Don't Self Doubt Quotes & Sayings

Doubt is most often the source of our powerlessness. To doubt is to be faithless, to be without hope or belief. When we doubt, our self-talk sounds like this: 'I don't think I can. I don't think I will.' ... To doubt is to have faith in the worst possible outcome. It is to believe in the perverseness of the universe, that even if I do well, something I don't know about will get in the way, sabotage me, or get me in the end. — Blaine Lee Pardoe

Happily, you don't know how to find me. If you did, I've no doubt, you would try to bribe me to finish the story. I know how you are. I know how I am, too. I am very susceptible to bribes. As you've probably noticed, I have no self-control whatsoever. I like chocolate best. But I also have a fondness for cheese. — Pseudonymous Bosch

It wasn't that she didn't love me, I knew that she did, and that actually made it worse. If someone leaves you because they don't love you, it's a tough break, but as they say, life's a bitch, get a helmet. But if someone loves you and leaves you anyway, you enter a whole new realm of self-doubt and recrimination, what psychologists call the what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-me syndrome. — Jonathan Tropper

I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on. — Anthony Doerr

I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I'm like, 'My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don't have it. I just want to chill.' We all have self-doubt. You don't deny it, but you also don't capitulate to it. You embrace it. — Kobe Bryant

We were greeted by the minister whose inclusive, non-judgemental smile was no more than a whisker away from a smirk. Have I made it clear? I don't like belief systems and even less like those that peddle self-righteousness. I have no doubt the minister was a sincere man, but I am not as impressed by the idea of sincerity as the sincere seem to be. — Jenny Diski

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. — Helen Mirren

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. — Harley King

If you don't believe in God, it may help to remember this great line of Geneen Roth's: that awareness is learning to keep yourself company. And then learn to be more compassionate company, as if you were somebody you are fond of and wish to encourage. I doubt that you would read a close friend's early efforts and, in his or her presence, roll your eyes and snicker. I doubt that you would pantomime sticking your finger down your throat. I think you might say something along the lines of, 'Good for you. We can work out some of the problems later, but for now, full steam ahead! — Anne Lamott

Shame is a child of self-centeredness. Heaven's occupants are not self-centered, they are Christ-centered. You will be in your sinless state. The sinless don't protect a reputation or project an image. You won't be ashamed. You'll be happy to let God do in heaven what he did on earth - be honored in your weaknesses. Heads bowed in shame? No. Heads bowed in worship? No doubt. — Max Lucado

I'm interested in the self. And in the limits and transformations of self. And in self presentation. And in doubt. And in playing with the audience's expectations. But I don't like dressing up like on Halloween. — Rachel Zucker

Stay committed to your mission, values, and the full self-expression of your inner leader even when people doubt you. When people say you'll fail or suggest you're not good enough, stand strong in your own skin and don't let them tear you down. Because leadership has a lot to do with believing in yourself when no one else believes in you. — Robin S. Sharma

Don't mask self-doubt with contempt. — Zadie Smith

Don't get ensnared in self-doubt, dare to look stupid. Genius are born that way. — Sarvesh Jain

Don't regret the past or fear the future. Both bring misery through self-doubt. — Deepak Chopra

Meredith was not so secure in her maturity that she did not suffer those periods of despondency and doubt which seemed to weave through the lives of self-reliant women. — Don DeLillo

Then you understand why I don't want to get close to another again. What happens when she dies, too? I couldn't bear it."
"Then you miss out on life."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll be alone, trusting no one because of fear. I know. I have four years experience of pushing people away, missing out on life. Four years spent by myself, living in my glass cage. Four years of self-doubt, worries, fears. — Maria V. Snyder

Maybe some things are better left broken and scattered
Veiled in darkness, secret bitterness and self-doubt
I should have known better
Than to start something that I couldn't finish
That I couldn't care about
That I couldn't remember starting in the first place
I don't want to know you
You went years without me
You might as well keep going. — Henry Rollins

I doubt if we nuns are really as self-sacrificing as we must seem to be to you who live in the world. We don't give everything for nothing, you know. The mystery plays fair. — Elizabeth Goudge

It's kind of a rule of thumb for me to self-doubt going into any kind of project. I always think that I shouldn't be doing it and I don't know how to do it and I'm going to fail and that I fooled them. I always try to find a way out. — Heath Ledger

We don't talk about what keeps us eating until we're sick, busy beyond human scale, desperate to numb and take the edge off, and full of so much anxiety and self-doubt that we can't act on what we know is best for us. We don't talk about the hustle for worthiness that's become such a part of our lives that we don't even realize that we're dancing. — Brene Brown

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 just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can't fix the weather - you just have to get on with it."
So has that approach helped him? "Not necessarily," he shrugs. — Douglas Adams

I know it when I don't know it. Sometimes I know it when I don't think I know it. I need to trust myself in these moments, these rare moments of self-doubt. — Rush Limbaugh

My theory was that if I behaved like a confident, cheerful person, eventually I would buy it myself, and become that. I always had traces of strength somewhere inside me, it wasn't fake, it was just a way of summoning my courage to the fore and not letting any creeping self-doubt hinder my adventures. This method worked then, and it works now. I tell myself that I am the sort of person who can open a one-woman play in the West End, so I do. I am the sort of person who has several companies, so I do. I am the sort of person WHO WRITES A BOOK! So I do. It's the process of having faith in the self you don't quite know you are yet, if you see what I mean. Believing that you will find the strength, the means somehow, and trusting in that, although your legs are like jelly. You can still walk on them and you will find the bones as you walk. Yes, that's it. The further I walk, the stronger I become. So unlike the real lived life, where the further you walk, the more your hips hurt. — Dawn French

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

In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it's because she's special, because she's smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and ... I don't know that I'm any of those things. I don't even know that I'm as ill-tempered as all that ... Maybe you meant to go to another girl's house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn't mean to choose me at all, because I'm not like storybook girls ... — Catherynne M Valente

My twin, Go. I've said this phrase so many times, it has become a reassuring mantra instead of actual words: Mytwingo. We were born in the '70s, back when twins were rare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves. We even have a dash of twin telepathy. Go is truly the one person in the entire world I am totally myself with. I don't feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can. We spent nine months back to back, covering each other. It became a lifelong habit. It never mattered to me that she was a girl, strange for a deeply self-conscious kid. What can I say? She was always just cool. — Gillian Flynn

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

I think that, to be an artist, you have to have a big enough ego to believe that people out in the world want to see what you think is a good idea. And if you don't have that sense of ego, then the minute that idea goes into the world, self-doubt kicks in. — Sam Taylor-Wood

I see that women still have self-doubt, and at the same time I feel like I see all these fantastic young women, and they all have ambition and are so focused on their futures. I don't think that's an anomaly anymore. — Mary Harron

This brief century of ours is arguably the most significant one in the history of our universe. We'll have the technology either to self-destruct, or [to] seed our cosmos with life. The situation is so unstable that I doubt we can dwell at this fork in the road for more than another hundred years. But if we end up going the life route instead of the death route, then in a distant future our cosmos will be teaming with life, all of which can be traced back to what we do-here and now. I don't know how we'll be thought of, but I'm sure that we won't be remembered as insignificant. — Max Tegmark

A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good morning!'
And the three secretaries - each of them a charming and accomplished actress in her own chosen style - recognise him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply 'Good morning' to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Good Morning. Good, despite the Russians and their rockets, and all the ills and worries of the flesh. For of course we know, don't we, that the Russians and the worries are not real? They can be unsought and made to vanish. And therefore the morning can ve made to be good. Very well then, it is good. — Christopher Isherwood

When someone comes to a pastor or a close friend and says "I think I'm gay", rest assured 99% are. How we respond creates light or darkness.
Please be aware that when you've never heard anything positive about being gay and you've laboured secretly over this for ages, you don't make a declaration like that lightly. It takes an enormous amount of courage to eventually tell someone. This is not an empowering coming out though or finally finding a place of self-acceptance; the statement is cloaked in fear and shame. The statement "I think I'm gay" is not really about doubt or confusion it's more likely they are saying "I'm gay, but it scares the shit out of me and I don't want to be. Help!"
At that point the pastor or friend has the privileged opportunity to provide a place of safety and compassion that will lead them on into self-acceptance and an authentic life. Handled unwisely could lead them into years of internal torment. — Anthony Venn-Brown

I had self-doubt about whether my story was interesting to people. I didn't want to write something that was anecdotal. It was important to me that people would get something out of my book. I want people to read it and say, "Now I don't feel so alone," or "I'm going to remember that next time I'm being an asshole." — Lizz Winstead

People with low self-esteem fear love. (Yep. Psychology degree rears its head again.) They doubt another person's ability to appreciate them, because they don't see the worth in themselves. — Kylie Scott

What I love about the thriller form is that it makes you write a story. You can't get lost in your own genius, which is a dangerous place for writers. You don't want to ever get complacent. If a book starts going too well, I usually know there's a problem. I need to struggle. I need that self-doubt. I need to think it's not the best thing ever. — Harlan Coben

The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don't quit and you don't know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste. The Struggle is when you don't believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can't hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is the Struggle. — Ben Horowitz

The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.
We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique. — Richard Rohr

Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don't know about you, tovarishch, but I am. — Robert A. Heinlein

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 loved me you would. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

It's not that deep down I want someone to "take care of me," it's that I'm exhausted, and occasionally overwhelmed by self-doubt. I'm steering the ship, but I don't know what I'm doing. None of us do. But it would be *so nice* to believe that someone out there did, and that maybe they could take the wheel for a little while. — Anna Kendrick

How strange," she said, "not to recognize one's own face."
"You have no cause for complaint," Grant said huskily. Even bruised and pale and ravaged, her face was incomparable.
"Do you think so?" She stared into the looking glass without a trace of self-satisfactionshe had displayed at the ball. *That* Vivien had had no doubt of her many attractions. This woman was far less confident.
"Everyone thinks so. You're known as one of the great beauties of London."
"I don't see why." Catching his skeptical expression, she added, "Truly, I'm not fishing for compliments, it's just... seems a very ordinary face." She produced a comical, clownish expression, like a child experimenting with her reflection. A shaken laugh escaped her. "It doesn't seem to belong to me. — Lisa Kleypas

Turning pro is a mindset. If we are struggling with fear, self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc., the problem is, we're thinking like amateurs. Amateurs don't show up. Amateurs crap out. Amateurs let adversity defeat them. The pro thinks differently. He shows up, he does his work, he keeps on truckin', no matter what. — Steven Pressfield

Don't stop yourself from greatness before you've begun from fear or from self-doubt. You were put here on this planet to do great things, to pioneer change by way of your own personal uniqueness, and to express yourself and share your happiness with others. — Kaiden Blake

Don't doubt yourself, that's what haters are for. — Turcois Ominek

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. — Don Roff

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. — Don Roff

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. — Assegid Habtewold

You don't have to do everything by the time you're 30. Or 40. All you need is a work ethic. It's what allows you to push through moments of disappointment and self-doubt and fear. — Candace Bushnell

don't let your self-doubt come between you and life. — Fiona Murphy

Words, especially when yelled in anger, can be very damaging to a child's self-confidence. The child probably already feels bad enough just from seeing the consequences of his or her behavior. Our sons and daughters don't need more guilt and self-doubt heaped upon their already wounded egos. — Jack Canfield

Abnegation who switch to Dauntless become... I don't know, soldiers, I guess. Revolutionaries. That's what he could be, if he trusted himself more" he adds."If Four wasn't so plagued with self-doubt, he would be one hell of a leader, I think. — Veronica Roth

I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me. — Tennessee Williams

The second role of a mentor is encouragement. Mentors lead us to believe that we can achieve something that seemed improbable or impossible to us before we met them. They don't allow us to succumb to self-doubt for too long, or the notion that our dreams are too large for us. They stand by to remind us of the skills we already possess and what we can achieve if we continue to work hard. — Ken Robinson

You'd be surprised how often you doubt your own sanity when you don't understand your own capacities. — K.M. Mac Aulay "Black Anna"

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

Ego, Identity and Self - the 3 concepts of one's creation that defines them entirely. Have an Ego, for without one, there is nothing but self-doubt. Have an Identity, for without one, there is nothing but an empty shell. Understand your 'Self,' for if you don't, then who or what are you? — Lionel Suggs

The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable.
The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell. — Steven Pressfield

Don't imprison yourself through self-doubt. Break out of your self-imposed prison with intentional action. — Tony Curl

Don't talk yourself into falling in love with someone. Either, you are in love or you are not. True love is not a choice. It is something you know in your heart when all guilt, doubt and fear are removed. — Shannon L. Alder