Aristotle once said “We are what we repeatedly do; success is not an act, but a habit.”

All of us want to achieve a level of maturity, prosperity, success, fulfillment and happiness in life, yet few do. It’s because only few are willing to go through what it takes to achieve such a level.

What separate successful people from unsuccessful ones is their ability to organize their attitudes and actions (called habits) towards a specific goal and purpose. Successful individuals realize that to achieve their goals and prosperity, they need to push themselves and have a lot of sacrifices; challenge their personal limitations and become more skilled in many different areas of their life.

If you want to achieve success, but you don’t want to change and be out of your comfort zone, then you are probably won’t achieve success. Wishing success alone isn’t enough to bring it. You need to want and act upon it despite the challenges, fear and anxiety you might feel.

Remember that you are the driver of your life. You have the freedom and choice to act according to your will. There may be forces outside your control but your response will direct the result that will come out your way. So, develop constructive attitude and act with courage. Your efforts will direct you to maturity, success, prosperity, fulfillment and happiness in life.

Solid self-esteem brings with it a sense of self-confidence and empowerment, and grants us the ability to move through the world to overcome life’s challenges, difficulties, and setbacks. Assertiveness is the ability to confidently and non-aggressively put forth what one needs and wants. It also includes the ability to draw lines and enforce boundaries where needed. Self-esteem, self-confidence and assertiveness are behaviors that are learned – and it is never too late to learn and practice these positive aspects of self-care.

Many of the ideas now associated with assertiveness training were first proposed in Manuel J Smith’s book When I Say No, I Feel Guilty, published in 1975. The book explains that assertiveness is largely about expressing oneself clearly and resisting manipulation. It proclaims a ten-point ‘Bill of Assertive Rights‘, all based around one key principle: “The right to be the final judge of yourself is the prime assertive right which allows no one to manipulate you.”

The ‘Bill of Assertive Rights’ in When I Say No, I Feel Guilty reads as follows:

• You have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself.
• You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior.
• You have the right to judge if you are responsible for finding solutions to other people’s problems.
• You have the right to change your mind.
• You have the right to make mistakes – and be responsible for them.
• You have the right to say, “I don’t know.”
• You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them.
• You have the right to be illogical in making decisions.
• You have the right to say, “I don’t understand.”
• You have the right to say, “I don’t care.”

Remember, assertiveness is not about my needs mattering more than yours, or me getting what I want at your expense. Assertiveness is instead an affirmation of my right to ask for what I want. Even if you say no, it was okay for me to ask. Just as you’re allowed to ask for what you want. Just as I’m allowed to say no if I’m not prepared to give it to you, etc. When one person exercises her rights, she inspires others to do the same.

Self esteem is defined by Dr. Twerski as a true and accurate awareness of one’s skills, capabilities and limitations. The importance of this is clear – one can optimally adjust or adapt to his reality or environment only to the degree that one’s perception of reality is correct. An incorrect perception of reality is a delusion, and someone who is delusional cannot possibly adjust properly to reality.

If I am delusional about myself, there is no way I can live a happy and productive life. If I happen to be bright but think that I am dull, if I am personable but think myself to be undesirable, if I am handsome and think myself to be homely, I am delusional, and my distorted self-concept precludes an optimal adjustment to life. Indeed, I believe that the overwhelming number of psychological problems that are not of physiologic origin are invariably due to low self-esteem, i.e., to a distorted self-concept in which a person grossly underestimates oneself.

You may say, “I know myself thoroughly, and I know that I am unlikable or dull or unattractive or impersonal. Those are facts, and it’s not my imagination.” However, having weaknesses does not make you incompetent or a failure. The real purpose of life is to become the best person you can become and to utilize your abilities for good.

Healthy self-esteem does not solve all the problems of life. Struggle and conflict is intrinsic to life. Sooner or later everyone experiences anxiety and pain. While self-esteem can make one less vulnerable more durable, it cannot make one ignorant of his feelings and needs.

Think of self-esteem as the immune system of consciousness. If you have a healthy immune system, you might become ill, but you are less likely to; if you do become ill, you will likely recover faster, your resilience is greater. Similarly, if you have high self-esteem, you might still know times of emotional suffering, but less often and with a faster recovery. Its presence does not guarantee fulfillment, but its absence guarantees anxiety, frustration and despair. So, focus on building your self esteem by creating greater awareness and build the skills toward more durable, fulfilling life.

Has the convenience that technology given to us also hindered us from overcoming social anxiety? Has technology made managing social anxiety even more difficult by placing a virtual wall between human interaction and physical contact? The fact is that the Internet acts as a buffer between people. Living in the age of the Internet, cell phone, email, messaging, online social sites and caller ID, makes it easier for a socially anxious person to avoid managing social situations and by that make it difficult to overcome social anxiety disorder.

The advanced technology has made it possible for people to make a living, go shopping, use services, and have “relationships” without ever seeing or directly interacting with another person. The high-tech society of today seems to cater to the person who suffers from social anxiety.  Eventually, living in this virtual world can be detrimental and deeply unsatisfying.

Technology is like a fine wine. A glass of wine a day is good for you. However, if you drink too much, it can kill brain cells and also can cause liver problems. Technology, like wine, can affect your relationships if you take in too much of it and let it control your life.

It is great to have friends from all over the world that I’ve never met and probably never will, but I think it can also limit your growth when it comes to getting past the reality of shyness and social anxiety. It is important to understand that technology is a tool that can be helpful, but we need to use it wisely and apply what we learn with it, to the outside world. We have to make sure we don’t use technology as a crutch to avoid physical and mental social interaction.

Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

There is a certain set of characteristics that every healthy person has in common. If you are able to understand what some of these traits of healthy people are, you too will be able to adopt these practices and finally achieve some of the success and happiness that you’ve always wanted.

The following is a partial list of habits of healthy, mature and successful people:

• High level of integrity
• Set vision, goals and priorities
• Look at life as a journey for growth
• Develop courage and act despite fear
• Focus on the solution rather than the problem
• Being proactive rather than reactive or a victim
• Focus on opportunities (to grow) rather than obstacles
• Develop organizational, planning and time management skills
• Work methodically, systemically, yet creatively (think out-of-the-box)
• Align themselves with people with positive character
• Make difficult decision and accept its consequences
• Are lifelong-learners
• Avoid procrastination
• Look at the big picture
• Focus on half glass full
• Practice what they preach
• Open minded and open to feedback
• Focus on being wise and not on being right
• Be assertive (not aggressive and not passive)
• Effective communicator and thoughtful listener
• Identify and follow their core values and believes
• Are adaptable, resilient, flexible while embracing change
• Focus on changing themselves rather than changing others
• Develop their emotional intelligence (IE) and Social Intelligence (SI)

By developing healthy habits that you practice continuously on a daily basis, you can increase your chances of living a long and vibrant life. That is why establishing an early foundation of healthy habits can last a lifetime and will lead you to a become a better person who has better life.

Leo Tolstoy starts the novel Anna Karenina with the line, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” There is a great deal of reality in that idea, which applies to healthy, mature individuals. Healthy people exhibit common habits, while the habits of unsuccessful people are all over the place.

Everyone who is successful and fulfilled in life, or who has done great things in their life, has developed proper habits. Developing habits means building the foundation of your character and destiny. Habits are created gradually, slowly while taking small step approach to rich high level of personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

Creating habits is not an easy thing, and require consistent and commitment to do the same things again and again. When you initially learn something the pathways or connections in your brain are weak. The more frequently you think a particular thought, have a particular attitude or act in a certain way the stronger the pathways become, forming an automatic habit of thinking, and doing. When habits are formed, they hold you in the right truck and serve you well.

The key thing to remember about healthy and successful people is that they understand that simply wanting to achieve success is not enough, you have to match this desire with drive, effort, constructive mindset as well as committed to develop healthy habits and practices that would leads you to success and fulfillment. So, take care of yourself by building healthy habits.

One of the most important elements of building self esteem among children is the way parents criticize and praise their kids. Negative criticism implies that affection or approval is conditional on good performance. Positive criticism implies that we approve you regardless of the result of your performance.

• Encourage your child to have “doing-your-best” attitude and accepting it regardless of the outcome.
• Never tell kids that second best is not good enough or a failure. Ask your children to evaluate their performance. “Are you happy with it?” “Why?” “What did you get out of it?” Ask: “What would you do differently next time?”
• Ask a child what he needs in order to do as well as he wants. Maybe your child needs more sleep or to learn how to prioritize, or maybe need more practice.
• Offer support verbally and nonverbally. Validate his challenges. Empathize with the child: “This stuff is difficult, isn’t it?”  “It is ok, we can learn from it and do better next time.”
• Teach your child to plan and prioritize. If your child leaves her homework for the last minute and consequently doesn’t do well on a test, don’t be harsh with “I told you so.” Instead, capitalize on his own disappointment. “You’re disappointed with the way things turned out, are you?” Ask: “What can you do next time to be more prepared and make it better?”
• Words of encouragement work like magic. Few words of appreciation get results where criticism and ridicule fail. Give honest and sincere appreciation and encouragement to kids and they would do anything for you.
• Reward the process, attitude and the effort, not the talent or the product. Shifting focus to effort illuminates the key to mastery and improvement (not perfection).
• When a child gets a high grade on a paper, resist the urge to say: “You’re brilliant” or you are the best. These are not authentic statements. Instead say: “You’re a really good thinker.” Be specific: It’s great that you connected X to Y (a behavior to the outcome). Or ask a question that focuses attention on the thinking: “What got you interested in this?” If you praise kids’ intelligence and then they fail at something, they think they’re not smart anymore, and they lose interest in work. But kids praised for effort get energized in the face of difficulty and challenges.
• Praising effort makes kids (and adults) being aware of their own mental health. The brain is built so that it generates positive mood states – and subdues negative ones – as it works hard toward a meaningful goal.
• Do not supply material rewards for achievement. Instead, congratulate your kid. Ask why things worked out so well and what your child attributes her success to. You want kids to understand exactly which efforts pay off in which situations. Supplying external rewards kills internal motivation and turns an activity into inspiration-crushing work.

If we have the desire, we can find numerous good things about our kids in one single day. Don’t waste time in finding words for the perfect praise. Just keep our eyes and ears open and discover the little things we can appreciate our kids about, and tell them about it!

The following are a few questions to ponder in regards to the meaning of your life:

• What makes you smile? (Activities, people, events, hobbies, projects, etc.)
• What are you most grateful for?
• What is your greatest talent?
• When do you most feel that my life is meaningful?
• What did you do last year that give you strong feelings of self-respect?
• What are the ideals, causes you would be willing to dedicate your life for?
• Do you express your love to those who means most to you?
• What would you change if you could live my life over?
• What would bring more happiness into my life?
• What are the most significant accomplishments you have made in the past five years?
• What are the three biggest mistakes you have made in the past five years?
• What have you learnt from these mistakes?
• Do you have a vision of where you want to be within five and ten years from now?
• State your current life goals?
• What do you do to achieve these goals?
• What can you do in the next year toward these goals?
• What goals can you set for yourself for the next three years?
• What are the three pieces of advice you can give your children?
• Do you implement these advices in your life? If not, why?
• What one decision you avoided making last year?
• What are the most important relationships in your life?
• What can you do to strengthen these relationships now?
• What are three things you would like to change about yourself?
• Which is worse, failing or never trying?
• Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
• Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?
• Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?
• If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?
• Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?

The above meaningful questions have no right or wrong answers. Yet, sometimes only asking the right questions is the answer. You are the only one that can ask them and answer them.

What is courage? Courage is quality of being brave. It is the ability to face danger, difficulty, uncertainty, or pain. It is the ability to overcome fear without being deflected from a chosen course of action.

The courage to act is the strength to carry out a goal while facing internal and external difficulties. To have courage is to feel fear, and to act in spite of it. It means to do the right thing despite obstacles, challenges, under condition of uncertainly and regardless of the outcome (failure or success).

“The courage to be is” is courage while facing an internal obstacles. It is the courage to hold onto meaning in the face of doubt, ambiguity and uncertainty. The courage to be is the alternative to despair. It is the courage required by a recently bereaved spouse sitting alone in an empty apartment and wondering how she can find the strength to live without her beloved husband. It is the courage required by someone suffering from chronic illness, and the people who care about them. It is the courage required by someone suffering from depression, searching each morning for a reason to get out of bed.

And it is also the courage required by each of us, even in the most normal of circumstances. How many of us, in a quiet moment, have been struck by a sudden doubt about the meaning that underpins our lives, and a fear that the goals we had set for ourselves may not in the end be realized. It is at moments like these that the courage to be is required.

Even when we come to doubt what we thought were our goals, even when we encounter a crack in the foundation of meaning, it is important to know that all is not lost. There is still larger meaning for us to find; there are still values of ultimate concern to which we can dedicate ourselves and commit ourselves to life no matter what is the situation.

As Edgar Guest said in her poem “Courage was never designed for show; It isn’t a thing that can come and go; It’s written in victory and defeat, and every trial a man may meet.“ Courage is more than a daring deed. It’s the breath of life and a strong man’s creed.”

Ultimately, courage is the recognition of something beyond ourselves. It is the commitment to a meaning that transcends our instinct for personal safety, our craving for societal approval, and the challenge of our personal doubts. When you do courage and take risks, you build an important positive future. Being courageous is the key to improving self-esteem and at the same time creates a fulfilling life.

Every time you shift your thinking and choose a positive and constructive attitude, you upgrade the software of your mind and build your self esteem. You send a clear message to your brain that says: “I am responsible for my attitude and happiness and choose to do what it takes to be fulfilled.”

This does not mean that there won’t be times when you are confronted with fear of failure or success, or that you won’t, on occasion, question your ability. What it does mean is that as soon as you notice you are feeling” less than” or “not good enough” you will:

1. Be aware and awake to your thoughts and feelings.
2. Identify the thoughts that result in your feelings negatively.
   (What are you telling yourself about the situation, which many times results of low self esteem?)
3. Shift your attention to thoughts supporting healthy and constructive one (which build positive self esteem.)

Here is an example of how it works: It is the fall season and all of the leaves have fallen. A couple spends many hours working on their yard fixing it. The wife says to her husband, “We have really gotten a lot accomplished today.” She focuses on the action. The husband assesses that the yard will take at least another six- to eight hours of work, so he replies, “We haven’t even made a dent in it yet.” The wife says, “Well, we filled up 30 bags, and I think that’s great.” The husband says, “We have at least 60 more bags to go.”

Who do you think most enjoys doing the work? Who is more appreciative of the actual experience of raking leaves? If we could interview the wife and the husband, we would find that the wife actually appreciated the sunny, chilly day and the fitness involved in the rigorous work. She was able to see the progress being made. The husband, on the other hand, is on a mission to complete the task; therefore he is overwhelmed by the work and that’s all he can think about—the work that is left undone.

If you want to have a powerful, constructive and passionate life, then you need to focus on the positives. Why not focusing on what you want, rather on what you don’t want. Why not focusing on accepting yourself, rather than rejecting yourself. So, focus on the positives, rather than the negatives. Remember, your thoughts are the most powerful thing you own.