Doing Hard Things: Rethinking What It Means to Be Mentally Tough

What does it really mean to be mentally tough?

For many of us, toughness has always meant pushing harder, working longer, and ignoring discomfort. But what if real resilience isn't about grinding through challenges—it's about learning how to respond to them with greater awareness?

In this re-released episode of the Leadership Vision Podcast, Nathan Freeburg and Brian Schubring revisit Do Hard Things by performance expert Steve Magness. Together, they explore why emotions aren't obstacles to overcome, why self-awareness may be the foundation of resilience, and how leaders can develop the kind of toughness that leads to healthier teams, stronger relationships, and more sustainable performance.

Whether you're leading an organization, parenting your kids, training for your next race, or simply trying to navigate life's inevitable challenges, this conversation offers a refreshing perspective on what it truly means to do hard things. 

In this episode, you'll learn:

•  Why traditional definitions of mental toughness often fall short 
•  How emotions provide valuable information instead of getting in the way 
•  The difference between reacting and responding during stressful situations 
•  How "zooming in" and "zooming out" can help you gain perspective 
•  Why embracing your own identity is essential to resilient leadership 
•  Practical ways to build emotional awareness and navigate difficult moments with greater confidence

Transcript

Do Hard Things Book Review

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg. Welcome back to the Leadership Vision podcast. Now, three years ago, Brian and I sat down to talk about a book that we had both recently read that really challenged how we think about the ideas of resilience and training, and we're both runners. And at the time, the book Do Hard Things by Steve Magnus was a relatively new release. You may remember when we put this out there a while ago. Since then, its ideas have only become more relevant and more real in this season of life. Now, many of us were taught that being mentally tough meant just pushing harder, working longer, ignoring discomfort, and simply just, you know, like kind of grinding our way through whatever challenge was right there in front of us. But what if toughness looked different? What if resilience isn't about like suppressing or pushing down your emotions, but actually understanding them? What if leadership isn't about just enduring more stress and just kind of dealing with all those hard things by yourself, but actually responding to it, responding to those things with greater awareness? Now, those questions, those ideas, those big themes, they all feel so important today, maybe more so than they did when we first recorded this back in April of 2023. Now, if you've been listening to our podcast for any length of time, you've heard us explore emotional health, uncertainty, change, alignment, helping leaders access the capacity that they already possessed. In fact, a lot of the ideas in Brian and Linda's book unfolded. Lessons of transformation from an origami frame deal with these same themes and topics. And listening back to this conversation here, it's striking how many of those like same ideas were already beginning to emerge. So as I was trying to figure out, or a little bit of a summer break, as I was trying to figure out like what can we read of released, what maybe didn't get as much um listening the mini ears as I would like, you know, rather than letting this just kind of disappear into the archives, we wanted to bring it back. So in this conversation, Brian and I discussed the book by Steve Magnus to Do Hard Things, and it's not just for runners, but it explores topics like creating space between ourselves and our emotions, learning to zoom in and zoom out during stressful moments, embracing who we are instead of just kind of performing toughness. And also why keeping your cool, whether that's at school, at work, at home with your kids, why that may actually be one of the hardest and most important skills that a leader can develop. Now, whether you're leading a team, whether you're leading a home, whether you're navigating change, raising kids, training for a marathon, or simply just trying to become a healthier version of yourself, because let's be honest, who isn't trying to do that? I think that you're gonna find something here that is worth revisiting. So here it is, it's conversation with Brian Schubring and I on the book Do Hard Things.

Our Definitions of Toughness

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Brian, I am curious, what is your earliest memory of like this idea of toughness and where did it come from?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Well, for me, uh, this could be similar to you, Nathan. My first experience of toughness, uh I am drawn right back to football practice on a dirt field, which could have been like just dirty concrete. It was that hard. There was no grass. Um, but we had a coach and he was he was tough. And this whole toughness thing was a mixture of you know excruciating workouts to public shaming to you know just crazy workouts. But you know, if you weren't tough, like he'd call you out and he'd he'd make an example of you. Um, but that was it. Like it and it was kind of like what you were saying, you just grind it out, you work harder, and no matter how much the pain, toughness came about working through that pain. How about for you?

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah, similarly. I mean, I don't remember kind of that stereotypical toughness metaphor like from my parents, but I know that like you know, popular culture and like stories that we looked up to as a kid, or you know, the best probably memory that sticks. Did you watch The Last Dance, the Chicago Bulls like documentary? Uh portions of it, not all of it. It's so there's on the list. Like the yeah, it's it's really good, but the the flu game where Michael Jordan supposedly played through the like I remember that as a kid and be like, wow, that is that is a sign of greatness, is when you against all odds just play through this ridiculous, you know, no matter how much it hurts. And then into my you know, post-college years, I kind of translated that into like the business slash entrepreneurial world of just like you know, to get ahead, you just have to work harder than everyone else. You have to put in the hours, you have to grind and grind, and then you know, I kind of took that approach to my marathon training as well. And what's interesting is that I'm like, that's just not me. Like I'm like, I am not not that I'm not a hard worker, but I am not like you know, if something hurts, or if something's hard, I want to be like, hang on a second, why why is this why is this hard? Why is this hurting? And you know, I I think a lot of the like my buddies and stuff I grew up with, they they a lot of you know, former football players and that, and they had that exact what you're describing. And so I think kind of by um like it just kind of rubbed off on me that that's like, oh, this is what this is what it means to be to be tough, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Well, Nathan, I've spent a majority of my life as a person and in my athletic career. I've spent my whole life as a person, so I I appreciate that. You spent the majority of your life as a person. As a person. As an athlete, business owner, like the mantra of pain is progress. Like the pain is a sign that you're making progress, and that navigated everything. If the workouts weren't painful enough, if I wasn't getting hit hard enough in my hockey career, if there wasn't that sense of pain, the victory or the accomplishment or the workout wasn't the same as if there was pain. And I didn't even begin to transition out of that until my 50s. Um, until I I really began to rethink. That's true. You know, that needing medical attention after every single marathon you've done, that's not a sign of accomplishment. That's a sign of maybe foolishness. But yeah, pain, pain's a partner, pain's my training partner.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Has been and we're gonna get into like some specific takeaways, but it reminds me of the example that he used in the book, and I've heard it other people talk about it too, that sometimes that athlete, the image of the athlete like losing their mind, think of like John McEnroe in tennis, like somehow that is like, oh, that guy's so tough because he seems to care so much about this thing that he's like you know losing it at the ref or he's fighting with another player. But really, like what Magnus talks about in this book, he's like, no, that's the opposite of it. Like you, you're not tough, you cannot keep it together. And that's really um, if anything, a giant sign of weakness. So yeah, you know, the guy who takes a break, or you know, like I remember high school cross-country, it's like, oh, you have a you have an injury and you're sitting out. Oh, that's you know, we weak sauce is what we would call that. Weak sauce. Weak sauce, yeah. So interesting. It's not very fun. What I want to do here is just kind of literally read the summary from the book, kind of figure out our flow here as we go, but just sort of talk about our takeaways. We have this shared Google Doc where we have a few different takeaways. We'll certainly have a different perspective on them, but a

Book Summary

SPEAKER_01 7:37

couple similar ones. So, what is this book about? In Do Hard Things, Magnus 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. He offers four core pillars to cultivate such resilience, which we're not going to go through all of these but uh in detail. But pillar one is ditch the facade, embrace reality. Pillar two, listen to your body, pillar three, respond instead of react. And pillar four, transcend discomfort. Smart and wise all at once, Magnus flips the scripts on script on what it means to be resilient, drawing from mindfulness, military case studies, sports psychology, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. He provides a roadmap for navigating life's challenging challenges and achieving high performance that makes us happier, more successful, and ultimately better people. And what I maybe should have prefaced, this is he uses a lot of sports metaphors and analogies, and he was almost a professional runner, but it's not a sports book. Like I think sports is such a an easy example to draw on from some of these things, but he talks a lot about business. He talks about leadership, he talks about leading a team, he talks about parenting. And so some of these principles that we're gonna share today are not really have anything to do with sports. Although Brian and I were talking before we started recording that we're both athletes, former athletes, current, we're always an athlete. And so, like, that's that's part of our story, and so that's like we're gonna be talking about it, but it just applies to so much. So, anything you want to add about that real quick before I I think I'm gonna have you go first and share one of your takeaways first. Anything you want to add though about the high-level summary?

SPEAKER_00 9:13

As a high-level summary, my invitation is that if there are people who are interested in reading the book, that they understand that he does Steve Magnus does approach the perspective of writing through the lens of an athlete, but he quickly disperses that those metaphors and those experiences for great applicability, no matter who you are. And that's one of the things that I liked about it is he uses this the sports illustrations as a threshold over which he steps to broadly apply the concepts that he's talking about. So it's a it's a very invitational read.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Okay, Brian. So share one of your big takeaways from this

Takeaway 1. Self Acceptance

SPEAKER_01 9:55

book.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Well, Nathan, the biggest takeaway that I have is the way that Steve Magnus focuses on this idea of this is who I am. I accept who I am in my background. I'm writing from that perspective because, hey, this is how I see the world. And I was keenly attracted to that immediately because as an athlete, I tend to struggle with my self-acceptance as an athlete because I don't believe it's directly applicable to everyone else. So I've I've often shaded or clouded my worldview as an athlete, believing that I can better relate to people if I don't use that lens. What Steve does is say the exact opposite, which I think is part of the theme of the book. He flips the script and says, This is the lens through which I see the world. That's just who I am. And for me, that happened in the first chapter of the book, and that was one of the main takeaways for me is this grand invitation. It's like, yep, Brian, you're an athlete, and that's part of how you see the world. It's a great part of how you see the world. Embrace that and just see through that lens.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

What's uh interesting is that I started reading this book before Brian, and I was like, hey, you should read it too, so we can do this discussion. And that was one of the reasons in that first chapter or two, whatever it was. I was like, I think Brian's gonna like this because it's so much about embrace who you are as a person. I think this probably f falls in like the first pillar of ditching the facade and embracing reality. Like, yep, don't pretend to be someone else, don't try to like you know adhere to some other set of values. It's like be who you are and use that as a way to embrace toughness as it as it looks like for you. So what's your big takeaway,

Takeaway 2. Keep Your Cool

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Nathan? My well, so it's interesting too is that I had um one giant takeaway that has so many drop downs. So he has this quote that I think we're gonna come back to a few times, but it's anything that makes you uncomfortable is an opportunity to train your mental muscle to sit with that feeling and navigate it. The book isn't really what you think it's about, or it wasn't what I thought it was about. It wasn't like here's some some tools of how you're gonna like you know run a marathon or you know accomplish this giant thing. It's more about the hard things. The hardest thing in life is keeping your stuff together, is keeping your cool when everything else around you is spinning into chaos. And I think of how applicable that is to, you know, an athlete who is performing, and I, you know, an athlete could be someone out there doing their first 5k, someone who's playing rec tennis and they're doing a pickup tennis match with someone, and like it can be anything. Pickleball, like pickleball, exactly anything, parenting, like leadership. There's so much, like how do you keep your your mind clear and focused and um in check when everything else is spinning out around you? You know, when you're driving the kids home from school, they're tired and hungry, and they're screaming, you're tired and hungry, maybe not screaming, but really frustrated and annoying. How do you keep your mind in the in the proverbial game? Yeah. Yep. So how did I have a lot more I could say about that, but how did that idea sit with you? Because I know that's something that you and I've been taught, like before this book have been talking about with just some of the mindfulness stuff that we've been working on.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Well, that idea that you're referring to is that anything that makes you uncomfortable is an opportunity to train your mental muscle to sit with that feeling and navigate it. As you know, I have been working for years to try to better understand my feelings and my emotions. Um for the last 18 months, I've been under the care of a performance and mindfulness coach. Um, part of this is the exercise. So when I saw this in the book, of course I recognized it. But where it really began to make sense for me, Nathan, was in the last third of the book. Um, I think the pillar is in the transcend discomfort in pillar four. Yeah. Because he began to Steve Magnus began to talk about what happens when feelings become so strong. And he made the connection between feelings are data, they're pieces of information, and feelings can often determine how our emotions are responding to a situation. So he separated feelings from emotions, but to sit with that difference, um, that was a huge takeaway for me because one of the things that that he said, Nathan, which has turned into a mantra of mine, is he said something about how a feeling is not a determinant of your emotional capacity or your emotional or physical well-being. And he gave an example of how he was in a race and how what he was feeling was determining that he wasn't physically ready for the race and wasn't emotionally ready for the challenge, and he realized that he can separate the feeling from this judgment. And I took that away as huge because his advice was when feelings start to arise, create space for the feeling to exist. And in creating space, you're with the feeling, but you're also separating from the feeling so that you can experience what's happening in the moment and realize if you have the physical or mental capability to actually, you know, go after or kind of move through whatever the challenges. So that was a big shaping part of this book on how I think as an athlete and as a professional.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

I wrote down another quote feelings are signals that need to be understood.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

And what I really love about that is our bodies, we don't have a lot of tools readily available to us to figure out uh like what's really going on. You know, are we frustrated? Are we hungry? Are we angry? Are we, you know, whatever it is? And so this idea, and this is actually one of our takeaways for later, but um but this idea of using everything that we're feeling to like interpret it, and sometimes we don't have the luxury to stop and journal or like actually, hmm, what is this what is this feeling, this sensation mean right now? But like in the last I don't know, couple weeks since I finished the book, anytime I like you know, flip out on my kids or get really annoyed, you know, with my wife, or you know, be annoyed, not not that I'm annoyed at Brian and Linda ever, uh, but like there's you know something at work that I'm like, what's happening? And I was like, oh wait, this is data, this is an opportunity, much in the same way as like you look at your bank account and be like, hmm, I thought that number would be bigger. It's like, okay, let's look and see what happened. It's like the same kind

Takeaway 3. Zooming

SPEAKER_01 16:25

of practice and um it's really hard. I don't know if you've uh found any nice takeaways, but I'm wondering if you can kind of lead into that. So you wrote down zooming, and yeah, I I loved this story in here about like zooming in and zooming out, which is also something that we talk about at Leadership Vision slightly differently, but like sometimes you need to hyper focus on that little tiny feeling. Sometimes you need to zoom way out to the big picture. Yep. Talk about why what that is, and then why you wrote that as one of your top takeaways.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Well, I wrote that down as one of the top takeaways because at Leadership Vision, we've been using the term zoom in, zoom out for over 10 years. And so when when uh Steve Megnus used the term zooming, it's a verb, which I like that, and it is it's what we talk to our clients about all the time. And Nathan, as you know, as a team, we do the same thing. I also have the luxury of having done a lot of research just on this idea of zooming in and zooming out prior to the book. Why it caught my attention in Steve Magnus's book is because he's not only saying there is a time when we need to zoom in and really narrow the aperture of what we're seeing. There's a time to focus on those details, to get something done or to navigate. But there's also that this need to also zoom out, again, creating space between us and the task or the emotion or the feeling or the relationship. Zoom out and see the entire landscape. That often changes your perspective. And then one of the things that uh Steve also mentions is then the need to just see. Like to just see. Sometimes you just need to be where you are, exactly where you are. There's no need to zoom in or zoom out, just see, just see what's around you, just see what's in your perspective. And I like that because I think that that's where the balance really falls for me. That's my first part. And the second part is and I'll refer to my book on page 208 and 209, he begins to list different types of zooming. And I want to mention this in the podcast. I really think that for our listeners, it's helpful to hear lists sometimes so that we as an individual have the opportunity to connect with one or two things in the list to give ourselves permission to say, Oh yeah, uh, that makes sense to me. That's what I do. And also to raise our curiosity. There could be something in this list where you think, Oh, I never thought of zooming in or zooming out on that piece. So I'm just gonna read quickly what they are. Number one is visual zooming, and he talks about portrait mode versus panorama mode. And I just like that just visually, what are you seeing? Because there are so many dead data points that we can get to about what we see. Uh, number two is cognitive zooming, and that is about the thought process, common answers, areas of interest, data you're picking up cognitively. Number three, physical zooming. You can imagine what that's like. What I love about this, I've been using it a lot um with with the people that I'm coaching, is he cites a study where people that actually lean into a conversation, like just that that physicality of like leaning your upper body into a conversation have a much more narrow aperture of understanding as those that like lean back, and that that leaning back physically opens up your mental aperture. Uh temporal zooming is about um like getting into a space of thinking about the future and looking forward, linguistic zooming and the importance of language and the words that you use, the specificity of word choice, as well as the broad, more open-ended word choices and how you create your sentences, environmental zooming. I think you can kind of think about what that is, what's your context, who's around you, physical space, lighting, heat, warmth. And that's that's six, and I would add number seven uh for the sake of this conversation, which I'm kind of surprised that he doesn't bring in here, and that's emotional zooming. Like the the zooming in on the feeling, zooming out on the core emotion, zooming in on what's actually inspiring that feeling, what's happening around you, and then doing some some work to how it is that you're going to actually respond emotionally, because he does spend a lot of time talking about how we respond to our emotions, kind of like what you're saying earlier, Nathan, of being with and sitting with to navigate. So I would add number seven, emotional zooming.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

The one that I really liked in that section was temporal zoom zooming. Okay, why is that? Well, I'll read you. Uh when you're going through a difficult time, ask how you might feel about this in six months, a year, or even ten years down the road, imagine how future you would think about your current situation often reminds us that whatever we are going through is temporary. That's something that I've been kind of reading a little bit of like philosophy about that everything is temporary. The very good stuff, the very bad stuff. That's why it's like so important to be in the present and to enjoy what's happening here. But that idea of um, you know, however difficult a situation is right now, it's like, okay, in six months, am I going to care about this? It's like, no, I'm just mildly annoyed at this person, at my neighbor for doing this. It's like, all right. Like it can just give perspective in a way that I hadn't really considered something like that. And what's interesting is my wife and I were recently just kind of reflecting on like our time since we lived in Portland, and you know, we're almost married 20 years, and so things that like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, I was like, remember when that was so incredibly important, and now we don't care about that at all? Like it's funny how you can get worked up about something in one season of life um or at one time, and then it's just it's just no longer that important.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

One of the things I want to add, Nathan, for us and for our listeners is when I read that that temporal. Zooming. What I also know as a practice is yes, it's it's helpful to understand that this moment that we're in right now is temporary and will it matter 10, 15 years from now or six months from now. I also do the temporal zooming looking backwards because it really gives me a sense to look at, yep, this moment is temporary. And if I look backwards, I can see how I have been prepared emotionally, professionally, intellectually, and relationally to actually navigate what's happening in the moment. You know, as the challenges come up in business or with clients or whatever, I always have this fear and freak out like reaction right away. But when I take a temporal zooming approach and think about how I got here, it's it's almost this reassurance of, yeah, I've navigated something just like this or very similar before. I know who to call or how to answer the email. That's really not new. And I also know that it's temporary and we will move through this. It just may not be the route that I would prefer, but it is a route around or through. And that's also how this temporal zooming can help me too. It's is the looking forward, and I also use it looking backward.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

I love that. And that might be a good transition into some of our takeaways.

TAKEAWAYS

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Okay. Because my kind of first takeaway, and by the way, I should mention like these takeaways, yes, it's for our listeners, but also it's like these are my personal takeaways of like what I'm going to try to do. So that idea of leaning into those uncomfortable situations and spend some time sitting with that uncomfortable feeling. And to your point, Brian, it's like if you think about like the future me or the past me, it's, you know, this, I think all of us probably have things in our life that are repetitive uh barriers to helping us do tough things. And again, a tough thing could be an athletic accomplishment or, you know, getting a job promotion or leading a team in a certain way. And so when you think about, like, let's just say you're you're the type of person who is is, you know, maybe you get frustrated easily when, you know, things aren't done the way you think they should be done. And so, you know, if you're like, okay, do I want to be the same type of person in next year, in five years, in ten years, the only way to do that, to lean into those uncomfortable situations. Every time you have an interaction with a coworker, they're like, ah, that just I was a little too sharp with them, I was a little too curt, whatever. Yep. Sit with that, process that. Because what I think about, and this applies in my work life and my parenting, is like, okay, next year, do I still want to be someone

Takeaway 1. Lean Into the Discomfort

SPEAKER_01 24:33

who is like struggling with the same, like, I got the same injury, so to speak, yeah, and I've not seen a PT for it. I have not done the like the right stretching or strength training. And so, so my big takeaway is this idea of leaning into those, and this is straight from the book, leaning into those uncomfortable situations and spending some time sitting with that uncomfortable feeling. Because I don't know about you, Brian, but too often I want to be like, oh, that was a really like we have some former coworkers. I was like, I was not my best self when I interacted with that person. Let's just ignore it, let's just let's just let it go away. And then a couple weeks go by, the same thing happens, same thing happens. And but sitting with that, okay, how could I have done better? How could I have like you know, maybe taken a moment or whatever? So I I have like a second part to that, but I'm curious. Any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 25:20

I don't have any additional thoughts on it because the the sitting with is important, and what I've learned is you're sitting with a feeling, an emotion or an experience, and my what's helpful for me is to discern is that that feeling, emotion, experience is not me. I am sitting with that, or I'm living with that for this moment, but that's not who I am. It's a it's a lived experience. Like one of my takeaways is create space, and I'm not used to that. I'm used to embracing and owning and shouldering instead of creating space and creating a healthy separation to be alive and free with the feeling, the emotion, or the experience.

Takeaway 2. Create Space - How?

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Yeah, so creating space, let's go on that because that was kind of the second part of mine. So I've just sort of given myself and our listeners this challenge to like lean in, lean into and kind of sit with that uncomfortable feeling. And I would love your uh honest take on this because we haven't talked about it. So, like, what what does that mean? What does that mean to like sit with this uncomfortable grossness and kind of my plan or what I'm you know doing is like so journaling? I'm not really a journaler, but I'm kind of learning to like let's write this down. I felt this way, this happened, like my my throat got dry, my mouth got dry, like I started sweating, like what was going on? And then, you know, books and podcasts and like practicing some mindful meditation, like finding resources. I think it's one thing to like just kind of sit by yourself in a dark room and ruminate, because that that's the dark, like where this can go bad, right? It's like you just ruminate and ruminate. Then it's like, okay, if I'm, you know, my mind kind of failed me here, how do I get better at it? So I can do some tough things, so I can have hard conversations, so I can, you know, become more mentally tough, so that the next time then I need to kind of embrace some of these things. Does that make sense? Like, what would you what would you what do you hear in my ramble there?

SPEAKER_00 27:11

What I'm hearing is ultimately a what what what's coming to my mind is the question of how do I sit with and create space? And one of the things that I believe uh from lived experience and observed experience is that people are often ill-equipped to sit with their struggles um and find a healthy way because we tend to fall back into those well-worn patterns of our psychology and our psyche. So um what what I would say, or what I would suggest, because uh this is what I do for myself, is how do I provide myself with an objective observation from someone or something that serves as an outsider? So an objective observation. So think of three O's objective, observation, outsider. And so, Nathan, I know you and I use the same mindfulness meditation app. And so that to me, that app provides me with an objective observation on a lived experience or reality from a true outsider that causes me to be able to be with whatever it is I'm experiencing, to be less anxious, and to have another perspective to help me navigate just how I am trying to create space with something and how it is like a few steps forward or inward. And that's been really helpful for me. Now, I've been journaling for almost 40 years every day. So that process of sitting with how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, and what I'm exploring, that's not new to me, but that objectivity, I'm I'm I'm trying to like raise the volume level on the objectivity that I'm receiving. That's kind of what I'm searching for right now, is a differentiation from how I have been thinking to how I am thinking.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Does that make sense? It does. And I'm wondering, one of your takeaways is finding reference points that are smarter than you. Is this yeah? Is this tied in tied into that? You know, think about like the coach and the app and other things.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Well, one of the things I like about Steve Magnus is he is not afraid to reference people or studies or research that are smarter than him. And that resonates with me because that's that's kind of how I do my work is I'm always trying to find a reference point or a reference voice that's smarter than me to not only elevate or expand my thinking, but to maybe deepen or ground my feeling in trying to find a place that resonates with me in that process. So that's one of my great takeaways is Steve Magnus modeled that as an author and as a practitioner. And it just connected with me because that's what what I that's just part of my practice, what I'm continuing to do. But what's different for me now is I recognize that I am in a need of a differentiated perspective than what I've had before. And I think that that's maybe part of the invitation that I'm hearing from this book is that there is a different way of how we can think about our reality. We don't have to settle for old ways of thinking to navigate new ways of being. And that's the invitation that I think is really coming forward for

Takeaway 3. Embrace your Identity

SPEAKER_00 30:23

me. Yeah. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Another takeaway we have here that you kind of started talking about at the beginning. Uh, accept and embrace your identity and perspective and lived experience and interpretive framework. Flow with what you know. That sounds like should be on a t-shirt or something. How we can make the t-shirt and then we can sell it. How is how is that a takeaway? Or let me, that's not the right word. Uh, make that more practical. Because embracing like who you are and your identity is such a long process. Like, how does someone actually go and and do that today? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Self-awareness and self-acceptance is a lifelong journey. Every one of us have examples of how we have sought to better understand who we are and then struggle to accept actually who we are. And the idea of flow is not only a psychological reality of you know how the greatest mathematicians or composers or athletes or whoever, when they're in their flow, like everything seems to be connecting. I'm sure our listeners have had that moment. And part of what I I was taken away from the book is Steve Magnus is inviting us to go with the flow of what you know. So he does that. Like, this is who I am. So he's addressing it to his self-acceptance of I am an athlete, I am this, that's our thing. He's also saying, go with the flow, like of what I know. And that is as an athletic, achievement-oriented, goal-oriented, extremely high accomplishment, that's also part of flow with what you know. I think that if people can discover that current that can carry them, it doesn't mean that we don't have to navigate. It doesn't mean that it can be not difficult at times. It certainly can be. But so many of us, myself included, have tried to swim against the current or to try to row against the current of actually who we are as an identity. And part of the conceptual framework of flow is that there is an ease with which this happens. There's a moment like when all the lights are on. It doesn't happen for very long. It does have an end point, but there's something about working with ourselves. And sometimes our greatest desires, ambitions, cautions, and intuition are part of our psyche saying to us, maybe we're drifting a little bit. You know, it's almost as if our inner being is asking us to stay in our flow.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Yeah. Well, and I feel like this is where you know a greater understanding of your strengths can come into play too. Not to like pigeonhole your flow into like a profession, but just into like, wait a second, I'm I'm in an area that I'm not passionate about, I'm not very good at. It's not, it doesn't come natural to me. And so, like, listening to those, um, to those messages as as well, I think, can be really, really powerful. So Brian, any final thoughts?

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Well, I would highly recommend the book by Steve Magnus, uh, Do Hard Things, um, because I really do believe that people respond well to counterintuition and different ways of thinking and feeling. And I believe that what Steve Magnus is doing is he's providing a counterintuitive approach to what it means to be tough and what it means to do hard things. And he's also agitating our thinking in soft ways and direct ways to try to wrestle with how is it that we can actually live with our feelings, our emotions, our relationships, and understand ourselves better, understand others better so that we can live a more full and fulfilling life. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

My, I think, final thought would actually be a tie in to one of our courses that we release, The Seeing Strengths from a New Perspective. One of the lessons in that is called How All Strengths Break. And how to put them, how to put them back together again. And it's this idea that when you're pushed too far, when your strengths are pushed too far, when they're kind of off track, how do you find rest and kindness and compassion for yourself? But how do you, in all of this learning, in all of this sitting with the yucky stuff that happens, how do you have self-compassion for yourself? How do you, you know, what you said earlier is like, okay, this is not me. I'm a good team member, a good parent, a good spouse, a good friend, a good whatever that just had a really tough moment there. And so how do I kind of remember that? Because I think it's well, my default is just beat myself up and be like, oh, I'm terrible. I shouldn't have done it that way. I was actually the other morning, I was reflecting on something from six months ago that happened at school. I was like, oh, I really dropped the ball on that. It's kind of like, well, that doesn't do any good to rehash that now. But Brian, this was this was fun. We you and I have never really done a book book together. A book club. Maybe we should start a leadership vision book of the month or something and see what happens. So um Brian, well, thank you very much. Thank you, Nathan. This was fun. Yeah, and thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast strength, our expertise in the discovery, practice, and implementation of a strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. For more resources on developing your strengths, the strengths of your team, or the strengths of your entire organization, or to learn how to do hard things for yourself, you can visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com or click the link in the show notes. I'm Nathan Freeberg. And I am Brian Schubring. And on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening. For listening. That was fun.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Yeah, I like that.