Do Hard Things Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Create space: spend time alone in your head. Keep your mind steady: develop the ability to respond instead of react.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“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

“If your goal starts to become unattainable, reengaging means switching to something still within your grasp. If you are struggling to put pen to paper on your novel, it’s switching from trying to write a chapter to simply outlining your thoughts. Reengaging allows you to shift the target slightly, so that instead of slamming on the brakes, you find something that you can manage in the moment. It’s moving from reaching the peak to getting down in one piece. Inner drive brings clarity, allowing you to listen to your body so that you can make the right decision during difficult moments.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Coping strategies act to amplify or blunt the effects of those thoughts, feelings, and emotions. We can use simple techniques, like directing our attention, or complex ones that involve cognition, like reappraisal. Where we direct our focus and cognition can push us toward a freak-out or enable us to work through whatever it is we are facing.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“They weren’t just using one strategy; they were changing their focus at different times in response to the demands of the event. Fatigue and a rising uncertainty about whether they could finish? Flip the switch and home in. Are those around them starting to make tactical moves? Shift attention to their surroundings and competitors. As I quizzed the athletes, the best performers were directing attention to help cope with the demands of the race, and the strategies were vast and complex. It wasn’t as simple as associate or dissociate”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“TOUGHNESS MAXIM The best performers tend to have a flexible and adaptive coping ability. They can bounce between different strategies, depending on the demands of the situation.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“5. Linguistic Zooming Remember from chapter 7 that when we switch from first person to either second or third person, we are putting distance between what’s occurring and our response to”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Temporal Zooming: Imagine the Future When you are going through a difficult time, ask how you might feel about this in six months, a year, or even ten years down the line.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“3. Physical Zooming: Mood Follows Action We have covered this idea so far in the book, but to reiterate, one study took participants and sat them in a chair. They told participants to either lean forward so that they were on the edge of their seat, anticipating what was coming, or lean back in a fully reclined comfortable position. After getting into position, subjects were given a task to categorize a group of pictures. Those who reclined in the chair were more likely to choose broad categories, coming up with creative ways to make,”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“2. Cognitive Zooming: Weird Versus Normal This is what I like to call the Family Feud style of thinking. In the TV game show, they present you with a challenge (e.g., “Name something that goes up and down” ), and then you have to answer what you think people who were surveyed would have answered.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“1. Visual Zooming: Portrait Versus Panorama Mode Direct your focus of attention, almost staring at an object, picking up as many details as possible in a small area. That’s portrait mode. It primes your mind for a single task, shifting you to a narrow state of mind. On the other hand, softening your gaze to an almost blurry state where you attempt to pick up everything in the periphery is what I call panorama mode.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Exercises: Broad Versus Narrow: Changing Your Processing Ratio The first step in utilizing any of the strategies below is to decide whether you need to zoom in or zoom out. Remember, stress causes us to narrow because it’s advantageous for a short period of time. Stress locks us in and shifts us to focus on one goal instead of exploring others. But you also miss vital information, and over time, your inner voice and negative mood soon spiral.”
― 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.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“When we are self-immersed, we amplify the emotional aspects of the situation. Our world narrows, and we get drawn into the emotionality of the experience, setting ourselves up for the negative cascade toward choosing the “easy path” in our toughness paradigm. And according to recent research, a self-immersed perspective causes us to see the situation as a threat. We get locked in on any details that might trigger danger. When we adopt a self-distanced perspective, our view of the world broadens. We can let go of the emotionality, seeing it for what it is, instead of letting it spiral. We see our current predicament as a challenge.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“When put through stressful situations, if we use self-distanced inner dialogue, it not only helps decrease anxiety, shame, and rumination, but also leads to better overall performance.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness