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

By Steve Magness 

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.

INTRODUCTION 

HOW WE GOT TOUGHNESS WRONG AND WHERE TO GO 

• As podcaster Rich Roll told me in summarizing the hundreds of interviews he’s conducted, “Everybody goes through shit in their life. Nobody escapes obstacles.” If we’re going to face obstacles, we might as well figure out the best way to navigate them. 
• Real toughness isn’t just about helping you deal with pain or perform better; it’s about making you a healthier, happier human being. 

The Four Pillars of Real Toughness 

* PILLAR 1: Ditch the Facade, Embrace Reality 


* PILLAR 2: Listen to Your Body 


* PILLAR 3: Respond instead of React  

* PILLAR 4: Transcend Discomfort 


CHAPTER 1 

From Tough Coaches, Tough Parents, and Tough Guys to Finding Real Inner Strength

• We’ve been conditioned to see the external as more important than the internal, and that putting on a facade of toughness is the way to go. 
• Pete Carroll wants players who come through when the game is on the line. But instead of relying solely on discipline, he believes toughness comes from somewhere much different: from an inner drive to keep them focused, from embracing challenges and bouncing back if things didn’t go their way, from perseverance and passion. 
• Carroll doesn’t shy away from making his players do difficult things. He embraces it, with his “always compete” practices. But he recognizes it’s his job to give them the skills to handle adversity. “Teaching guys how to feel confident enough to believe in what they’ve been prepared to do and believing what they can do and they go out there and do it,” 

Leadership Style & Development of Toughness 

• In 2008, researchers out of Eastern Washington set out to explore the relationship between leadership style and the development of toughness. After conducting research on nearly two hundred basketball players and their coaches, they concluded, “The results of this study seem to suggest that the ‘keys’ to promoting mental toughness do not lie in this autocratic, authoritarian, or oppressive style. It appears to lie, paradoxically, with the coach’s ability to produce an environment, which emphasizes trust and inclusion, humility, and service.” 

Real toughness is about providing the tool set to handle adversity. It’s teaching. Fake toughness creates fragility, responding out of fear, suppressing what we feel, and attempting to press onward no matter the situation or demands. Real toughness pushes us to work with our body and mind instead of against them. To face the reality of the situation and what we can do about it, to use feedback as information to guide us, to accept the emotions and thoughts that come into play, and to develop a flexible array of ways to respond to a challenge.  Toughness is having the space to make the right choice under discomfort.

• Whether discomfort comes in the form of anxiety, fear, pain, uncertainty, or fatigue, navigating through it is what toughness is all about. Not bulldozing or pushing through, but navigating. Sometimes that means going through, around, under, or waiting until it passes. When we frame toughness as a decision to act under discomfort, it allows us to see that toughness is far more than merely having grit or grinding through. We can actively change how we appraise, experience, and respond to discomfort. 

TOUGHNESS MAXIM 

• Real toughness is experiencing discomfort or distress, leaning in, paying attention, and creating space to take thoughtful action. It’s navigating discomfort to make the best decision you can. 

What I’ve learned on this journey is simple: We have a fundamental misunderstanding of what toughness is. Being tough isn’t some special attribute reserved for the talented. It’s attainable to all. Most of us are just walking around with the wrong framework. Stuck in the old-school mindset described throughout this chapter. 

Chapter 2 

• 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. 
• We took the wrong message from the military on toughness. No, it’s not that we need to put athletes through ridiculous training or enact authoritarian control. It’s not the discipline or demandingness we needed to copy. Not even the strength or machismo. We took the sorting to mean training. We saw the training but forgot the teaching. We glossed over that the training wasn’t hard for the sake of creating toughness. It was designed to simulate and train for the actual demands soldiers would face on the battlefield. 
• The lesson wasn’t that we just need to put people in difficult spots and force them to deal with adversity. We need to teach them how to navigate the discomfort they’ll soon face. 

When researchers evaluated soldiers who were able to keep a clear head during extreme stress, they that found the soldiers: 

• appraised stress as a challenge instead of a threat, thanks in large part to a better assessment of what they encountered. 

• utilized a diverse array of methods to cope with stress, demonstrating a high degree of cognitive flexibility. 

• processed internal signals better, without reacting to them. 

• didn’t react to negative stimuli but instead were able to change 
their physiological state. 
  • In other words, soldiers were training their biology and psychology to work in tandem during challenging moments. It’s not that they weren’t experiencing discomfort; instead, they had figured out ways to maintain clarity when everything around them was pushing them toward chaos. High performers are able to work their way through adversity and challenge with the same equanimity. When put in situations that require toughness, it’s not that they are bulldozing through the experiences; they navigate them with grit and grace. 

• The best of the best have another factor in common. No, it’s not that they were born with extraordinary abilities to manipulate their inner world to handle adversity. It’s not that they are immune to stress and anxiety so that they can work their way through situations easier than you or I. Their secret? When dealing with discomfort, they all want to quit. Under extreme levels of discomfort, our biology and psychology push even the toughest of us to give up. I surveyed dozens of authors, entrepreneurs, executives, soldiers, and athletes, nearly all having moments of wanting to throw their manuscript in the trash, debating ways to get out of their approaching deadline, or finding a hole to step in to end the misery of the race they are running. Negative thoughts of quitting are normal. They don’t mean you are weak. They represent your mind trying to protect you. 
• Whether you’re trying to resist the pull to quit or barraging your potential lover with texts, the key to toughness lies in navigating this biological and psychological cacophony. I’ve hinted at this sequence throughout this chapter, but let’s clearly define it. How do we get from discomfort to action? 

Feel ➞ Inner debate ➞ Urge ➞ Decision (freak out OR find our way through) 

• We often quit so that the unknown becomes the known. Other times it means changing our expectations before even beginning a task. Or it could mean exploring, accepting, or avoiding whatever it is that has led to unease or discomfort. Uncertainty demands a conclusion. We have an innate need for closure, however we can reach it. 
• Toughness is about making the pull for closure amid uncertainty work with you, not against you. 
• It’s training the mind to handle uncertainty long enough so that you can nudge or guide your response in the right direction. To create space so that you don’t jump straight from unease to the quickest possible solution, but to the “correct” one.


THE FIRST PILLAR OF TOUGHNESS 

DITCH THE FACADE, EMBRACE REALITY

CHAPTER 3 

Accept What You Are Capable Of 

• In the field of exercise science, there’s a simple formula that dictates how we utilize effort to govern our pacing and ultimately our performance: 
  • Performance = actual demands / expected demands 
• If the pace feels much more comfortable than you expected, you pick it up. If it feels more challenging than expected, our feeling of pain and fatigue will go up, our inner dialogue will become negative, and we’re more likely to slow down. 
• A tougher runner isn’t one who is blind with ambition or confidence, but one who can accurately assess the demands and the situation. The magic is in aligning actual and expected demands. 
• It’s why experienced writers don’t go into their first draft expecting perfection. They understand it’s going to be messy, and often, not that good. Contrary to old school toughness wisdom, a touch of realistic doubt keeps us on track, and makes it more likely that we will persist. 

Toughness is about embracing the reality of where we are and what we have to do.  Not deluding ourselves, filling ourselves with a false confidence, or living in denial. All of that simply sends us sprinting off the line, only to slow to a walk once reality hits.  Being tough begins long before we enter the arena or walk on stage. It starts with our expectations.

• In a conversation captured in the magazine Nautilus, Alex Honnold asked whether or not the images of children burning counted as stress? Despite being reassured by Joseph that such images routinely elicit some sort of emotional arousal, even in rock climbers and adrenaline junkies, Honnold quipped, “Because, I can’t say for sure, but I was like, whatever.” And as Joseph would later see, Honnold wasn’t putting on an act. His brain echoed his experience. There were no flashes of color to indicate activity in the brain’s threat and fear sensing areas, just gray. Honnold’s amygdala didn’t react to a single disturbing image. Not a blip of activity. Honnold’s secret weapon might be that his emotional reactivity is monk-like. When the rest of us are smashing the panic button, heading toward a freakout, Honnold’s mind is enjoying the scenery, quietly thinking there’s no threat here. 
• Honnold isn’t superhuman. Shortly into his first attempt to climb El Capitan, Honnold mused, “This sucks. I don’t want to be here. I’m over it.” He pulled the plug, explaining, “I don’t know if I can try with everybody watching. It’s too scary.” It’s not that Honnold never experiences threats, that his amygdala never lights up. It does so when he needs it to. That day, fear rang out, and he listened, pulling the plug before disaster struck. He’d wait to reach his goal another day. 
• Through a bit of luck, the right genes, and countless hours of mental and physical rehearsal, Honnold has fine-tuned his threat-detecting machinery to be triggered when something is truly off. Not when pictures pop up on a computer screen, but when he can’t actually complete the task he sets out to. Our body’s alarm system is malleable. We don’t have to be monk-like and turn the knobs to adjust our sensitivity. We just have to get better at predicting. 
• 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. An honest appraisal is all about giving your mind better data to predict with. 
• Our body cheats. Instead of waiting to see whether a task is hazardous, our brain makes its best guess about what we need to survive or thrive. It’s the reason you feel nerves or a racing heart well before you step onto stage. It’s why while waiting for the plane to reach the right altitude to jump out, novice skydivers are filled with dread, while veteran skydivers are excited. Inside their bodies, the novices are secreting cortisol, while the veterans have more adrenaline. Same event, yet the body releases different hormones to prepare for what’s to come. Whether it’s climbing a ladder or a mountain, our biological response and the sensations that come with it are guided not only by the actual experience but by our expectations. How we see the world shapes how we respond to it. 
• On the other hand, if we see the stressor as an opportunity for growth or gain, as something that is difficult but that we can handle, we’re more likely to experience a challenge response. Instead of relying mostly on cortisol, our body releases more testosterone and adrenaline. We shift toward figuring out how to win the game, how to accomplish our goal. 

TOUGHNESS MAXIM 

Our appraisal of a situation as a threat or as a challenge depends on the perceived demands of that stressor versus our perceived abilities to handle them. Do we have the resources to handle the demands? 

Facing Reality 

“It’s easy to be tough when you know you can handle the situation. The true test comes when you can’t,” 

• When I asked Drevan Anderson-Kappa what the difference was in individuals who were able to keep their cool, he replied, “When there’s a difference between what you project and what you are capable of, it all crumbles under stressful situations. If, on the other hand, you’re honest with yourself, and acknowledge what your strengths and weaknesses are, what you’re capable of and what might scare you, then you can come to terms with what you’re facing and deal with it. The you walking the streets and the you stranded in a jungle aren’t that much different. So you’re able to assess the situation with clear eyes and expectations instead of trying to live up to some false standard. It was the same thing in track. The ones who thought they had to bring 110 percent to a race inevitably fell apart. The ones who lined up on the starting line and thought, ‘This is going to be easy’ or ‘This is going to be extremely hard’ didn’t perform up to standard. They were living in an altered reality. The ones who said, ‘Here’s what I’m capable of. Here’s what the race demands. I’m going to execute based on those two things.’ Those are the ones who consistently perform.” 
• Drevan’s experience isn’t unique; it’s backed by scientific research. At the turn of the twenty-first century, a group of scientists analyzed soldiers across the military branches as they went through the same type of survival school that Drevan experienced. They noticed the same phenomenon. While nearly everyone experienced high levels of stress, one group seemed to zone out and become almost detached from the experience, while another was able to largely maintain a clear, level head and perform up to their potential. Both groups were managing stress in a different way, yet the ones who focused on the reality of the situation were better at handling various elements of the mission. These more robust soldiers appraised the upcoming task as a challenge instead of a threat. In concluding their work, the group of researchers summarized their findings that the more robust “individuals are more accurate in descriptions of what they encountered during stress.” They were facing reality. 

TOUGHNESS MAXIM 

Embrace reality. Accurate appraisal of demands + accurate appraisal of our abilities. 

1. Set Appropriate Goals

• We’re often told to shoot for the moon or dream big when it comes to setting goals, but research points to the opposite conclusion: set goals that are just beyond our current capabilities. If there’s too large of a mismatch between our abilities and our goal, our motivation decreases. It’s as if our brain shrugs its shoulders and says, “What’s the point? We aren’t going to win anyway.” Whenever we set our expectations too high, we’re more likely to enter the “freakout” stage of our toughness pattern. Instead of going big, set just manageable challenges. 

2. Set Authentic Goals 

• In a series of studies in the Netherlands, psychologists sought to understand why some individuals are able to make progress and reach their goals, while others continually fall short. Over three studies, researchers found that better goal authenticity contributed to better goal achievement. When people chose goals that reflected their true selves, not their public selves, they were more likely to follow through. Those who failed often chose goals that were imposed on them by a parent, coach, or society in general. For those who were successful, goals came from within, reflecting who they were and what they cared about. A high degree of self knowledge is what allowed these individuals to see clearly. 
• Seeing reality doesn’t just mean understanding what you’re capable of and what the actual task demands are. It means taking the time to understand who you are and what matters to you. Whether through introspection, journaling, or conversations with close friends and family, or an epic online course! Do the hard work to ask what matters and why it does. Tough people are self-aware, and they get there by embracing reality and understanding who they are. 

3. Define Judgments and Expectations

• If we all took the viewpoint of Ricky Bobby from the movie Talladega Nights that “If you aren’t first, you’re last,” we would be in trouble. What happens when we set an audacious goal and quickly realize we can’t hit it? When we don’t think we have a shot, whether it’s in a race or in class, our brain shuts us down. Our mind jumps into protection mode, thinking, “Well, we aren’t going to win, so why waste any energy trying?” We are unintentionally killing our drive if we define success and failure in such a narrow way. 
• I’ve witnessed far too many people harm their motivation and their performance by defining success in the wrong way. They’ll focus solely on outcomes, neglecting to realize that what place they finish in or what their grade is on a presentation is largely out of their control. 
• Shifting the focus toward process-orientated goals, such as the effort you can put forth, helps remedy these situations. It also provides vital feedback that allows you to grow in the future. When you judge yourself solely by what place you came across the finish line, it provides zero actionable information on how to improve in the future. Judging yourself by how much effort you gave or whether you executed your plan offers a road map for what can be worked on during the next go round. 

4. 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.” 

5. Prime Your Mind

• In 2018, a group of researchers out of University College London wanted to see how stress impacts the way we treat information. In the study they looked at how on-duty firefighters and students who were about to step on stage to give a speech handled being informed of either good or bad news. For example, being told your chance of getting in a car crash or suffering serious injury in a fire was much higher than the subjects thought. When relaxed, participants tended to ignore the bad news and embrace the good. Hearing that there was a greater chance to suffer some negative consequence didn’t impact their behavior or mood. But under stress, as lead researcher Tali Sharot summarized, “They became hyper-vigilant to any bad news we gave them, even when it had nothing to do with their job (such as learning that the likelihood of card fraud was higher than they’d thought), and altered their beliefs in response.” 
• Stress shifts us toward a negative bias, priming us to search out and recognize danger or threats in the environment. This is a great evolutionary survival mechanism, but it can hamper our performance when we aren’t really in danger. To combat this quirk of evolution, prime your mind to search for opportunities, not threats. In Peak Performance, I outlined research that shows that when athletes warm up by “doing what they like,” they alter their hormonal state in a positive manner. The same phenomenon applies to artists and executives. The closer you are to a performance, the more you want to prime with what you’re good at. Reviewing mistakes, working on weaknesses, telling yourself that you “can’t hit the slider, so watch for it” backfires when you’re on deck. Those are items you work on far before it’s time to step into the batter’s box. 

CHAPTER 4 

True Confidence Is Quiet; Insecurity Is Loud 

Shaping How You See the World 

• In 2009, performance psychologists Kate Hays and Mark Bawden had the opportunity to sit down with fourteen of the most accomplished athletes in their sport and ask them about their highest highs and lowest lows. Thirteen of the sample had won medals at a major championship (i.e., Olympic Games), and the lone individual who hadn’t was a world record holder. This unique glimpse into the mind of the best wasn’t just an interview; it was part of a study for the English Institute of Sport examining the role of confidence in those who had reached the pinnacle of their sport. 
• We tend to think of the best of the best as impervious to the feelings of doubt and insecurity that you or I might experience. As I’ve worked with world-class performers across a variety of domains, I’ve noticed one consistent theme: they are human, just like the rest of us. They aren’t emotionless machines immune to the effects of pressure or poor performance. And that’s precisely what Hays and Bawden found in their research. Despite achieving at the highest level possible, all could point to debilitative periods where their confidence waned and their performance suffered because of it. 
• It’s not just that high performers suffer lapses in confidence but that it infiltrates and affects their thinking, feeling, and actions. When confidence was low, the athletes “were irrational, and unable to control their nerves, think positively or maintain focus on their usual routines.” It’s as if their brains were hijacked. Their worldview turned dark and gloomy, and simple tasks became difficult. Or as Dr. Hays and Dr. Bawden found, athletes suffered from a triumvirate of symptoms: faulty cognition, negative affect, and ineffective behaviors. They could not maintain focus as their attention drifted toward what others were doing or got hijacked by the doubts taking over their minds. They experienced a wider range of negative emotions, including nervousness, unhappiness, and an inability to enjoy the competition. Joy and thrill turned into anxiety and despair. They began to see the competition as a sign of a threat, not a challenge. And most importantly, when confidence was low, their behavioral responses followed their cognition and emotions. They were timid, indecisive, withdrawn, and lacked that extra bit of fight they normally possessed. Despite being some of the most accomplished athletes in the world, low confidence was like kryptonite, turning their cognition, emotion, and thoughts against them. 
• When our confidence is low, our toolbox shrinks. In the interviews conducted by Hays and colleagues, one athlete reported, “I was trying to use my psychological techniques . . . but none of them were working. I just couldn’t concentrate. . . . Everything was going wrong and it was just horrible.” A lack of confidence constricts our response. 
• When confidence is low, we are priming our minds to be susceptible to the negative spiral. We already have doubts over our ability to perform up to our expectations, so at the first sign of that being the case, our brain grasps hold of it. A gentle nudge and we’re headed toward a full-blown freak-out. 
• Not surprisingly, when confidence is high, we experience the opposite. We’re able to completely focus on the task at hand. We experience positive emotions: enjoyment, calm, and excitement. Our body language shifts, and we feel in control of the situation. Research shows we’re able to cope with the demands of the situation, to frame nervousness as excitement, and to persist in the face of mounting fatigue. 
• Confidence is a filter, tinting how we see the challenges before us and our ability to handle them. It tips the scales toward an optimistic or pessimistic view of our current situation. When our confidence is high, we are able to cope with the demands of the event. We can manage our fears and doubts, quiet the negative voices, and redirect our focus to the task at hand. Confidence expands our ability to act, to manage, and to make our way through difficult situations. Confidence and toughness go hand in hand. 

True confidence has to be founded in reality, and it comes from the inside. It’s not in ignoring the human condition of experiencing doubt and insecurity, but coming to terms with them and what you’re capable of. It’s not in the elimination of doubt, but in allowing enough doubt to keep us in check, while being secure in the knowledge that we’ll find a way past the obstacle in our way. For far too long we’ve correctly insisted on the value of confidence, but we’ve gone along building the wrong kind. 

“Fake it until you make it!” It’s a well-worn piece of advice doled out to athletes, entrepreneurs, and anyone attempting to climb the corporate ladder. The advice encapsulates what we think of confidence: that it’s essential, a requirement for success. And if we can’t muster the real kind, we’re better off acting like we know what we’re doing than letting on the truth. But we didn’t stop with advising adults. The search for an artificial form of confidence encompassed an entire generation of children as we espoused the benefits and virtues of self-esteem. Not by creating real value or through overcoming challenges, but by affirming to children how great they are. 

TOUGHNESS MAXIM 

Confidence is a filter, tinting how we see the challenges before us and our ability to handle them.  

• Self-esteem is a good thing. But where we went wrong is thinking that self-esteem in and of itself should be the goal. That we should strive for the feeling, instead of having self esteem be a by-product, something that occurs instead of is sought. 
• According to one prominent theory, self-esteem functions as a type of sensor, alerting us of our sense of worth or value. The sociometer theory posits that self-esteem represents a summary of our sense of acceptance, both from ourself and from our social group. The greater degree of acceptance, the greater our self-esteem. Successful people tend to have higher self-esteem not because they are striving for self-worth itself, but because it’s a by-product of overcoming challenges and making meaningful connections with others. 
• Our inner narrative changes when we are challenged and overcome adversity. When we put forth effort on a difficult task, we internalize that we have a strong work ethic. We become adept at knowing that we, too, can “grind away” at a problem. Lasting self-esteem doesn’t come from being told that we are great. It comes from doing the actual work and making real connections. 
• 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. As Mark Freeman summarized in his book, You Are Not a Rock, “The pursuit of self-esteem logically sets you up for low self-esteem. It’s the same trap again: If you believe your value comes from people giving you things, then you hand over control of your self-image to other people. If they don’t give you those things, then your brain logically concludes you must not be valuable.” 
• Similarly, when our sense of self shifts to receiving praise or external rewards, our motivation shifts with it. 

**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. 

Arrogance Sits on Insecurity; Confidence Sits on Experience 

• Just like self-esteem, with confidence, there’s a real version— one that is deep, based on evidence and understanding—and a fake version that’s based on bravado. The fake version is derived from insecurity. It’s a mask that a person wears, attempting to fake his way through a task or to put on a show for his friends. Men seem to be more susceptible to the fake variety, perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that one in eight men somehow think they could score a point against tennis superstar Serena Williams. Delusion and fake confidence go hand in hand. 
• We even encourage this conceptualization. We’ve demonized doubt. Showing any weakness, having any hesitation, is a sure sign that you don’t deserve the raise. Humility and vulnerability are signs that you can’t handle “tough” situations. It’s a message we’ve absorbed since peewee football. Acting confident leads to success. Let any doubt or uncertainty enter your mind and you are on the wrong side of the equation, heading toward failure and breakdown. 
• We tell each other to fake it until we make it. Or, after a poor performance, we tell athletes to act confident as if it’s something that they can simply switch on. We’ve confused the outward displays with an inner confidence. We think that if we can talk the talk, we’ll be able to walk the walk. Just like self-esteem, we’ve gotten it wrong. Confidence has to come from deep within. 

How to Create Inner Confidence 

1. Lower the bar. Raise the floor.

2. Shed perfection. Embrace who you are. 
3. Trust your training. Trust yourself.

4. Develop a quiet ego
5. Lower the bar. Raise the floor.


• Brian Zuleger, a sports psychologist out of Adams State University, taught me an exercise to reframe expectations. Instead of aiming for our best performance, something that we can only accomplish rarely, shoot for improving your best average. When we judge ourselves against our all-time best, we inevitably fall short more often than not. Instead, averaging out our five most recent performances gives us a still tricky but achievable goal. 
• The aim is first to be consistent. Don’t lower your expectations just so you can become confident. Understand what you are capable of, and set a standard that falls within that realm or just a touch outside of it. Embrace reality. Understand that a breakthrough doesn’t come from creating a false sense of confidence; by developing the belief that you can achieve a certain standard, you free yourself up to take risks when the opportunity presents itself. 

2. Shed perfection. Embrace who you are. 

• Real confidence lies in understanding who you are and what you are capable of. It lies in being vulnerable, not in delusional machismo. You don’t raise your floor by developing an unrealistic view of yourself. You do so by taking a hard look at where you are in the moment. Understanding what you are capable of, what challenges the task brings, and where your weaknesses might lie. 
• Real toughness resides in being humble and wise enough to acknowledge your strengths and weaknesses. To find the right point of risk versus reward, to balance upon the expectations-versus-demands scale. 
• Vulnerability—in acknowledging that you aren’t going to be stoic, be impervious to pain or pressure, or never fail—is the only way to obtain inner confidence. 
• Truly tough individuals don’t mind exploring their weaknesses. They develop the capacity to express vulnerability and pain without fear of being shamed. Refusal to explore or acknowledge your weaknesses is a sign of insecurity, not confidence. 

3. Trust your training. Trust yourself.

• Michael Jordan, once said, “If you have doubt or concern about a shot, or feel the ‘pressure’ of that shot, it’s because you haven’t practiced it enough. The only way to relieve that pressure is to build your fundamentals, practice them over and over, so when the game breaks down, you can handle anything that transpires.” To gain confidence, put in the work from a place of growth, not fear. Boldness is earned, not assumed. 

4. Develop a quiet ego.

• A quiet ego is about keeping our self in balance—coming to terms with the need for confidence, but being keenly aware of the strengths and weaknesses of ourselves and our situation. It’s being open and receptive to others, instead of defensive and closed off. It’s having the ability to zoom out, gain perspective, and understand that a short-term loss is often part of a long-term gain. 
• How do we quiet our ego? 
  • Ask: What causes you to sting, ruminate, and pull away? What causes you to default toward defensiveness? Do you dismiss criticism out of hand, or do you consider and evaluate it? 
  • What you’re after is a dash of self-awareness and reflection combined with a secure sense of who you are. A bit of doubt and insecurity is normal. Too much defensiveness and protection are signs your ego’s too loud. When we mix perceptive, awareness, and security together, we can move on from the false-bravado style of confidence that permeates the world. 
  • Confidence is doing difficult things, sometimes failing, but seeing where you lie, and then going back to the work. 

What do we do when we fail? 

• If you get an F in math class, do you now think that you are bad at math? That it’s not your thing? If you exceed your earnings goal for the quarterly report, do you attribute it to your cunning business expertise? A large part of developing confidence lies in creating a secure but flexible sense of self. And a large part of that depends on how we integrate success and failure into our inner story. 
• In her PhD thesis, sports psychologist Jennifer Meggs at Teesside University found that we generally assimilate positive and negative beliefs into our sense of self in two different ways, either compartmentalization or evaluative integration. 
  • When we compartmentalize, it’s all or nothing. We either see the item as entirely positive or negative. Take the example of failing in a class at school: compartmentalization tells us that it’s all bad news and that we probably don’t have a future in the field.
On the other hand, those who possess an evaluative integration bring more nuance to the discussion. They can see the good and bad in situations. They might feel anxious or frustrated, yet still believe that they can perform the task at hand. It isn’t all or nothing. 
  • When researchers tested individuals based on what self structured group they fell into and compared that to their scores on a toughness scale, the results were clear. Those who were better able to integrate instead of compartmentalize were tougher and better at “thriving in adverse circumstances.” 

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.” 

CHAPTER 5 

Know When to Hold ’Em and When to Fold ’Em 

• Seligman and Maier stumbled upon a phenomenon they called learned helplessness. The dogs had learned that pain and suffering were outside of their control. They had no power over what was happening to them, so their only point of recourse was to sit there and take it. 
• Our modern workplaces, sport leagues, and even schools often train us to respond in the same manner. They, like the old model of toughness, often rely on control and constraint. They take choice away. It’s the dictatorial coach who motivates through fear and punishment. The boss who micromanages. The company that tracks every minute that a worker is on task, and when they click away to Facebook. The parent who restricts and controls their child so much that they cut off their natural inclination to exploration. It turns out, when control and choice are taken away from humans, we act just like the helpless dogs in the experiment. 
• We lose the ability to try. Lack of control extinguishes the flame of even the most motivated. When we lack control, when we feel like no matter what we do, it doesn’t make any difference, our brain is getting the message “What’s the point?”  We move from thriving to surviving. There’s a reason that burnout is rampant in just about every profession. We have spent years training hopelessness in the misguided name of discipline. 
• When we lack control, our stress spikes. When we have a sense that we can impact the situation, our cortisol response is dampened. Control doesn’t alter just our hormonal response but also the experience that accompanies stress. 
• When researchers peered into the brains of subjects with fMRI machines, they found that when pain was controllable, participants had lower rates of anxiety, along with a decreased response in the threat-sensing area of the brain (amygdala). They had not only a lower alarm response from the amygdala, but also a better-equipped controller (the prefrontal cortex) that was able to step in and put out the fire much more quickly. When we have a sense of control, our alarm is quieter and easier to shut off. 
• Control alters not only our physiological response to stress, but also our ability to persist. When we believe we have influence over an outcome, we’re more likely to persevere, even if we face a setback. 

TOUGHNESS MAXIM 

Our level of control changes how we respond to stress. When we have a sense of control, our alarm is quieter and easier to shut off. 

When life feels like it’s spinning out of control, or like the task you have in front of you is insurmountable, it’s easy to default to hopelessness. To “What’s the point?” That’s natural. Your body evolved to conserve energy. We need to train hopefulness. To clear the path to continue. It doesn’t take big heroic efforts to train hope. Small signals that you are in control, that you can have an impact, will be enough to turn our prefrontal cortex back on.

Leading Others 

1. Learn to Let Go 

• When you dictate and control, you’re sending the message, “I don’t trust you to do the job.” As those in the Special Forces often say, “Trust but verify.” It’s a balance between trusting and overmanaging 

2. Set the Constraints and Let Them Go 

• Giving away control isn’t about letting people run wild with no direction. Set up the boundaries or constraints and then let them go. I always tell anyone I’m working with that my goal is to make myself obsolete. I’m trying to coach them toward independence, not dependence. 

3. Allow Them to Fail, Reflect, and Improve 

• Part of giving back control is allowing them to make mistakes. That means giving more autonomy and control in projects that someone can handle. Don’t throw them into the deep end with an incredibly demanding task, tell them, “You figure it out,” and then watch them sink. Give away control in small bites that eventually grow into something much more significant. Then have a system in place that allows for reflection and growth. 

We often equate toughness with persistence, but in some cases, it’s the exact opposite. Toughness is navigating the inner turmoil in order to make a good decision. Sometimes that’s to persist. Other times it’s to quit. 

THE SECOND PILLAR OF TOUGHNESS 

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY

CHAPTER 6 

Your Emotions Are Messengers, Not Dictators 

• If feelings are meant to inform and nudge, emotions are the alarm bells, screaming at you that something changed and that you need to do something about it. Emotions move us from nudge to shove. 
• When it comes to toughness, feelings and emotions serve a vital role. Whenever we encounter scenarios where we need to be tough or make difficult decisions, our feelings and emotions set the stage. They bias us toward a particular response. But they don’t control us. As writer Robert Wright wrote in the book Why Buddhism Is True, “What emotions do—what emotions are for—is to activate and coordinate the modular functions that are, in Darwinian terms, appropriate for the moment.” In other words, they are the first step in a cascade designed to prepare us for action. 

Here’s why listening to our emotions is essential to true toughness: they are telling us important information. 

• Our feelings and emotions aren’t merely the fuel gauge in our car, but more like the little indicator that tells you about how many miles you have left to drive before the tank is empty. 
• Our bodies are taking in sensory information and making the best guess on what it should keep us informed about. Researchers theorize that feelings and sensations hint at how taxing something we are about to encounter is going to be on the body. How much gas will be drained from our tanks? Feel anxious while waiting to step on to the stage for a performance? That’s our body telling us how far out of our norm we are about to push some of our systems, or put another way, it’s an indicator of the resources we will need to call upon shortly—no different than the feeling of unease or tension as we walk down an unfamiliar alleyway. 
• Their initial study found a connection between those who self harmed and how they self-rated their interoceptive abilities. The self-harm group had greater interoceptive ambivalence and lower interoceptive appreciation. 
• This test of our interoceptive abilities forces us to dial in on our most basic internal feedback, our heart beating. The more accurate we are at guessing our heart rate, the better our ability to read the internal status of our body. 
• Impaired interoceptive awareness has been found in everything from addiction to eating disorders. When we aren’t able to make sense of our internal world, we turn to external ways to cope. The same holds true for other feelings and sensations. Kindergartners who don’t understand the shame or angst of getting in trouble for the first time resort to tantrums. Or the person who after a frustrating day at work, takes his anger out on their partner. 
• When we don’t have clarity in our internal world, we tend to resort to less effective coping mechanisms. An ability to read and discern our inner world gives us the flexibility to respond in a more productive manner. 
• An expert at interoception is no different than the veteran pilot who needs to merely glance at a gauge instead of reading the label or manual. An experienced athlete can separate pain and injury. A stage performer can distinguish between nervousness and anxiety. 
• Our ability to make sense of the simple (sensations) and the complex (emotions) leads to better decision making and ultimately toughness. Situations that require toughness are those that involve a high level of stress, pressure, or adversity. Such conditions are prime for misreading and misattributing our feelings and emotions. It’s easy to mistake a body brimming with adrenaline and excitement for one that’s full of anxiety and unease. 
• Research shows that tougher athletes are better able to make sense of whatever feedback their body is giving them. A study out of the University of California–San Diego found that individuals who scored lower on resiliency had lower interoceptive awareness when put under stress. And in an intriguing study out of the UK, psychologists found that stock traders who had better interoception not only were more profitable but also lasted longer in a business that is notorious for turnover. It wasn’t the traders with the better credentials who excelled at making risky decisions; it was the ones who could read their body. When I presented this research to my friend Marcel, who works in a similar field that relies on assessing and making risky decisions, investment banking, he replied, “Pedigree gets you in the door; thoughtfulness and self-awareness are what separate you.” 
• How we describe and label what we feel impacts our subsequent performance. 
• When we name something, we take back control—converting the ambiguous to something tangible that we can understand, manipulate, and come to terms with. Even how we talk about feelings and emotions matters. Take the example of depression. It’s common to say, “I’m sad.” But that doesn’t make sense when you think about it. That implies that sadness is concrete, a trait that you can’t change. If instead you say, “I’m experiencing a wave of sadness,” it implies that it’s a trait that will pass. It might seem trivial, but the language we use to describe what we are experiencing goes a long way in determining whether we have power over our emotions or they control us. 
• When testing how individuals work in high-pressure situations, researchers out of Spain found that people could use the anxiety that came along with pressure to their advantage. They could persist longer at a task, reach a higher level of achievement on an academic test, and even have greater job satisfaction. All thanks to the feeling of anxiety. What separated those that were able to use anxiety to their advantage? Whether or not they had clarity on what they were feeling. The researchers concluded, “Individuals who are clear about their feelings are more likely to thrive on anxiety.” Even so-called negative feelings can be beneficial. It comes down to clarity of our inner world. 

CHAPTER 7 

Own the Voice in Your Head 

• Intrusive thoughts are just one part of our vast inner dialogue. Researchers define two main types of inner dialogue: integrated and confrontational. 
• We might experience a singular inner voice reaching conscious awareness, a calm version of self-talk where we list out the tasks we need to accomplish or make a mental note of something we want to tell our spouse. In other cases, we simulate a conversation with a real-life person, working through our talking points and how we expect the other person to respond. These examples are what psychologists refer to as integrated dialogue. In this kind of self-talk, it’s less of a debate where there is a winner and a loser and more about working through a scenario— practicing how you might respond, taking different viewpoints into account, and navigating your way through them. 
• On the other hand, our inner dialogue can appear to be like the prizefight mentioned previously, with competing voices trying to win an argument. Two voices that represent two different selves trying to push us toward competing conclusions or actions. Sitting at a restaurant trying to decide between a juicy burger and a healthy salad, two voices may appear out of nowhere to make their case for why the healthy or indulgent option is best. Psychologists refer to this type of self-talk as confrontational dialogue. A negotiation of sorts occurs, with different voices competing for the “win.” In situations that require toughness, confrontational dialogue is the norm. The higher the stakes, the more potential danger, the louder the contrasting selves shout. 
• We experience these competing voices as individuals having different motives. One might be looking after our health, while the other cares only about the potential reward or pleasure. 
• A group of scientists found that coping statements were more effective when they were verbalized. One explanation for this is that inner talk is cognitively more sophisticated. As we just discussed, it came later in our cognitive development, so reverting to a simpler form of dialogue can ease the burden and deliver a more succinct and actionable message. Like a two-year-old telling himself how to climb the stairs or shoot and retrieve a ball, we are stepping back in time, accessing a deeply ingrained system. Another reason that using external self-talk might work well is that it holds you accountable. 
• When sport psychologist Judy Van Raalte and colleagues at Springfield College investigated positive and negative self-talk during a number of tennis matches, they found that winners and losers didn’t differ in the amount of positive self-talk they used. However, match winners utilized less negative self-talk than their less successful peers. When they dug further into the data, they found that it wasn’t so much whether someone had positive or negative self-talk but how they interpreted it. Those who believed in self-talk’s effectiveness lost fewer points than those who saw self-talk as largely irrelevant. 

Psychological Distance 

• Before leaving the room, the researchers gave each child some coaching on how to persevere. They told one-third of the kids that they should think about their thoughts and feelings and ask, “Am I working hard?” The second third were given the same instructions but instead of saying “I,” they were told to use their name, such as, “Jill is working hard!” And the final group was told to refer to themselves as someone else they looked up to, for example, “Is Batman working hard?” With the instructions clear, the kids were left alone for ten minutes to work, distract, or do whatever they pleased. The six-year-olds who thought in first person, using “I” to reflect on their work, stayed on task only about 35 percent of the time, choosing the iPad for the majority of their ten minutes. The kids who referred to themselves by their name fared a little better, spending around 45 percent of their time on task. But it was the final group, which focused on Bob the Builder, Batman, or Dora the Explorer as the example of someone who worked hard, who stayed on task nearly 60 percent of the time. The more the child was distanced from his inner self, the longer he or she persisted. 
• “It’s easier to give advice to a friend than to yourself” is an adage that most of us have heard, and it largely holds. Should we quit a job or end a relationship? We’re often too close to the issue to have any sort of objectivity. We wrestle over the decision, with our inner voice offering a mix of justifications and rationalizations. Yet, if we see the same situation with a friend or acquaintance, the answer comes nearly instantly. We tell our friend that she needs to drop that guy without hesitation. This phenomenon doesn’t just hold true with giving advice, but also in helping us persist and navigate internal discomfort. It can be easily influenced simply by changing our grammar. 
• The six-year-old children were creating what’s called psychological distance. When we use first-person pronouns as part of our inner dialogue, the bond between ourselves and the situation is too tight. When we use third-person pronouns, our first name, or examples of others, it creates space between our sense of self and the situation. We transform into that friend giving advice, not blinded by our connection to the issue. 
• According to work done by researchers from the University of Michigan, first-person pronouns tend to create a self-immersed world, while using words and phrases that create space produces a self distanced perspective. 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. 

THE THIRD PILLAR OF TOUGHNESS 

RESPOND INSTEAD OF REACT 

CHAPTER 8 

Keep Your Mind Steady 

• Now, if a student acts out or isn’t following directions, Hillary says, “I first provide them with a choice, asking ‘Can you reset?’” A reset is a momentary pause, an opportunity for the child to think about their behavior or mistake and correct it. Teachers explain and practice resets throughout the year. If the child resets, the teacher quickly moves on. As Hillary summarizes, “Everybody makes mistakes and mistakes are okay. A reset is a chance to think through your emotions and come back online. Children aren’t used to or equipped to navigate the barrage of emotions they feel. Give them space to deal with them.” 
• And if the behavior continues? “I give them two options. For example, you can start your assignment at your desk or at my table. Or, you can reset now or we can practice resetting at recess together. They feel like they have control as they’re picking a choice, but I’m steering their behaviors toward what is acceptable. They can’t just say ‘No.’” 
• Since teachers have adopted a modern behavioral approach, children still act out and make mistakes, but they learn, adapt, and grow. Tantrums and fits are down. It turns out that even with six-year-olds, creating space, helping them navigate their emotions, and giving them a choice is crucial for teaching them how to navigate life’s challenging moments. 
• Existential psychologist Rollo May best captured the essence of what we are after when he stated in The Courage to Create, “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.” 

TOUGHNESS MAXIM 

Purpose is the fuel that allows you to be tough 

TOUGHNESS MAXIM 

When we explore, instead of avoid, we are able to integrate the experience into our story. We’re able to make meaning out of struggle, out of suffering. Meaning is the glue that holds our mind together, allowing us to both respond and recover. 

Real toughness is living in the nuance and complexity of the environment, bodies, and minds we inhabit. There is no one standard pathway to inner strength, no formula for making difficult decisions or dealing with the extremes of discomfort. Real toughness is about acceptance: of who you are, what you’re going through, and the discomfort that often comes with it. It’s living in that place of tension so that the needed space can be created to find the best path forward. 

My hope is that this book is a small step toward a major course correction, one that teaches our children that acting tough isn’t the same thing as being tough. That being vulnerable and honest isn’t a sign of weakness but a sign of strength. It’s time to redefine toughness. It’s more important now than ever before. 

Ditch the facade and the external. It’s time to focus on true inner strength. 

We’re all capable of developing such inner strength, even those who might be labeled as weak or failures. 

Joshua Wolf Shenk wrote about the man who had to figure out how to help the country he loved navigate its toughest period, “Lincoln, by whatever combination of habit and choice, took his own path. He did not pretend to be anything other than he was.” 

Be who you are. That’s real toughness. 

Recommended Reading

The Upside of Stress 

The Mindful Athlete

Perform Under Pressure