Toughness Reimagined: The Quiet Power of Emotional Strength

Steve Magness shares 5 key insights from Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness.

Photo by Anastase Maragos on Unsplash

The 2024 Summer Olympics wrap up this weekend, so I thought we’d take a look at what we can learn from the world’s greatest athletes. One of the key things these champions have to teach us is toughness, but toughness might not be what you think it is. Whether you call it toughness, resilience, or grit, most of us think the way to accomplish difficult things is to bear down and power through. But our model is broken, and new research shows there’s a smarter path to success in sports, business and relationships. Bestselling author and sought-after performance coach Steve Magness has written a book called Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness. Steve has coached dozens of runners, including Olympians, and our curator Malcolm Gladwell says his book is “a must-read for parents and coaches and anyone else looking to prepare for life's biggest challenges."  Here’s Steve to share 5 of his big ideas.

1. Acting tough isn’t the same as being tough.

We have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be tough. We hold on to ideas that better resemble a middle school football coach’s ideal of toughness than reality. We mistake toughness for strength, power, and control. Our definition of toughness has, unfortunately, revolved around a belief that the toughest individuals have thick skin, fear nothing, constrain emotions, and hide vulnerability. In other words, they are callous.

Look at the language we use: we say to “man up,” and tell people they are “soft.” In the corporate world, we prop up the companies that create slick-looking ads promoting values of inclusion and diversity, all while the inner workings of those organizations are littered with abuse, hostility, and harassment. We’ve chosen the glitzy Instagram filter of toughness. It’s the bully version, projecting strength, masking the hurt and insecurity within. Some of the world’s best performers tell us that the old school method backfires. Demanding parents and coaches lead to less disciplined, less persistent individuals. It fails in the military, where the most resilient soldiers show high levels of emotional flexibility, and high levels of humble confidence. It fails in sport, where athletes who fall for the old model play out of fear, leading to worse performance.