Author
Susan Jeffers
The psychologist whose book title became the phrase for acting while afraid.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Susan Jeffers was a psychologist, born in 1938, who taught workshops on fear for years before writing the book that made her name.
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, published in 1987, set out her truths about fear, that it never goes away as long as you grow and that the only way to lose the fear of something is to do it, along with the tools: 'whatever happens, I can handle it', one risk a day, the no-lose decision. It has stayed in print since and been translated into dozens of languages.
She wrote many follow-ups, including Feel the Fear and Beyond and Embracing Uncertainty, and died in 2012.
The signature
Jeffers writes as a workshop leader talking to a room: direct, warm, repetitive on purpose, with the key sentences meant to be memorised. Her signature is the reframing of fear as the constant companion of growth and the sentence 'whatever happens, I can handle it'.