self-doubt

There will be times in which things appear hopeless. You will begin to doubt everything around you. You will even begin to doubt yourself. You will think things will never look up and you may be in the deepest, darkest, loneliest place in the world. Everything which had once been infused with wonder may appear disappointing and harsh. You may grow cynical and come to believe that this is simply the way the world is...that one must bear with the unforgiving realities of the world and only hope that it doesn__ get worse. You might grow suspicious of others, as adults tend to do, and close yourself off from the rest of the world. You might just look to the past and reminisce about better days...or you might just dwell in one place for a little too long and become nostalgic for the future. Just remember__egardless of where you are, what experiences you have, and who you have become__hat there will always be those who have loved you. Those whom you may have taken for granted, but have nonetheless, always had you in their hearts and in their hopes and wishes. Lives that you have touched: whether you realize it or not. To separation you may venture, but indissolubly in union shall you drift...you will always be at the whims of forces, both great and small, and far beyond your capacity to control. That__ how all our stories go. Innumerable arcs intersect and scatter into a vast indefinite sea.

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.

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.

Writing was a defeat, it was a humiliation, it was coming face-to-face with yourself and seeing you weren't good enough.

Where would I be had I not believed I was incompetent?

perfection is a form of fear

A person__ greatest limitations are not genetic, but imposed by self-doubt, insecurities, indecision, and timidity.

A person is bound to experience troubling doubts when attempting to forge a viable philosophy for living. When we are young, the world appears as a dream, no desire is unattainable, and no goal is impossible. We do not entertain the notion that the world will blunt our passionate aspirations, we assume that the world will yield to our resolute will. Misfortune, poverty, illness, and death crush a person__ hopes, awakening us to parts of oneself and the world that we previously denied. When fate has spoken harshly we initially feel ruined, life appears as a bleak wasteland. We must then chose to accept a misery ridden existence or rally the courage and fortitude to turn our thoughts from bitterness and regrets, surrender vain notions that we are somehow special and immune from the terrors of a life when reality does not care a wit for our survival.

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

No matter how challenging things get, never stop believing in yourself. Self-doubt is nothing but a highway to failure.

Indecision and fear can cripple any chances of succeeding and lead to maelstroms of regret that fuel our most fantastic nightmares.

Self-doubt inflicts the deepest wounds.

I am the one constant obstacle to my own momentum.

Probe deeply enough, under the slickest façade of confidence, and you tapped a vein of self-doubt or a hidden fear. Irrational fears and baseless doubts, many of them, but that was precisely why constant reassurance was necessary to the human animal.

The worst enemy of our humanity is our self-doubt.

It has nothing to do with who I am as compared to everyone else. It has everything to do with who I am in companionship with God.

Because that saying about sticks and stones is a pack of lies. Unkind words hurt more than anything else. You end up carrying them around in your head, wondering if they__e true. Bruises fade, but self-doubt follows you forever.

You do not need to pay attention to those voices within you that create pain, or make you feel less competent, smart or able.