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In order to excel at life, you have to want to excel at life.  You will have to develop discipline, perseverance, resilience, and drive.  The easiest road to developing these qualities is learning to value yourself for your abilities, courage, worth, and valuing your existence  Engage in positive self-talk by writing down all the positive qualities you can think of about yourself.  Add to this list as much as you can. Read this list every morning when you start your day.  You are the agent in creating your life, so if you are going to be mentally and emotionally prepared to strive to excel in your life, you need to nurture your self-confidence to the point that you believe in yourself. Celebrate yourself for even wanting to create an excellent life. You may have received negative messages in the past from your childhood, your social experiences, or the society you live in.  Those messages can be much more ingrained than you think.  Write down every negative thing you have ever been told, or that you think about yourself.  Take some time to look at that list and start reframing negative themes that there may be in your life.  For example, everyone has made mistakes in their life.  Are you still holding on to guilt and shame about these mistakes?  Did someone tell you that you were stupid or worthless while you were growing up?  Do you still somehow hold on to that message and let it hinder you? In order to excel at life, you must begin to shed those negative messages and replacing them with positive ones.  An easy example of this that most people engage in is negative self-talk.  Say you dropped your keys on accident.  What are the first thoughts in your head?  Perhaps you think, “I’m so stupid, I can’t even hold on to keys.”  If you pay attention, you may find you speak very harshly to yourself throughout the day.  In striving to excel, you are the coach, the team, and the star player.  You have to start treating yourself as someone who deserves the excellent life you are building. .  A major factor in creating lasting, positive change in your life is that you have to see yourself as someone who can create change.  Take responsibility for who you are, what you do, and what you choose.  Embrace the power of choice in your life, and understand that every day you are making choices.  Remove the word "can't" from your vocabulary. "Can't" is a word that stops creativity and makes you feel stuck in your situation. But the word is usually a replacement for a real meaning. For example, you might say, "I can't speak French." What you really mean to say is: "I don't know how to speak French." When you say "can't," there is an assumption that there is no solution. If you say that you don't know how to do something, then you recognize that you have agency in a situation to change how you act or think.  For example, yes, you get up and go to work every day….but do you HAVE to?  Absolutely not.  You could choose to stay in bed and lose your job.  Choices have consequences, but it is very important to shift the focus from things you feel you are bound by to understanding the power of choice you have in your life.  Will you choose to go to work?  Yes, because you don’t want the consequences of losing your job.  It’s still a choice.  You are an agent of change, and you make choices every day.  Empower yourself by fully embracing the power of choice that you have. Is the glass half empty or half full?  Or is it just a glass with some water in it?  Creating a life where you feel you are excelling depends heavily on your perspective. Along with creativity, resilience, and determination, your perspective on life and reality goes a long way in determining feeling as though you are striving for mastery of your life.  Write down some examples of things that recently disappointed you and then write down how you felt about it.  For example, maybe your small cupcake business isn’t doing so well.  Does that mean defeat to you?  Does that mean that life is working against you so that you never will be happy?  Take a look at the statements you have written down.  Perhaps they are black and white statements like: “I will never get what I want.  Nothing ever goes my way.” Try reframing these statements and internalizing a new perspective.  For example, instead of taking the perspective that you have failed, try to reframe that thought. Tell yourself, “Okay, there must be another way to do business, something else I can try, a different way to market, or maybe I need to explore a different business model.” Try to notice if you shut yourself down without giving a new perspective a chance.  In order to excel at life, you have to view life as something that you want and will excel at with endless possibilities and a healthy desire to strive to explore those possibilities. It is important to remember to be kind and easy on yourself.  In order to create resiliency, self-esteem, and self-worth, you must be okay with things not working out.  To keep the flame of determination as you work towards excelling at your life, you must keep yourself in a healthy mind space of doing your best according to the circumstances.   Always doing your best regardless of outcome also will reduce your stress and keep the focus on things that you can control.  This will help you empower yourself, strengthen your sense of agency, and let go of stresses over things outside of your control.  You did your best, and that is excelling.  Let’s say that your cupcake business just isn’t a feasible business venture.  If you explored all your options, enacted creative changes, and truly gave your all in making the cupcakes sell, you have done your best.  Although you may perceive your cupcake business a failure, you did your best, and that is a success.  You got practice using all of your skills and brilliance and that is a success.  You tried something different.  That is a success.  Knowing you did your best and focusing on that as excelling instead of the outcome will help you keep trying new things and striving for the life you want. Doing your best will be different for everyone depending on the day, circumstances and context.  If you were sick and didn’t execute a project to your expectations, take into consideration that you were sick.  You did the project anyway, and under the circumstances of being sick, you did your best.  That’s all you can do, and doing your best is always reason to feel good about yourself. In your journal, start making daily logs of ways that you did your best that day.  Maybe you had a difficult day at work where you felt misunderstood or blamed for something that went wrong.  It’s easy to feel shame and embarrassed, but instead honestly ask yourself, did I do my best?  Journal about ways you did do your best and ways you could have done things differently.

Summary:
Write down your positive qualities. Reframe negative themes in your life. Empower yourself Keep a positive perspective. Remind yourself that you’re doing your best. Appreciate your circumstances. Keep a daily log of what you did best.