Victoria Pendleton Quotes

If you're going to worry about what people say, you're never going to make any progress.

My performance level has risen - and my anxiety-level has sky-rocketed.

You're constantly trying to prove yourself, even after you've made it.

I don't think about records.

We're always looking over our shoulders, 'what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one - am I making the right career move?' When you're young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

My deepest challenge has been an internal one. It's allowing success to take over by focusing on how many Twitter followers I have or what people are saying about me online, or just feeling like no matter how much success I get, it's not enough.

It feels like my hard work has paid off, but at the same time, I still have the impostor, you know, syndrome. I still feel like I'm going to wake up, and everybody's going to see me for the hack I am.

It's hard being on the best team in the world.

From a young age, people have been touting me as a future world champion and it's nice to get that out of the way.

It's hard when you win the title to not think, 'I'm here. Now what do I do?'

A strange side effect of sudden success is the sense that if you can succeed in one field, then it might well be worth trying to succeed in another.

It's a difficult place being on top because, for me, beating the Average Joe has no significance, but for the Average Joe, beating me could be the biggest match of his life, potentially.

Even when you are there on top, you feel the same nerves.

One minute you're a developing athlete trying to get to the top, then the next minute you do well and win a medal somewhere, and then it's all foisted on you. You never know when it's going to happen. You don't think about the media side of things when you're a young athlete trying to do well.

Hollywood's built on insecurity. People are trying to prove things. And I probably have that. I probably do. Probably guilty of it, in a way.

I hope I can live up to the faith that has been put in me to do a good job.

I do have at home the most ridiculous number of awards for what I have done, which is nice in terms of being patted on the back, yet it does cure you of caring about what other people say about you. Ultimately, you must have your own standard of what is good enough.

You succeed and accomplish and accomplish; the problem is when you stop, you become depressed because you could never do enough.

My biggest enemy for the longest time was my head. When I first became successful, it made me anxious because I was overthinking everything, and you hear so many 'fail' stories.

Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best.

I thought that when you have more success that you'd feel more buoyed or feel more confident. But in fact my brain has the gift of switching it around and saying, 'Now people are expecting something. Now you're really going to let people down.'

At the end of the competition, I played the Liszt concerto and I felt my head was on the block. Well, I won.

I never think about any of my accomplishments and I always get butterflies in my stomach and I never get too comfortable with the status.

On the other hand, I have devoted so much energy to reach the top that I accept the stress of being there.

Writing on assignment, with lots of money handed to you before you even began, got very scary for me. My dread of not being perfect, something I got from a childhood surrounded by powerful, successful people, began to infect everything I wrote.