Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people wh... — Oprah Winfrey

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.

Author: Oprah Winfrey

Insight: Most of us have a pretty accurate sense of what we're not good at yet—and we use that knowledge as a reason to stay put. We tell ourselves we're being realistic. We're not mountain climbers; we're not public speakers; we're not the type to start a business or learn an instrument at forty-five. The thing is, that "realistic" assessment often just means we've decided the embarrassment of failing isn't worth the possibility of succeeding. What Winfrey's pushing at here is that the people who end up doing remarkable things aren't necessarily more talented at the start. They're just the ones willing to eat dirt publicly. They audition and bomb. They launch something that doesn't work. They ask for the promotion and get told no. The difference between someone who eventually cracks the code and someone who stays frozen is simply that they tried more times. There's a weirdly liberating twist in this: once you've failed at something once, the terror evaporates. It's not nearly as bad as the imagined version. You didn't actually die. Nobody actually cares as much as you thought they would. And suddenly, the second attempt becomes possible—not because you're braver, but because you've already survived the thing you were afraid of.