Challenge yourself with something you know you could never do, and what you'll find is that you can overcome anything.

This motivational maxim circulates widely in late-20th- and early-21st-century self-help culture, especially in posters, social-media graphics, and inspirational quote compilations where authorship is often unattributed or generalized as “Anonymous.” It reflects a common theme in modern personal-development rhetoric: deliberately choosing a daunting goal to expand one’s sense of capability. Because it appears in many secondary contexts without a stable earliest citation, it is best treated as a piece of contemporary anonymous wisdom rather than a traceable remark from a particular speech, book, or historical figure.

The quote argues that growth comes from confronting tasks that feel impossible. By attempting what you “could never do,” you test the limits of self-belief and discover that many limits are psychological or provisional rather than fixed. The second clause—“you can overcome anything”—is hyperbolic in a literal sense, but rhetorically it emphasizes resilience: once you have evidence that you can surpass a presumed boundary, future obstacles seem less absolute. The underlying message aligns with ideas about self-efficacy and incremental mastery: repeated encounters with difficulty can reframe fear as a signal of potential development.