Quotes About Self-doubt

I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility.

There's some muscle group around your shoulders that seizes up during the perfection dance and doesn't let go until you are asleep, or alone. Or maybe it never really lets go at all.

Am I really so bad-mannered, conceited, headstrong, pushing, stupid, lazy, etc., etc., as they all say? Oh, of course not. I have my faults, just like everyone else, I kniw that, but they thoroughly exaggerate everything.

I know I'm far from being what I should; will I ever be?

At the moment, as you've probably noticed, I'm going through a spell of being depressed. I couldn't really tell you why it is, but I believe it's just because I'm a coward, and that's what I keep bumping up against.

Mi-e team? de mine îns?mi, mi-e team? ca, în dorinÈ›a mea, s? nu m? d?ruiesc prea repede.

I know that I can write, a couple of my stories are good, my descriptions of the 'Secret Annex' are humorous, there's a lot in my diary that speaks, but whether I have real talent remains to be seen.

I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it.

I'm probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.

Jealousy has always been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed.

You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously well I am doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn't look all that great around the cuticles.

But be careful: if your intuition says that your story sucks, make sure it really is your intuition and not your mother.

Believing isn't the hard part; waiting on God is. So I stuck with it and prayed impatiently for patience, and to stop feeling disgusted by myself, and to believe for a few moments that God, just a bit busy with other suffering in the world, actually cared about one menopausal white woman on a binge.

I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good enough at it...

Writer's block is going to happen to you. You will read what little you've written lately and see with absolute clarity that it is total dog shit.

I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good enough at it, and I don't think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect.

a struggle with perfectionism [which is] the most toxic condition for the soul. The next most toxic is the ensuing and chronic contempt for oneself, the belief that one is secretly defective and less-than. The next is the obsession that one is right and better-than.

You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

As one grew older, one remembered only the energy, the optimistic side of being young. Time removed many of the agonies of uncertainty, self-doubt, loneliness, and the confusion that can hurt so much. Maybe it was just as well. Age brought its own diffucult pains.

He was afraid of the ultimate failure of being a coward. And that was something he could control. It might cost him everything he had, but it was still within his power to do it. It was within him, not beyond.

I'm that bad, am I?" I whispered, lips trembling. I was going to bawl again. "In all the world, with all the things humans have done, all the unspeakable horrors men have visited on other men, the unthinkable suffering of women and children worldwide at the hands of mankind, and I'm that bad!

Strength? What strength! This is a weak, flopping, sloshy, repulsive collection of nerves and ganglia. Don't even mention the word 'strength.