A short motivational monologue by Brian Tracy arguing that fear is the main obstacle to adult success and that repeating positive affirmations ("I can do it") cancels fear, builds confidence, and enables action. The speaker instructs listeners to counter fearful self-talk immediately with "I can do it" and to encourage others similarly.
The greatest single obstacle to success in adult life is fear. And it's fear of all kinds. It's fear of failure and fear of loss and fear of criticism and a fear of rejection and fear of embarrassment and ridicule, Fear of poverty. It's fear that holds us back. Fear paralyzes us and causes us to be much, much less than we're capable of doing. Now, here's a great discovery of mine, is that you can counter the emotion of fear with positive words that cancel out the fear. You see, fear is caused by feeling. I can't. I can't. So you can cancel those words by saying, I can. I can do it. I can do it, I can do it. And so whenever you're afraid of anything, what you do is you immediately say, wait a minute, I can do it, I can do it. I can do it. I can do anything. Anything I put my mind to. If you want to encourage others, tell them you can do it. You can do it as well. But as you go through the day, whenever you think of anything that might hold you back, you say, wait a minute, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. And as your confidence goes up when you say, I can do it, your fears go down, and pretty soon you can take action and accomplish things that you might not even believe today.
