Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

This book found me when I was feeling despondent. I was feeling helpless against forces larger than myself and hopeless in a world that seems to be making strange choices that will inflict more harm than good. How to continue to battle, to grit it out, was looking insurmountable.Steve Magness provides a great counterpoint to the American idea of Toughness; one that promotes empathy, embracing reality, and reframing our situations in a grounded, realistic way that is encouraging and ultimately more rewarding than the old thoughts of Toughness that focused on suppression and grinding ourselves into the ground. This is a great book to read if you're looking for perspective and to slow things down in a world that continues to expect more and more from an individual, at a faster pace, and to no conceivable end.Slow down, take your time, and enjoy the read.

I like the sentiment of this book. I think it would have been even better if there was clearer guidance on how to translate it into actionable strategies in real life. For example, some summary points at the end of each chapter or an action plan at the end of the book would have been useful. Or even a table summarising all of the toughness maxims.

I expected that this book would help me be a tough guy, I guess. To stop being whiny and wimpy. But the focus is different, the focus is much more honest and valuable. There is genuine value in reading this book. There is a lot of research quoted and pointed out, and there is a lot of excellent explanation. Highly recommended.

This is seriously such a good gift for someone going through a hard time. Do you ever have a friend or family member have a difficult time and you just tell them, “well if there’s anything I can do please let me know.” Instead of not taking action, this is a beautiful thing to do for someone.This book reinforces the beauty you can find in hard times. It’s not cheesy but rather gives practical examples to anyone as a reminder that hard times can help your character and perseverance in so many ways. I highly recommend as a thoughtful gift.

This book really exceeded my expectations.Clarity and assertiveness in every chapter, made me look toughness from a very different perspective... I just realized how wrong I was trying to get the best results from my teenage athlete son.Highly recommended!

It was a completely mismatch book for me. I thought of something else and I thought I would find the answer in this book. However, this book was about something else as psychological analysis than stories. The book was generally well written with a bunch of information. Maybe good for sports management majors rather than ordinary readers like me.

Gt

This is an interesting book touching on the fallacious beliefs of toughness and those coached to the athletes to make them perform better.This book gives a lot of ways to distinguish between actually acting tough and being tough from the inside.