Quotes about self-doubt

I've many reasons why I believe that every individual I meet is a greatness material I don't have any reason to think otherwise except that person's self doubt.

It’s not about being ready or feeling prepared all the time sometimes you just have to do what you know you have to do. And when you do – you will always see that you’re more ready and more prepared than you realize. Never doubt yourself or you may never do anything of significance.

Time spent worrying - about anything - provides no emotional or physical benefit to us such things only weaken us for the fights we must endure in our lives.

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound.

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

Always have faith in yourself and the universe, for one will not get you anywhere without the other. Both must be equally strong to reach your desires, for they are the wings that will lift you to your dreams.

Erase self-doubt by working to build your strengths instead of focusing on your weaknesses.

One concrete way in which we all landscape our sanity is by having our experience of reality confirmed by others. When our experience of reality is disconfirmed by others, our confidence in our own sanity can be undermined. (page 125, Chapter 9, Graeme Galton)

Self-doubt imprisons those that never overcome it.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

What seems like a flaw is merely our higher consciousness telling us we're not looking at it in the right light yet.

Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.

what i miss most is how you loved me. but what i didn't know was how you loved me had so much to do with the person I was. it was a reflection of everything I gave to you. coming back to me. how did I not see that. how. did i sit here soaking in the idea that no one else would love me that way. when it was i that taught you. when it was i that showed you how to fill. the way i needed to be filled. how cruel i was to myself. giving you credit for my warmth simply because you had felt it. thinking

Self-doubt is a persuasive mistress careful not to shag her or you’ll never get your balls back.” - Simon Hunt

When our commitment is wavering, the best way to stay on track is to consider the progress we've already made. As we recognize what we've invested and attained, it seems like a waste to give up, and our confidence and commitment surge.

I bought you something" Willows blurts out."You bought...What?"Willow closes her eyes for a second. She's a little surprised she's going to give it to him after all, but there's no going back now. She has to."At the bookstore." She reaches into her bag again, and pushes the package across the table towards him.Guy takes the book out of the bag slowly, Willow waits for him to look disappointed, to look confused that she would buy him such a battered, old-"I love it when used books have notes in t

The mental mist of ambiguity and the fog of ambivalence hamper human existence.

...wanting soul life without the dark, warming intelligence of personal doubt is like expecting an egg without the brooding heat of the mother hen.

A little self-doubt is a good thing," said Jia, "but not excessive doubt. Sometimes we live up to the stories others tell about us.

Bea stared at the pencils as if they were enemies.

Fear and self-doubt are the deadly enemies of creativity. Don’t invite either into your mind.

Things happen, and nothing is for sure, but you just have to keep going, believing that one day, you'll find something that is.

Many of us are literally prone to believing the most blatantly nonsensical untruths. There are some opinions and some beliefs so incredibly moronic, you actually feel stupid for not believing them; and it's probably because in giving the benefit of the doubt you self-doubt, you convince yourself into lame passivity and blind acceptance, you tell yourself, 'Maybe I'm just missing something here.

Why is hard to believe than to doubt?

I am drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness - and even I am not strong enough to deny the routine, the rote, to simplify. No, I go plodding on, afraid that the blank hell in back of my eyes will break through, spewing forth like a dark pestilence; afraid that the disease which eats away the pith of my body with merciless impersonality will break forth in obvious sores and warts, screaming "Traitor, sinner, imposter.

Self-doubt and Depression are the real killers. The other are just pawns.

Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you l

With emotional abuse, the insults, insinuations, criticism, and accusations slowly eat away at the victim’s self-esteem until he or she is incapable of judging a situation realistically. He or she may begin to believe that there is something wrong with them or even fear they are losing their mind. They have become so beaten down emotionally that they blame themselves for the abuse.

I write every day whether somebody pays me or not. I write every day whether or not self-doubt is kicking my ass. It's what writers must do.

He intrigued her. Powerful men, in her experience, were usually not so full of doubt. Kuni was consumed by the desire to do good for others, but uncertain what "good" might be and whether he was the right man for the job.Kuni was the sort of man, Risana realized, who, rather than deceive himself, was so full of self-doubt that he could not longer see himself

I want to drag knives over my skin, just to feel something other than shame, but I'm not even brave enough for that

I’m not this unusual,” she said. “It’s just my hair.”She looked at Bobby and she looked at me, with an expression at once disdainful and imploring. She was forty, pregnant, and in love with two men at once. I think what she could not abide was the zaniness of her life. Like many of us, she had grown up expecting romance to bestow dignity and direction.“Be brave,” I told her. Bobby and I stood before her, confused and homeless and lacking a plan, beset by an aching but chaotic love that refused t

Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?

A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!

If someone wants to be in your life they will find you. If they don't they will find an excuse.

your only barriers are what you let it be

I loved Monty Python for the wordplay--this sense that you didn’t have to squash your intelligence to be funny. In fact, you could walk right into your intelligence and nerdiness and self-doubt, and that could be funny.

In graduate school, early on, I once overheard a classmate talking in her office as I walked by. She didn't know I was there. She was gossiping about me to a group of our classmates & said I was the affirmative-action student...Rationally, I know it was absurd, but hearing how she & maybe others saw me hurt real bad...I stopped joking about being a slacker. I tripled the number of projects I was involved with. I was excellent most of the time. I fell short some of the time. I made sure I got goo

Criticism is just someone else’s opinion. Even people who are experts in their fields are sometimes wrong. It is up to you to choose whether to believe some of it, none of it, or all of it. What you think is what counts.

He recalls a lot of family worry about what he was going to do, and while he still sent in the occasional sketch to radio shows, he acknowledges that his confidence was extremely low. Despite his subsequent success and wealth, this propensity for a lack of confidence has continued.“I have terrible periods of lack of confidence,” he explains. “I just don’t believe I can do it and no evidence to the contrary will sway me from that view. I briefly did therapy, but after a while I realised it is jus

Trapped. Sinking. Can't be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone's fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

Knowing when and how to change course is important to success. Self-doubt is a lighthouse that will keep you from running aground. Don't become shipwrecked on the rocks of time. Be willing to rethink your decisions and change course.

There are ways to do things, ways to act with people, and I do not understand them. I cannot understand what people mean when they talk. I do not do things right. I do not feel things right. I do not see things right. I am not...I'm not made of the same thing as everyone else.'The baker took in a deep breath. 'I think if you'll look around, my boy,' he said gently, 'you'll find that no one is quite right. But we all do the best we can.

The worst weapon of your enemy, rival, competitor, distractor is creating self-doubt in you and/or your team. They cannot win you without first destroying your self-worth.

Fear and self-doubt are the greatest killers of personal genius.

It doesn’t matter if I’m off the beat. It doesn’t matter if I’m snapping to the rhythm. It doesn’t matter if I look like a complete goon when I dance. It is my dance. It is my moment. It is mine. And dance I will. Try and stop me. You’ll probably get kicked in the face.

Most haters are stuck in a poisonous mental prison of jealousy and self-doubt that blinds them to their own potentiality.

Maybe he would see me as weak and stupid. Maybe he was right.

Who hasn't asked himself, am I a monster or is this what it means to be human?

Powerlessness is such a lure, such a poisonous lure.

A youth is susceptible to the influence of idealist notions. As a person ages, they notice a gap between their expectations and reality and they grow more pessimistic about the world and their ability to live up to the lofty notions that inspired a younger self.

Manifestation blossoms when we turn down or tune out doubtful noise.

I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself.

To Cassidy, the panopticon wasn't a metaphor. It was the greatest failing on everything she was, a prison she had built for herself out of an inability to appear anything less than perfect. And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself. She would always be confined by what everyone expected of her because she was too afraid and too unwilling to correct our imperfect imaginings.

Yolanda Gampel utilizes an expanded concept of the "uncanny" to outline the results of violence: Those who experience such traumas are faced with an unbelievable and unreal reality that is incompatible with anything they knew previously. As a result, they can no longer fully believe what they see with their own eyes; they have difficulty distinguishing between the unreal reality they have survived and the fears that spring from their own imagination.

Comfort...was the key ingredient to making the prisoner crave the prison.

It has nothing to do with who I am as compared to everyone else. It has everything to do with who I am in companionship with God.

Because that saying about sticks and stones is a pack of lies. Unkind words hurt more than anything else. You end up carrying them around in your head, wondering if they’re true. Bruises fade, but self-doubt follows you forever.

You do not need to pay attention to those voices within you that create pain, or make you feel less competent, smart or able.

I have learned to be kinder to myself, to imagine that I am my own best friend, whispering comforting words in my ear and drowning out the voices of Self-Doubt and Self-Criticism. I have learned to acknowledge and appreciate the 98% that I have achieved instead of the 2% that I didn’t.

Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.

Self-doubt inflicts the deepest wounds.

I am the one constant obstacle to my own momentum.

Probe deeply enough, under the slickest façade of confidence, and you tapped a vein of self-doubt or a hidden fear. Irrational fears and baseless doubts, many of them, but that was precisely why constant reassurance was necessary to the human animal.

We don't have time for such uncertainty because it reliably breeds indecision, and indecision is one of the mothers of failure.

A person’s greatest limitations are not genetic, but imposed by self-doubt, insecurities, indecision, and timidity.

You know, I've always thought scars were beautiful. Really. They remind me of my Saviour. You know, without scars, Jesus would look like any other man. His scars proved his love for you and me. He became marred and disfigured by choice, because of his love.

The first night in the hospital with a snuffling baby girl, I learned that my family was not the only thing that had expanded. There was now a whole new world of opportunities for judgment and self-doubt.

Spring is coming....Time for some cleaning. Remove all the self-doubt, worry, jealousy, regret, anger, guilt, or any other negative emotions that are holding you back from your happy, fulfilled life.

Where would I be had I not believed I was incompetent?

perfection is a form of fear

The best writers I've read possess oodles of self-doubt, yet claw their way up with each work and remain humble. Boastful ones, not so much.

Writing was a defeat, it was a humiliation, it was coming face-to-face with yourself and seeing you weren't good enough.

How do you surrender when every cell of your being is screaming that your life is not working and that you need to do something to make it work? How do you surrender in that moment when jealousies, envy, doubt, rage, resentment all rise up inside you? You accept that you are resisting letting go; you accept that perhaps you are not yet ready to take your hands off the steering wheel; you accept this with kindness to who you are in the moment, being gentle and tender instead of beating yourself o

Let your fear drive you to evolve into greatness.

Conviction is having the mindset to never doubt your self-understanding

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

... And I wondered if we had disappointed God so much, that he wrote us off as pets, just alive to entertain.

Que sais je? [What do I know?]

The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous, and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.

I feel ugly” I said and you looked at me as if I spoke a different language. There are things you will never understand and if there were words to describe the rapture that takes place in my head from time to time I would put my hand in front of your eyes to protect you from all the ugliness in the world. I kept my eyes on the streetlights outside the window and you kissed every inch of my body as if you could kiss the pain away.

Because his art is sucha difficult one, the writer is not likely to advance in the worldas visibly as do his neighbors: while his best friends from highschool or college are becoming junior partners in prestigiouslaw firms, or opening their own mortuaries, the writer may bestill sweating out his first novel.

Never allow opinions of others to disturb your inner tranquillity.

There is stability in walking an uncertain path, because you never allow yourself to be misled by what you think you know.