Do Hard Things by Steve Magness

Author:Steve Magness
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

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Respond to reality. For most of us, we are not only responding to the actual stress but the reverberations of it. Tough individuals learn to match perception with reality so that they marshal the appropriate response instead of an exaggerated one.

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Having a Calm Conversation

When I was a budding endurance athlete, I had a go-to method for dealing with pain: ignore it until I couldn’t anymore, then bulldoze through it. In the early years of my running career, it served me well. I was one of the fastest high school runners in the nation and thought I had this whole running-through-pain thing figured out. But the physical and emotional toll was deep. I’d run myself into the ground, throwing up after nearly every race. I took pride in what I thought was a sign of my toughness—a clear signal that I was pushing myself far beyond what my competitors were. It wasn’t sustainable. In races where I didn’t have the emotional reserve when it came time to reach down and summon something to get me over the hump, the well was dry. With no other tools at my disposal, I’d watch my competitors glide away, as I’d slow down, at the mercy of fatigue.

As I matured as an athlete and then battled through vocal cord dysfunction, I realized that if I was going to survive, I needed to expand my mental repertoire. Whenever we face an unpleasant sensation or the negative mental self-talk that comes with it, there are four ways to deal with it:

Avoid or ignore

Fight

Accept

Reappraise

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