Why'd You Think You Could Do That?

What if the very thing holding you back could become the thing that carries you forward?
In this Breakthrough episode of Why’d You Think You Could Do That?, host Sam Penny shares how Aaron Linsdau found progress in the middle of Antarctica’s brutal storms, starvation, and hallucinations. His lesson: the mind screams loudest just before progress shows

What You’ll Learn in This Episode
  • Why the hardest days and darkest moments often sit right on the edge of breakthrough.
  • The truth about fear: it doesn’t vanish — you move forward with it.
  • A simple exercise to transform fear into forward motion.
Key Takeaway
Breakthroughs don’t arrive when fear disappears. They arrive the moment you refuse to let fear stop you.
Power Move
Take the fear you wrote yesterday and complete this sentence:
  • Even though I’m afraid of ____, I will ____ anyway.
Say it out loud. Let yourself hear your own voice commit to moving forward.
🌍 Explore Aaron’s full story and resources at his guest hub: sampenny.com/aaron-linsdau

🚀 Ready to break through in your own life? Work 1:1 with Sam: sampenny.com/action

Creators and Guests

Host
Sam Penny
Sam Penny is an adventurer, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker who lives by the mantra “Say YES! to the Impossible.” From swimming the English Channel in winter to building and selling multi-million-dollar companies, Sam thrives on pushing boundaries in both business and life. As host of Why’d You Think You Could Do That?, he sits down with ordinary people who have done extraordinary things, uncovering the mindset, resilience, and bold decisions that made it possible — and showing listeners why their own impossible is closer than they think.

What is Why'd You Think You Could Do That??

They’ve swum oceans, scaled mountains, launched empires, and shattered expectations. But before they did any of it, someone, maybe even themselves, thought: “You can’t do that.”

Hosted by Sam Penny, Why’d You Think You Could Do That? dives into the minds of people who said “screw it” and went for it anyway. From adventurers and elite athletes to wildcard entrepreneurs and creative renegades, each episode unpacks the one question they all have in common:

“Why'd you think you could do that?”

If you’re wired for more, haunted by big ideas, or just sick of playing it safe, this is your show.

Sam Penny (00:00)
What if the very thing holding you back could become the thing that carries you forward? This is Why'd Think You Could Do That? I'm Sam Penny, and these short episodes are your power move, a few minutes to challenge your thinking, fuel your courage, and bring you closer to your impossible. On Monday, you named your spark, the dream you want, the thing you're going after. Yesterday, you faced your struggle, the fear that tries to shut you down. And today,

It's about the breakthrough, the moment persistence shifts the game. For Aaron Linsdau that breakthrough came not in a single flash of triumph, but in the quiet, relentless choice to keep going. Antarctica tested him in ways most of us can't imagine. He skied through storms so violent he couldn't tell where the sky ended and the ground began. He dragged sleds weighing more than 160 kilos

ridges and through drifts that swallowed them whole. But his butter, half of his calories went rancid, leaving him starving and weak. And in the silence, he began to hallucinate. He heard things that weren't there. He saw things that didn't exist. His own mind was trying to betray him. Most people would have turned back, but Aaron discovered something powerful. The mind screams loudest just before the progress shows.

The hardest days, the darkest moments often sit right on the edge of the breakthrough. And here's the key. Breakthroughs don't come when fear disappears. They come when you decide to move forward with the fear. Aaron didn't wait for courage to arrive. He didn't wait until it felt easy. He chose to ski anyway. That choice to keep chipping away, to not quit, is what carried him all the way to the South Pole.

And that's your breakthrough today. Fear, struggle, setbacks, they aren't signs you're failing, they're signs you're close. So here's today's power move. Take the fear you wrote yesterday. Now write this sentence, even though I'm afraid of, I will anyway, and fill in the blanks. Then say it out loud. Let yourself hear your own voice commit to moving forward. Tomorrow, you're going to hear Aaron's

full story, the record breaking solo South Pole expedition. But today, remember this, breakthroughs don't arrive when the fear vanishes. They arrive the moment you refuse to let fear stop you.