain only to find that the more you ignored it, the more unbearable it became. Perhaps you’ve ignored emotions until they found a way to burst out – spectacularly. From beloved performance expert, executive coach, and coauthor of Peak Performance Steve Magness comes a radical rethinking of how we perceive toughness and what it means to achieve our high ambitions in the face of hard things. Do Hard Things is an extraordinary book. In fact, I believe it will prove to be one of the most life-changing, family-changing, church-changing and culture-changing books of this generation.