Do Hard Things

Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

By: Steve Magness

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"In Do Hard Things, Steve Magness beautifully and persuasively reimagines our understanding of toughness. This is a must-read for parents and coaches and anyone else looking to prepare for life's biggest challenges."—Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Talking to Strangers and host of the Revisionist History podcast

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.

Toughness has long been held as the key to overcoming a challenge and achieving greatness, whether it is on the sports field, at a boardroom, or at the dining room table. Yet, the prevailing model has promoted a mentality based on fear, false bravado, and hiding any sign of weakness. In other words, the old model of toughness has failed us.

Steve Magness, a performance scientist who coaches Olympic athletes, rebuilds our broken model of resilience with one grounded in the latest science and psychology. InDo 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:

Pillar 1: Ditch the Façade, Embrace Reality

• Pillar 2: Listen to Your Body
• Pillar 3: Respond, Instead of React
• Pillar 4: Transcend Discomfort

Smart and wise all at once, Magness flips the script on what it means to be resilient. Drawing from mindfulness, military case studies, sports psychology, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, he provides a roadmap for navigating life’s challenges and achieving high performance that makes us happier, more successful, and, ultimately, better people.

toughness is not what we think!

Toughness is about being true to you. I enjoyed all the examples from endurance athletes. I definitely learned from this as an athlete and a person. I enjoyed learning that what we know about. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is actually wrong. It’s not self actualization that’s at the top, but connection.

So wordy!

I can not help but thinking, “Get to your point” constantly while listening to this book.

Would use again

Their are many good nuggets to build on in this book I highly recommend it. If you apply it you should be fine.

Good Book for Managers

Learned a new definition of “tough.”

Not just for athletes. Performance is performance. Flow is flow. Practice is practice.

One suggestion - a word other than “stoic” for cold and unemotional.

Great advice for sports and work

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve their mental toughness, whether they are an athlete, a business leader, or simply someone who wants to be more resilient in the face of challenges.