Quotes & Sayings About Working By Yourself

Befuddlement is a healthy part of the learning process. When students approach a problem and don't know how to do it, they'll often decide they're no good at the subject. Brighter students, in particular, can have difficulty in this way - their breezing through high school leaves them no reason to think that being confused is normal and necessary. But the learning process is all about working your way out of confusion. Articulating your question is 80 percent of the battle. By the time you've figured out what's confusing, you're likely to have answered the question yourself!" - Kenneth R. Leopold, Distinguished Teaching Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota — Barbara Oakley

Witches are naturally nosy," said Miss Tick, standing up. "Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though."
"Will it cost me anything?"
"What? I just said it was free!" said Miss Tick.
"Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive," said Tiffany.
Miss Tick sniffed. "You could say this advice is priceless," she said, "Are you listening?"
"Yes," said Tiffany.
"Good. Now ... if you trust in yourself ... "
"Yes?"
" ... and believe in your dreams ... "
"Yes?"
" ... and follow your star ... " Miss Tick went on.
"Yes?"
" ... you'll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye. — Terry Pratchett

You count the days and watch the years go by. You tell yourself, and you believe it, that you'd rather just die. You'd rather stare death boldly in the face and say you're ready because whatever is waiting on the other side has to be better than growing old in a six-by-ten cage with no one to talk to. You consider yourself half-dead at best. Please take the other half.
You've watched dozens leave and not return, and you accept the fact that one day they'll come for you. You're nothing but a rat in their lab, a disposable body to be used as proof that their experiment is working. An eye for an eye, each killing must be avenged. You kill enough and you're convinced that killing is good.
You count the days, and then there are none left. You ask yourself on your last morning if you are really ready. You search for courage, but the bravery is fading. When it's over, no one really wants to die. — John Grisham

If you look good, are in good health, and feel good about yourself, then you'll be more productive at work, you will be happier in your relationships with your friends and your family, and consequently, you will be a more productive, contributing member of society, making the world a better place for all. And, it all starts by working on yourself. — Lee Labrada

Highly sensitive children and adults often appear frightened, irritable, apprehensive, with digestive problems, or as loners. But you may also appear as aware, imaginative, and creative. As an adult you tend to overwhelm yourself by working too hard, too long, with too much interpersonal interaction, unaware of your sensitivity thresholds. — Signe Dayhoff

Any feeling of security is only in your head. Anything could happen at any time. As long as you are strictly someone's employee at one company, you're a liability on the balance sheet. I say that as a business owner. We cannot trust any government to provide us with what we need, nor is that its responsibility. We cannot trust most employers either. Insulate yourself with multiple incomes either from different companies or by working for yourself in addition to one main source of income. Diversify and protect yourself. - Chris Lutz, Modular Career Design — Chris Lutz

We dismantle the predator by countering its diatribes with our own nurturant truths. Predator: You never finish anything you start. Yourself: I finish many things. We dismantle the assaults of the natural predator by taking to heart and working with what is truthful in what the predator says and then discarding the rest. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

In this type of cinema, whether working with actors or non-actors, as much as you do direct them, if you allow yourself to be directed by them, then the end result will be much more pleasing. The real and individual strengths of the actors is allowed to be expressed and is something that does affect the audience very deeply. — Abbas Kiarostami

There is another side [to ego] that can wreck a team or an organization. That is being distracted by your own importance. It can come from your insecurity in working with others. It can be the need to draw attention to yourself in the public arena. It can be a feeling that others are a threat to your own territory. These are all negative manifestations of ego, and if you are not alert to them, you get diverted and your work becomes diffused. Ego in these cases makes people insensitive to how they work with others and it ends up interfering with the real goal of any group efforts. — Bill Walsh

I have never met a truly strong person who didn't have self-respect. I think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on someone's shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. - The Iron — Henry Rollins

Don't decide that you're going to be a writer or musician and just expect it to happen because it's a big gamble and a lot less predictable than a conventional job. But you do increase the likelihood of success by working as hard as you can and holding yourself to the highest standard you can muster. — Max Bemis

He was in blue jeans and a work shirt, which is another weird quirk of Rich Old Men. Just one of the guys here. Blue jeans and a work shirt, salt of the earth, working man like yourself. Like they're somehow uncomfortable about being rich enough to sleep in a bed made of vaginas being pulled around the town at night by a fleet of gold-covered midgets. — Warren Ellis

I asked her where she got her toughness. She pretended she didn't understand. Maybe she didn't at first, or maybe she had forgotten that to do the things she was prepared to do, to have them done to her, took enormous toughness, more than most people had. She said you just had to keep working on yourself until you didn't feel what they wanted you to feel, or anything else. By seven o'clock she had fallen asleep in my arms having said that she loved me and that she knew I was going through hell. She breathed like a little girl. — Elliot Perlman

By the time I was 17, I was working in radio, making $100 a week. And that's when I made my peace with money. I decided that no matter what job I ever did, I wanted that same feeling I got when I first started in radio - the feeling of I love this so much, even if you didn't pay me I'd show up every day, on time and happy to be here. I recognized then what I know now for sure: If you can get paid for doing what you love, every paycheck is a bonus. Give yourself the bonus of a lifetime: Pursue your passion. Discover what you love. Then do it! — Oprah Winfrey

One of the rules on that list I'm not making is DON'T COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS. What you, as a human being, need to realize is you're you. There is nobody else that will be a better you. Comparing yourself to others is what ends up ruining your self esteem. Everything about you is absolutely amazing. You're another wonderful work of art created by the universe. You're EXACTLY what you need to be. A beautiful, working, thinking, breathing, moving, feeling, living work of art. Nothing could possibly be more fantastic than your existence. — Hailey Burke

By working to get away from your circumstance you can make something better of yourself, but there's no guarantee ... But you know what? The joy of it is chasing that dream. — Jon Stewart

I'm so fascinated by YouTube culture. I have no idea how it's working, but more and more people are becoming Internet famous, and it is because it allows you to have an atmosphere in which you feel comfortable to be yourself, which you might not get otherwise. — Aubrey Peeples

It's pretty boring, working by yourself. The scene happens in between the two of you, and then you don't know what it's going to be because it's a kind of combustion. So, you do take something from every actor you work with. — Julianne Moore

She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last integuments! — D.H. Lawrence

Change happens not by trying to make yourself change, but by becoming conscious of what's not working. — Shakti Gawain

I wish you could simply extirpate violence and war from the world, abolish all the armed forces, and destroy all the bombs. But this is probably not very realistic. Ultimately, everyone has to start with themselves. Many want to be active somewhere else, at best in a country where they don't currently live. But what's the point, if there's no peace in your own life? So be at peace with yourself. And how? Through peaceful dealings with others. Start by ensuring peace at home before you go out into the world. Or work for peace in both spheres. You can't be working for a peace camp in the Middle East during the day and then in the evening have a quarrel with your family over the phone. — Jon Gnarr

Biblioll College. Sir, - I have read your letter with interest; and, judging from your description of yourself as a working-man, I venture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade than by adopting any other course. That, therefore, is what I advise you to do. Yours faithfully, T. Tetuphenay. To Mr. J. Fawley, Stone-mason. — Thomas Hardy

Individually we can work on ourselves. By working on your own ego and developing truth, control, and an equitable inner dialogue, you individualize the spirit within you through the process of observation. If you work on yourself, the progress you make radiates invisibly to others, helping them and giving them courage, which also improves the global picture. After all-your ego is a part of the world ego, and as you control it, you lessen the overall influence of the world ego while expanding the presence of truth on our planet. — Stuart Wilde

Don't wear yourself out trying to compete with others. You were uniquely designed by God to do great things with the talents He blessed you with. Celebrate who you are and keep working hard to become a better you! — Theresa Lewis

Never complain or make excuses. If something seems unfair, just prove yourself by working twice as hard and being twice as good. — Amy Chua

Well, well, nobody's perfect, but" - here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the inadequacy of words - "what I am thinking of is - what it must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when he hasn't got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched. That's the long and the short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here. — George Eliot

Some ADD adults adapt to the work world by allowing themselves to be pitifully underemployed. Rather than find a great match for their skills and interests, they will work at a job far below their natural abilities. In this way, their inevitable screwups and difficulties with following directions will be balanced by being more capable than those they work with. This strategy has its own set of painful problems. For one thing, knowing you could do and be more can lead to an enduring agony. For another, you may find yourself falling prey to negative feedback from people who aren't as smart as you are. Another strategy ADD adults sometimes adopt is to overcompensate, working inhuman hours to try to avoid possible criticism. It can be shattering when even this strategy doesn't prevent criticism from heading your way, whether from colleagues, bosses, or clients. Another problem with this strategy is that it can take a tremendous toll on your personal relationships. — Lara Honos-Webb

A lot of times, working in stand up, you're by yourself, and so you just have to rely on yourself only ... but I like working in an ensemble. — Josh McDermitt

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is one of the funniest shows on TV and I was a little intimidated working with those guys 'cause you're in a sound booth by yourself and they're all in a room in Atlanta. — David Cross

You can't just be talented: You have to be terribly smart and energetic and ruthless. You also have to become necessary to people, by working hard and well and bringing more than your bones and your skin to the project. Don't just show up. Transform the work, yourself, and everybody around you. Be needed. Be interesting. Be something no one else can be
and consistently. — Katharine Hepburn

In my many years of working with people, I have never seen things change by chance, you have to work it out yourself ... life really sucks but YOU have what it takes to change it. — Nkem Paul

Like Phoenix, you work all your life to find your way, through all the obstructions and the false appearances and the upsets you may have brought on yourself, to reach a meaning - using inventions of your imagination, perhaps helped out by your dreams and bits of good luck. And finally too, like Phoenix, you have to assume that what you are working in aid of is life, not death. But you would make the trip anyway - wouldn't you? - just on hope. 1974 — Eudora Welty

You really have to work hard and apply yourself and by applying yourself and working hard and being diligent, you can achieve success. — Julie Benz

After working so long on something like this, it's great to go out and meet people and see the reactions and remind yourself that, oh, yeah,, I wasn't just working in a cave by myself for no reason. — Don Hertzfeldt

No one will give you change. You have to work for it. You have to earn it not by screaming, but by working hard, by believing in yourself, by proving yourself. There are windows, but if you are radical, no one will talk to you. And that window will shut. — Haifaa Al-Mansour

Because you do it out of passion, as well as hoping it will bring better opportunity. It's like you're investing in yourself, so although you don't see anything up front there's always the possibility that the kind of compensation that is priceless can come later. For someone who's striving to get where they're meant to be, opportunity over a quick buck is something that will always be taken by the wise. Because they know opportunity is king, and all other benefits will follow... — Rico Lamoureux

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in. — A.S. Byatt

Working collectively and collaboratively is the difference between mediocrity by yourself or success as a team. You have to share the pain and the responsibility and if you do then you will also share in the rewards. — Michael Bloomberg

I know about how you need to be left alone to do work. I know why. This job, you'll be allowed to do that. You'll report to me, but when you're here, you'll be working on tasks that I assign and that you'll be able to do by yourself. — Craig Lancaster

In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreations; to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity. — George Orwell

In our society, growing food yourself has become the most radical of acts. It is truly the only effective protest, one that can-and will-overturn the corporate powers that be. By the process of directly working in harmony with nature, we do the one thing most essential to change the world-we change ourselves! — Jules Dervaes

If you trust in yourself ... and believe in your dreams ... and follow your star ... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. — Terry Pratchett

The incentive for the outsider is to attack the system right up to the moment he is co-opted by it. The incentive for the insider -and this took some getting used to- is to allow yourself to be attacked, and then co-opt your most ferocious attackers, and their best ideas. The effect on the system as a whole is to make it more stable, because everyone winds up working on its behalf. — Michael Lewis

The generation now below me were born into a world where if you're a kid with raw talent now, you can roll in and land a lead in a Scorsese film. You don't have to have prove yourself by working up the ranks, doing the classics, and getting the canon under your belt in the way the great Sirs and Dames of mom and dad's generation - the [Ben] Kingsleys and [Helen] Mirrens and [Anthony] Hopkinses and people of that ilk. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Smiling for the first time all day, he came in to supper, slung an arm around Sophie's waist, and gave her a loud smack on the lips. "The cattle are settled in the summer pasture. Tomorrow I start working around the place, repairing and adding here and there. The men will be able to help, too. I hope you didn't do all the man's work yourself, Sophie darlin'. You did leave something for me, didn't you?" "Clay, you're filthy." Sophie slapped at Clay's chest, but he could tell by her grin that she was pleased with his attention. "It's hard work and honest dirt, darlin'. Let me share a little with you." Clay pulled her closer, but she jumped back, grabbed a ladle off the stove, and waved it threateningly at him, failing to suppress a smile. The girls started giggling, and maybe for the first time, Clay didn't mind it at all. — Mary Connealy

The starting point of enlightenment, a goal that every person should strive for, is inner leadership. Leadership is far more than something businesspeople do at work. Leadership is all about personal responsibility, self-discovery, and creating value in the world by the people we become. Too many people spend their time blaming others for all that isn't working in their lives. We blame our spouses for our unhappy home lives; we blame our bosses for our distress at work; we blame strangers on the freeway for making us angry; we blame our parents for keeping us small. Blame, blame, blame, blame. But blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. Blaming others for the current quality of your life is a sad way to live. In doing so, all you're doing is playing the victim. — Robin S. Sharma

Love yourself enough to give what matters every chance of working by communicating as well as you possibly can, and trying for as long as you wish. — Jay Woodman

I think you can get so mentally beat by kind of working yourself up too much. — Holly Holm

I see similarities in the sports I played growing up in the sense of how I tackle a role when I get a job. A lot of effort goes in on an individual basis. There is a lot of time spent by yourself working on your craft and what you have to do. But, at the end of the day, you're there to serve the movie just like you would the rugby team. — Luke Bracey

The professions of novelist and journalist are very separate. As a novelist, you are ultimately working for yourself. Yes, you need the approval of a publisher and an audience, but what is valued in fiction writing - style, individual voice, insight - is scorned by the editor who is combing through your newspaper article. — Jon Weisman

If you were a single mom, there's no way to support yourself and your kids by working in a hair salon. It's about a woman who decides to go and do what was considered a man's job, but was treated quite horribly for it and decides she has to fight for her rights when everyone thinks she should just shut up and take it. — Charlize Theron

Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about. — Ram Dass

Where a typical manager may set the deadline for the employee, Musk guides his engineers into taking ownership of their own delivery dates. "He doesn't say, 'You have to do this by Friday at two P.M.,'" Brogan said. "He says, 'I need the impossible done by Friday at two P.M. Can you do it?' Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. You're working hard for yourself. It's a distinction you can feel. You have signed up to do your own work." And by recruiting hundreds of bright, self-motivated people, SpaceX has maximized the power of the individual. One person putting in a sixteen-hour day ends up being much more effective than two people working eight-hour days together. The individual doesn't have to hold meetings, reach a consensus, or bring other people up to speed on a project. He just keeps working and working and working. The — Ashlee Vance

THE basic ground of compassionate action is the importance of working with rather than struggling against, and what I mean by that is working with your own unwanted, unacceptable stuff, so that when the unacceptable and unwanted appears out there, you relate to it based on having worked with loving-kindness for yourself. — Pema Chodron

We live in a world in which everything seems to needed now and working quickly is normally viewed as a positive attribute in the workplace...Do not let yourself become too frazzled and stressed by doing everything at high speed.

As I have coached hundreds of individuals in the workplace, I have discovered that we waste precious time by delaying and procrastinating. We might know that the work is very urgent and important but we still might find ourselves being slow to start the task. — Nigel Cumberland

Watch for the high tides of yourself and flow up with them; when the inevitable low tides come, either rest or meditate. You cannot escape rhythm. You transcend it by working with it. — Elsa Barker

When insecurity prevents you from working productively, stop and take some time to reestablish trust in yourself. You can do this by reminding yourself of the clients who have responded favorably to your work in the past, naming them aloud, if necessary. Re-read any client testimonials you've received or review work that you're particularly proud of. — Michael Law

If you loved everything you were writing, you would be deluding yourself or a complete and absolute narcissist. It's not about liking what you write, it's about improving with every word, little by little, exploring your craft, becoming the artist you hope to be one day. And you can only do that by working at it every day. It doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen over a weekend, it is a lifelong pursuit. — Brian Michael Bendis

Acting is reacting ... there's a magic when you're working with another actor. With voice acting, you're doing it alone, all in your head. So, you have to re-create that essence by yourself. It's not necessarily more difficult. It's just a different set of skills. — Josh Keaton

This ignorance and this crushing of liberty are diligently promoted by the teaching of very many blind pastors, who stir up and urge the people to a zeal for these things, praising them and puffing them up with their indulgences, but never teaching faith. Now I would advise you, if you have any wish to pray, to fast, or to make foundations in churches, as they call it, to take care not to do so with the object of gaining any advantage, either temporal or eternal. You will thus wrong your faith, which alone bestows all things on you, and the increase of which, either by working or by suffering, is alone to be cared for. What you give, give freely and without price, that others may prosper and have increase from you and your goodness. Thus you will be a truly good man and a Christian. For what to you are your goods and your works, which are done over and above for the subjection of the body, since you have abundance for yourself through your faith, in which God has given you all things? — Martin Luther

So from now on, screw "perfect." Forget for a while about what kind of person you want to be, and just be the best version of the person you are. Figure out which of your classmates you genuinely like (not who you want to like you), and get to know them by telling your own stories and listening to theirs. Hang out with the people you think are cool, not the people you'd like to be considered cool by. Do things because they interest you, not because they make you look interesting ... and then, take stock in a month and see whether you're not happier, healthier, and working on some actual friendships with other imperfect-but-lovely humans. — Kat Rosenfield

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 over the head with the 'Must hurry up, time is of the essence, everyone is passing me by' train of thought. — Kelly Martin

I know that a lot of our successes came because we had pure intentions and great talent, and we did a lot of things right, but I also believe that attributing our successes solely to our own intelligence, without acknowledging the role of accidental events, diminishes us. We must acknowledge the random events that went our way, because acknowledging our good fortune - and not telling ourselves that everything we did was some stroke of genius - lets us make more realistic assessments and decisions. The existence of luck also reminds us that our activities are less repeatable. Since change is inevitable, the question is: Do you act to stop it and try to protect yourself from it, or do you become the master of change by accepting it and being open to it? My view, of course, is that working with change is what creativity is about. — Ed Catmull

Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily. — Epictetus

When you're working with somebody else in that kind of way, you always have to have these guidelines to what you're doing - especially when you're working with your sibling. But when you're working by yourself you're free to do whatever you like. — Eleanor Friedberger

As filmmakers, you're not working on just one project, you're producing something, directing something, shooting something, and so it becomes hard to do it by yourself. — Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

All I know about 1970s New York City is that it's where I grew up, and you always have an umbilical connection to the time and place of your growing up. It was cheap, didn't have too many people in it, you could go to the movies or whatever on the spur of the moment, you could get by without working too much and especially without involving yourself in the corporate world. — Luc Sante

The status quo is a very powerful opiate and when you have a system that seems to be working and producing profits by the conventional way of accounting for profits. It's very hard to make yourself change. But we all know that change is an inevitable part of business. Once you have ridden a wave just so far, you have to get another wave. We all know that. For us, becoming restorative has been that new wave and we have been riding it for 13 years now. It's been incredibly good for business. — Ray Anderson