Do Hard Things

National Bestseller "In Do Hard Things, Steve Magness beautifully and persuasively reimagines our understanding of toughness. This is a must-read for parents and coaches and anyone else looking to prepare for life's biggest challenges." -- Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and Talking to Strangers and host of the Revisionist History podcast 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. Toughness has long been held as the key to overcoming a challenge and achieving greatness, whether it is on the sports field, at a boardroom, or at the dining room table. Yet, the prevailing model has promoted a mentality based on fear, false bravado, and hiding any sign of weakness. In other words, the old model of toughness has failed us. Steve Magness, a performance scientist who coaches Olympic athletes, rebuilds our broken model of resilience with one grounded in the latest science and psychology. In Do Hard Things, Magness teaches us how we can work with our body – how experiencing discomfort, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action can be the true indications of cultivating inner strength. He offers four core pillars to cultivate such resilience: Pillar 1- Ditch the Façade, Embrace RealityPillar 2- Listen to Your BodyPillar 3- Respond, Instead of React Pillar 4- Transcend Discomfort Smart and wise all at once, Magness flips the script on what it means to be resilient. Drawing from mindfulness, military case studies, sports psychology, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, he provides a roadmap for navigating life's challenges and achieving high performance that makes us happier, more successful, and, ultimately, better people.

Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, author of Do Hard Things and The Science of Running, and coauthor of Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. He is the co-host of the podcast Farewell, and co-founder of The Growth Equation, an online platform dedicated to the understanding and practice of performance and well-being. He has written for The Atlantic, Runner’s World and Sports Illustrated, and he has been featured in The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, on NPR, and others. Magness has served as a performance coach and speaker for teams and individuals in the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, the US military, and numerous companies and organizations. Magness's latest book, Win the Inside Game, will be published by HarperCollins in February 2025. He lives in Houston, Texas.