Challenge Myself Quotes & Sayings

I think athletically I can be okay with any role, but I'm willing to go over and beyond for my work. My fan base is so strong and loyal, and they wanna see me evolve. I'm where I'm supposed to be and I want to challenge myself with the people that are doing it real big. — Pooch Hall

If you listen to most of my songs, the lyrics are pretty kind of dark, but I like to put it behind happy music because then it evens it out ... I'm really happy, actually. Obviously I have my bad moments, but I always challenge myself to not put negativity out there because there's already enough. — Shamir

It is definitely a challenge to play Nathan, but the more different he is from myself, the more interesting the character becomes for me. — James Lafferty

As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality. — Grimes

One thing I learned particularly at Yale was how to work with others. Having studied so long trying to master myself, the biggest challenge was learning about the other person's work. — Trai Byers

I try not to repeat a story. I try not to repeat an emotion. I want it to be all sort of new for the viewers and to challenge myself as a writer, so there's always pressure. What else can you come up with? — Michael Patrick King

I always want to challenge myself as a writer. I consider myself more of a writer than I do a director. — Lena Waithe

I go by intuition. Work-wise, that means asking myself if a role will push me outside my comfort zone, challenge me to learn something new. — Isabel Lucas

I missed him with an intensity that made his absence painful and his return a celebration. In the dark or the light, in the great hall or in our bedchamber, he was gruff but gentle, arrogant yet attentive, and he made love with a ferocity and focus that made it impossible not to bend myself to his will, even as I found ways to challenge and defy him. — Amy Harmon

When I started acting, I made a conscious decision that I wanted to be a character read and not a leading man. I didn't want to do the same thing again and again. I wanted to push and challenge myself. I find and embrace new and unique challenges in all mediums. — Brian J. White

I've had great opportunities to show different sides of myself, but the challenge will always be getting either people to let you do it or finding the right things to do in order to do it. — Kelli O'Hara

As a writer, I challenge myself not to tell the same story - to tackle different characters with different issues. — Eric Jerome Dickey

The annoying this was that their authority loomed larger by the hour. One is not aware of it, but these men are kings. Throwing open my rooms, they would say, "Everything here belongs to us." They would fall upon my scraps of thought: "This is ours." They would challenge my story, "Talk," and my story would put itself at their service. In haste, I would rid myself of myself. I distributed my blood, my innermost being among them, lent them the universe, gave them the day. Right before their eyes, though they were not at all startles, I became a drop of water, a spot of ink. I reduced myself to them. The whole presence of me passed in full view before them, and when at last nothing was present but my perfect nothingness and there was nothing more to see, they ceased to see me too. Very irritated, they stood up and cried out, "All right, where are you? Where are you hiding? Hiding is forbidden, it is an offense," etc. — Maurice Blanchot

I want to challenge myself to see where my limit is and experiment with a lot of different films. A lot of artists from Asia focus too much on their Asian background. I don't want to let go of my background, but to be a success in the U.S., which is my goal, I realize I need to surround myself with American filmmakers and producers. — Rain

...no way through it but through it," I tell myself. — Gayle Forman

I always get offered the pretty, popular girl roles, but I want to do something dark, really challenge myself and get out of my comfort level. — Ashley Benson

I would love to close my eyes and see myself with my girlfriend when we're 99 years old and I have a pipe and she's knitting a sweater, and I hope that's the way it goes. I think it's a challenge every day. — Chris Messina

It's my chance to challenge myself to the fullest, which is one of the great joys about my job ... I love it when a character requires me to look less than my red-carpet best. It's more fun playing a character that requires you to look like dog s - t. — Kate Winslet

My goal is to be myself, and to challenge stereotypes, and to follow the rules, and break them, and make new rules. It's not about doing something that's already been done. That would be silly. — Sasha Grey

Then I was working in a store in Newark, New Jersey, and I saw an actor in person, and I got so excited. My whole day changed. That's when I decided to challenge myself to make my dreams become a reality. — Derek Luke

My only two constants are to challenge myself and to try not to repeat myself. — Cillian Murphy

It's kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else's hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them. — Eminem

I want to see where I measure up against everyone in the world and everyone who has ever competed in the sport, and there's that innate sense of wanting to challenge myself. I'm competitive in all aspects. — Ashton Eaton

I was a beast in college. I worked hard and I played hard. I was relentless learning about business. I actually snuck into MBA classes my freshman and sophomore years. I wanted to challenge myself to see how I compared to the smartest kids at Indiana University so I was 18 and pretended I was an MBA student. — Mark Cuban

Some part of me ... had been waiting, since Kelp's death, for certainty that God ... was either dead or malicious. On the cot, now, in the rain-shadowed room with the medicine smells, I knew it was worse than that. They were a challenge, a dare: you must look at the horrors of the world and find a way back to faith in spite of what you saw. I had a glimpse of what the purer version of myself might be capable of: enduring the loss, keeping the rage and disgust down, finding meaning through suffering. But it was only a glimpse. There was so much shame, and the shame made me angry at the thought of getting better. — Glen Duncan

I enjoy every second I'm in the gym. I love to challenge myself, push myself; obviously there's a lot of different routines and a lot of different stuff we do - love cycling, and again, it's part of my lifestyle. — Camilo Villegas

It can be challenge enough to have to eat with myself. — Jonathan Safran Foer

So what am I? I guess I would call myself a sober optimist ... If you are not sober about the scale of the challenge, then you are not paying attention. But if you are not an optimist, you have no chance of generating the kind of mass movement needed to achieve the needed scale. — Thomas L. Friedman

While I'd like to make movies that are uplifting, there's always that part of you that goes, 'I want to play the evil guy because it's not me.' So anything that is not me is a challenge, and if I rise to the challenge, then I've kind of proved myself. — Dean O'Gorman

But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it."
"Right," I said dryly.
Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in general and me in particular. Not even the years I spent missing could change that. If anything, it made things worse, because when I came back, I promptly removed myself from all the places he was accustomed to finding me. Hating me suddenly took effort - an effort he's proved annoying glad to make. On the other hand, it's actually been something of a relief, because it is something I can count on. Dawn comes, the moon rises and Tybalt hates me. — Seanan McGuire

I'm a tek addict myself. No matter where you are, people are looking for something to tear them away from reality, challenge their state of mind. — Greg Evigan

In the preface to my Plays for Puritans I explained the predicament of our contemporary English drama, forced to deal almost exclusively with cases of sexual attraction, and yet forbidden to exhibit the incidents of that attraction or even to discuss its nature. Your suggestion that I should write a Don Juan play was virtually a challenge to me to treat this subject myself dramatically. The challenge was difficult enough to be worth accepting, because, when you come to think of it, though we have plenty — George Bernard Shaw

I work out every day, and I challenge myself. I've got a couple of friends who do CrossFit; I'm not a huge CrossFit guy, but I love the challenge. — Donald Driver

I'm always interested in finding new aesthetic problems to deal with and challenge myself, even if the aesthetic problem is one of content. — Stephen Shore

No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences. My times become slower and slower, but the experience of the race is unchanged: each race a drama, each race a challenge, each race stretching me in one way or another, and each race telling me more about myself and others. — George A. Sheehan

When I was growing up, people didn't tell me to slow down, to do less, to be calmer, or to practice being content.
In fact, people told me to do the opposite: be involved, challenge myself, stay busy, push through the pain, chase after my goals, swing for the fences, do more, make more, go all out.
But you wanna know something? When it comes to dealing with the hard stuff in life, it's the slowing down and remembering the basics that are most important. Also, all of those other words sound exhausting. — Chad Eastham

So what was the hardest part?' Mr Gopnik said.
'I'm sorry?'
'Of working for William Traynor. It sounds like quite a challenge.'
I hesitated. The room was suddenly very quiet. 'Letting him go.' I said. And found myself unexpectedly biting back tears. — Jojo Moyes

The way I challenge myself is by writing something that really engages me, that doesn't have an easy answer, and isn't always an easy book to write. — Jodi Picoult

In anything I do I try to stay true to myself because I think that's what matters most, and then the challenge is getting all these different sides of my personality to fit together in one box. It isn't an easy task. But that's basically what the end result represents. — G-Eazy

Perhaps the greatest challenge has been trying to keep my time to myself and my private life private in order to do my job. Everything that is most mine belongs to everyone now. — Sandra Cisneros

I like to keep pushing myself and trying things out. I get easily bored, so I need a challenge. — Felicity Jones

I'm definitely a fan of sort of dramas, independent sort of social dramas where you play really challenging roles. Every actor wants to play those dark roles and it's definitely true for me and I'd love to kind of challenge myself in any way possible. — Nathalie Emmanuel

I want to challenge myself and do new things.
I don't know what it's like to be my true self. But it's more interesting that way.
Even if you don't know yourself?
If you don't know it means you can become anything you want to be, right? — Peach-Pit

My problem is, whether it's for emotion or for the talents that a character has to have in a role, I find it very difficult to not take on a challenge. For instance, 'Phantom Of The Opera,' in truth, scared the crap out of me, but I wasn't going to walk away and say, 'I didn't do that because I didn't believe in myself.' — Gerard Butler

I'm not giving up on my work. I'm still trying to challenge people's aesthetics and myself. — Guido Palau

My nature is that I have to excite myself with a big challenge. — Garry Kasparov

I look at it as a challenge, ... I'm not going to put too much added pressure on myself. I want to play in the NHL, and after that [happens], I can worry about things beyond that. — Sidney Crosby

I challenge myself to take at least one fashion risk a day, otherwise I get stuck. — Emma Stone

I really just want to continue to challenge myself. And I want to continue to grow as an artist. I never want to stop. — Dane DeHaan

I always want to set myself a challenge by doing something no-one would expect me to do! But, having said that, I don't feel as a musician you can steer too far away from what you normally do. — Akon

From time to time I try to imagine this world of which he spoke
a culture in whose mythology words might be that precious, in which words were conceived as vessels for communications from the heart; a society in which words are holy, and the challenge of life is based upon the quest for gentle words, holy words, gentle truths, holy truths.
I try to imagine for myself a world in which the words one gives one's children are the shell into which they shall grow, so one chooses one's words carefully, like precious gifts, like magnificent gifts, like magnificent inheritances, for they convey an excess of what we have imagined, they bear gifts beyond imagination, they reveal and revisit the wealth of history.
How carefully, how slowly, and how lovingly we might step into our expectations of each other in such a world. — Patricia J. Williams

Whatever the challenge was, however unattainable the goal may have seemed, I never let anyone talk me out of believing in myself. — Muhammad Ali

We need to increasingly live from the fullness of our whole hearts in order to become who we are meant to be and play the significant role that is ours to play. We want to be awake and alert. We want to be women who live their lives on purpose. — Stasi Eldredge

I've written what and when I want to. It's been about expressing myself. But with the degree, I had to learn to do everything in a very specific, disciplined way. I am very disciplined, but this demanded a totally different kind of discipline. A real challenge. — Joan Armatrading

I wanted to challenge myself to write a story about a young woman who takes a huge risk emotionally and physically by having sex on her first date with a guy she's infatuated with," says Elizabeth Famous, "and somehow she manages to handle what she got herself into, maturing as a person in the process. — Elizabeth Famous

I want to learn and challenge myself and grow. — Gia Coppola

I don't abuse my body, I've been off 10 months, I still train and I'm always thinking about boxing, so I felt like I would be fine and I just wanted to challenge myself against another top caliber fighter. — Andre Ward

For people who want to eat and drink more healthfully, keeping a food journal can be extremely effective. For instance, one study showed that dieters who kept a food journal six or seven days a week lost twice as much weight as people who did so once a week or not at all. Although keeping a food journal sounds straightforward, I braced myself for a challenge when I decided to try it. No one ever mentions how hard it is to keep a food journal, but I'd already tried and failed three times. — Gretchen Rubin

I only want to make movies that I believe in, that I care about and that mean something to me. At the end of the day, that's the only reason I'm doing this. Hopefully I can continue to grow and challenge myself to try to do things I've never done before, and make different kinds of movies that still maintain what makes the film my film. — Drake Doremus

Tests were always easy for me. I saw them as games, saw myself as being in a contest against a mythical adversary, and welcomed the challenge. — Walter Dean Myers

I don't intend to kind of like wind down and get decrepit. I have a challenge to keep myself going. To eat right. To exercise. — James, Son Of Zebedee

I always want to have a new challenge involved. I need to put myself to the test, and if I make mistakes, it doesn't matter. What matters to me, instead, is making my dreams come true and putting them on display. — Yohji Yamamoto

Oh, merciless freedom, you continue to overwhelm me! You demand that I challenge myself and feel ashamed, and yet continue to feel so outrageously proud to live a life full of my desires. — Nina George

I'm not scared of doing movies that are just about entertainment. I'm not scared of doing movies that are really challenging and cover difficult terrain. I just want good experiences and I want to challenge myself and I want to just keep learning, as an actor. — Joel Edgerton

I can't convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at. — Kenny Smith

I've always had a desire to be provocative and to make people think, but it wouldn't be any challenge for me just to be shocking. That is where it begins for me, not where it stops. And I could be much more shocking. I think I've adopted a sense of subtlety. I don't sit around wondering how I can make myself even stranger to the world. I've simply evolved into the monster I created, and I'm quite happy with it. — Marilyn Manson

Most professional women I know - myself included - long since gave up looking for a rulebook or a roadmap; we make it up as we go along. Every day presents a new choice, a new challenge, which makes long-term career planning seem like an especially abstract exercise. — Nancy Gibbs

I try to create a challenge for myself in each book. And sometimes, believe me, I just kick myself afterwards, and say, 'Why on earth did you ever attempt this, you idiot!' But I'm always better for the experience. — Elizabeth George

I loved living with my parents - that's probably why I did it for so long. But it was almost too easy to live there. I had to force myself to get out, had to challenge myself. I had to start a new chapter. — King Tuff

I think it took me a little while to be true to myself as a designer, and in some ways I'm still trying to do that. I have to choose things that come naturally to me. Whenever I challenge something too much or try too hard, it never quite works out. — Stella McCartney

I'm always trying to do stuff I haven't done before or challenge myself so I'm not resting on my laurels all of the time because if I just found my little niche and never left it, I'd be pretty boring, I think. — Zooey Deschanel

And though I have done many shameful things, I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of who I am because I know who I am. I have tried to rip myself open and expose everything inside - accepting my weaknesses and strengths - not trying to be anyone else. 'Cause that never works, does it?
So my challenge is to be authentic. An I believe I am today. I believe I am. — Nic Sheff

So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge. — Sharon Shinn

All that mattered was that he was Adrian, my Adrian. My match. My partner in crime, in the long battle I'd just signed on for to right the wrongs in the Alchemist and Moroi worlds. Maybe Marcus was right that I'd also signed myself up for disaster, but I didn't care. In that moment, it seemed that as long as Adrian and I were together, there was no challenge too great for us. — Richelle Mead

I have a serious challenge for you if you're up for it. Want real feedback? Find people who care enough about you to be brutally honest with you. Ask them these questions: "How do I show up to you? What do you think my strengths are? In what areas do you think I can improve? Where do you think I sabotage myself? What's one thing I can stop doing that would benefit me the most? What's the one thing I should start doing? — Darren Hardy

The goal with me, and the way I challenge myself as an actor, is to go from genre to genre. I like that. A lot of actors always challenge themselves. But for me the challenge lies not only in getting better, but going from drama to comedy to action or whatever the case may be, and having a wide array of movies in terms of my filmography. — Dwayne Johnson

I always challenge myself. I get out in deep water and I always try to get back. But I get hung up. The audience never knows, but that's when I smile the most, when I show the most ivory. — Earl Hines

Right there, the Jew temple of Jerusalem beneath us, I swore to myself that I would finally enter him - the boy prophet, the ultimate challenge, my obsession. I would enter him the way I entered the Emperor's gates after a campaign: invincible, majestic. But hailed by his groans rather than by the cries of banner-waving masses. — Michael Schiefelbein

I try to challenge myself as much as possible, as often as possible. — Alan Dean Foster

The first time that I entered through the double-locked doors of the psych ward I was terrified, believing for no real reason that such places harbored evil souls ready to assault me at any moment. But once inside I found it to be the slowest-moving place on Earth, and I saw that these patients were unique only in that time had stopped inside their wounds, which were seemingly never to heal. The pain was so thick and palpable in the psych ward that a visitor could breathe it like the heavy humidity of summer air, and I soon realized that the challenge would not be to defend myself from patients, but to defend myself against my own increasing indifference toward them. What originally struck me as cryptic in chapter fifty-nine was now mundane: they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. — Hope Jahren

I feel like I see life differently. I see it as this amazing challenge that I look forward to every day. I never used to see life as that. It used to be just this thing you went through and had a good time. Now I have responsibilities to myself, my family, my fans that I have to uphold. It's more exciting this way and way more rewarding. — Kris Allen

I'm a poster child for Luddites. It was a challenge for me to open myself up the tech world. — Julia Butterfly Hill

I like to challenge myself and give myself a timeline. It pushes me to be more creative and actually do these things, not just dream about them. — Balthazar Getty

From very early on, I've realized that and I have a mission statement with my songs to entertain, to encourage and to challenge the Body of Christ. That's always kind of the focus of the songs that I write for myself. — Jonny Diaz

It's got to be a challenge but at the same time you have to feel as though you can play them - it's really dangerous to want to be a part of something just because you think it's going to be great. I've been sent plenty of scripts where I've known that it's going to be a great film and a successful one, but I just couldn't convince myself that I was the right person for the part. So, I think you have to be careful with that. — Eric Bana

As I have told you, I myself was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father's house
even when his father did, a fact which surely puts my credentials beyond all challenge. I am one of those righteous for whom the rejoicing in heaven will be comparatively restrained. And that's all right. There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or a parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause and consequence? — Marilynne Robinson

My body looks like 30 but my face looks like 50. But I cannot walk bare-chested in the streets. I like to do these movies to challenge myself physically. — Jean-Claude Van Damme

I think some modesty actually serves me by just accepting that I am an instrument. I'm not trying to match up to an ideal as some kind of challenge. It's more like I use the family tree of music and song that I feel has fit me as an encouragement; like it's a bed to rest in rather than a challenge to try to better myself over, to try to. — Mirah

I've programmed myself musically to come up with love-feeling tracks that are romantic, sexy, but classy, all in one. And that's the challenge. Once I create that music, then the lyrical content starts to come - you know, the stories and things like that. — R. Kelly

I feel the need to endanger myself every so often. — Tim Daly

People who thought of my journey as a physical ordeal or an act of courage ... missed the point. Courage and physical endurance were no more than useful items of equipment for me, like facility with languages or immunity to hepatitis. The goal was comprehension, and the only way to comprehend the world was by making myself vulnerable to it so that it could change me. The challenge was to lay myself open to everybody and everything that came my way. The prize was to change and grow big enough to feel one with the whole world. — Ted Simon

So what if I never win my fifth gold medal; It's only one end of the string. It's competing that matters. It's proving that there is a place for guys like me in sports. It's a persona challenge to extend myself. — Al Oerter

I'm not looking to be the King of Comedy, or the King of Hollywood. I just want to be able to keep making stuff that I'm into and have the opportunity to challenge myself with, wearing different hats. — Mike White

I want to be able to challenge myself. And do things that are away from what I usually do. Stand-up is safe for me. I can do stand-up in front of twenty-five thousand people, and I'm like, "I know how to do this. This is what I do." I want to be a little scared. — Dane Cook

Too many people want the fruit of Paul's ministry without paying the price that Paul paid. He died. He died to everything. He died daily He was crucified with Christ ... I challenge you to pray this prayer: 'Lord, be ruthless with me in revealing my selfish ambition and my lack of willingness to die to myself.' I guarantee that He will answer your prayer - and quickly. — Floyd McClung

Was my sense of being in love not just the result of living in a particular cultural epoch? Was it not society, rather than any authentic urge, that was motivating me to pride myself on romantic love? In previous cultures and ages, would I not have been taught to ignore my feelings for Chloe in the way I was now taught to ignore (more or less) the impulse to wear stockings or to respond to insult with a challenge to a duel? "Some — Alain De Botton

This time last year I would have said Federer would beat Sampras's record. Now I'm not so sure. His aura has gone. He's not as dominant as he was, and since I beat him in Australia he's looked frustrated. Players are beginning to challenge him now, especially myself and Rafa. He's got 12 Grand Slams to his name and maybe he will beat Sampras, but now I'm here it will be tough for him. — Novak Djokovic

Because of the level of my chess game, I was able - even against a weak opponent, such as my younger brothers or the dog - to get myself checkmated in under three minutes. I challenge any computer to do it faster. — Dave Barry

The temperature in the glade plummeted, and I realized she was right behind me. Her jaws, blackened with tar-hardened ice, ripped into my thigh, and then her silvery whorled horns bucked me into the swamp. I whirled around, scrambling to get a grip on the slippery weeds. Sun Bin roared. My challenge was met. She wanted to destroy the vampyre tombs, but she would make sure I was defeated first.

I braced myself as the Winter Dragon lowered her head and charged. — Heather Heffner

It was so different than kissing Dancer. Dancer's kiss was sweet and dreamy and exciting. Ryodan's kiss had razor edges, sharp and dangerous as the man. Being in Dancer's arms was like living on the edible planet. Being in Ryodan's was like stepping into the eye of a cyclone. Dancer was easy laughter and a normal future (sans abrupt death). Ryodan was endless challenge and a future that was impossible to imagine.
Dancer accepted me any way I wanted to be without question. Ryodan made me question myself and pushed me to be the most I could be. — Karen Marie Moning