A Quote by Erin Willett
Believing in myself has always been hard. For a long time, I constantly compared myself to others, and it took away from the energy I could have been putting into my career.
Related Quotes
There's something about approaching 50 that's very liberating. Political struggle has always been a 24-hour-a-day job for me. I felt I could never take time out for myself. Now I feel I owe it to myself to develop in ways I've been putting off all my life.
I have always wanted a solo career, deep in the darkest pit of myself, but I didn't dare admit it to myself even. It took me a long time to confront my fears.
It seems so much of my time and my energy have been focused on making or trying to make other people love me. The unspoken belief was that if I could make myself lovable to others I would feel loved....The truth is, I can only feel loved by others when I love myself.
It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!
I've always been hard on myself, so I expect so much out of myself that that pressure can be inspiring at time.
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.
These past couple of years have been about learning to not sabotage myself in a subtler way - for instance, even just by putting moisturiser on when I get out of the shower. Learning to honour myself and believing that I'm worth taking care of.
The biggest challenge of my career has been wanting to do EVERYTHING! I always say I wish I could clone myself so that I could do everything for work and be a full-time mommy at the same time, and I know that so many women feel the same way. It has been a challenge for me to step back, take a moment to breathe, and to accept the fact that I logistically just cannot do everything and be everywhere at the same time.
I'd been shy since childhood, constantly full of self-doubt. And as an actor, I'd been so scared of failing that I made my career - and myself - a big joke.
I am now willing to forgive myself . . . for believing I could offer something to others before I have offered it to myself.
They took away what should have been my eyes (but I remembered Milton's Paradise). They took away what should have been my ears, (Beethoven came and wiped away my tears) They took away what should have been my tongue, (but I had talked with god when I was young) He would not let them take away my soul, possessing that I still possess the whole.
I know that one of the things that I really did to push myself was to write more formal poems, so I could feel like I was more of a master of language than I had been before. That was challenging and gratifying in so many ways. Then with these new poems, I've gone back to free verse, because it would be easy to paint myself into a corner with form. I saw myself becoming more opaque with the formal poems than I wanted to be. It took me a long time to work back into free verse again. That was a challenge in itself. You're always having to push yourself.
Everybody knew about the bulimia in the family. And they all blamed the failure of the marriage on the bulimia and it's taken them time to think differently. I said I was rejected, I didn't think I was good enough for this family, so I took it out on myself. I could have gone to alcohol. I could have been anorexic. I chose to hurt myself instead of hurting all of you.
The work I've been putting in, I've kind of just been preparing myself for every situation. I've been doing a lot of off-the-ball shooting, catch-and-shoot shots. And preparing myself to play on the ball as well.
I'm constantly proving myself. I have to always prove myself. There are roles where I feel like, "That should have been a straight offer. Why am I having to call my people and fight for it?"
It took me a while to figure that out and to realize what a gift that I had been given. And when I finally did, I dedicated myself to be the best pitcher I possibly could be, for as long as I possibly could be.
