You’ve probably heard the line from the movie Apollo 13: “Houston, we have a problem.” Tom Hanks, playing Commander Jim Lovell, was informing Mission Control about a catastrophic failure aboard the space craft. The film is based on actual events, and “the” catastrophic failure turned out to be a series of challenges that threatened to leave three astronauts stranded in space.

Faced with these challenges, the real-life astronauts and ground-control experts could have thrown up their hands at the unfairness of life, decided the problems were insurmountable, become overwhelmed and panicked, focused on their inadequacies, or gotten caught up in any of the dozens of excuses we all use for failing to work our problems. Instead, they maintained their focus and pulled off a miraculous save.

So when you’re faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem, don’t waste time thinking about what you can’t do. Just start doing what you can. Remember these thoughts:

“The problem when solved will be simple.”

—Sign in a General Motors research lab

“We skew toward people who like to solve problems–the bigger the problem, the better–rather than those who settle in and say, ‘Okay, I’ll do that for 30 years’.”

—Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president of “people operations”

“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.”

—Babe Ruth, professional baseball player

“You cannot solve current problems with current thinking. Current problems are the result of current thinking.”

—Albert Einstein, scientist

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.”

—Moses Maimonides, philosopher

“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”

—Gloria Steinem, social activist and writer

“Perseverance: secret of all triumphs.”

—Victor Hugo, poet and novelist

“Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.”

—Henry J. Kaiser, industrialist