Satisfying our basic needs is the fuel that allows us to put to work all of the tools we’ve developed to be tough. We can train this in everyday situations: pause when you feel that incessant urge to check your phone, or listen to your family member express their political views instead of interrupting. The better you’re able to identify and interpret these, the more likely you are to cope with the difficulties you face. Once upon a time, he ran a mile in 4:01 in high school, at the time the 6th fastest high school mile in US history.

What I mean by real toughness is the confidence that will equip us to not only do hard things that challenge us and help us grow, but to enjoy the process of engaging in difficult projects, athletic challenges, or conversations, all of which will help us become better, happier people. Both Apple and Google state that they ensure that only users who have actually downloaded the app can submit a review. But Magness cleverly takes the ‘Do Hard Things’ title to draw in the ‘mentally tough types’ and turns them into seeing how flexibility, acceptance and value led approaches are really beneficial. When they dug further, the expert meditators had a “greater ability to fully embrace the feeling of pain and … let go of the appraisal of what the pain meant to them.In the workplace, a recent study of over 1,000 office workers showed that the strongest predictor of how well they dealt with demanding work was whether they felt respected and valued by their managers. There are also summaries at the end of every chapter, to help the reader reinforce what has just been covered. In the Israeli military, those who grew up in an authoritarian environment adapted to and coped with the challenges of military life much worse than their peers who grew up in a nurturing environment. In the corporate world, we prop up the companies that create slick-looking ads promoting values of inclusion and diversity, all while the inner workings of those organizations are littered with abuse, hostility, and harassment.

Our definition of toughness has, unfortunately, revolved around a belief that the toughest individuals have thick skin, fear nothing, constrain emotions, and hide vulnerability. In his bestselling titles Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox as well as his latest, Do Hard Things, Magness shares the secrets behind achieving sustainable success while operating at the peak of your capabilities. 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.There are several parts of his book that I marked that I would like to go back to and spend more time with so that I can fully appreciate all the insights this book has to offer. What does a child who was taught to follow the rules unquestioningly out of fear do when a parent isn’t there to dictate his behavior?

If you set an unrealistic goal – say, doing a hundred push-ups a day when you’re not in shape – and you fail to meet that goal, you have to lower the bar. Magness has served as a consultant on mental skills development for professional sports teams, including some of the top teams in the NBA.

The book is a mixture of performance science, psychology, social psychology, Buddhist philosophy, and self-help. But Magness then redefines toughness in this way, “Real toughness is experiencing discomfort, or distress, leaning in, paying attention and creating space to take thoughtful action. Disassociate through the easy parts and bank your mental stamina for later when you need to focus on the hard parts.

He spends time reminding the reader that there are dangers in setting your expectations too low or too high. When we go in with bravado, it backfires because at the first inkling that we may not be able to succeed, our brain freaks out. When you’re all about image, you set goals designed to impress other people: I’m going to run a marathon or I’m going to marry the most attractive partner I can find. What’s the X factor that allows one smart, innovative thinker to found a company or invent a product that makes waves, while their equally smart, innovative peer makes barely a ripple? In evaluating almost seven hundred players’ performance, those who played under a coach with an abusive leadership style saw a drop in performance, as measured by a player efficiency score.This section has a lot of good insight into having different ways to respond to situations and knowing which response is appropriate for which situation.