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The document discusses the concept of toughness and resilience. It argues that we have misunderstood what it means to be tough, equating it with acting strong and hiding vulnerability. However, real toughness is about navigating discomfort through thoughtful action rather than reaction, and having inner strength based on humility and equanimity. It also discusses the importance of understanding our inner emotional world rather than avoiding feelings, and how experts are better able to respond to challenges rather than immediately reacting to them. Real toughness involves making the right choices under stress through emotional control.

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Mohan Ram
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
166 views17 pages

English Project PDF

The document discusses the concept of toughness and resilience. It argues that we have misunderstood what it means to be tough, equating it with acting strong and hiding vulnerability. However, real toughness is about navigating discomfort through thoughtful action rather than reaction, and having inner strength based on humility and equanimity. It also discusses the importance of understanding our inner emotional world rather than avoiding feelings, and how experts are better able to respond to challenges rather than immediately reacting to them. Real toughness involves making the right choices under stress through emotional control.

Uploaded by

Mohan Ram
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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DO HARD THINGS

A MINY PROJECT REPORT

SUBMITTED BY
Rishi Nandharaj Sivakumar

In partial fulfilment for the award of the

internal marks for the AISSCE-2023

in

ENGLISH CORE
Subject Code:301

SUGUNA PIP SCHOOL


COIMBATORE

DECEMBER 2022

BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE

Certified that this project report TITLE is a bonafide work of


RISHI NANDHARAJ SIVAKUMAR who carried out the project work under my
supervision.

SIGNATURE OF
SIGNATURE OF EXTERNAL EXAMINER
INTERNAL EXAMINER.

SIGNATURE OF THE PRINCIPAL



WHAT IS A PODCAST?

A podcast is the streaming age’s answer to radio. The dictionary


definition of a podcast is a digital audio file you can download or
listen to over the Internet. Its interesting history explains why it is
called a podcast, to begin with.

Podcasts are a form of media content that was developed in 2004,


when former MTV video jockey Adam Curry and software developer
Dave Winer coded the “iPodder.” The iPodder was a program that let a
user download internet radio broadcasts to their Apple iPod. This is
where the term and meaning podcast was born, taking its name from a
blend of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcasts’.

Today, podcasts are an extremely popular form of audio entertainment


and have progressed beyond being downloadable radio shows. Each
podcast is a series created by a host and then published episode-by-
episode online, where subscribers can then download and listen to
each episode when it’s released.

Unlike traditional methods of content production like TV and radio


shows, podcasts are an accessible way for content creators to connect
with an audience. They’re not even currently regulated, meaning you
don’t need a broadcasting license to publish podcast content. Anyone
with basic podcast equipment like a microphone, recording software,
and a membership to a hosting platform can create their own show.
Monetizing a podcast is also becoming a reliable way to make either a
side or a full-time income, thanks to brand sponsorships, affiliate
marketing, subscriptions, and paid content.

Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the


Surprising Science of Real Toughness?

Adults do this thing — and maybe you've already done it yourself


since you've grown up — where they go out of their way to remind
children that life will come with its difficult moments, so we should
revel in the good, easy times while they last. Ease, we learn, is the
state we should most aspire to.

But, what about those hard things, moments, and experiences? Isn’t
there value in them, even if they’re not fun in the moment? Aren’t
they important in not only making us who are, in fostering confidence,
competence, and resilience? In making life truly good, and equipping
us with the resilience to get through the times when it’s not? And,
what about that age-old notion of toughness? What’s really going on
there? Can we be tough, but also gentle, vulnerable, open?

In this podcast, Steve Magness, a world-renowned expert on


performance, well-being, and sustainable success, dives deeper into
these questions and explore the fascinating intersections of success,
toughness, doing hard things, and science.

Toughness is a word that comes with certain unfortunate, heavily


machismo-fueled perceptions that might not be accurate or even
helpful to us as we strive for success or try to work our way through
hard things. In this conversation, you'll hear us dissect the words "grit"
and "toughness" as Steve offers his take on the matter, defining grit as
the ability to create space for navigating your doubts, insecurities, and
feelings that can get in the way of the desired outcome. And in the
end, we explore the importance of training our brains to escape the
shock of difficulties and forge on until the end — even with the
complicated feelings and all.

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.

It’s time to move to a definition based on navigating discomfort by


creating space to take thoughtful action. Toughness is about
responding, not reacting. It’s about authentic connection and
belonging, not leadership through fear. For far too long, we’ve
propped up an external version of toughness based on bluster and
machismo while neglecting inner strength based on humility and
equanimity. Real toughness is quiet and comes deep from within. It’s
about making the right choice under stress, uncertainty, and fatigue—
this requires emotional control. Real toughness is borne of self-
security that is rooted in confidence, but not arrogance. Toughness is
about figuring out how to thrive in adversity, and isn’t concerned with
posturing.

Understand your inner world—don’t avoid it:

If you’re like me and grew up in sports, you learned that feelings are
enemies. Don’t show emotion. Ignore what you feel. We send the
same message in the workplace, parenting, and beyond. Our inner
world isn’t the enemy. It protects from physical or psychological
threat, such as shielding our ego from the bruise of failing a job
interview. Feelings and emotions are messengers from our bodies that
relay what’s going on. Don’t shun them; decipher their language
instead.

Research shows that the best stockbrokers, endurance athletes, and


military personnel are better at reading their inner signals. Think of a
four-year-old. They throw tantrums because they have little idea what
that barrage of emotions is when their teacher tells them to redo their
work, or when a friend rejects them on the playground. You see this in
young kids’ vocabulary—they explain every emotion as “sad.”
Hopefully, adults can differentiate between sadness and frustration,
shame, boredom, or isolation.

In psychology, the ability to add nuance to emotional experience is


called interoception. Experts in interoception don’t push away
sensations, they learn to understand them. Only once we speak their
language can we know how to deal with them. To know if that pain is
a warning that injury is imminent, or if that feeling of shame is an
uninformed feeling that we should scroll on by. Tough individuals are
expert at listening to their body.

Respond, don’t react:

When researchers at the University of Wisconsin compared how a


group of expert meditators and novices handled a hot probe being
applied to their wrists, initially there weren’t many differences. Both
rated the pain at about a 7 out of 10. But as they peered into their
brains using fMRI technology, a difference emerged. The experts’
threat-detecting area in the brain (the amygdala) remained silent. Their
novice counterparts’ amygdala lit up, sounding the alarm. When they
dug further, the expert meditators had a “greater ability to fully
embrace the feeling of pain and … let go of the appraisal of what the
pain meant to them.” They’d learned to observe the itch without
scratching. They were creating space to respond, instead of freak out.

It’s not just meditators. It’s the child who doesn’t jump from
frustration to temper tantrum. The basketball player who doesn’t miss
a shot, and then fear that she’s lost her touch. The spouse who can
listen to their partner, instead of yelling during an argument.
Responding is keeping our head cool amid chaos.

We create space to respond by sitting with discomfort. Expert


meditators hone this through years of practicing letting thoughts and
feelings float on by. The rest of us don’t necessarily need meditation,
but we need to accept discomfort. We can train this in everyday
situations: pause when you feel that incessant urge to check your
phone, or listen to your family member express their political views
instead of interrupting. You can be intentional in training your
capacity to respond. Jump in a cold shower and practice relaxing
instead of tensing up. Go for a hard run. Have a calm conversation
instead of catastrophizing when pain rises.

Whenever you feel the urge to react, pause, take a few deep breaths,
and sit with that urge. You are training your mental muscle to be in
control, to be considerate, and deliberate with your response. In a
world that pushes us towards reacting, slowing down to respond is a
skill society desperately needs.

Real toughness comes from satisfying core needs:

When under pressure, we often default to a controlling leadership


style. We dictate and demand, believing that we are taking charge and
creating order out of disorder. This often backfires.

When a team of organizational psychologists studied the NBA, they


found that a coach's behavior in a single season influenced their
performance for the rest of their career. In evaluating almost seven
hundred players' performance, those who played under a coach with
an abusive leadership style
saw a drop in performance, as measured by a player efficiency score.

But the effects weren't limited to the season with that coach. The
impact stretched to the player's entire career. The player's career
trajectory shifted a notch downward. Not only did their performance
drop, but the coach's style rubbed off on them. Those players had
more technical fouls (an indicator of aggression) throughout the rest of
their career.

When you look at what works over the long haul, research shows that
athletes perform better and are more resilient when their basic
psychological needs are met. When an environment provides these
four things, they perform better:

• Being supported, not thwarted: having input, a voice, and a


choice.

• The ability to make progress and grow.


• Feeling connected to the team and mission; a sense of belonging.
• Finding purpose or meaning in the pursuit.

This isn’t just in sports. In the workplace, a recent study of over 1,000
office workers showed that the strongest predictor of how well they
dealt with demanding work was whether they felt respected and
valued by their managers. In other research, those who report feeling
more autonomy and less micromanaging have higher levels of job
satisfaction and performance. Toughness is amplified when we have a
choice and feel like we can make a difference.

When we satisfy basic needs, we create an environment where people


play to win, instead of playing not to lose. When fear dominates, we
perform worse. Outliers can handle playing out of fear, but for most of
us, security gives the freedom to perform. For decades we thought
callousness was the key to toughness. It turns out the real secret sauce
is being a decent human being who actually cares about others.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER


Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance, well-
being, and sustainable success. His most recent work is Do Hard
Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of
Real Toughness. He is coauthor of the best-selling Peak Performance
and The Passion Paradox. In his coaching practice, Steve works with
executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes on their performance and
mental skills. He’s served as a consultant on mental skills
development for professional sports teams, including some of the top
teams in professional sports.

His writing has appeared in Outside, Runner’s World, Forbes, Sports


Illustrated, Men’s Health, and a variety of other outlets. In addition,
Steve’s expertise on elite sport and performance has been featured in

The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The
Guardian, Business Insider, and ESPN The Magazine.
Steve received his undergraduate degree from the University of
Houston and a graduate degree from George Mason University. He
currently lives in Houston, Tx with his wife Hillary. Once upon a time,
he ran a mile in 4:01 in high school, at the time the 6th fastest high
school mile in US history.

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