Susan Jeffers: Travel Quotes, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, and the Psychologist Who Wrote Courage for the Unknown
Susan Jeffers (1938 to 2012) was an American psychologist and self-help author whose book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway has sold over two million copies. She did not write about airports or itineraries, yet travellers carry her lines into every trip that frightens them, because the first step onto unfamiliar ground is always a question of fear. The genuinely sourced lines are gathered here, with the travel reading flagged honestly.
Search for Susan Jeffers travel quotes and you meet a psychologist rather than a travel writer, and that is the honest place to start. Jeffers (1938 to 2012) earned a doctorate in psychology and spent her career teaching ordinary people how to act in spite of fear. Her 1987 book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, became one of the most widely read self-help books in the world and has sold more than two million copies. This page does not pretend she wrote about packing lists or border crossings. It gathers her real, sourced words about fear, uncertainty and taking the step anyway, walks through who she was, and is honest that the travel reading is ours, applied to lines she wrote for life as a whole.
Who Susan Jeffers Was: The Psychologist Who Taught People to Act Through Fear
Susan Jeffers was born in 1938 and earned a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University in New York. For years she served as a therapist and ran a New York health organisation, and she knew the subject of fear from the inside: she wrote that for much of her early life she was ruled by it. The turning point was the plain, hard idea that became her life’s work, that the fear never fully leaves, so the only way forward is to feel it and act regardless.
She turned that idea into Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway in 1987, and it found readers all over the world. She went on to write a shelf of related books, including Dare to Connect (1992), End the Struggle and Dance with Life (1996), Feel the Fear and Beyond (1998) and Embracing Uncertainty (2003). She lectured widely, was a familiar voice on radio and television, and kept writing until close to her death in 2012. Her message never changed: you can handle far more than your fear tells you.
Her Defining Idea: You Can Handle Whatever Comes Your Way
Jeffers built her work on a small number of plain ideas, repeated until they stick. The most important is that at the bottom of every fear sits a single quieter fear, the belief that you will not be able to handle what happens. Remove that belief, she argued, and the fear loses its grip, because if you trust that you can handle anything that comes, there is finally nothing left to be afraid of. The whole of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway is built to install that one piece of trust.
Read her as a traveller and the connection is direct. Every meaningful trip asks you to stand on unfamiliar ground, to make decisions without knowing the outcome, and to trust that you will cope with whatever the road hands you. That is Jeffers’s territory exactly. She wrote for the person frozen at the edge of a choice, which is precisely where a traveller stands the night before a hard departure. Her lines have travelled so widely because the fear she described is the same fear that keeps a trip in the daydream stage.
Her Best Book and Where to Start
Jeffers is best met in the book that started it all, and there is one clear edition to recommend rather than the many reissues and spin-offs.
1. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
Best for: Anyone standing at the edge of a decision, a trip or a change, who needs a practical way through fear.
The 20th Anniversary edition from Ballantine Books, the enduring version of the book that has sold over two million copies. It lays out her ten-step process for moving from victim to creator, the five truths about fear, and the no-lose approach to decisions. It is the source of every sourced line on this page, and the single best place to start with Jeffers.
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Jeffers’s Philosophy of the Journey: Do Not Wait to Feel Ready
Jeffers’s philosophy is easy to state and hard to live: the fear will not disappear, so stop waiting for it to. She taught that courage is not the absence of fear but action taken alongside it, and that every time you do the thing you are afraid of, you prove to yourself that you can handle the next one. For the traveller the lesson is plain enough: do not wait to feel ready, because ready never quite arrives. Book the trip, stand on the unfamiliar ground, and let the doing teach you that you were equal to it.
Memorable Susan Jeffers Quotes, Sourced and Read for the Road
Notes on sourcing: every line below comes from Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987), her best known book. Jeffers wrote about fear and uncertainty rather than literal travel, so the travel reading is ours, offered honestly. We have not dressed any line up as a travel quote she did not write.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
— Susan Jeffers Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987) The title and the whole idea in five words, and the cleanest instruction a nervous traveller will ever get: the fear is allowed to come, the trip happens regardless.
The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.
— Susan Jeffers Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987) One of her five truths about fear. You do not think your way past the fear of a journey, you walk into it.
Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I am on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.
— Susan Jeffers Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987) Her most travel-shaped line. The confident travellers you envy feel the same fear on new ground, they have simply learned to move with it.
Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.
— Susan Jeffers Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987) The case for going: the discomfort of the trip is smaller than the slow ache of the trip you keep not taking.
If you knew you could handle anything that came your way, what would you possibly have to fear? The answer is: nothing.
— Susan Jeffers Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987) The heart of her method, and a quiet thing to carry through an airport: trust that you can cope, and the fear has nothing left to hold.
Starter path: pick the one line that loosened something in you, write it on the inside cover of your notebook, and read it the next time a trip is sitting in your drafts folder waiting for you to feel ready.
Other Voices on Doing the Thing That Scares You
If Jeffers is your way in, these writers carry the same nerve, where the journey is really about doing the thing that scares you.
- Kristin Addis: the banker who bought a one-way ticket and built an authority on fearless solo travel, Jeffers’s idea lived out on the road.
- Rick Steves: the European travel guide whose whole philosophy is that fear is mostly for people who do not get out much.
- Cheryl Strayed: who walked eleven hundred miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone and wrote the courage of doing the hard thing anyway.
Frequently Asked Questions About Susan Jeffers
Who was Susan Jeffers?
An American psychologist and self-help author (1938 to 2012). She earned a doctorate in psychology and is best known for Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (1987), which has sold more than two million copies. She wrote a series of related books on fear, connection and uncertainty.
Did Susan Jeffers write travel quotes?
Not directly. She wrote about fear, decision making and uncertainty rather than literal travel. The sourced lines on this page come from Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, and we are honest that the travel reading is ours, applied to lines about life in general.
What is the most famous Susan Jeffers quote?
Feel the fear and do it anyway, which is both the title of her 1987 book and the single idea at the centre of all her work.
What did Susan Jeffers mean by feel the fear and do it anyway?
That fear never fully disappears while you are growing or trying something new, so waiting to feel unafraid keeps you stuck. The way through is to accept the fear and take the action regardless, which builds the trust that you can handle whatever comes.
What is the best Susan Jeffers book to start with?
Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, her first and most complete statement of the idea. The 20th Anniversary edition is the easiest version to find and the source of the sourced lines on this page.
Why Susan Jeffers Belongs on a Travel Quotes Page
Susan Jeffers earns a place on a travel quotes page not because she wrote about travel, but because she wrote about the exact moment a trip lives or dies: the moment fear says you are not ready. Her gift is permission to feel that fear fully and go anyway, to trust that you can handle the unfamiliar ground, and to stop waiting for a confidence that only arrives after you have already left. If you read only one of her books, make it Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, where every line on this page lives in its true home. For more wisdom in this voice, browse our full library of travel quotes.
More Quote Collections Worth Your Time
- 100 Best Travel Quotes: the full library, organised by theme.
- Solo Travel Quotes: courage and independence for going it alone, the natural next read after Jeffers.
- All Author Bios: every writer whose travel lines we have sourced and checked.