Skip to content

BOOKS

The art, science, and practice of sustainable excellence and well-being.

Do Hard Things

Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness

 

The Practice of Groundedness

A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds--Not Crushes--Your Soul

PEAK PERFORMANCE

Elevate your game, avoid burnout, and thrive with the new science of success.

THE PASSION PARADOX

A guide to going all in, finding success, and discovering the benefits of an unbalanced life.

How to Read the Growth Equation Books

If you enjoy our content online, we're confident that you'll love our books and find them hugely valuable. They've sold over 400,00 copies and are staples everywhere from NBA locker rooms to artists studios to physician and nursing journal clubs to the bookshelves of educators, executives, and entrepreneurs. Our books will help you take your game to the next level in a sustainable manner, whatever your game may be.

All stand on a three-legged stool:

1) Modern science.
2) Ancient wisdom and history.
3) Day-to-day, where the rubber meets the road, practice.
What's more, each book addresses what we call the knowing-doing gap. First, you've got to know something. Then, you've actually got to do it. We scrutinize our books to ensure that you leave not only with fascinating concepts and ideas, but also with the concrete tools, habits, and practices to implement them in your own life.

Our books complement each other—if you read one, you'll want to read them all. Sometimes people ask us in what order to read them. The honest answer is to start with whatever one you're most interested in and curious about at the moment, and then move on to the next:

To learn about genuine excellence and how to strive for it in a sustainable manner without sacrificing your mental or physical health, read The Practice of Groundedness. This book is all about building a solid foundation from which you can soar. It teaches you how to select the right goals and, equally important, the skills to find not only lasting success but also meaning and fulfillment in the process.

To learn about real toughness, inner strength, and how to work through the biggest challenges in your work and life read Do Hard Things. This book busts myths of machismo, chest-thumping toughness. It presents a new, and better, model for resilience, and it teaches you how to apply it across different areas in your own life.

To learn about how to attain your peak and, ideally, stay there for as long as possible, read Peak Performance. This book goes deep into the cycle of stress plus rest equals growth, and it shows you how to deploy it in numerous domains.

To learn how to develop fierce motivation without it going off the rails read The Passion Paradox. This book busts the myth of "find and follow your passion" and presents a more evidence-based model for building lasting drive where you control it so it doesn't control you.