"You must do the things you think you cannot do"

A summons to courage, the line insists that the very edge of our fear marks the beginning of our growth. The mind protects us with doubt, depicting challenge as impossibility to spare us discomfort. Yet the human psyche also expands through mastery earned under stress. When we act where we feel least capable, we rewrite the story we tell about who we are. Courage is not the absence of fear but the decision to move with it, transforming anxiety into a compass that points toward what most needs to be attempted.

There is a practical rhythm embedded here: start where resistance is strongest, but scale the risk. Micro-bravery, making the hard phone call, delivering the brief presentation, asking the difficult question, creates evidence that our limits are more elastic than they appeared. That evidence builds self-efficacy, and self-efficacy widens the realm of the possible. Failure becomes a tutor, not a verdict. What looked like a wall becomes a staircase when we commit to iterative attempts, guidance from mentors, and preparation that respects the stakes without being paralyzed by them.

The moral tone of the sentence matters too. Must suggests duty: to ourselves, because a life shrunken to fit fear is a life unlived; and to others, because communities need people willing to shoulder the tasks that daunt everyone. The instruction does not celebrate recklessness but disciplined daring, action informed by values, anchored in care, and open to uncertainty. Over time the cycle becomes self-reinforcing: think you cannot, try anyway, learn, adjust, and discover you can. Then choose a larger horizon. Freedom arrives not when fear disappears, but when it no longer decides the size of our days. Doing the hard thing is how a person becomes someone who can.