Some people have social confidence to spare. It’s easy to see that some children are seemingly born with great social confidence, while others are not. Social confidence seems to come and go for most adults.

A serious lack of social confidence can lead to isolation and stifle career growth. If there’s one part of your life in which it pays to be confident, it’s in your social interactions.

Use these strategies to increase your social confidence and feel comfortable in all social situations:

1. Practice. Every person that crosses your path is a practice partner for your social skills. The more practice you get, the better you’ll become at interacting with others. The better you become, the more confident you’ll feel. There are all kinds of things you can practice:

– Eye contact
– Small talk
– Non-verbal communication
– Telling jokes
– And more

2. Rehearse. Imagine yourself being successful socially. Before you head into a social situation, rehearse in your mind. See yourself being confident and competent. Imagine others responding to you in a positive way. In time, you’ll learn to feel the same way out in the real world.

3. Adopt an effective attitude. It’s not a matter of life and death. No one is judging you or spending any of their time thinking about you. In fact, they’re probably wondering what you’re thinking about them.

– Interacting with people in a social context should be fun and pleasant. Have a reasonable perspective on the situation.

4. Focus on self-development. When you feel better about yourself, you’ll be more socially confident. Whether that means getting in shape, learning a new skill, or meditation, any enhancements you make will leave you feeling more confident.

5. Learn. Learn about communication. Pick one area, such as nonverbal communication, and become an expert. Then, get out and practice. When you’ve mastered that, pick a new area to learn about. The more you know, the better you’ll become. That leads to real confidence.

6. Avoid the need to be perfect. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be the funniest person at the party. You don’t have to be the most charming person in the bar. Perfection is an unreasonable goal that leads to anxiety and a lack of confidence.

7. Join a social group. You know a group of people that hang out together. It might be at work. It might be a friend that has a separate group of friends. See if you can join, too. Finding the right group of people can boost your social confidence.

– Perhaps you already have a group of friends. Spend more time with them. Or, you might form your own group and become the social director!

8. Combine social events with activities you’re good at. Are you a great softball player? Join a softball league. Are you an expert at riding a motorcycle? Join a motorcycle club. Find an activity you excel at and turn it into a social activity.

– Make a list of everything you do better than the average person. Now, find a way to do that in a group setting. You might join a band, a chess club, or a group that square dances on the weekend.

Think about how much your life would change if you were more socially confident. How would it impact your career? How would your social life be affected?

It’s hard to think of any potential downside to having greater social confidence. If you weren’t lucky enough to be born with perpetual confidence, you’ll want to grow and nurture this important attribute.

You probably know more than your fair share of negative people! Since they’re everywhere, it’s important to know how to coexist with them.

Negative people can have an impact on your attitude and your day. But, that doesn’t have to be the case. There are ways to mitigate the effect that negative people have on you.

Practice these strategies to avoid allowing negative people to negatively impact your life:

1, Understand that you can only control yourself, but you can influence others. You can’t snap your fingers and make the people around you take a more positive view of the world. But you can control yourself and how you choose to react to their negativity.

You might even be able to sway people over to your way of thinking a little bit. Set a good example and be a positive influence on those around you.

Accept people for who they are. It’s just easier that way

2. Be grateful. One way to maintain a positive attitude is to remind yourself of the positive. When you’re feeling run down by the negativity around you, make a quick mental list of the things in your life that you’re thankful for. It will give your mood a quick boost.

3. Remember that it’s not about you. Everyone has their challenges and issues. There’s no reason to be upset that someone has a negative attitude. It likely doesn’t have anything to do with you at all. It could be circumstances in their life or their basic nature. Just keep on doing what you’re doing.

4. You have the choice to be positive or negative. You can choose to be affected or not by the people around you. Focus on yourself and keep your chin up. Take care of your business and let others view the world however they choose.

5. Speak up. Sometimes it can be helpful to tell people to just cut it out. Many people will push until someone calls them on their behavior. Have a frank talk with someone that’s perpetually negative. Maybe they’re not aware of the impact they’re having on others.

6. Spend time with positive people. Recharge your batteries with the positive energy of other positive people. Get away from those negative people and spend time with people full of positive attitude. It doesn’t take long to recenter yourself when you surround yourself with the right people.

7. Make the most of your time alone. Make the most of the time you have to yourself. Do things you really enjoy doing. Read positive affirmations. Watch feel-good movies. Put your attention on positivity. It can be like armor against negative people.

8. Headphone can be your friend. If the situation permits, put on some headphones or earbuds. What you can’t hear can’t bother you. Consider listening to a positive podcast or music that makes you feel good. If your work situation allows this, it would be silly not to take advantage of it.

9. Stay away. There are plenty of people in your life that are optional. Stay away from negative people that you don’t have to associate with. You have some control over who is part of your life and who is not.

Negative people will drag you down if you let them. Take steps to minimize the impact they have on your life. Practice gratitude each day, and you can maintain a positive perspective. Block negative people out with headphones and stay away from as many negative people as possible.

Negative people will always be around, but you can deal with them and still be a positive person.

You can accomplish anything if you’re willing to fail along the way. Failure is a consistent part of success. The most successful people fail far more often than the least successful people.

Life is full of setbacks. The question is whether you allow failure and other setbacks to derail your efforts. Everyone can learn to better deal with these common annoyances on the road to success.

Failure is a funny thing. It feels embarrassing and catastrophic, but that’s rarely the case. You fail every day. When you think your keys are in the kitchen drawer, but discover they are not, you failed. However, you don’t let it bother you. Instead, you just look somewhere else.

Dealing with failure can be that simple. If your first attempt doesn’t work, try something else.

The same can be said for your 30th failed attempt. Most people try a time or two and then give up. They decide it either can’t be done, or the stress of failing becomes too much to bear.

Use this process to overcome failure:

1. Maintain your composure. Nothing will derail your progress like becoming emotionally distraught or quitting altogether. Undesirable results happen more often than not. It’s important to understand this fact.

When you expect that you’ll sometimes fail, it won’t bother you nearly as much. You simply keep going.

2. Determine what went wrong. If possible, determine the error in your approach. Do your best to understand exactly what happened and why. If you don’t understand the issue, you can’t correct it.

3. Maybe you just need to try again. Some things just naturally have high failure rates, like sales. For some products and services, you might face 100s of failures between successes. There’s no reason to fret, just try again. And again. And again.

4. Alter your approach. It’s important to keep improving your method. No matter how great you are at something, it can always be better. Take a few minutes each day and adjust your approach.

5. Look for alternatives. Maybe you need to try a completely new approach. There are often multiple ways around any obstacle. Maybe you can find a better alternative. For example, if you’ve been cold-calling for clients, maybe it would be better to:

– Cold-email
– Ask people you know for referrals
– Show up in person
– Attend meetups or conventions
– Send postcards
– Pass out flyers
– Send lumpy mail
– If you’ve thoroughly investigated one method, try another.

6. Sharpen your axe. Sometimes it’s not about how hard you chop at the trees. It’s about how sharp your axe is. Develop yourself each day. Work on your general sales skills and charisma if those are useful. A chemist might brush up on his knowledge of synthetic organic chemistry.

7. Work on your coping skills. Figure out the best ways to handle the stress and other negative emotions that commonly accompany failure and setbacks.

Keep your options healthy. Calling a friend, exercise, and meditation are examples of acceptable options.

Using drugs, alcohol, or food are examples of unhealthy coping strategies.

You can’t succeed if you can’t handle failure. Most of us are far more afraid of failure than we should be. A failed sales call or 30-foot putt isn’t a life and death matter. The most successful people fail more often than they succeed. It’s just part of the game.

One of the best ways to predict your success is to look at your ability to handle failure. Successful people handle failure without any undo fuss. Just learn and keep going.

If your life isn’t as fulfilling as you’d like, you probably aren’t making fulfillment a high priority. To maximize anything in your life, whether it be your health, income, or fun, it has to be a priority.

You can restructure your life and make fulfillment one of your most important objectives. Fulfillment might be a lot closer than you realize!

Get more of what you want out of each day with these strategies:

1. Identify the things that bring you fulfillment. It’s hard to have a life overflowing with fulfillment if you don’t even know what makes you feel fulfilled. What do you currently find fulfilling in your life? What have you found fulfilling in the past? What other things do you believe you would find fulfilling?

2. Identify the things in your life that don’t bring fulfillment. What are you currently spending time on regularly that doesn’t really matter to you? Most of our days aren’t particularly fulfilling, so your list of things might be quite long.

Pay special attention to those things that are optional. If they aren’t fulfilling, ask yourself why you do them.

3. Eliminate as many maintenance activities as possible. Most of our lives are filled with maintenance activities. These are things that are necessary to keep our lives on track, but don’t necessarily create positive change. These items take a lot of time and typically aren’t fulfilling to the vast majority of people.

Maintenance tasks include items like shopping for food and clothes, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and mowing the grass. These items need to be done, but they don’t necessarily need to be done by you.

As your finances allow, consider paying others to do these tasks for you. Use the extra time to find something more fulfilling to do. Unless, of course, you find trimming your hedges fulfilling.

4. Scrap the unnecessary. Things you don’t need in your life take up time and space that could be better spent on other items and activities.

Go through your house and your schedule and eliminate as many things as you can that you either don’t need or don’t love.

5. Make time each day for your passion. Everyone’s life gets shorter each day. Avoid believing that you’ll have time in the future to pursue your passions. Begin making time today for those meaningful activities and try to do them every single day.

6. Have goals for each day. Each day can be made more fulfilling just by making yourself feel like you made the most of it. Most people merely survive each day and have little to show for their time and effort. Have a plan for each day and strive to complete it. You’ll feel great at the end of the day.

7. Have longer term goals, too. Long-term goals are important, too. They provide an overall theme to your life. When your life is about something, and you’re diligently working toward it, you’ll feel more fulfilled. Most people lack short-term and long-term goals.

8. Surround yourself with the best people and avoid the worst. You’ll feel inspired, energized, and supported when you have great people in your life. You become a better version of yourself when you have wonderful people around you. Cut away the dead weight and make room for more great people.

To have more fulfillment, you must prioritize fulfillment. This simple fact escapes many people.

Does your life have a primary objective? Most people prioritize surviving, which is important, but rarely leads to fulfillment. Have a higher purpose and make your sense of fulfillment a daily goal. Make the most of each day.

Life isn’t as complicated or as scary as you might think. With just a few, simple truths, you can make your life a lot easier, more productive, and more enjoyable.

Most of us are worried about things that don’t matter. If we could see the reality of the situation, we’d worry a lot less.

We’re also making life more challenging than it needs to be.

Change your perspective with these simple truths, and your life will change, too:

1. The Universe doesn’t care. Sometimes it seems like the sun, the moon, and the stars are plotting against you, but it’s simply not true. The universe doesn’t play favorites. It doesn’t care. It’s up to you to create the life you desire.
2. Ninety-nine percent of the people in your life don’t really care, either. Most people aren’t that concerned with your happiness and success. They’re too busy worrying about themselves to worry about you. So, their opinions don’t really matter.
3. In the long run, your mistakes won’t matter. If you’re worried about messing up, making an incorrect decision, or a mistake you’ve made, ask yourself if it will make a difference in a hundred years. If not, you can avoid worrying about it.
4. It’s important to be choosy with regards to friends and romantic partners. Your life is incredibly important to you. Consequently, it’s important to be incredibly selective about who you allow into your life. The people in your life can make it significantly better or worse.
5. Things beyond your control don’t deserve your attention. If you can’t affect it, what’s the point in worrying about it? Put your attention on something you can influence.
6. Happiness and success don’t have to happen at the same time. There are successful people that are miserable. There are happy people that are struggling. Becoming successful won’t necessarily make you happy. If you seem to be failing left and right, it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.
7. Making a mediocre choice is better than making no choice. Even if you don’t make the best choice, at least you’re moving forward. When you fail to make a decision, the decision will ultimately be made for you, and it won’t be in your best interest.
8. It’s often surprising what people will do if you’ll just ask. Most people are more accommodating than you might think. Instead of trying to take on the world alone, considering asking for some help now and then. You never know if you don’t ask. If your request is refused, you’re not any worse off.
9. Make your health a priority. We’d all be better off if we had made eating nutritiously and exercising a habit in our teenage years. It’s not too late to start. The sooner, the better. Decide to make your health a priority today. If you wait for a health crisis to take your health seriously, you’ve fallen way behind.
10. How you spend your time matters. The quality of your life is determined by how you spend your time each day. Spending time on frivolous activities doesn’t add value to your life. Think about how you spend your time. If you’ll use it more productively, your life will be more fulfilling.

Understanding the basics of life makes the whole game easier. Life becomes complicated when we ignore these basic ideas. For example, if you believe the universe is fundamentally against you, and you let just anyone into your inner circle, where is your life likely to end up?

Accept responsibility for your life, realize what matters to you, and spend your time wisely. Allow these truths to set you free.

• 1. Self-confidence is situation specific. You can have a lot of self-confidence regarding your ability to do math, host a great party, or to play basketball. You can simultaneously have zero self-confidence in your ability to cook or sing.

• 2. Self-esteem is general impression you have of yourself. Self-esteem is a form of self-love. It’s how pleased you are with yourself in general. You can have a lot of self-confidence and very little self-esteem. The opposite can also be true.

• 3. Self-confidence is easier to build. Self-confidence is the result of preparation and success. For example, if you prepare well for an exam, you’ll have confidence in your ability to do well on that exam. When you have a history of doing well at something, you’ll develop self-confidence in that area.

4. Self-esteem can’t be built with achievements, but self-confidence can. A wall full of trophies and awards can really boost your self-confidence. However, it may do little for your self-esteem. You can be great at something without valuing yourself.

Building self-confidence is work, but the work that needs to be done is quite clear. If you want to be confident at shooting free-throws, shoot 100 of them each day until you’re consistently successful. Practice giving speeches until you’re good at giving them and you’ll develop self-confidence in that area of your life.

Learning to love yourself more will help you build self-esteem.

Practice these techniques to build your self-esteem:

1. Identify your values and use them to guide your decisions. List your values and refer back to your list often. Think about changes you can make to your life to live according to your values. Failing to adhere to your values is a leading cause of low self-esteem.
2. Reject perfection. If you’re trying to be perfect, you’re going to fail. If you consistently fail at living up to a standard, your self-esteem will suffer. Lower the bar to something achievable and give yourself the chance to be pleased with yourself.
3. Volunteer. Spend some of your time each week helping others that are less fortunate. This is a great way to show yourself that you’re a kind and giving person. Find an organization that serves a cause that you feel empathy for.
4. Manage your self-talk. If you spend all day insulting yourself, it’s tough to feel good about yourself. There’s no way to permanently shut down your inner vocalizations, but you can manage them. Stop yourself when you notice negative self-talk and turn it to something positive.

You can have one without the other. But it’s much more powerful to have both than to only have one. You can be wildly successful with just self-confidence, but your successes will never make you happy or satisfied. Both work together synergistically to create a life experience that can’t be duplicated any other way.

Build self-confidence in the areas that serve you. Build your self-esteem so you can love yourself.