The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Earhart frames courage as a sequence: first the hard internal leap—choosing to act—then the sustained external work of persistence. By calling fears “paper tigers,” she suggests that many anxieties gain their power from imagination and anticipation rather than from the actual difficulty of the task once begun. The quote also shifts the idea of “reward” away from outcomes (records, acclaim, even success) toward agency and process: acting, learning, and exerting control over one’s direction become intrinsically meaningful. In this reading, tenacity is not grim endurance but a practice that transforms fear into manageable steps and turns self-directed action into its own form of fulfillment.