“Whatever happens to me, given any situation, I can handle it.”

Why it was said

Susan Jeffers places this sentence at the centre of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. She argues that beneath every specific fear, of failing, of being rejected, of making the wrong choice, sits one deeper fear: that we will not be able to handle what happens. This line is her direct answer to it.

What it actually means

Jeffers' move is to stop arguing with each fear separately. You can spend years trying to guarantee that the business will not fail or the relationship will not end, and the fear simply relocates to the next thing. The sentence does not promise that nothing bad will happen. It shifts the question from "will it go wrong?" to "can I cope if it does?", and for most people the second question has a far better answer than they assume. The evidence is their own history: things have gone wrong before, and they are still here, handling it. Repeated deliberately, the line builds trust in the one resource that travels into every situation, your capacity to respond.

How to use it

1. 1Name the fear behind a decision you are postponing, then write what you would actually do in the first week if the worst happened.
2. 2List three difficult things you have already come through; they are the evidence the sentence rests on.
3. 3Say the line before a specific hard moment, a call, an interview, a launch, rather than as a general mood.