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 a new definition of inner strength 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 such resilience. He offers four core pillars to cultivate such resilience: 

    Pillar 1: Ditch the Façade, Embrace Reality
    Pillar 2: Listen to Your Body
    Pillar 3: Respond, Instead of React 
    Pillar 4: Transcend Discomfort   

Smart and wise all at once, this life-changing self-help book 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, overcoming performance anxiety, and achieving the kind of high performance that makes us happier, more successful, and, ultimately, better people.

About the Author

Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance. He is the author of the new book Win the Inside Game: How to Move from Surviving to Thriving, and Free Yourself Up to Perform. He is the author of the bestselling Do Hard Things, coauthor of Peak Performance, The Passion Paradox, and the author of The Science of Running. Collectively his books have sold more than a million copies.

Magness has served as a performance coach to numerous professional sporting teams, executives, entrepreneurs, artists, and more. He's worked with Olympians, athletes from every professional sports league, and the U.S. military. His focus is on performance holistically; whether that's developing mental skills to show up when it counts, or solving organizational or team problems.

His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Runner’s World, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, and a variety of other outlets. In addition, Steve's expertise on elite sport and performance has been featured in The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, Business Insider, and ESPN The Magazine.