Sometimes life is simply tough. And it is hard to stay motivated and to keep a positive mindset.
So in the first part of today’s post I’d like to share 83 of the most powerful quotes that will help you to keep your head up, reload your motivation and to keep going even through difficult days.
And in the second part I’m going to share 3 of my favorite tips that have helped me many times through dark or uncertain times.
If you want even more inspirational quotes then have a look at this post with quotes on adversity and this one filled with quotes on how to deal with mistakes (+ my own 5 favorite tips for doing that).
Inspirational Quotes About Keeping Your Head Up During Hard Times
“I know it seems hard sometimes, but remember one thing. Through every dark night, there’s a bright day after that. So no matter how hard it gets, stick your chest out, keep ya head up and handle it.”
Tupac Shakur
“Keep your head up in failure and your head down in success.”
Jerry Seinfeld
“Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level.”
Max L. Forman
“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”
Helen Keller
“Keep your heels, head, and standards high.”
Coco Chanel
“It is important to keep your head up and follow what you believe is right.”
Ajay Naidu
“You have to lift your head up out of the mud and just do it.”
Teri Garr
“You’ve got to have some adversity and learn from it. I’m working hard, but I didn’t expect a cure in one day. You learn. You move on. You hold your head up. You go on to the next day.”
Chuck Knoblauch
“I never lose. I either win or learn.”
Nelson Mandela
“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.”
Richard Branson
“And I know this world is so cold and deceiving but I keep my head up like my nose is bleeding.”
Lil Wayne
“Don’t let haters get me off my grind. With my head up, I know I’ll be fine. Keep fighting until I get there. When I’m down and I feel like giving up, I think again. I whip my hair back and forth.”
Willow Smith
“No matter how much it hurts, you have to hold your head up and keep going.”
Brooke Addison
“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
M. Scott Peck
“I had to hold my head up high and put a bold face on things, but the thoughts keep coming anyways.”
Anne Frank
“It takes someone strong to leave with their head held high. It takes someone stronger to stay with their head held higher.”
Isabella Poretsis
“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”
T. S. Eliot
“Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.”
Jesse Jackson
”Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday.”
Brian Tracy
“Believe in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine.”’
Roy T. Bennett
“Someone once asked me how I hold my head up so high after all I’ve been through. I said it’s because no matter what, I am a survivor. Not a victim.”
Patricia Buckley
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan
“Never let anyone tell you who you are, hold your head up high, look them in the eyes and tell them who you are.”
Sonya Parker
“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy.”
Leo Buscaglia
“You only live once, life is really short.. don’t let anything minuscule like that keep you down. Keep your head up.”
Mitch Lucker
“Lift your head up high, and scream to the world “I know I am someone”, and let the truth unfurl.”
Michael Jackson
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Winston Churchill
“He who is silent and bows his head dies every time he does so. He who speaks aloud and walks with his head held high dies only once.”
Giovanni Falcone
“If I’m going to have hope, I’m going to have to learn to endure disappointment.”
Sharon Weil
“Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.”
Richard Nixon
“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”
Steve Jobs
“Keep your head up. God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers.”
Unknown
“Abundance is a direct reflection of your preparation to live abundantly. People who are ready for abundance keep their heads up, their eyes open and give thanks for everything they get.”
Iyanla Vanzant
“Keep your head up and be patient.”
A. J. McLean
Keep Your Head Up Quotes that Will Give You a Positive Boost
“Always keep your mind strong with positive thoughts and your head up with full confidence, because you truly have greatness in you.”
Edmond Mbiaka
“Different is good. When someone tells you that you are different, smile and hold your head up and be proud.”
Angelina Jolie
“Keep your head up because one day one person will fight like hell for you, the same as you would for them, and it will be a deep love. So, keep your head up.”
Carlos Salinas
“Stand tall, stand proud. Know that you are unique and magnificent. You do not need the approval of others.”
Jonathan Lockwood Huie
“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
John R. Wooden
“So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life’s a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.”
Marilyn Monroe
“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”
John Newton
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
Zig Ziglar
“Man was made to lead with his chin; he is worth knowing only with his guard down, his head up and his heart rampant on his sleeve.”
Robert Farrar Capon
“Each morning is the open door to a new world – new vistas, new aims, new tryings.”
Leigh Mitchell Hodges
“Don’t wait on approval, validation and likes from others – always give yourself the highest of approval ratings and work from there. Hold your head up and be fabulous no matter what!”
Jody Watley
“I was thinking one day and I realized that if I just had somebody behind me all the way to motivate me I could make a big difference. Nobody came along like that so I just became that person for myself.”
Unknown
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
C.S. Lewis
“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If you’ve got a good idea and you’re willing to do whatever it takes to pursue it, keep your head up and eyes open because you don’t know when opportunity will come knocking.”
Paula Deen
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
Napoleon Hill
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
Arthur Ashe
“Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.”
Charles F. Kettering
“If things don’t work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again!”
Sarah Dessen
“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.“
Groucho Marx
“Keep your head up, keep your heart strong. Keep your mind set, keep your hair long.”
Ben Howard
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”
Zig Ziglar
“It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.”
Confucius
“One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.”
Viggo Mortensen
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
Maria Robinson
Recharging Keep Your Head Up Quotes for When Someone Criticizes You
“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”
Aristotle
“To everyone battling a difficulty or under attack right now, smile, keep your head up, keep moving and stay positive, you’ll get through it.”
Germany Kent
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.”
Unknown
“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”
Elvis Presley
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
Dale Carnegie
“The only reason to look down on someone is to help them up.”
Leroy Hibbert
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Mark Twain
“Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.”
Frank A. Clark
“The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.”
William Faulkner
“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.”
Charles Schwab
“Who do you spend time with? Criticizers or encouragers? Surround yourself with those who believe in you. Your life is too important for anything less.”
Steve Goodier
“People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need.”
Gary Chapman
“Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you.”
Roy T. Bennett
“I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man’s self-respect is a sin.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them.”
Unknown
“We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.”
Michel de Montaigne
“You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.”
John Wooden
“Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.”
Abraham Lincoln
“It is much more valuable to look for the strength in others. You can gain nothing by criticizing their imperfections.”
Daisaku Ikeda
“One mustn’t criticize other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself”
Mark Twain
“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
Benjamin Franklin
My 3 Favorite Tips for Keeping Your Head Up When Facing Negative Situations
1. Talk the situation over with someone close to you.
This is my most often used and favorite tip that helps me to keep my head up and to keep moving forward when I face a negative situation in my life.
I talk to my wife, a friend or my parents about the situation. To vent, to figure things out for myself out loud and/or to get some level-headed and experience-based advice when I need it the most.
This helps me to lighten my mental load and it renews my energy and motivation.
2. Learn from criticism but remember that all criticism you get is not about you.
When you get criticized, don’t just dismiss it. Instead, first ask yourself questions like:
- Can I learn something from this piece of criticism?
- Is there perhaps actually something here that I may not want to hear but that could help me to improve?
Remain clear-headed, open and take a couple of minutes to figure out if there is something here that can help you.
But also keep in mind that all criticism you get will not be helpful. And some of what people may tell you are simply attacks.
What can you do then?
Well, what works for me is to kindly remind myself that criticism isn’t always about me.
Because in real life people will have a bad day or month. Some will – at least at this point in time – hate some part of their life or not be well.
And so they lash out and release pent up negative emotions and thoughts.
And sometimes you or I are there at the wrong moment. It’s no fun. But it happens to most of us from time to time.
To lessen the sting of such harsh or misdirected words I try to be understanding.
I think to myself that based on the message I got – often really angry or overly critical about some pretty minor or unimportant thing – this person is not feeling too good right now.
Being understanding makes it easier for me to let such messages go and move forward in my own life instead of feeling bad or getting dragged into being angry myself.
3. Reminder: It’s darkest before the dawn.
This thought has helped me to hold on many times when things have felt very difficult. When I’ve felt like giving up.
Because I have over and over again found it to be true.
When things seemed to be at the lowest point with my dating life, with my business or my life in general something always happened.
Why?
Well, likely pretty often just because hitting rock bottom and being at that low point forced me to change something in how I did things in that area of my life.
But I also think it’s because life seems to have some kind of balance if I keep going.
If I keep taking action. Instead of giving in and going home.
If I keep on moving something good always happens.
Seeing this repeat itself strengthened my belief in taking action – even if it is sometimes by just taking one or two small steps forward – even on rough days and through tough weeks.
And this thought brings me some comfort even when things look pretty dark.