Susan Jeffers (1938–2012,) née Gildenberg, was an American psychologist. The author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway and other popular self-help literature, she was also a sought-after public speaker.
Born to a Jewish family in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, Jeffers got a bachelor’s degree from Hunter College in New York City, and a master’s and a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University.
Jeffers is well known for her first self-help book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987; revised 2006.) Initially rejected by several publishers, it sold some 15 million copies in 100 countries and was translated into more than 35 languages. Jeffers also established a thriving training and consulting business, recruiting hundreds of accredited trainers all over the world.
Jeffers wrote 17 other self-help books, including End the Struggle and Dance with Life (1996,) I’m Okay, You’re a Brat! (2001,) and Embracing Uncertainty (2003.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Susan Jeffers
If you’ve truly committed yourself to something, given it all you’ve got, and then concluded that it is not for you—move on to something else.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear
As you begin to understand the immense power and love you hold inside, you will find an unending surge of joy, light and love that will nourish and support you all the days of your life.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Possibilities
The kind of power I’m talking about leaves you free, since you don’t expect the rest of the world to fill you up. It’s not the ability to get someone else to do what you want them to do. It’s the ability to get yourself to do what you want to do.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear, Power, World, Sin
Awareness is half the battle.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear, Awareness, War
Most of us do not “sculpt” our lives. We accept what comes our way…then we gripe about it.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Live, Fear
The point to remember is that when you blame any outside force for any of your experience of life, you are literally giving away all your power and thus creating pain, paralysis and depression.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear, Life, Giving, Depression, Power, Experience
Start thinking about yourself as a lifetime student at a large university. Your curriculum is your total relationship with the world you live in, from the moment you’re born to the moment you die.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Life, Time, Live, Fear, World, Thinking
What we resist persists.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear
Why be miserable when you can be happy?
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear
You can drop an awful lot of excess baggage if you learn to play with life instead of fight it.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear, Life, Age
I said to myself: “You mean all those people out there that I’ve been envying because they’re not afraid to move ahead with their lives have really been afraid? Why didn’t somebody tell me!?” I guess I never asked.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Live, Yin, Fear, People, Envy
It is reported that more than 90% of what we worry about never happens. That means that our negative worries have less than a 10% chance of being correct. If this is so, isn’t being positive more realistic than being negative? Think about your own life. I’ll wager that most of what you worry about never happens. So are you being realistic when you worry all the time? No!
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Time, Life, Worry, Fear, Age
I have learned that there is always more to learn. And experience is our greatest teacher.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear, Experience
Shoulds bring on guilt and upset—totally draining emotions. Your power is taken every time you utter the words “I should”.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Time, Power, Fear
See if you can go a week without criticizing anyone or complaining about anything.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear
Taking responsibility means not blaming yourself… Anything that takes away your power or your pleasure makes you a victim. Don’t make yourself a victim of yourself!
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Responsibility, Power, Fear
Taking responsibility means being aware of where and when you are NOT taking responsibility so that you can eventually change.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear, War, Responsibility, Change
The biggest pitfall as you make your way through your life is impatience.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Patience, Life, Fear
For some reason, when you become a support to others, you become bigger than you are.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear, Support
Now I know that when I am angry at my husband, I simply have to ask myself, “What am I not doing in my life that I could be doing that I am blaming him for not doing for me?”
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Life, Fear, Doing
In a sense, your need to please shows you what you have to work on—and that is: letting go emotionally of the role of child and stepping into the role of adult.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Work, Fear
Determine what you want on your life and act on it.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Life, Fear
Take a risk a day—one small or bold stroke that will make you feel great once you’ve done it. Even if it doesn’t work out the way you wanted it to, at least you’ve tried. You didn’t sit back…powerless. Watch what starts to happen when you expand your comfort zone…with each risk you take, each time you move out of what feels comfortable, you become more powerful… As your power builds, so does your confidence, so that stretching your comfort zone becomes easier and easier, despite any fear you may experiencing. The magnitude of the risks you take also expands.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Work, Confidence, Risk, Power, Fear, Time
We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.
—Susan Jeffers
When we let someone be who they are without trying to change them, that is giving away love. When we trust that someone can handle his or her own life, and act accordingly, that is giving away love.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Yin, Love, Trust, Giving, Try, Fear, Life, Change
The most important thing is for you to be your own best friend. Whatever you are doing—don’t put yourself down. Slowly begin to discover which, for you, is the path of the heart. Which path in life will make you grow? That is the path to take.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Discover, Life, Best, Doing, Fear
The truth is that love and power go together.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Power, Fear, Truth, Love
When you see yourself connected to something bigger than yourself, you no longer feel you must do it all alone. Your sense of power becomes highly magnified, and your fears are greatly diminished.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Fear, Power
Women have been conditioned to believe that to be powerful is unfeminine and unattractive. It is my experience that nothing could be further from the truth.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Believe, Experience, Fear, Truth, Power
The knowledge that you can handle anything that comes your way is the key to allowing yourself to take healthy, life-affirming risks.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Risk, Knowledge, Health, Win, Fear, Life
When we give from a place of love, rather than from a place of expectation, more usually comes back to us than we could have ever imagined.
—Susan Jeffers
Topics: Love, Fear
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