Quotes About Self-doubt

For the entirety of my young and skittish life, I had fixated upon my fear as if it were the most interesting thing about me, when actually it was the most mundane.

I think perfectionism is just a high-end, haute couture version of fear. I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it's just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more than a deep existential angst that says, again and again, "I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.

Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes—but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work.

Because often what keeps you from creative living is your self-absorption (your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing sense of self-protection). The arrogance of belonging pulls you out of the darkest depths of self-hatred—not by saying "I am the greatest!" but merely by saying "I am here!" I

I think perfectionism is just a high-end, haute couture version of fear. I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat.

the drive for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time, because nothing is ever beyond criticism. No

In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers - always measuring our lives against some other person's life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead.

I've watched far too many brilliant and gifted female creators say, "I am 99.8 percent qualified for this task, but until I master that last smidgen of ability, I will hold myself back, just to be on the safe side.

But I see it differently. I think perfectionism is just a high-end, haute couture version of fear.

But sometimes a man who is very good thinks, I am very bad, and it—destructs his life, everything. Because he does not believe that he has any right to do something, so he does less and less.

I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together- the lithium, the Prozac, the desipramine, and Desyrel that I take to sleep at night- can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out. But that was long ago.

How could I let anybody see me this way? How could I expose other people to my person, to this bane to the world? I was one big mistake.

When would I stop wondering what right—what nerve—I had to be depressed? Enough with this going on about all my blessings. I was starting to sound like a character in a TV movie with a title like The Best Little Girl in the World or Most Likely to Succeed.

I feel rather a fool writing down my thoughts

Stop it, she told herself. Buck up. Buck up. Things were going well. Very well. What did it matter what people thought? Robert was starting to relax. Those old women—who cared? They were as irrelevant as Polly herself was, and she was shown and told about her diminished status at every juncture.

I'm told that I'm Wisdom, but how would I know?

It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment when we internalize others' assessments; it's usually not just a single experience but rather a series of moments that bruise the spirit and lead us to distrust ourselves and those around us. And then we wake up at age seventeen or twenty-five or thirty-seven and realize we don't know the last time we've lived life only to please ourselves

It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment when we internalize others' assessments; it's usually not just a single experience but rather a series of moments that bruise the spirit and lead us to distrust ourselves and those around us. And then we wake up at age seventeen or twenty-five or thirty-seven and realize we don't know the last time we've lived life only to please ourselves.

It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment when we internalize others' assessments; it's usually not just a single experience but rather a series of moments that bruise the spirit and lead us to distrust ourselves and those around us.

Why did she feel like she was still broken?

Now don't go thinking nice things about me. You'll only be disappointed.

And I remembered with a pang what had happened to me the previous summer - that even Gallagher Girls aren't always as strong as they need to be.

I am my own worst enemy. But if there were to be a second place, it would go to this girl.

But as I looked at everything I was supposed to carry and thought about all the things I was supposed to know, I had to wonder: Do all girls go through this? Is every girl on a date really in deep cover?