Eight ways to increase and maintain your self-confidence.

Be true to who you are:
Don't pretend to be someone you are not. Don't center your life around trying to please others. Incorporate more of what you love into your life. Put love into whatever you do. Take pride in how you live your life. Feed your soul by pursuing your passions. Remember, the only person living your life is you. Your life is your business. Be the writer of your own story. Give voice to that which you believe in. Own your life.

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Don't second guess your decisions:
Take your time, don't act impulsively, and don't make decisions in the heat of the moment. Make decisions to the best of your ability. Learn to trust yourself. Once you have made a decision, continue to recognize that you made the best decision, to the best of your ability. Don't beat yourself up if it doesn't turn out. Remind yourself, that all you can ever do is your best. Life is full of growth and learning. Making mistakes says nothing negative about you. You are not a bad person if you've made mistakes.

You are not a victim:
Empower yourself. Stand in your power. Seeing yourself as a victim disempowers you. Stop giving your power away! No one has the power to make you feel any way without your permission. You get to decide how you feel, no one else. Don't take other people's negativity to heart. A lot of the time people's actions and words are a reflection of themselves and not you. Stop giving control over to outside forces and start empowering yourself. Things may have happened. You may find yourself in circumstances that prove difficult. Don't give up. Allow yourself healing. Be patient with yourself. Give yourself some grace. Stop focusing on what is beyond your control and start focusing on whatever you can do. Develop an action plan, begin working on the steps. Direct your energy towards helping yourself. Reach out for help if you need to. Become an advocate for your healing, and for your well-being.

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Develop positive daily habits:
Challenge your harmful habits. Are you looking after yourself? Are you looking after your health? Are you taking time for self-care? Are you balancing your life? Are you making time for YOU? Practice loving yourself more. What habits can you incorporate into your life that will enhance your well-being and your enjoyment of life? What can you do to help yourself? Look at long-term versus short-term payoffs. Remember, you are your own best investment. Invest in yourself and your lifestyle. Quality of life is a key component in finding joy and maintaining self-confidence.

Face your fears:
Don't allow your fears to consume you. Don't allow fear to rule your life. Be afraid, and act anyway. Be honest about what you will and will not do. Be realistic about the effort and commitment it will take to achieve goals. Make commitments you intend to keep and then stick to them. It is OK to change your mind, as long as you don't make a habit of constantly changing your mind about everything. Try sticking it out on some things so that you can experience the deep satisfaction of completing something and seeing it through. Celebrate every success. Allow yourself the encouragement to move forward. Not everything will work out, and that is OK. Sometimes, the journey in itself is more valuable than the outcome. Aren't good things worth working for? Don't be afraid to venture outside of your comfort zone, to push yourself, to try new things. Everyone has doubts, but it is your choice whether or not you will listen to them. You will never ever know unless you try. Remember, you always start with a no, and chances are that you will lose nothing by trying. Look back at all you have accomplished, at all you have survived.

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Stop the negative self-talk and increase your feelings of self-worth:
How does berating, degrading yourself serve you? Stop criticizing yourself! Don't worry about what you don't know. You certainly can't punish yourself for whatever you didn't know. Work on loving yourself more. Work on being and acting as your own friend. Work on self-acceptance. Accept yourself for who you are. Accept yourself as you are. Don't try and quash parts of yourself. Don't introduce judgment when looking at yourself. Instead, learn to love and work with all that you are. Constructive criticism is OK, as long as it provides feedback that you can work with. Practice saying kind, loving, and empowering things to yourself. You are strong. You are brave. You are capable. You can make it through this. Limited thinking limits you. Believe in possibilities. Focus on what you can do, not on what you can't. Speak well of yourself to others. Remember, your mind will believe whatever you think. If you want to believe something better about yourself, you need to think something better about yourself. Changing our thinking requires practice and repetition. Be patient. Keep practicing.

Practice mindfulness:
Life is not about what happened in the past. Life is not about what will happen in the future. Life is happening right now, right at this very moment. The only place you can make a difference for yourself and for your life is in the moment. Don't wait to act until the perfect moment. Act now. Stay present. Push out regret, shame, and guilt over the past. Cast aside anxiety, worry, and stress for the future. You have no control to change the past, you have no control to know the future with uncertainty. The only time and place you have any control is over what you do now in this moment. Don't distract yourself. Focus on what you are doing now, on how you are doing it. Focus on intention. Introduce love into the moment. Believe in the potential of the moment. Believe in the magic of the moment. Take rest and reprieve to refresh your focus and mind. Sometimes, we take on so many responsibilities that we lose ourselves in our own lives. Take the time to get to know yourself better. Take the time to maintenance your psychological well-being. A key component of mindfulness is to also be aware of yourself in the moment. How are you? How can you practice some self-love and self-care in this moment? Find and practice balance. Cultivate your inner peace.

Image by Alexandr Ivanov from Pixabay

Enact boundaries:
Enacting boundaries for yourself and others is an act of self-love. What are you allowing into your life? Are you allowing a lot of negativity into your life? Is it absolutely necessary to let this negativity into your life? Can you enact some rules or boundaries to limit your exposure? Examples of negativity are negative unsupportive people, drama, gossip, and things we have no power to change or that we are not prepared to get involved with. Surround yourself with people who are supportive, who love you, who bring out the best in you. Pick and choose your battles. Keep in mind that every time to choose one thing, you choose to not do another. Sometimes it will serve us well to unplug and focus on just one thing at a time. Do you need to check your messages constantly? How about your email? How about the news? Can you set some boundaries for yourself that will serve you better to do the things you actually wish to do? Stop standing in your own way!

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