how to be sharp in life

1. Challenge your thoughts. Identify the negative beliefs you have about yourself and challenge them. Find evidence to the contrary. 2. Retrain your brain. Negative thinking becomes a habit ingrained in your brain. Rewire your brain by intentionally thinking new and positive thoughts, even if it feels awkward at first. You will create new wiring and new habits. 3. Smile. Arranging your facial muscles in a smile actually makes you feel happier and more confident. It triggers those feelings in your brain. 4. Stand up straight. Pay attention to your posture. It makes you appear more self-confident and therefore you feel more self-confident. 5. Practice. If you lack self-confidence in a skill, practice it. With improvement comes confidence. 6. Make a list. Write down your skills, abilities, successes, and gifts. In moments of low self-confidence, you forget all of the great things about you. Write them down so you can remember. 7. Interact. Isolating yourself allows you to get lost in negative thinking. Spend time withe other people. Make yourself, even if you don’t feel like it. 8. Create boundaries. Low self-confidence often goes hand-in-hand with people-pleasing. How are you allowing someone to control your decisions or behavior? What is one thing you could do to create a boundary here and reclaim yourself? 9. Write a vision. Write down exactly how you would like your life to look if you were creating it from scratch. When you put it in writing, you have begun the process of creating it. 10. Look your best. Take care of your appearance. Dress nicely. Get your hair styled. Put on make-up. When you look your best, you feel more self-confident. 11. Challenge a fear. Where are you holding yourself back? Where are you afraid of failure? Take one teeny tiny action in that area. Then another. 12. Hug your failures. Take a good look at past failures. Write down what you learned from them and how they served you. See how failure has been kind to you. 13. Define your values. Write down your most important life values. How are you living contrary to those values? What is one action you could take to correct that? 14. Find a mentor. Who is someone inspiring and motivating to you? Learn more about them, how they conduct their lives, and how they got where they are. 15. Focus on now. Most self-confidence problems stem from worry about the future or regret about the past. Focus on the task at hand. Immerse yourself in it so your mind is happily engaged. 16. Do something for others. When you are kind and giving by choice, you will find immense satisfaction and confidence in sharing and serving others. 17. Plan a pity party. If you need to dwell on your problems or failures, just allow yourself a 10 minute pity party a day. 18. Try something new. Anything. A hobby, a sport, a recipe. Just do something that you haven’t done before. 19. Read something inspirational. Keep a motivational book with you to give yourself a booster shot of self-confidence. One of my favorites is Fearless: Creating the Courage to Change the Things You Can by success coach Steve Chandler. 20. Call in reinforcements. Take a course to improve your self-confidence. And if you have issues from the past that you can’t resolve, seek the support of a counselor so that you can move forward.