personal development on Toughness

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.

During the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto broke his right knee while competing in the floor exercise. At the time, Japan and the Soviet Union fielded the world's ...

The novel Martin Chuzzlewit , written by Charles Dickens, is one of his least successful works, though Dickens himself commented to a friend that he believed it was his greatest work up to its pu...

Brett Favre was a driven man. He explained to USA Today that his father’s message that he was never good enough drove him to become one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history…His dad had also been hi...

Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffe...

Resilience is not something that can be mustered in a moment of “rising to the occasion.” It is formed over a long period before the crisis of testing so that it can continue the transformation during...

Resilience is not about becoming smarter or tougher; it’s about becoming stronger and more flexible. It’s about becoming tempered. Which takes us back to the blacksmith’s shop. Tempered. Let the word ...

“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”

Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.

I was listening to a show on the National Geographic channel. Two deep-sea diving experts were discussing the physics of a submarine. I found it fascinating that every square inch of a submarine’s hul...

The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them.

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the eq...

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

I suspect that this is the most important thing I’ve said in all my interviews and talks as well as in this book. It’s a truth that applies to more than writing. It applies to anything that is importa...

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Life can often feel like a bully, throwing punches at us we didn’t see coming. We get taken out, for a moment. But how we jump back in becomes our decision.

The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a best-selling statistician, argues that it is not even mere resilience we need, but what he calls antifragility . He groups things into three categories. First, fragile...

Many of life’s annoyances just have to be ignored. That doesn’t mean that we suppress, ignore, or deny every pain. Serious pain has to be confronted. But one mark of resilience is learning to tell whi...

It’s human nature to resist change—particularly when it comes in the form of adversity or challenges. But change is inevitable, and developing the trait of resilience helps us not only survive change,...

“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.”

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

The word [patience] never means the spirit which sits with folded hands and simply bears things. It is victorious endurance (and) constancy under trial. It is Christian steadfastness, the brave and co...

Trials come to prove and improve us.