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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mary Schmich wrote this line in an essay for the “Chicago Tribune” in 1997. The piece was titled “Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted on the Young,” and she opened the essay by proposing that “inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out.” She then went on to list advice for young people, as if she were, in fact, speaking at a graduation. One of her suggestions, along with “sing” and “floss,” was this now-famous approach to building courage and overcoming fear: “Do one thing every day that scares you."

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