Pushing Yourself Quotes

Unless you're not pushing yourself, you're not living to the fullest. You can't be afraid to fail, but unless you fail, you haven't pushed hard enough.
~ Dean Karnazes

Not enough people realize the satisfaction you can get from really pushing yourself to the limits. ~ Richard Branson

At its heartmeat core, writing is about exploring the questions of your heart on the assumption that what intrigues you, what inflames or amuses or ennobles you, will have the same effect on someone else. It's about taking chances, and taking risks, and pushing yourself to be honest in the issues that present themselves. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

I like to describe Himalayan climbing as a kind of art of suffering. Just pushing, pushing yourself to your limits. ~ Wojciech Kurtyka

Fear - It's a fine line between that and pushing yourself. You definitely reach new heights when you push. But fear is good. Fear keeps us alive. If we didn't have it, we'd be doing crazy things and getting in sticky situations. ~ Stephanie Gilmore

There is something that you can do, for a greater good, for a greater cause, one that is far bigger than just yourself. Find it, and then, do it. ~ Kevin Abdulrahman

As an entrepreneur, you have to be OK with failure. If you're not failing, you're likely not pushing yourself hard enough. ~ Alexa Von Tobel

When you are pushing yourself to not go back to the same well, you're gonna come up with something different, or you'll find songs that are different. ~ Hillary Scott

What does it mean to be a snowboarder? It's about having fun, with your friends or by yourself. It's about pushing yourself to try new things and do the unexpected. Finally, and most importantly, it's about being creative. ~ Shaun White

It's just about pushing yourself to realms that are uncharted. I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing, I don't know if it's any good, I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line. Not just a creative fantasy world or something like that, but a mood too. ~ Ariel Pink

You can create the perfect triceps by just pushing yourself off your wall. ~ Jean-Claude Van Damme

It's about personal development. It's about creating your own character and pushing it to the limit. It's about pushing yourself so far out of your own and everybody else's idea of who you are and what you're capable of, that you no longer believe in limits. It's about reaching beyond your so-called potential, because your potential is never where you or anyone else expects it to be, not even close. It's about being able to say with the last breath of your life I used all my potential and all my talents and pushed myself to the limit. I could not have fought any harder. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

I think if you're everyone's cup of tea, that probably means you're a little bit boring, or you're not pushing yourself. Creativity happens where it's dangerous and scary: where you're not comfortable. ~ Kacey Musgraves

Pushing ourselves to do too much despite the pain will not result in gain but may cause additional injury. However, sometimes we do need to push ourselves to get up and move around to avoid becoming stiff and actually increasing our pain. ~ Karen Lee Richards

We need to distinguish between stress and stimulation. Having deadlines, setting goals, and pushing yourself to perform at capacity are stimulating. Stress is when you're anxious, upset, or frustrated, which dramatically reduce your ability to perform. ~ Andrew J. Bernstein

There's no such thing as positive thinking. There is, however, positive acting and positive doing, and positive being. Positive thinking is the reflection of such activities. You can't force yourself to think positively, but merely suppress negativity and get insane while pushing yourself along a river that flows on the opposite direction. Every life challenge is there to show you that you don't want to hit the rocks. It's really that simple when you look at things as they show themselves to you. You flow with the stream and you avoid the rocks along the way. That's positive thinking, even when you are angry about life, even when you're complaining, and even when you feel antagonistic with the world and the ones around you. That's the truth, simply because it will bring you back results. And that, you won't ever get by sitting on the floor and imagining emotions. You have the right to hate the rocks that come your away, as long as you keep paddling and enjoying the journey. There's no point in closing your eyes and pretending the rocks aren't there or trying to make them vanish with wishful thinking, or expecting a big magical bird to save you and take you in his wings for a pleasant flight in the skies. ~ Robin Sacredfire

It doesn't matter how far you might rise. At some point you are bound to stumble ... If you're constantly pushing yourself higher ... the law of averages, not to mention the Myth of Icarus, predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do I want you to know this, remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. ~ Oprah Winfrey

As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice. ~ Paul Auster

If you're constantly pushing yourself higher, higher, the law of averages - not to mention the myth of Icarus - predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to know this, remember this: There is no such thing as failure. ~ Oprah Winfrey

I'm a big believer in pushing yourself outside your comfort zone and stretching yourself artistically, but not at the expense of foolishness. ~ Nichole Nordeman

There's a constant tension in climbing, and really all exploration, between pushing yourself into the unknown but trying not to push too far. The best any of us can do is to tread that line carefully. ~ Alex Honnold

I look at everything I've done critically - but I think that's the job of an actor. If you ever sit on your laurels or think that you're good - in a way, I don't then think you're pushing yourself. ~ Nicole Kidman

If you have no doubt in what you are about to do, you are not pushing yourself hard enough. ~ Silvio Micali

I'm a triathlete. Running is when I do my best living and my best thinking. I love the discipline, pushing yourself to suffer as much as you can, because it leads to a form of redemption. ~ Naomi Benaron

There's real beauty in pushing yourself to expose the real you in more ways. ~ Kevin Systrom

If you don't feel challenged, it's because you're not doing enough. Ballet should never feel comfortable. Comfortable is lazy! If you're comfortable when you dance, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. 100 % is not enough. You have to give 200%. One tendu takes years of hard work and will never be perfect. Everything in ballet is a challenge. ~ George Balanchine

In music, push yourself but not too hard; if you play too many sharps you may cut your fingers. ~ Sneha Abraham

You just keep pushing yourself harder and harder to achieve more and more - I don't think it's ever quite as glamorous as it appears on the outside. ~ Sean Parker

Keep Reading.
Keep Writing.
Keep Pushing yourself!
And never stop learning!
We writerly types have to stick together mostly because everybody else thinks we're "weird". ~ Darynda Jones

I try as much as possible to keep pushing myself beyond my limits, those set by myself, and those by others, to see how much lies within. He said nothing is impossible and I truly believe Him.
Once in while I go beyond . . .
More often than not, I get pretty burned and decline to tend to my sores in solitude, whilst trying the best I can to find out why I burned so bad.
Other times, I surprise myself at the power within has been lying dormant probably out of ignorance or out of fear.
Either ways, I learn . . .
And probably that is the most significant thing to be gleaned out of every experience. ~ Ufuoma Apoki

You're not always going to hit the bull's-eye. I'm going to make movies that work and I'm going to make movies that don't work, and that's just a part of being creative. Because really, I think if you're taking risks and you're pushing yourself and you're doing things that scare you, you are going to fall on your face, and it's not always going to work. ~ Hilary Swank

By doing things when you are too tired, by pushing yourself farther than you thought you could - like running the track after a two-hour practice - you become a competitor. Each time you go beyond your perceived limit, you become mentally stronger. ~ Pat Summitt

The reason I don't retire is that I learn something new every day. The brain has to be exercised the same as the rest of the body. It's about expanding, constantly pushing yourself. ~ Clint Eastwood

Being involved in competition is a privilege and an opportunity. Seek to make the most of that opportunity by pushing yourself to the limit of your abilities. When it is over, you will have earned the respect of your opponents, your coaches, and yourself. ~ Tony La Russa

You should never feel comfortable. There is something wrong if you are. You should always feel under threat, on the edge of your seat and pushing yourself. Win one and you want to win more. It's never-ending. ~ Damon Hill

If you're not a real chameleon of an actor and if you're not one of those guys who can really shape-change themselves all the time, one of the ways to keep pushing yourself and keep changing is to be in different kinds of movies. ~ Ethan Hawke

There's a time when people say your work is revolutionary, but you have to keep being revolutionary. I can't keep shooting pop stars all my life. You have to keep changing, keep pushing yourself, looking for the new, the unusual. ~ Rankin

Transformation also means looking for ways to stop pushing yourself so hard professionally or inviting so much stress. ~ Gail Sheehy

Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not demanding more from yourself - expanding and learning as you go - you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip. ~ Dean Karnazes

Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you've seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself up. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

If you have early success, do your best to ignore the praise and keep pushing yourself to the edges of your ability, where improvement happens. If you don't have early success, don't quit. Instead, treat your early efforts as experiments, not as verdicts. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. ~ Daniel Coyle

I'm good at marketing myself through the columns. But compared to other people I know, as far as networking and pushing yourself out there, I'm not very good at that. ~ Joel Stein

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner's medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it's three-Michelin's stars, there's no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate. ~ Gordon Ramsay

As women of the western world, we see our sisters in other lands being raped, maimed and even executed simply for trying to exercise the most basic freedoms, such as taking a bus alone or wearing a bright red sweater. And when we look at our own world, we see that it too still lacks equality for the sexes.
It's a terrible thing to go through one's entire lifetime not getting to do all the things we dream of doing just because others say we're not permitted to do them, and to know that they will hurt us if we try.
But far, far worse than that is when there's not a thing or a person outside that's stopping us from living exactly as we wish, but we stop ourselves; internally we do not give ourselves permission, simply because we're too scared of what will happen if we dare. ~ PatriciaV. Davis

Performing is the craziest workout for me, because I feel like, on the first day of tour, I'm going nuts. Halfway through, I'm just so tired but obviously you keep pushing yourself because you have fans watching you. ~ Hayley Williams

Fear of failure is a ticket to mediocrity. If you're not failing from time to time, you're not pushing yourself. And if you're not pushing yourself, you're coasting. ~ Eric Zorn

Running alone is the toughest. You get to the point where you have to keep pushing yourself. ~ Walter Payton

We simply do not allow space in our hearts, minds, or souls for darkness.
Instead, we choose faith. Faith in ourselves and the power of hard work. Faith in our God whose overwhelming love sustains us every single day. That's what we choose.
We choose love. Our love for our children. Our commitment to leaving them a better world. Our love for our country which has given us so many blessings and advantages. Our love for our fellow citizens: parents working hard to support their kids, men and women in uniform who risk everything to keep us safe, young people from the toughest background who never stop believing in their dreams, some people like so many of you. That's what we choose.
And we choose excellence. We choose to tune out all the noise and strive for excellence in everything we do. No cutting corners, no taking shortcuts, no whining. We give 120% every single time. Because excellence is the most powerful answer you can give to the doubters and the haters. It's also the most powerful thing you can do for yourself. Because the process of striving, and struggling, and pushing yourself to new heights, that's how you develop your God-given talent. That's how you make yourself stronger, and smarter, and more able to make a difference for others. ~ Michelle Obama

Career miracles happen when you're so in love with your life that pushing yourself is actually easier than stopping, when you "do without doing." Joyful activity adds real value to the world, and adding value is the heart and soul of a successful career. ~ Martha N. Beck

Hopefully with each thing that you do you're learning something, you're growing, and you're pushing yourself a little harder in some way or another. So I think you'd be in real trouble if each new thing that you create didn't feel like 'Oh, wow. I feel like I'm doing something a little different this time.' ~ Rian Johnson

On the brink of sleep I have a gloomy thought: that saving yourself is only pushing yourself even deeper into the trap rather than getting out. Dying is the only way out. ~ Erri De Luca

Prayer is easily ruined when we make it a project - part of a spiritual self-improvement plan. Rather than pushing yourself forward by resolve, allow God to lead you by desire. The most typical evidence of grace at work within us is not awareness of duty but awareness of desire. ~ David G. Benner

I had to learn to be honest with myself. I had to recognize my pain threshold. When I hit the floor, I have to realize it's not as if I broke a bone. Pushing yourself over the barrier is a habit. I know I can do it and try something else crazy. If you want to win the war, you've got to pay the price. ~ Flo Hyman

I learned from my mom to always keep pushing yourself. ~ Gabby Douglas

I am only doing this because I was asked. They tell me that, sometime in the future, I will thank them for pushing me this way. They say that one day, when all this is over, I will come to terms with who I am and where I came from. Not gonna happen. ~ Leigh Hershkovich

But we'd had only so many nights together, and the notebook had only so many pages, and that world was never going to get any bigger. The truth was that I couldn't have kept her even if she'd lived. At the end, we'd both been pushing at the walls of our secret world, pushing at each other. We'd given each other everything we could. It wasn't enough for either of us anymore. ~ Jennifer R. Hubbard

It's not you it's me' she couldn't use that line. Even though it really was her and not him, everyone thought that line really meant, 'it's not me. It's definitely you.'
There was still a part of her that thought perhaps she shouldn't do it at all. In Andrew she had all the raw ingredients for a perfect life. Here was a grown-up, good-looking, solvent, generous, warm-hearted man who adored her. A man who adored her even when she looked like the loch ness monsters little sister and had a terrible temper to match.
It didn't take a huge leap of imagination to see Andrew standing at the top of the aisle, looking back at lou walking towards him with a grin as wide as the English channel. She could see him painting the nursery yellow; pushing a pram that contained two lovely brown haired twins (one boy, one girl); presenting her woth an eternity ring on their tenth anniversary, taking the twins to school, teaching them how to play football on long, summer holidays in Tuscany, giving the daughter away at her own wedding, cosying up to Lou on the veranda of their perfect house as their retirement stretched ahead of them- a long straight road of well-planned for, financially comfortable and perpetually sunny days.
'oh god' Lou poured herself a vodka. ~ Chris Manby

I'm making a list of things that make you agreeable."
I scoffed, pushing my foot into his leg. "And all you got is sex and vacations?"
"The length of the list is not my fault."
"Are you saying I'm disagreeable?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Woman, how stupid do you think I am? You really think I'm answering that? I want to get laid tonight?"
I pushed him harder. "Watch it, or you might get laid to rest."
Braden threw his head back and laughed. ~ Samantha Young

He brushed a kiss across my lips, there and gone before I could gather myself to respond.
'Come now my dear. Let's have breakfast."

"Yes." There was a golden bubble in my chest, pushing out against my ribs.
"Thank you for being patient with me."

His smile turned the gloomy morning to pure sunshine. "You're worth it. ~ Jordan L. Hawk

We're starting to push the envelope in terms of the expectations, and you can also have your own style, personality and sense of humor, because now we're allowed to. ~ Lisa Guerrero

I've always been a closet jock. With exercising, the more you do it, the more you get into it. And the more you see results, the more you're pushing for the next level. ~ Michelle Obama

Remember your dream is your only scheme, so keep on pushing. ~ Curtis Mayfield

"Black culture" is ready for whatever. I sense some momentum and excitement around black artists (especially in comedy, which is where most of my own art resides), really pushing the bounds of what has generally been expected as black. I don't think it's a revolution so much as an exposure of what has always been there, and now that the production and distribution means are more accessible, people can more easily find each other. ~ Baratunde Thurston

Rob's breath were pushing over my ear, his chest puffing up underneath me. His heart were beating so close to my own that it calmed me for sheer distraction. ~ A.C. Gaughen

Faith itself is a horrible mechanism that stunts the growth of ideas. It also stunts the act of questioning, and it does this by pushing the idea that you have to have faith - and that nothing has to be proven. ~ Joe Rogan

I'm quiet for a long moment, and Velva just sits with me, waiting. She's good at that. Just being a companion, not pushing or prodding, but waiting as if she has all the time in the world. Why is it that a woman of 94, who probably has very little time left, can be far more patient that an woman of 30 who has a lot of years ahead of her? ~ Beth Pattillo

Travis grabbed my wrists and wrapped them around his middle. "There's nothing to hold on to but me, Pidge. Don't let go," he said pushing the bike backward with his feet. ~ Jamie McGuire

If an idea cannot move on its own, pushing it doesn't help; best to let it lie there. ~ Lewis Thomas

The first time I understood the story of the Nativity, I was in a Palestinian village called Yanoun, in the northern West Bank. We got a tour from two shepherds, both young guys who joked and laughed with each other as they shared their day with us. They showed us where they kept their sheep. It was a low, dark cave, noisy and crowded with animals, and smelling like...well...sheep shit. The mangers were a tad rusty, with sheep pushing at each other to find space to eat. It was a good hangout for sheep, but not really the sort of place where you'd want to have a kid. I remember thinking: "Oh. If God can be born here, I guess God can be born anywhere. ~ David Finnegan-Hosey

What would his father do then? Go on, Johnny supposed. People had a way of doing that, just going on, pushing through with no particular drama, no big drumrolls. ~ Stephen King

This is what we do. Not so much argue as joust, in jest. We can't stop pushing and pulling the taffy of words and concepts. ~ Larry Duberstein

Vocally, I'm definitely pushing out more. That feels good. It's very freeing. I've always been very private and consciously private. Now it's kinda like, 'Who cares.' I'm gonna be free and gonna be me. I feel good. ~ Ciara

The pure menace radiating from my younger sister is undeniable. She can hate me, but I need her to know that she has something that Stella never did: a place to fall. "And if he hurts you or if anyone hurts you...you have me."
It feels unnatural, but I hug my sister. Her arms are limp at her sides, but she doesn't push me away.
"Remember, you have me," I repeat. ~ Katie McGarry

People pushed by force of habit, pushed for the pure pleasure of pushing, and they would go on pushing until you showed them you were willing to push back, at which point you would earn their respect. ~ Paul Auster

A KISS! A KISS!" the crowd chanted.
(...)
"I dont know," Cleo began, sickened by the thought of it. How far was she willing to go to appear agreeable? "Quite honestly, it seems like a bad--"

Magnus took a tight hold of her arm and turned her around. Before she could say another word, he put his hand behind her neck, drew her closer to him, and kissed her.

Every muscle in her body stiffened. It was the sensation of being a bird caught in a hinter's trap. Her wings screamed out for her to fly away as fast and as far as possible. But he held her firmly in place, his mouth against hers, soft but demanding a response.

She gripped the front of his shirt. It was all too much--she wasn't sure if she was pushing him away or pulling him closer. Much like diving into deep water, she had no idea which way would find her air to breathe or which way would drag her down deeper into the depths where she would surely drown.

And for a moment, just a moment, she found it didn't seem to matter.

The warmth of his body against hers on such a cold day, his now-familiar scent of sandalwood, the heat of his mouth against hers...it all made her head spin, and logic fell away. ~ Morgan Rhodes

It occurred to me that we were the same, in a way. Both of us treading water, pushing against forces we couldn't control. ~ Heather Demetrios

pushing her long, dark hair out of her face. "But what's the point? If you're into him enough to sleep with him, why would ~ Brenda Rothert

We all push sometimes, just to make sure someone is on the other side, pushing back. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,
he walked through the woods one winter
crunching through the shinycrusted snow
stumbling into a little dell where a warm spring was
and found the grass green and weeds sprouting
and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,
He went home and sat by the stove and read Darwin
Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural
Selection that wasn't what they taught in church,
so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,
found a seedball in a potato plant
sowed the seed and cashed in on Darwin's Natural Selection
on Spencer and Huxley
with the Burbank potato.

Young man go west;
Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa
full of his dream of green grass in winter ever-
blooming flowers ever-
bearing berries; Luther Burbank
could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbank
carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winter
and seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus -
winters were bleak in that bleak
brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts -
out to sunny Santa Rosa;
and he was a sunny old man
where roses bloomed all year
everblooming everbearing
hybrids.

America was hybrid
America could cash in on Natural Selection.
He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and Natural
Selection and the influence of the mighty deadJohn Dos Passos

Burbank Charles Darwin Darwin Herbert Spencer Huxley Luther Burbank Spencer T H Huxley Thomas H Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Huxley