Donna C.

“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

“sometimes we don’t see our hopes and expectations for the ones closest to us as conditional forms of love, because we perceive what we want for them as “good.” unknowingly, in our wanting of what is “best” for them we limit our ability to give them the finest and most powerful form of love, a selfless love that empowers them to decide for themselves what is best for their lives.”
― Yung Pueblo, Inward

“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

“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