Magness has served as a consultant on mental skills development for professional sports teams, including some of the top teams in the NBA. He has also coached numerous professional athletes to the Olympics and world championship level. He has coached seven athletes to top Top-15 finishes at a World Championship, twelve athletes to births on the World Championship or Olympic teams, and guided more than twenty-five Olympic Trials Qualifiers. He helped guide Roberta Groner, a forty-one-year-old full-time nurse, to 6th place in the marathon at the 2019 World Championships. When you think of the word “tough,” who do you picture? Many people might think of a John-Wayne-type: someone who suffers silently, stoically ignores pain, and wouldn’t be caught dead talking about their feelings. But this popular image of toughness is deeply flawed. In fact, science and psychology find that stereotypically tough behaviors such as these are counterproductive to cultivating lasting resilience. It’s about time we redefined toughness! Let’s get one thing straight. If something like this has ever happened to you, the problem is not that you’re not tough enough. The problem lies in society’s toxic definition of toughness. In this summary, we’ll share a new definition of toughness that’s grounded in science and psychology. What’s more, we’ll guide you through strategies for building this toughness within yourself. I'm not exactly a teenager anymore. But as I was reading I began to see how this can apply to anyone. It's never too late to start. I absolutely cannot wait to suggest this book to the 'kidults' in my life." 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.

Magness was a columnist for Running Times magazine and is now the co-host of two podcasts: The Growth Equation podcast, with Brad Stulberg, and On Coaching with Magness and Marcus, with Jon Marcus. His writing has also appeared in Runner’s World and Sports Illustrated. In addition, Steve's expertise on elite sport and performance 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. Individuals with exceptional levels of drive have all found an intrinsic motivation to keep pursuing their aims. It’s that sense of unchanging purpose – a purpose connected to spirituality, intellect, community, or mission – that allows them to dig deep. When the US army examined results from their survival training courses, they found that the soldiers who experienced doubt and expected the training to be difficult performed much better than the soldiers who thought the training would be a ‘piece of cake.’ As a wise and experienced military friend once told Steve Magness, “An ounce of doubt keeps me sharp.”I read countless books but this is one of the most unique, defining and important ones I’ve ever seen. It is paradigm-shifting, revolutionary, liberating and hope-instilling. Not only the insights and principles, but the stories of young people cheerfully doing hard things will capture your imagination. While I’d love for every teenager to read Do Hard Things, I’m just as eager for every parent, church leader and educator to read it. Do Hard Things is so important. It is challenging teenagers to rebel against the low expectations placed on them. And the voices that are asking teens to rise to meet this challenge are voices from their own generation. That thrills me."

A growing movement of young people is rebelling against the low expectations of today's culture by choosing to "do hard things" for the glory of God. And Alex and Brett Harris are leading the charge. The writing was boring and written in a textbook style. There were some nice stories about teens helping the homeless and becoming missionaries, which were meant to be inspiring, but the real-life people were portrayed as emotionless, which dampened the message. This sounds more radical than it should because we’ve failed our young people by lowering our expectations and enabling them to lower theirs. But raising expectations and following Christ wholeheartedly is a refreshing and long-overdue message countless teenagers are longing for and will gladly embrace. As a volunteer high school coach, I spend lots of time with teenagers and I plan to give them Do Hard Things. 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.Acting tough and being tough are two different things. Moving away from flawed notions of toughness and instead listening to your body, your emotions, and your inner voice will allow you to develop the lasting resilience to overcome even the most daunting challenges. After covering the pioneering work of Dr. Martin Seligman and his concept of learned helplessness, Magness discusses the importance of attaining a small amount of control over your situation to reduce your levels of despair: Self-determination theory (SDT) includes the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Or stated another way, to feel in control, like you can make progress, and to belong