"A mindset is like your default way of thinking about things."

"Mindset work is key to nearly every aspect of our emotional health and wellbeing, but it’s especially helpful if you struggle with anxiety and self-doubt and want to become more confident."

"1. Shift your expectations from idealistic to realistic"

"Expectations themselves aren’t a problem. The problem is that we rarely examine or update our expectations…"

"So, anytime you find yourself getting frustrated or resentful, use it as a cue to check in on your expectations, and if at all possible, update them to be more realistic."

"2. Shift your judgments from moral to mechanical"

"When you’re in the habit of judging things—including yourself—in moral terms (right vs wrong, good vs bad), it’s easy to end up moralizing about things that aren’t actually moral. This results in an extra layer of guilt or shame that’s both unnecessary and confidence-killing."

"This mechanical judgment triggers curiosity rather than shame. And because your overall level of painful emotion is lower, you’ll be more confident letting it go and moving on with less anxiety and self-doubt."

"There’s a time and place for moral judgments. But if you want to feel more confident and resilient, be careful not to moralize things that aren’t actually moral."

"3. Shift your criticism from people to actions"

"criticisms are dangerous because they easily slip from healthy and productive to unhealthy and hurtful. And one of the ways criticism, especially self-criticism, is unhealthy is that it makes us anxious and insecure."

"Now, for a variety of reasons, this bit of self-criticism is probably unhealthy and unproductive—mostly because it criticizes you as a person rather than some specific action."

"be careful with criticism, including self-criticism. One simple way to distinguish whether your criticism might be helpful vs unhelpful is whether you’re criticizing a specific behavior or action vs an entire person."

"4. Shift your focus from thoughts and feelings to behavior"

"While it’s good to be aware of your thoughts and feelings, and to periodically reflect on them, most people who are anxious and insecure spend WAY too much time thinking about how to feel better and far too little time doing confidence-building things despite how they feel."

"1. Reframe procrastination as values problem, not a productivity problem"

"But frequently, it’s your mind’s way of sending you an important (if uncomfortable) message:"

"You don’t really want the things you say you want."

"You want to want that thing but you don’t really want it."

"You do want the thing, but you’re not clear enough about why."

"Working harder is rarely the solution to chronic procrastination because it just begs the question of why you can’t work harder."

"Do I procrastinate because I’m lazy or do I procrastinate because I’m not being totally honest or clear with myself about how much I value my work?"

"2. Stop using self-criticism as motivation"

"Then—and this is the critical thing to realize—it seems to work!"

"But what most people don’t realize is that they actually have far less energy and enthusiasm for their work immediately after a tirade of self-judgment and condemnation."

"Remind yourself that it’s normal to feel resistance to doing meaningful, hard work."

"But at the end of the day, you are the only one who can make a change now. You are the only one who can substitute a self-criticism habit for a self-compassion habit."

"3. Get out of your head (and change your environment instead)"

"Most procrastinators overestimate the importance of their mental environment and underestimate the importance of their physical and social environment."

"If you struggle with chronic procrastination, take some time to think deeply about the environment in which you keep procrastinating…"

"Your environment matters. A lot."

"And if you’ve struggled with chronic procrastination for a while, and tried lots of other things without much success, it’s entirely possible that what you really need is a significant change in your environment."

"Why do we claim to want things but never fully pursue them?"

"Can you honestly say you want something if you haven’t done the work to identify and accept all the tradeoffs required to pursue it?"

"Maybe we need to be much more clear with ourselves about want in the “sure that sounds nice” sense of the word and want in the “I have done the hard work to examine all the tradeoffs associated with pursuing this thing and am still willing to commit to it” sense?"

"It seems like a set up for frustration and disappointment if we’re confusing those things—especially if we’re expecting the results of the latter while only putting in the work of the former."

"How much we really want something is proportional to how much we’re willing to sacrifice for it."

"If that’s true, a good way to test how much you really want something is to honestly examine what tradeoffs are required to get there and whether you’re really willing to make those trade-offs."

"Because while all sorts of things can help you feel better about yourself for a moment, they won’t make much of a dent in how you feel about yourself long term."

"While feelings are quick to come and quick to go, beliefs are built up over time."

"But to do those things consistently, it helps if you start very small so that they are doable and not one more thing you end up procrastinating on."

"People with low self-esteem tend to have a negativity bias when it comes to themselves:"

"A simple way to begin to correct this negativity bias is to keep a daily self-gratitude diary."

"By getting in the habit of reminding yourself of positive things you’ve done, you can reduce your negativity bias and become more in touch with the many positive and esteem-worthy things you already do but rarely give yourself credit for."

"2. Schedule an Early-Morning Win"

"The win can be anything as long as it leads to a small sense of accomplishment and pride in yourself."

"If you’re serious about improving your self-esteem, then get serious about scheduling and protecting time to build a habit that will improve it."

"3. Flip Regrets into Values"

"One of the biggest reasons people get stuck in low self-esteem is the habit of self-criticism and negative self-talk."

"And the more overly-focused you are on your regrets, the harder it is going to be to build healthy self-esteem."

"In other words, look at your regret not as a bad thing, but instead, as a message signaling something about your values and what matters most to you."

"Regret is a future-facing emotion. We feel it so that we can be motivated to be better in the future."