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Nike’s new slogan – Why Do It? – flips everything the company once stood for. The brand that built its empire on grit and action is now telling Americans to stop and question themselves. It is more than a marketing shift. It is a reflection of how doubt, not drive, has become the national mood.
Hesitation feels protective in the moment, but it corrodes confidence over time. Therapists call this avoidance: short-term relief that leads to long-term weakness.
I have seen a young professional spend hours rewriting a single email, convinced it would never be good enough. A college student skipped class to escape anxiety, only to find it grew worse the longer she stayed away. Another, urged by a previous therapist to quit a “triggering” job, discovered the anxiety followed her into the next one. Lives stall in the name of safety.
And just as bad therapy reinforces that cycle, Nike is now selling it.
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Good therapy does not cushion hesitation. It challenges it. Growth comes from taking risks, facing discomfort and learning you can survive it. Yet much of modern therapy and much of our culture has flipped that script.
Too many therapists echo fears instead of confronting them. Schools treat discomfort as harm. Politicians amplify grievances instead of solving problems. The result is the same: people are comforted in the moment but not strengthened.
Nike’s new slogan offers the same illusion. Just Do It was blunt, even harsh, but it was sound. Confidence does not precede action; it follows it. That was the genius of the line. It cut through hesitation and demanded movement. Why Do It? discards that wisdom. It dresses up self-doubt as insight and sells paralysis as empowerment.
Nike, for its part, pushed back on that characterization. A spokesman told me that “Just Do It hasn’t changed or gone away,” explaining that Why Do It? is simply the title of a campaign film. He added that the marketing “remains under the JDI tagline” and that “Nike has always been a brand about empowering human potential.”
The company’s chief marketing officer, Nicole Graham, echoed that message in a press release, saying, “‘Just Do It’ isn’t just a tagline – it’s a spirit that lives in every heartbeat of sport… With ‘Why Do It?’ we’re igniting that spark for a new generation, daring them to step forward with courage, trust in their own potential and discover the greatness that unfolds the moment they decide to begin.”
But while Nike insists the campaign’s spirit is unchanged, its tone tells a different story. Why Do It? sounds less like a call to action than an invitation to hesitation—a reflection of the doubt that now defines our culture.
The message fits a wider cultural shift. From college campuses to corporate boardrooms, we have replaced resilience with reassurance. We call fear “self-care” and hesitation “wisdom.” It is the same therapeutic logic that tells people to avoid discomfort rather than master it. That mindset might feel compassionate, but in the long run, it leaves people smaller and weaker.
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Sports, however, is the opposite of hesitation. No athlete ever became great by waiting for doubt to vanish. Michael Phelps did not become the most decorated Olympian by questioning whether the effort was worth it. He did it by swimming through pain, failure and doubt repeatedly. Sport proves what good therapy also teaches: strength is built in discomfort, not retreat.
Nike once embodied that ethic. Just Do It was more than clever advertising; it was a cultural message about resilience and grit. By abandoning it, Nike has adopted the logic of bad therapy: validate hesitation, avoid hard truths and confuse comfort with growth.
And Nike is not alone. Therapeutic culture has seeped into nearly every institution. Universities create “safe spaces” for feelings but leave students unprepared for adversity. Workplaces roll out wellness programs that prize validation over productivity. Even politics increasingly resembles a therapy session, with leaders affirming outrage rather than solving problems. Nike’s campaign is one more sign that hesitation and grievance have become the new American brand.
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This is bigger than sneakers. It reflects a cultural drift I have seen both in the therapy room and across the country. We live in a therapeutic age where ordinary stress is relabeled as trauma, where boundaries are prized over relationships and where self-protection is celebrated more than perseverance.
In this climate, hesitation is no longer a weakness to overcome; it is recast as wisdom. Nike’s campaign does not resist that drift. It mirrors it.
The danger is that hesitation does not empower. It corrodes. The patients who thrive are not the ones who wait until they feel ready. They are the ones who act anyway, who send the email without rereading it 50 times, who return to class even while anxious, who face conflict instead of retreating from it. Their growth comes not from endless questioning but from discovering that confidence is built by doing.
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That ethic once defined not just Nike but much of America. Just Do It emerged in the 1980s, when perseverance was admired and ambition celebrated. Today’s slogan belongs to a different era, one where hesitation is romanticized and holding back is marketed as empowerment. It is weaker advertising and a weaker cultural ideal.
To be fair, the message resonates. Rates of anxiety and depression are high, especially among young people. The instinct to meet them with compassion is right. But compassion without challenge is indulgence. Sensitivity that never pushes people forward is not kindness; it is enabling. And enabling, whether in a therapist’s office, a classroom or a corporate billboard, leaves people more stuck than before.
The irony is that Nike built its brand on athletes who proved the opposite truth. Phelps, Serena Williams, Kobe Bryant – none of them achieved greatness by holding back. They rose by acting, failing, enduring and acting again. Sports, like good therapy, shows that resilience is not cruelty. It is a necessity.
So why do it? Because nothing worthwhile comes without effort. Hesitation may feel safe, but it only makes us smaller. False comfort is still false. Nike once sold grit and resilience. Now it sells illusion.
Just Do It pushed us forward. Why Do It? leaves us stuck, the perfect slogan for an anxious age.
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