‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’
There’s no better example of determination and persistence than author Dr Susan
Jeffers.
Married at 18, by the age of 25 she felt trapped in a life of tedious domesticity.
Believing she was meant to be doing something in addition to raising a family, she
enrolled at university, gaining a B.A. and an M.A. six years later. By the mid-seventies
she had become the Director of New York’s Floating Hospital, an educational and
medical facility for the disadvantaged. It was there she began her journey into self-
discovery that eventually led to her writing her first million selling self-help book,
Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway.
Written in 1986, Feel The Fear...was mocked and rejected by most of the major pub-
lishers, who had no experience of this type of book. One told her, ‘Lady Di could be
cycling nude down the street giving this book away and still nobody would read it.’
But she was determined to succeed. ‘If an idea is a pioneering one,’ she observed,
‘it often seems foolish and flies in the face of established wisdom.’ Now, thanks in
no small part to her efforts, the self-help genre is a well-established and much
appreciated section of the book trade.
6 DETERMINATION