Certain basic principles and values make people more effective.

• Focus on developing character, not personality.

• You are what you habitually do, so adopt productive habits.

• Excellence is a habit, not an aptitude.

• You are free because you can determine how you respond to circumstances.

• Choose sound principles — integrity, dignity, quality, service, patience, perseverance, caring, courage — and endeavor to live by them.

• Write a personal mission statement to clarify your principles and set your goals.

• Think of what you want people to say about you at your funeral; try to deserve it.

• Build trust in your relationships.

• Try to allocate time to your responsibilities and relationships.

• Understand that you have the ability to improve your habits and your life.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Highly effective people take the initiative, and they do not impose limits on themselves that prevent them from acting. They live by the “principles of personal vision.” and they see what they can do, and do it.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Begin by drafting a personal mission statement that outlines your goals and describes the kind of person you want to be. Decide what you need to change and what you want to become.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Never let your most important priorities fall victim to the least important.  The urgent is easy to see. The important is harder to discern. Emphasize planning, avoiding pitfalls, developing relationships, cultivating opportunities and getting adequate recreation.

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

A win/lose relationship is destructive, because it produces losers and, therefore, enemies and bad feelings, such as hatred, defeat, and hostility. Highly effective people become highly effective by multiplying their allies, not their enemies.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Find out what the other parties want, and what winning means to them. Don’t assume you know. Listen. Always try to understand what the other people want and need before you begin to outline your objectives. Do not object, argue, or oppose what you hear. Listen carefully and think about it.

Habit 6: Synergize

Cooperation multiplies the power of one. In combination with communication, it builds the two legs of a synergistic relationship.

Listen, reflect, respond, and cooperate.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Effective people take care of their bodies with a program of exercise that combines endurance, flexibility, and strength.
Effective people also care for their souls with mindfulness and self-renewal. Never neglect this spiritual dimension; it provides the energy for the rest of your life.

Learning is continuous, it never ends. 

Teach yourself what you have always wanted to learn and don’t wait for someone to do it. Self-education isn’t more difficult than classroom learning. But it can be harder and requires patience and some discipline.

Read about some tips to bring learning into your daily routine.

• Distraction-free learning environment
  
  It is helpful to have a soft of studying space, which helps to keep focused and to make you comfortable. As soon as you enter this space, your mind will be prepared to commit to the goal of learning.
  
  
• Research new words
  
  Important materials are often written in a highly intellectual language, so you’ll need interpretations to understand what the authors are trying to say. Whenever you don't know a word, spend a few minutes to look it up and try to use this new word in a conversation in the next 24 hours.
  
  
• Make notes and highlight important knowledge
  
  It will be hard to remember everything. As in school, have a notebook or a system to write down or record important information so that you can refer to it sometime in the future.
  
  
• Use different sources and mediums to learn
  
  Experiment with different mediums as books, videos, conversations, articles, online-classes,... and focus on the one that inspires you the most. The trick is to understand how you learn and then build a system around it.
  Always remember, not everything that we read on the internet is true. Check the facts from other sources or do in-depth research.
  
  
• Talk to people and share ideas
  
  You can learn a lot from meaningful conversations. Find people who are experts on the topics of your interests and ask questions. Nothing beats one-to-one communication with inspiring people.
  
  
• Set your learning schedule
  
  Self-education should be a commitment, not a pastime. Make sure to fit it in your schedule as a regular activity with deadlines and responsibilities. Ideally every single day for a dedicated and committed time.

Learn about your successes to become better.

Research has shown that people benefit significantly from positive feedback about their strengths and contributions.

The following article describes four tips for reflecting on successes.

1. Being aware of positive feedback

Some of us are well aware of critical feedback as it is easy to remember and somehow threatening and emotional. But often positive reflections on actions are taken for granted or even considered as uncomfortable. To hold moments of positivity in your memory practice might be necessary.

A method that helps is to capture these moments and even package them in notes. By collecting positive feedback, you can also identify patterns.

2. Ask more when receiving positive feedback

Rather than just taking positive feedback, you might ask follow-up questions to understand better and to dig deeper. Of course, a challenge is to ask this in the right way, which does not make you sound egoistic. 

Try to unpack vague comments and seek to understand what worked well for you and others in that situation.

3. Study and review your cases

If you receive positive feedback in person, take some time afterward to write and reflect on the case. You can even write it down in the form of a journal. 

With this time invested, you have a chance to reflect on your strengths and the possibilities to complement your weaknesses.

4. Practice to active your best self

In some environments, it can be hard to get any affirmation at all. A goal can be to find ways to show your best self in these contexts. 

You may require to think more broadly to bring what you have learned from being a valued contributor elsewhere back into your work. 

To develop self-confidence, you have to believe you have the right stuff, and that you are able to pull it off. Self-confidence is a deep-seated belief that you have inside you. 

With the help of affirmations, you have the abilities, inner resources, talents, and skills to create your desired results especially. 

Here are 6 tips that can help you develop maximum self-confidence.

1. Make the choice to believe in yourself
    
   It is an attitude you develop over time. To be successful, you have to remember, the past is the past and there is no payoff for blaming anyone for your current level of self-confidence. It’s your responsibility to take charge of your own self-concept and your beliefs.
   
   You must choose to believe that you can do anything you set your mind to, because the reality is, you can.
   
   
   
2. Use positive self-talk and positive visualizations to persuade yourself
   
   The latest brain research indicates that with enough positive self-talk and positive visualization combined with proper training, coaching and practice, anyone can learn to do almost anything.
   
   On the other hand, if you believe that it is impossible, you will not do what is necessary, and you will not produce the result. Either way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
   
   
   
3. Give up the words “I Can’t”
   
   If you are going to develop maximum levels of self-confidence and success, you need to give up the phrase “I can’t” and similar as these disempower you.
   
   They actually make you physically weaker when you say them. Your brain is designed to solve any problem and reach any goal that you give it, and the words you think and say affect your brain and body.
   
   
   
4. Ignore what others think of you
   
   If having others believing in you and your dream were a requirement for success, most of us would never accomplish anything.
   
   You need to base your decisions about what you want to do on your goals and desires–not the goals, desires, opinions, and judgments of your parents, friends, spouse, children, or co-workers.
   
   In fact, most of the time, most people don't think about you anyway. Meanwhile, all that time you’re wasting worrying about what other people think about your ideas, your goals, your clothes, your hair, and your home, could be better spent focusing on doing the things that will actually get you closer to achieving your goals.
   
   
   
5. Constantly acknowledge your positive past
   
   Most people in our culture remember their failures more than their successes.
   There is almost always more emotional intensity around your errors, mistakes, and failures than there was around your successes.
   
   Most people underestimate and underappreciate the number of successes they’ve had, compared to the number of failures they’ve had.
   
   The best way to counteract this phenomenon is to consciously focus on and celebrate your successes. Remembering and acknowledging that you have had successes in the past, will give you the self-confidence that you can have more successes in the future.
   
   
   
6. Create a victory journal for yourself
   
   A victory journal is a list of all your daily successes. The point is to keep a running list that you can add to each day.
   
   Begin by writing down your successes from yesterday and those from today, and keep the list going in order to log these victories into your long-term memory. As simple as this exercise is, it is extremely powerful in building your maximum confidence.