Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations (2008)

I picked up a copy of this book after a friend of mine recommended it for our youth group. The study guide is free online in pdf form from the authors. This book was written after great and unexpected success of the blog spot these teenage boys created. The challenge - Do hard things - rebel against the low standards set for teens and accomplish something great. I would say that any parent of a teen would find this worthwhile. In fact we have begun a Do Hard Things New Boston on FB as a group for our teens to share their hard things and for the parents to encourage the teens to greatness.
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This book surpassed my expectations! I picked it up at a thrift store, wasn't expecting much, but it was great! I loved it! Great encouragement for teens. One thing I didn't like, was that they put to much emphasis on doing the "big hard things", which not everyone is called to do, and has the ability to. But otherwise, very good! ( )

Neat ( )

Finally finished. The book is focused on encouraging its target audience to strike out and do things that sound difficult and I believe it mostly accomplishes this. I am not in that target audience and still was challenged by its message, overall. ( )

I opened this book with a lot of reservation. Being the jaded, read-it-all, know-it-all college student who just left what seemed to be the Harris' overly focused audience (by turning 20), I wasn't sure how much I could get out of this book.
While I still think their focus might have been somewhat limiting, this apathy of low expectation seems to be infecting our entire populace, I can also see why the deliberate focus on teens shines an even stronger light on an even darker blind spot for a lot of people.
I also felt a little more removed from a percent of the content, especially early on, because of how politically involved the twins have been and how they used that for a lot of their examples. They balanced out a lot of their political examples, however, in the end; over all, I would have to admit that in the end their examples are even fairly gender balanced, which is another point that they could have missed.
Finally, the best point of this book is that YES I have been feeling exactly what they say in this book for the past few years of my life, and instead of finding this book ridiculously boring, I devoured it in two or three days! Not only was it enormously encouraging to me (I am not alone), but it also inspired me in a lot of ways to challenge myself and others around me who are not fulfilling our full potential. ( )