Challenging Myself Quotes

If I stay alert, then I can challenge myself, and by challenging myself, that helps me to stay alive and to hopefully take something away from the experience. ~ Thomas Jane

Looking back at my earlier pictures, I think that the work is very much coming from the same place. I have gone through a period of challenging myself with a complicated idea to currently challenging myself with the idea of simplicity. ~ Tim Walker

I get bored quite easily, so I like to keep my mind entertained by challenging myself. ~ Douglas Booth

I just want to keep trying to surprise myself and I want to keep challenging myself. ~ Jennifer Aniston

I never dreamed of being an actor, but I'm beginning to love it more and more because I like challenging myself. When I feel like I'm not learning or having fun anymore, then I'll stop. ~ Kristin Kreuk

I got into hula hooping at age six - I hula hooped all day, every day. That was something I was comfortable with, but I never tried walking or singing while hula hooping! It's actually pretty difficult and tiring. But I like challenging myself. It's hard, but it's really fun. ~ Patina Miller

It's important to keep challenging myself and try to come up with some new face every now and again. ~ Johnny Depp

I pay attention to what's going on around me. I'm always looking for new energy, new talent, new voices. When you do that I think it's easier to come up with fresh ideas. It's not that my career has been based on surprising people, but it's been about challenging myself - to constantly do new things that are going to broaden my own mind and in the process, hopefully, connect with other people. ~ Madonna Ciccone

I feel like people grow the most when they step outside of the box that they are used to. For me, it's constantly challenging myself to step outside of my comfort zone. As soon as you do that, then you grow, but then you get comfortable again. ~ Sanaa Lathan

I'm really passionate about things I enjoy, and I like to be out there doing things, and learning and challenging myself. So it's just more fun that way, just to get out and try and do and learn and meet people and try to do something new. ~ Steve Nash

Honestly, there is something seductive about being the kind of person who can just take it. Challenging myself to absorb more and more hate is a masochistic form of vanity. ~ Lindy West

I'm always trying to figure out ways to one up everyone, and that's what I love about competitions. I love challenging myself and pushing the envelope. ~ Ryan Sheckler

I like challenging myself. I like the challenge of rapping to fast beats, rapping to beats that are super slow, whatever. I like the challenges, so I'm not afraid to take on any piece of music and create a song to it if it feels right to me. ~ Will Ferrell

I directed one of my shorts that did festivals around the world, and that was great. I've got a bit of a bug for that now. I just hope I keep challenging myself and keep doing stuff that interests me with people who I respect and who teach me stuff. If I can keep doing that in anything - acting, writing, directing or whatever - I'll do it because life is short. ~ Josh Lawson

Creatively I just enjoy challenging myself in different genres. ~ Debra Messing

I'd quite like to do a film but I'd also love to do more theatre. I want to keep challenging myself with good roles. It's harder for women because there aren't as many challenging roles. ~ Ruth Wilson

I've always wanted to be a communicator of ideas through music. Today, I wanna be the most effective musical communicator of social change I could be, so I try to find different ways to do it and I'm always challenging myself to find new things, learn new instruments. But I always try to find in my heart, what it is I really want to say with words. ~ Michael Franti

For me, challenging myself with this type of endeavor [ultramarathons] brings the best out in me because even at the darkest, deepest moments when I feel like I can't go on, when I feel like there's no chance I could break the record or much less finish the trail, somehow I find that strength inside of me. ~ Scott Jurek

The reality is each new day and each project is another opportunity to learn, experiment and try something I haven't done before. I've found that's what keeps me motivated and moving forward - learning new things and challenging myself on a daily basis to improve as a composer, recording engineer, percussionist, guitarist, producer ... the list goes on and on! ~ Jason Graves

Music is my number one, it's my life, it's my everything. I'm enjoying challenging myself; I want to raise the bar and set a new standard for Australian pop artists. ~ Ricki-Lee Coulter

Theater is a way to keep challenging myself. ~ Patrick J. Adams

From a creative standpoint, I'm interested not only in the idea of helping couples and women, but challenging myself creatively, and doing each one better than the last thing I did. I think by doing that, by adding a visual element to these films, it really makes a huge difference. ~ Sasha Grey

The thing about this business is that you always end up finding these amazing stories and these amazing people who make amazing films. I just want to work with good people and keep challenging myself with different kinds of characters. ~ Madhur Mittal

I'm singing and dancing and playing guitar. I really enjoy pushing myself into different aspects. I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life, but I want to keep challenging myself. And if I'm fearful of something I definitely want to step into it and see how good or bad I am at it. ~ Dustin Clare

As a competitor, I want to continue to keep turning the chapters and keep challenging myself. ~ Abby Wambach

I always try to put myself in the way of surprise as much as possible. My ambition is to keep challenging myself. I like that journey of discovery. ~ David Morrissey

I'm challenging myself to reverse the hate. ~ Orlando Jones

I just want to keep challenging myself. Keep moving the goalposts and raising my game. ~ Martin Henderson

As an artist, I think it's important to always keep growing, and I definitely want to keep challenging myself. ~ Ciara

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before. ~ P.J. Harvey

If I ever stop challenging myself, then I am getting lazy and comfortable and I am no longer growing. I hope to use life's challenges as stepping stones to ever greater things. ~ Roz Savage

I felt like challenging myself and challenging my readers with something darker and heavier. I don't know how to explain it, because I'm not a political person. I have two political stories, and that's it: 'Human Diastrophism' and 'Poison River.' ~ Gilbert Hernandez

Of course, every actor has their box and you have to respect and play for it, but I do love challenging myself. I love every role to be new, and I always like to bring a freshness to every character I play. ~ Aneurin Barnard

What I've got here are my own constraints. I'm challenging myself, using found objects and making stuff that throws all this computational capacity at, you know, these trivial problems, like car-driving Elmo clusters and seashell toaster-robots. We have so much capacity that the trivia expands to fill it. And all that capacity is junk-capacity, it's leftovers. There's enough computational capacity in a junkyard to launch a space-program, and that's by design. Remember the iPod? Why do you think it was so prone to scratching and going all gunky after a year in your pocket? Why would Apple build a handheld technology out of materials that turned to shit if you looked at them cross-eyed? It's because the iPod was only meant to last a year! ~ Cory Doctorow

I feel myself becoming the fearless person I have dreamt of being. Have I arrived? No. But I'm constantly evolving and challenging myself to be unafraid to make mistakes. ~ Janelle Monae

Ironman distance triathlons are a true test of oneself as a whole. Each race is a test of physical, mental and spiritual toughness that I haven't found in any other type of racing. At the end of the day, challenging myself on all levels is what it's about for me. ~ Timothy O'Donnell

I'm always interested in challenging myself and pushing and seeing how far I can go. ~ Taraji P. Henson

After my second-to-last record, 'The Greatest', I had gone on tour for a while, and I didn't play an instrument for about five years. And I got kind of - it's not self-esteem or whatever, or anger toward myself - but disappointed in myself that I hadn't been challenging myself to learn musically. ~ Cat Power

I was a swimsuit model, and I got bored. Acting was challenging. It was very hard and intimidating. We choose to do things in life sometimes that scare the crap outta us. Performing in front of people was my challenge. ~ Christa Campbell

Advice for New Knitters
When choosing a pattern, look for ones that have words such as "simple", "basic", and "easy". If you see the words "intriguing", "challenging", or "intricate", look elsewhere.
If you happen across a pattern that says "heirloom", slowly put down the pattern and back away.
"Heirloom" is knitting code for "This pattern is so difficult that you would consider death a relief". ~ Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

It's daring and challenging to be young and poor, but never to be old and poor. Whatever resources of good health, character, and fortitude you bring to retirement, remember, also, to bring money. ~ Jane Bryant Quinn

I think I've had a fairly meandering career. Because I did start so young, I think that I've always chosen my parts based on what's interesting to me and what I think would be challenging or fun, or someone I've always wanted to work with or a place I've always wanted to work in or a topic. ~ Christina Ricci

When kids get stuck on one of our quests, we now have an app for that. It is so cool to know that now kids can use mobile technology to learn more about Poptropica's great adventures and solve its challenging quests. ~ Jeff Kinney

Golf really excites me only when the course is difficult and challenging. I love competing. The pressure of competition against fine holes and fine players makes me feel very much alive. ~ Jack Nicklaus

Writing in a journal activates the narrator function of our minds. Studies have suggested that simply writing down our account of a challenging experience can lower physiological reactivity and increase our sense of well-being, even if we never show what we've written to anyone else. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

Working with franchises can be challenging, but at the same time I really did enjoy working on 'Star Wars,' for example, and I have done a lot of 'Dungeons & Dragons' games, but I still enjoy it very much. ~ Chris Avellone

My parents, they're the kind of people that didn't want me to get a big head, so they just kept challenging me and challenging me. ~ Abby Wambach

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. ~ Saul D. Alinsky

I am not worried if scientists go and explain everything. This is for a very simple reason: an impala sprinting across the Savannah can be reduced to biomechanics, and Bach can be reduced to counterpoint, yet that does not decrease one iota our ability to shiver as we experience impalas leaping or Bach thundering. We can only gain and grow with each discovery that there is structure underlying the most accessible levels of things that fill us with awe.

But there is an even stronger reason why I am not afraid that scientists will inadvertently go and explain everything--it will never happen. While in certain realms, it may prove to be the case that science can explain anything, it will never explain everything. As should be obvious after all these pages, as part of the scientific process, for every question answered, a dozen newer ones are generated. And they are usually far more puzzling, more challenging than than the prior problems. This was stated wonderfully in a quote by a geneticist named Haldane earlier in the century: "Life is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." We will never have our flames extinguished by knowledge. The purpose of science is not to cure us of our sense of mystery and wonder, but to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate it. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

Of course a woman who decides to work full time as a mother in the home can be happy and deserves full respect from us. Motherhood is one of the most challenging and creative jobs anyone can do. The goal is to remake the world so that our choices are not so stark. ~ Naomi Wolf

Inch by beautiful inch, Grant stole his way into my body and into my heart. The feel of him stretching me, challenging me to work with him, was exquisite.

It would be the story of us. ~ Kate Meader

I can say I won a Senior British Open at Turnberry. I think that's the best thing about it, the whole week, was playing this course. It's a challenging, very tough course, under extreme weather. But you know, it's nice to win any event. ~ Fred Couples

Survival in space is a challenging endeavor. As the history of modern warfare suggests, people have generally proven themselves unable to live and work together peacefully over long periods of time. Especially in isolated or stressful situations, those living in close quarters often erupt into hostility. ~ Jenny Offill

During an individual's immersion in a domain, the locus of flow experiences shifts: what was once too challenging becomes attainable and even pleasurable, while what has long since become attainable no longer proves engaging. Thus, the journeyman musical performer gains flow from the accurate performance of familiar pieces in the repertoire; the youthful master wishes to tackle the most challenging pieces, ones most difficult to execute in a technical sense; the seasoned master may develop highly personal interpretations of familiar pieces, or, alternatively, return to those deceptively simple pieces that may actually prove difficult to execute convincingly and powerfully. Such an analysis helps explain why creative individuals continue to engage in the area of their expertise despite its frustrations, and why so many of them continue to raise the ante, posing ever-greater challenges for themselves, even at the risk of sacrificing the customary rewards. ~ Howard Gardner

Of course, thousands of years of traditional masculinity weren't going away without a fight. They lingered in the vestigial memories of men, occasionally challenging a decision to read the directions or wear argyle, hoping for a day when a hurtling piece of space rock will send the world back to a time before the advent of styling gels. ~ Matt K. Turner

I've learned that guns are exceptionally challenging to use effectively, with a power that must be respected. But mostly what I've learned is that they're a lot of fun, and dangerously appealing to an active imagination. ~ Trieste Kelly Dunn

It takes a lot out of you to do a stage play, but I'd love to do that. I'd love to continue to do challenging material, whatever shape or form that comes in. ~ Jeremy Renner

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.
Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.
Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.
I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.
The job is not the work. ~ Seth Godin

We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it, we have lived by it, we prospered and grew great by it. So the status quo has never been our god, and we ask no one else to bow down before it. ~ Carl T. Rowan

Instead of seeing the life you want to live in the distant future, just start living the life you want today. It is really that simple, and that challenging. The only one standing in your way is you. ~ John Bruna

Get some rest. Kalr will bring supper to your quarters. Things will seem better after you've eaten and slept." "Really?" she asked. Bitter and challenging. "Well, not necessarily," I admitted. "But it's easier to deal with things when you've had some rest and some breakfast. ~ Ann Leckie

One of the things that feels so challenging is how questioning Israel and the idea of a Jewish state somehow opens the door for other sorts of questions - and wounds. ~ Jill Soloway

You wanna grow up to be a trivia question?" she asked, challenging me. "Or do you wanna make a difference in the world? ~ Dan Gutman

Self-esteem is such a challenging issue for young women. ~ Kimberly Elise

As artists, it's our job to delve into the uncomfortable, the difficult and the challenging. ~ Jared Leto

I am attached to the west coast of Scotland - it's gorgeous to look at and challenging. You have to contend with the possibility of being blown away or rained on. And in the summer months you can be eaten alive by midges. ~ Clive Anderson

Life, or the specter of life, is constantly challenging us for acts we've never committed. And sometimes for acts we never even thought of committing. ~ Roberto Bolano

Protecting dozens of major coastal cities from future flooding will be challenging enough-rebuilding major coastal cities destroyed by super-hurricanes will be an almost impossible task. ~ Joseph J. Romm

I am often asked what keeps me going after all these years. I think it is the realization that there is no final struggle. Whether you win or lose, each struggle brings forth new contradictions, new and more challenging questions. As Alice Walker put it in one of my favorite poems: I must love the questions themselves as Rilke said like locked rooms full of treasures to which my blind and groping key does not yet fit.1 ~ Grace Lee Boggs

If the material is challenging, it forces you to challenge yourself when handling it. ~ Joel Coen

I had a really kind of yucky divorce and it was really challenging to get over that. ~ Ricki Lake

Empowerment is constantly challenging oneself with something difficult that tests his power of nerve, knack, skill, aptitude, attitude and wisdom to do things diligently, delightfully but differently. ~ Anuj

There will be ribbons in a range of colors with placings noted and records kept. Ribbons aren't worth much more than that; they're only a symbol. It's your partnership that mattered. That the two of you spent weekends challenging yourselves to improve, always competing against your last show, and balancing winning and losing into a place of faith and trust. That the two of you built a special relationship that made a difference, if not in the huge world, certainly in your own hearts. You persevered through joy and pain, thrill and dread, and in the end, there was a place that the two of your shared. Ribbons say it was worth celebrating. In a world where horses struggle, suffer, and die for the whims of humans, it says that you saw past the surface and shared breath and heart with another soul. You lifted your eyes higher. ~ Anna Blake

Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous. ~ Candice Bergen

When I went to university, I was a philosophy major, but because I'm not very bright I chose to study philosophy at a performing arts school, maybe because the philosophy program there wasn't too rigorous or challenging. ~ Moby

A High Performance team requires people with High Performance Mindsets, with relevant competence, committed and balanced communication, to a meaningful and challenging goal. ~ Tony Dovale

child is born on that day and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his or her individual karma. The resulting horoscope is a challenging portrait revealing his or her unalterable past, and its probable future result. But the natal chart can be rightly interpreted only by women and men of intuitive wisdom: these are few. ~ ~ ~ Swami Sri Yukteswar Guru of the great Paramahansa Yogananda ~ Jeffrey Green

To me, it's a structural flaw of the faith that its adherents are forbidden from challenging the leader (and its policies) at all costs. And right behind the current leader is another of the same kind. ~ Leah Remini

Why incentivize laziness? High-school students shouldn't be discouraged from grappling, sometimes unsuccessfully, with challenging books, pictures, and songs. A really, really good work of art doesn't bow down to you; you step up to it, and it rewards you. In the end, kids faced with what Chaucer actually wrote may still dislike him, and I'm fine with that; they will have earned that opinion rather than had it handed to them. For heaven's sake, it's easy for kids to see themselves and their peers in a rap song. When they can start to see themselves in a 14th-century poem, then they're actually learning something. ~ Jeff Sypeck

I am Love. You are Love. All that is real is Love.
This is worth remembering,
especially when you seem to be stuck
in the middle of a challenging experience. ~ Paul Morris Segal

Breaking the rules and challenging convention is in the DNA of every successful entrepreneur. Doing things differently and solving problems with new, innovative and fresh approaches are the very reason many start-ups are able to compete and sometimes outpace the established market leaders. ~ Richard Branson

Often what feels like the end of the world is really a challenging pathway to a far better place. ~ Karen Salmansohn

Some offenses will be more challenging than those for which we've been trained. This extra strain may cause ~ John Bevere