J.F. Kennedy: Do difficult things.

Why you need to do hard things and pursue big challenges.

J.F. Kennedy knew that to aim low meant to accept mediocre accomplishments. But to aim high could, if things went right, create something extraordinary.

President John F. Kennedy's bold declaration to put a man on the moon came in a historic speech to Congress on May 25, 1961, where he said: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Imagine the audacity of it. 1961: America's entire space experience consisted of a single 15-minute suborbital hop. The US hadn't even put a man in orbit yet. The Soviets were dominating space, having already launched both the first satellite and the first human. NASA itself was barely three years old.

And there it comes Kennedy with an impossible goal. He doesn't propose catching up to the Soviets. He doesn't suggest a modest step forward. Instead, he declares that within nine years, America will land humans on the moon and bring them safely back to Earth.

It would be like someone in 1903, just after the Wright brothers' first 12-second flight, declaring we'd have supersonic passenger jets by 1912. The gap between current capability and stated goal wasn't just large - it seemed unbridgeable.

Away from being scared by this, he doubled down his bet. Kennedy later reinforced this commitment in his famous 1962 speech at Rice University, where he said: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

President John F. Kennedy at Rice University

We choose to go to the moon and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

Seven years later, Neil Armstrong's boot pressed into moon dust. A human being had walked on another world and returned safely home. In less than eight years, America had gone from a 15-minute suborbital flight to walking on another world.

The goals we set are like the ceiling we build above our own heads. A low ceiling feels safer - you can easily reach it, you can see it clearly, there's no risk of falling too far. But it also limits how high you can rise.

When you tear off that ceiling - when you set goals that seem almost unreachably high - something remarkable happens. Even if you don't quite touch that elevated goal, you'll stretch higher, reach further, and grow taller than you ever would have under that low ceiling.

Do difficult things.

When Kennedy said that it was hard to go to the moon, he did not mean that it was unlikely for the project to succeed. He meant that choosing hard things was good because it’s better to engage with projects that will involve the creation of new knowledge and skills.

When we do difficult things, we embark on the journey of discovering what's possible along the way. When we choose to do hard and challenging things instead of easy ones, we are discovering our true potential.

But it will be far from easier. There will be a huge gap between where we are now and when we want to be. This difference will inevitably lead to moments of self-doubt, fear and despair. It will feel like we’re not ready. And that’s good. It’s supposed to be that way. If we felt ready, that would mean we are not aiming high enough.

E.L. Doctorow's once said: "Life is like driving at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Do you think the US was ready when Kennedy announced they were going to put a man on the moon? No, not at all.

Do you think they knew beforehand all the steps along the way? Impossible. In fact, many of the technological requirements for going to the moon had not yet been developed.

Kennedy himself mentioned in his speech that the rocket that would carry astronauts to the Moon would be “made of new metal alloys, some not yet invented, capable of withstanding heat and stress many times greater than has ever been experienced, all assembled with a precision better than the best watch” and sent “on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body”.

Aiming high is a leap of faith. When you pursue a big challenge, every logical part of your brain will be screaming that you're not ready, that this is madness. That you are going to fail. You’ll feel like giving up or taking an easier challenge.

And you know what? Your brain is right: you're not ready. You can't be ready. No amount of preparation can make you completely confident about a challenge so far beyond your current capabilities. And yes, you will likely fail. Because if not, then you are tackling a thing difficult enough.

Embrace all these obstacles along the way. The great thing about pursuing hard things is not just to get results, but to find out what they're capable of. Take action.

Normal people think you need to be confident to start. Successful people know they get confident once they start.

The beauty isn't in being ready. It's in being willing to be unready, to be scared, to be doubtful - and to start anyway. Because here's the truth: if you wait until you feel completely ready to aim high, you'll be waiting forever.

Every great achievement in history started with someone who wasn't ready, who didn't feel confident, who had no guarantee of success - but who dared to dream big. They made their leap of faith not because they knew they would succeed, but because they knew that even falling short of an ambitious goal would take them further than succeeding at an easy one.

That’s why doing difficult things is important. Your beliefs set the boundaries of your achievements before you even begin. When you tell yourself "I can't" or "It's not for me," you're building walls around your potential - walls that become self-fulfilling prophecies. As Jeff Bezos once said, “thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy”

What if everyone throughout history had limited themselves to what seemed "realistic"? What if they had let doubts and fear of failure prevent them from taking action? What if everybody would do easy things and play safe?

We might live on a world where landing on the moon was impossible to achieve, speaking face-to-face with someone on the other side of the world was pure fantasy, flying across continents in hours was an unrealistic dream, eradicating diseases like smallpox was beyond reach, and where cars would never replace horses as reliable transportation.

The leap is and always will be scary. The question is: what might you discover if you dare to jump?

When Kennedy announced his intention to put a man on the moon, it was such an ambitious goal that it was also a leap of faith. And sometimes that is what we need. To throw ourselves into an ambitious goal, knowing that failure is very likely, and without any certainty about the journey we must take.

Take that leap. Jump. Even if you don't quite reach the other side, you'll land far beyond where a cautious step would have taken you.