Believe it or not, confidence is something I’ve struggled with my entire life. I grew up in the suburbs of PA, and there were like 5 asian people in my high school, if that, out of a sea of hundreds. I was different, and I hated myself for it. There was a lot of ignorance, and as you know, teens can be brutal. I spent a majority of my adolescence repulsed by my appearance, and my self-esteem was shit.
It’s been years, and I’m obviously not THAT girl anymore, but it’s still something that I struggle with, and I’m ok with that. Confidence is like a muscle, and like all things, it’s something you need to practice, develop and strengthen. I’m a firm believer in positive affirmations, which is why I’m posting another quote roundup today. I have a private board on pinterest for that exact reason, and it helps me 90% of the time so hopefully this can help you strut like the king or queen you are.
1. “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” Eleanor Roosevelt
2. “Always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and try to duplicate it.” Bruce Lee
3. “Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles, and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident, and more and more successful.” Mark Victor Hansen
4. “Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” Golda Meir
5. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” Marianne Williamson
6. “Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.” Brene Brown
7. “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.” Oscar Wilde
8. “You yourself, as much as anyone in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” Buddha
9. “To anyone that ever told you you’re no good … They’re no better.” Hayley Williams
10. “Wouldn’t it be powerful if you fell in love with yourself so deeply that you would do just about anything if you knew it would make you happy? This is precisely how much life loves you and wants you to nurture yourself. The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. Then you can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from inside out.” Alan Cohen
11. “Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing.” Theodore Roosevelt
12. “Successful people often exude confidence – it’s obvious that they believe in themselves and what they’re doing. It isn’t their success that makes them confident, however. The confidence was there first.” Travis Bradberry
13. “It’s a dead-end street if you sit around waiting for someone else to tell you you’re okay.” Michael Pitt
14. “I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.” Anna Freud
15. “You have no control over other people’s taste, so focus on staying true to your own.” Tim Gunn
16. “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life.” Marcus Garvey
17. “When you’re different, sometimes you don’t see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn’t.” Jodi Picoult
18. “I think the best way to have confidence is not to allow everyone else’s insecurities to be your own.” Jessie J
19. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt
20. “Confidence isn’t optimism or pessimism, and it’s not a character attribute. It’s the expectation of a positive outcome.” Rosabeth Moss Kanter
21. “Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.” Brian Tracy
22. “Don’t waste your energy trying to change opinions … do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” Tina Fey
23. “You can have anything you want if you are willing to give up the belief that you can’t have it.” Dr. Robert Anthony
24. “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” Eleanor Roosevelt
25. “When you have a lot of confidence and you feel like nobody can beat you, it’s game over for everyone else.” Jason Day
26. “With confidence, you have won before you have started.” Marcus Garvey
27. “Confidence is not ‘they will like me,’ confidence is ‘I’ll be fine if they don’t.”
28. “With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” – Dalai Lama
29. “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” Sir Edmund Hillary
30. “Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.” Samuel Johnson
31. “The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down anymore.”
32. “Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” Lao Tzu
33. “If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise its price.”
34. “I found I was more confident when I stopped trying to be someone else’s definition of beautiful and started being my own.” Remington Miller
35. “If you want to improve your self-worth, stop giving other people the calculator.” Tim Fargo
36. “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” Lucille Ball
37. “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.” Helen Keller
38. “Just believe in yourself. Even if you don’t, pretend that you do and, at some point, you will.” Venus Williams
39. “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” Mark Twain
40. “We are what we believe we are.” C.S. Lewis
I hope you guys enjoyed this post! For those of you interested, make sure you also check out “40 of the Best Quotes on Love.” A huge thanks to the uber talented Jasmine Kerbel for these incredible images – make sure to follow her here on instagram – and Main Street Ballroom for letting us use their beautiful space. Outfit deets: dress from ASOS, layered necklace from Full Line Collection.
Amazing post. I’ve struggled with confidence myself for many years and I feel like it gets better with age even though I still don’t feel 100% but as you said, confidence is like a muscle and we just have to exercise it.
Some good quotes here. Especially like those of Eleanor Roosevelt, an incredibly strong person.
The shots of you are stunning — you are surely a woman with confidence. Great post. Thanks.