Steve Magness > Quotes

“True Confidence Is Quiet; Insecurity Is Loud”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“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

“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

“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

“Growth comes at the point of resistance. Skills come from struggle.”
― Steve Magness, Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive With the New Science of Success

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Instead, 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

“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

“Confidence doesn’t come from doing the work out of fear or neuroticism—to practice because you are afraid to lose or fail. When fear drives the motivational ship, then insecurity pervades. When the work is done in the name of getting better, of enjoying the process, of searching for mastery of the craft, then confidence gradually grows.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“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

“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.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Performance = Mismatch (Expected Effort/Actual Sense of Effort) Where: Expected Effort= Previous Experience+ Psychological drive (importance) Actual Sense of Effort= (Internal + External feedback)* Hazard + current Psychological Drive”
― Steve Magness, The Science of Running: How to find your limit and train to maximize your performance

“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

“The problem with Fat is that it is an even more complex chemical process than carbohydrate breakdown, thus while the energy production is very high, it can only work at low to moderate intensities.”
― Steve Magness, The Science of Running: How to find your limit and train to maximize your performance

“To develop true, inner confidence, there are four steps: Lower the bar. Raise the floor. Shed perfection. Embrace who you are. Trust your training. Trust yourself. Develop a quiet ego.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Super Bowl. He also believes in toughness. 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.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Giving yourself a choice sometimes means entertaining the idea of quitting, slowing down, or even giving up. It’s not that I want you to do so, but by having a choice, by needing to make a decision, you are developing a sense of control. By considering quitting as an option, you now have influence over the outcome, even if one result is negative.”
― 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

“When we are overconfident, we set ourselves up for failure. This isn’t idle conjecture: researchers have found this phenomenon in everything from competing in sports to deciding whether to stay in a relationship or quit your job. It’s easy to feel confident in the beginning but when we come face-to-face with the reality that we might fall short of our goal, we experience what psychologists call an action crisis.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

“Originally, LT was defined as a fixed lactate reading at 4.0 mmol/L, but more recent research has shown that lactate levels at LT can vary as much as 6 mmol/L, between 2 and 8 mmol/L (Beneke, 2000). In addition, LT can be expressed as a percentage of VO2max.”
― Steve Magness, The Science of Running: How to find your limit and train to maximize your performance

“Coyle makes the case that contrary to the way we traditionally think about it, we don’t need trust before we can become vulnerable. The opposite is true. In order to trust, we first must be vulnerable. Being open and vulnerable sends an invitation to the person sitting across from you that you trust them. If that signal is reciprocated, that trust between the pair increases. We lower our defenses and guard, feeling open to being who we are.”
― Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness