"Never underestimate your problem or your ability to deal with it"
About this Quote
The line captures a tension at the heart of resilience: be honest about the size of the challenge, and equally honest about the strength you can bring to it. Minimizing a problem invites complacency, sloppy planning, and unpleasant surprises. Over time, small cracks widen into crises when they are ignored. But minimizing your capacity is just as dangerous. It breeds paralysis, rumination, and the self-fulfilling prophecy that nothing can be done. The wisdom is in the calibration: accurate threat appraisal paired with accurate self-appraisal.
Psychology gives language to this balance. In stress research, people make two appraisals: What is happening to me? and What can I do about it? Underestimating the first blinds you to risk; underestimating the second erodes self-efficacy. Schullers sentence guards against both errors. It pushes back against catastrophizing and against optimism bias, refusing the extremes of panic and denial. The desired posture is sober confidence.
Schuller, a pastor best known for possibility thinking and for the phrase tough times never last, but tough people do, rooted his optimism not in wishful thinking but in action-oriented faith. His ministry encouraged people to look problems in the eye while mobilizing resources, community, and persistence. That context matters because the line does not preach toxic positivity. It does not say problems are small; it says your response can be large enough if you marshal it.
There is also an ethical undertone: taking problems seriously respects the stakes and the people affected. Taking your ability seriously respects the work you have done, the help you can seek, and the skills you can still learn. Both forms of respect generate momentum. You gather facts, set proportionate priorities, and then act. Courage is not the absence of fear but the conviction that your tools, allies, and adaptability, properly engaged, can meet the moment. The balance keeps you from flinching and from swaggering, so you can do the real work in front of you.
Psychology gives language to this balance. In stress research, people make two appraisals: What is happening to me? and What can I do about it? Underestimating the first blinds you to risk; underestimating the second erodes self-efficacy. Schullers sentence guards against both errors. It pushes back against catastrophizing and against optimism bias, refusing the extremes of panic and denial. The desired posture is sober confidence.
Schuller, a pastor best known for possibility thinking and for the phrase tough times never last, but tough people do, rooted his optimism not in wishful thinking but in action-oriented faith. His ministry encouraged people to look problems in the eye while mobilizing resources, community, and persistence. That context matters because the line does not preach toxic positivity. It does not say problems are small; it says your response can be large enough if you marshal it.
There is also an ethical undertone: taking problems seriously respects the stakes and the people affected. Taking your ability seriously respects the work you have done, the help you can seek, and the skills you can still learn. Both forms of respect generate momentum. You gather facts, set proportionate priorities, and then act. Courage is not the absence of fear but the conviction that your tools, allies, and adaptability, properly engaged, can meet the moment. The balance keeps you from flinching and from swaggering, so you can do the real work in front of you.
Quote Details
| Topic | Overcoming Obstacles |
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