Do Hard Things Quotes

“True Confidence Is Quiet; Insecurity Is Loud”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Research consistently shows that tougher individuals are able to perceive stressful situations as challenges instead of threats. A challenge is something that’s difficult, but manageable. On the other hand, a threat is something we’re just trying to survive, to get through. This difference in appraisals isn’t because of an unshakable confidence or because tougher individuals downplay the difficulty. Rather, those who can see situations as a challenge developed the ability to quickly and accurately assess the situation and their ability to cope with it.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“We tell our children to believe in themselves, without explaining how to develop that belief. We’ve fallen for the Instagram version of confidence, emphasizing the projection of belief, instead of working on the substance underneath. We need a new approach to building confidence, one focused on the inside.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“real toughness is experiencing discomfort or distress, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action. It’s maintaining a clear head to be able to make the appropriate decision. Toughness is navigating discomfort to make the best decision you can. And research shows that this model of toughness is more effective at getting results than the old one.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“We believe that failure of any kind should be avoided instead of embraced, because it shatters our confidence. We’re making the same mistakes, setting ourselves up for a confidence based on the external, not internal.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“In an increasingly distractible world, we’re slowly losing the ability to sit with our thoughts and experiences. When our inner self becomes foreign, we become hyperreactive to anything it says.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Clutch required choosing; flow required experiencing. Two different states. Both bringing about top performance. One requires grit, the other grace. One accepting, the other a conscious decision. In many ways, the clutch-versus-flow paradigm reflects toughness. We tend to think of it as a singular method: push through, persist. But as we’ve come to realize, that’s a false constriction. Being tough means being able to choose the right strategy, given your abilities and the situation.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“When it’s based on external rewards or praise, it’s dependent on something over which we have little control.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Research and practice are clear. Stress inoculation doesn’t work unless you have acquired the skills to navigate the environment you will encounter. As sports psychologist Brian Zuleger told me, “Telling people to relax doesn’t work unless you’ve taught people how to actually relax. The same goes for mental strength. The historical way to develop toughness was to do something physically challenging, and you’d have a fifty-fifty shot if they thrived. You have to teach the skill before it can be applied.” Throwing people in the deep end doesn’t work unless they’ve been taught the basics of how to swim.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Pretending to be confident can be effective to some degree . . . however, like any façade we create, it won’t last.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“When our self-worth is dependent on outside factors, we have what researchers call a contingent self-worth. We derive our sense of self from what people think and how we are judged. We give over control to external factors. When we utilize idle praise and combine that with undeserved rewards, we create an environment ripe for developing contingent self-worth.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“The old model of toughness, in essence, throws people into the deep end of the pool but forgets that we need to first teach people how to swim.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“When I went back and compared motivation styles to performance improvement over each athlete’s career, one factor stood out. Those who scored high in a particular type of extrinsic motivation called external regulation had lower improvement rates. External regulation is defined as when “the sport is performed not for fun but to obtain rewards (e.g., praise) or to avoid negative consequences (e.g., criticisms from parents).” The five highest-ranked athletes in external regulation were five athletes who showed the least amount of improvement.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Instead, real toughness is experiencing discomfort or distress, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action. It’s maintaining a clear head to be able to make the appropriate decision. Toughness is navigating discomfort to make the best decision you can. And research shows that this model of toughness is more effective at getting results than the old one.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“We create fake confidence for the same reason we build fake self-esteem: to protect the sensitive parts of our ego and to hide our weaknesses and insecurities from the world for fear of being exposed as a fraud or as not good enough.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“An honest appraisal is all about giving your mind better data to predict with.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“And that’s the key to true confidence. Acknowledging the good and bad, our weaknesses and strengths. Living with and dealing with reality instead of putting on a front. Setting our own standards. And realizing that, as Alain de Botton said in his book On Confidence, “The way to greater confidence is not to reassure ourselves of our own dignity; it’s to come to peace with our inevitable ridiculousness.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Confidence doesn’t come from doing the work out of fear or neuroticism—to practice because you are afraid to lose or fail. When fear drives the motivational ship, then insecurity pervades. When the work is done in the name of getting better, of enjoying the process, of searching for mastery of the craft, then confidence gradually grows.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Course-Correct for Stress A group of French researchers from the University of Nantes wanted to see how stress affected individuals’ judgment of what they were capable of. They chose a simple task: estimating how high of a bar one could step over. The trick was that participants had to make their guess after being kept awake in a lab for twenty-four hours straight. Sleep deprivation does a number on the brain, inducing stress and fatigue. Regardless of the actual height they could navigate in a normal state, participants severely underestimated the height they could step over when in a sleep-deprived state. Stress alters our judgment of what we’re capable of. In another study, researchers found that those in chronic pain tend to overestimate the distance to walk to a target. These findings led sports psychologist Thibault Deschamps to state, “Individuals perceive the environment in terms of the costs of acting within it.” In another study, researchers asked individuals standing at the bottom of a hill to guess how steep the hill was. The overwhelming majority greatly overestimated the steepness, guessing it was a 20-, 25-, or even 30-degree-grade hill. In reality, the hill had a 5-percent grade. There was one group of students who were accurate: the cross-country team. If we have the capability to run up the hill without too much undue stress, we see the steepness for what it is. If we don’t, it looks overwhelming. In an interesting twist, when researchers took those runners and made them go out for a long run and then come back and judge the slant of the hill, their hill-judging expertise disappeared. In a state of fatigue, they started overestimating the slope to a much greater degree. Fatigue had shifted their capabilities and, with them, their perception abilities. When we flip into a threat state, a freeze reaction, or a full-blown freak-out, the normal often seems unattainable. We tend to overcompensate, greatly diminishing what we’re capable of. Part of having an accurate appraisal is course-correcting. If you feel tired, fatigued, or anxious, you can learn how to navigate that. But knowing that you might sell yourself short gives you the power to do something about it, and to readjust as stress or fatigue mounts.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“The students primed with a broad attention task produced more unique answers.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Frankl reported in his book Yes to Life. The key to a free mind was seeing meaning in life, not just in the way we are used to thinking of it, as some greater purpose. But in every moment. That if we could find meaning in the minuscule portions of life, that something was greater than ourselves, then we would possess the will to survive or, if circumstances deemed otherwise, the peace to see meaning in our demise. Freedom was the key to meaning. Freedom to choose how you saw and experienced every part of suffering. To Frankl, death contained meaning, just as life did. Freedom of your mind wasn’t just about surviving; it was about being able to choose. That if you were going to die, you still had the ability to escape the place you were in, to go somewhere else, even if it was only in your mind.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Instead, if we wanted to be fulfilled, there were three ways to achieve this. First, the act of doing. Creating—whether it be in an artistic pursuit or a labor of love—brought meaning to one’s life. The second was in experiencing—nature, love, art, or anything that might create the sensation of awe and expand one’s perspective of the world. You can imagine an audience sitting in a lecture hall being slightly thrown off by the joy and happiness declaration, but their minds were surely back in sync with the message of doing and experiencing to create meaning. The third key to fulfillment would catch most off guard, but this particular audience was likely expecting it: suffering.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Over five Saturdays, the professor outlined his theory on the keys to having a meaningful life. He railed against conventional wisdom, declaring that joy could not be pursued and that happiness “should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome.” Such pursuits did not bring meaning to our life. They did not fill our soul.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“You can’t force cohesion or unity. It doesn’t come from trust falls, gimmicky bonding activities, or forced interaction. It comes from being real. From allowing people to lower their defenses and feel comfortable enough to be who they are. You can’t force it. All you can do is create the space for it to happen. The magic wasn’t in Popovich’s team dinners. It was in his creating space for genuine interaction.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“The study’s takeaway wasn’t what many in the sporting community interpreted it to be: go out and high-five your teammates. The key wasn’t the acts themselves. It’s what they represented. Teams that are high in trust and belonging display more signals that they do just that, truly trust one another.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Cultivating an environment that allows for progress and competence has the following characteristics: A challenging but supportive environment The ability to take risks and voice your opinion without fear being the dominant motivator A path that shows the way for growth and improvement in your job or field”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“In an autonomy-supportive environment, the leader acts as a guide, a person who is on the journey with the individual. The leader pokes, prods, nudges, and maybe even pushes individuals in certain directions, but the leader understands that they are there to help others reach their potential. That while they can direct and guide, it ultimately is up to the individual to take ownership of their actions.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“to ingrain to only listen because they’re afraid of me?” Fear is easy to instill. 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.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Self-determination theory (SDT) was born. It includes the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Or stated another way, to feel in control, like you can make progress, and to belong.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“the peak to returning safely down to her loved ones. Tough people don’t live in a black-and-white world of success or failure. They are able to adjust and pour their ability to persist into a new worthwhile goal.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness