Do Hard Things

creating space between thought and action.

Even worse, we shifted the focus away from the joy of actually doing the work and toward external praise and rewards.

We’re left with a system that can hold contradicting information in various parts of our brain. One module might receive information that our core temperature is rising at an alarming rate, while another module focuses on the strong motivation and degree of importance of our current task. One self pushes us toward completing our goal; the other wan

Resisting, pushing through, and playing through the pain are all akin to telling your parents, child, partner, or whoever is in the midst of their tantrum to “calm down.”

The ability to persist, to stay motivated and engaged, is directly tied to toughness. How do we keep going, despite ever-increasing stress or fatigue?

“Healthy adaptation is the result of flexibly choosing between regulation strategies to adapt to differing situational demands.” It’s not that distraction, suppression, reappraisal, detachment, or shifting to a broad or narrow worldview is good or bad. They all work—and don’t. TOUGHNESS

“When one feels belonging, one feels accepted and seen, and when one is deprived of belonging, one feels rejected and invisible.”

Creating space is a tool that we can all learn to use, one that helps us disconnect the initial sensation from the reverberating emotional response. And it’s a skill that truly defines grittiness because we are working through a challenge, not blitzing past

“The key to being able to handle the pain and uncertainty?” Cleather quipped, “Accepting the pain. Not fighting it.”