Quote
“The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow.”— Susan Jeffers, in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987) · Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway →
Why it was said
Susan Jeffers lists five truths about fear early in the book, and this is the first. It came from her own years of waiting to feel ready before doing anything new.
What it actually means
People wait for fear to leave before they act, and Jeffers's truth is that it never leaves, because every new thing produces it. The sentence removes the wait rather than the fear. If fear is the permanent companion of growth, then its presence is not a signal to stop; it is evidence that you are doing something new, and the only choice left is whether to act with it present.
How to use it
- 1Rename the fear you feel before something new as the sign you are growing, and do the thing at the smallest size today.
- 2Keep a list of things you did while afraid; it becomes the evidence that the feeling is survivable.