In a society that wants everyone to be mediocre, you can work to become the best version of yourself. This will help to set you apart from others. These are ten ways how you can become the best version of yourself.

10 Ways To Become The Best Version Of Yourself

These are ten ways to become the best version of yourself.

[bctt tweet=”You can become the best version of yourself once you accept self-responsibility and start to set goals.” username=”@secure_single”]

Self-Discipline

First, practice self-discipline. Discipline leads to freedom. It sounds counterintuitive, but it is true. When you start to be disciplined in your life, you will find that you will begin to reach your goals.

Some simple ways to start practicing self-discipline are to make your bed each morning, get up and go to bed regularly, and work to reach your goals. Self-discipline is a necessity if you want to achieve any goals you may have for yourself.

Recommended – How Self-Discipline Changed My Life

Set Goals

Second, set goals. If you do not have goals, you will remain where you are. You can set realistic goals for yourself.

By having goals, you are challenging yourself to work to complete a project or a task by a deadline. With each goal that you achieve, the more confident you will become.

You can break your goals into short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. This will allow you to manage your time better while you work to accomplish each objective you want to achieve.

You can learn to set goals, plan strategy, and apply resources to reach your goals.

Money Management

The third way is to learn the basics of money management. You can track how much income you have each month and how much you spend. You can start to follow a budget, which will help you manage your money better.

The first thing you can do is start to pay off any debt you may have. Second, you can build an emergency fund of whatever you think is reasonable as an emergency expense. Third, you can start budgeting money into your savings account. You can then begin investing some money once your regular costs are covered.

Passive Income Streams

Fourth, you can learn to make passive income streams. You can work to slowly leave the nine-to-five job that you may hate and transition to doing something that you enjoy. One of the great things about the Internet is that it has made it more accessible for people to make passive income.

When starting, you want to make passive income streams matching your strengths. Passive income streams also take more time to build compared to receiving a paycheck from an employer for exchanging your time for money.

Surround Yourself With Like-Minded People

Fifth, you want to surround yourself with like-minded people. If you have goals, but your other friends don’t, then you may want to consider finding new friends. If you can’t immediately make new friends who have the same goals, you want to improve yourself to surround yourself with people who have goals like you.

[bctt tweet=”The people you choose to spend time with are a reflection of you. They can either reflect positively or negatively on you.” username=”@secure_single”]

Time Management

The sixth way is time management. You can start to value your time. When you value your time, you will start reaching your goal. You can begin to list the tasks that need to be done in order of importance. You can also devise a strategy that works best for you to organize your day.

The strategy that I have come up with that works best for me is to do my tedious tasks in boring tasks in the morning, creative tasks in the afternoon and evening, and work to complete one large task. By doing this, I also allow myself to work to achieve a goal.

Priority Management

Seventh, you can begin to manage your priorities. You can list your top three to five priorities that you need to do the next day. You can then list what you want to get done for the following day. You could also list what you want to do soon. These are some ways to start to manage your priorities better. You can reach your goals as you manage your time and priorities better.

Self-Education

Eighth is self-education. The reality is that college does not prepare you for the real world. The purpose of education, and the higher education system, is to make you a good obedient employee.

Self-learning is how you develop skills and improve yourself. You can continue to improve by learning about an area of knowledge that you find exciting and honing your skills. You always continue learning. You are a lifelong student when you embrace self-education.

[bctt tweet=”Self-education is empowering.” username=”@secure_single”]

Recommended – 12 Reasons Why Young People Should Not Go To College

Take Risks

Ninth, you can learn to take risks. Taking chances is how you grow as a person. When you stay in your safe bubble, you remain where you are, and you are static. In contrast, when you take a risk, you force yourself to learn new things and become uncomfortable.

[bctt tweet=”You only improve yourself when you are uncomfortable. Comfort is the enemy of greatness.” username=”@secure_single”]

Develop Skills

Finally, you must continue to develop skills. You will always need to hone your skills to remain competitive in your industry and among your workers. You will want to continue to build your skills in your personal and professional life too.

You could use some of your skills to take on a second job or a side hustle to earn extra income. You could even decide to use your skills to start a business.

You can always work to improve yourself, from improving your skills to finding ways to increase your income to use your time better.

Recommended – 15 Habits To Build Wealth For Singles

Summary

These are ten ways to work to become the best version of yourself. It is up to you to decide whether you want to improve yourself. You can start to invest in yourself to thrive as a single person.

Secure Single is now on Substack. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack to get powerful self-development strategies sent directly to your email.

How does mindset affect success? More than you may think. What you think about directly connects to how you view the world and whether you can achieve success. Three main minds affect whether or not you succeed. Two are harmful and affect you psychologically, holding you back from success; the third can help lead you to success. This is how mindset affects success.

How Mindset Affects Success

Victim Mindset

[bctt tweet=”There are three common mindsets: victim mindset, fixed mindset, and growth mindset. ” username=”@secure_single”]

First is the victim mindset. The person who has a victim mindset believes that they are a victim. Someone may claim to be a victim for real, imaginary, or made up to push an agenda. No matter which of the three reasons it may be, the person ultimately chooses to be a victim.

They consider themselves to be the victims of actions by others. The actions may or may not directly affect them, but they claim victimhood.

Some common signs of the victim mindset include:

• You always claim victimhood and claim to be a victim of something.
  • Real
  • Imagined
  • Made up to push an agenda.
• You blame others for your problems.
• You enjoy sharing your tragic stories with others to get a reaction from them.
• You refuse to improve your life because you believe you are a victim.

Those who have a victim mindset then want the wrong to be corrected, most often through coercion through an institution, particularly government laws, and regulations. Rather than finding a way to deal with the problem themselves, they often want to use force on another person or organization that disagrees with them.

The victim mindset has become popular today because if you claim victimhood for something, you can gain the acceptance of popular culture and a segment of the population. This can then be used as social currency within those circles.

An example of the victim mindset may be if you are poor, you blame income inequality or things that may contribute to income inequality. You continue to blame external things (wealthy people, central banks, cost of living) to claim victimhood status instead of finding ways to stop being poor. Deep inside, you may secretly enjoy the attention that being a victim gets you from others.

The victim mindset is different from the fixed mindset in that the person always thinks they are a victim, while someone with a fixed mindset believes they cannot do something.

Fixed Mindset

The second is the fixed mindset. Someone who has a fixed mindset thinks they can’t do something. They either continue to make excuses or believe they can’t learn a new skill. They suffer from can’t syndrome. Rather than thinking that they can learn a new skill or improve themselves, people with a fixed mindset remain stuck where they are.

The fixed mindset is the one that is most often taught in the education system. Students are taught that there is only one way to solve a problem. They can either pass or fail a test. They want to get good grades to please their professor and get recommendations for when they apply for jobs after college.

Some signs that you have a fixed mindset include:

• You give up easily.
• You expect rewards without effort.
• They want to be rewarded without putting in the hard work.
• You allow setbacks to get in your way of finishing something.
• You believe that you have failed, so you stop.

An example of a fixed mindset is someone who says they can’t make more money. They make up excuses for not finding ways to increase their income. A person with a fixed mindset continues complaining rather than actively finding ways to make extra money or new income streams. They get in their own way.

A critical difference between the fixed and growth mindsets is that someone with the fixed mindset believes they cannot better themselves. They repeatedly say that they can’t do something.

Growth Mindset

Third is the growth mindset. People with a growth mindset challenge themselves to learn new things and skills, and they focus on self-improvement.

Some signs of the growth mindset are:

• You embrace challenges.
• You accept constructive criticism and negative feedback.
• You equate rewards with the effort you put into a project.
• You learn from your failures.
• You never give up.

An example is someone who is poor. Instead of blaming something external or thinking they can’t do something, they will find a way to make more money and increase their income. They could start a side hustle, get a second or third job, or learn to make passive income. They will put in the time and work to achieve their goal of wanting to make more money.

[bctt tweet=”A growth mindset can help you solve problems, achieve goals, and get where you want to be. It would help if you took action, did not give up, and did not expect to be rewarded unless you did the work. ” username=”@secure_single”]

Recommended – How To Use Failure As A Learning Experience

Summary

There are three common mindsets: victim mindset, fixed mindset, and growth mindset. It is up to you to decide which one you want to affect your psychology and life. You can change your mindset, but it will take time.

Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack to get more powerful self-development strategies.

[bctt tweet=”There are three main ways to learn: from history, from others, and your mistakes.” username=”@secure_single”]

The third way is the most challenging way to learn, but it often makes you learn your lesson so that you then want to learn from the first two in the future.

Failure is the best teacher because you decide to confront and learn from your failure or continue to repeat your mistakes. If you intend to learn from your failures, you are on your self-improvement journey. Many stories show how failure can help you discover what you want to do and what you are passionate about.

These are five ways how to use failure as a learning experience.

Jacob Warwick’s Story

Jacob Warwick is one story. He had no idea what he wanted to do after graduating high school. Warwick found himself always working odd jobs and hours to pay his bills. He was an entry-level journalist at NBC News in his early 20s. He later learned video editing, which taught him about digital marketing at Discovery.

He eventually landed the marketing strategist role through hard work, determination, and learning digital marketing strategy by working for many startups. He ultimately found himself working in Silicon Valley, where Xerox hired him as a young director of marketing.

Jacob Warwick would later go on to become the CEO and co-founder of Discover Podium. He went from working odd jobs and having no idea what he would do to having a company that makes millions of dollars in revenue. Warwick discovered that his passion was digital marketing, to use his marketing talent later to connect people and leaders with jobs they love doing.

Failure can help you in the same way if you learn from your failures.

5 Ways How To Use Failure As A Learning Experience

Teaches You What Not To Do

First, failure teaches you what not to do. You can decipher what you should not do because you could not complete the task, project, or skills you were working toward. You may not be suited for what you were trying to do. Or, maybe you were going about it incorrectly and needed to find another way.

Rather than remaining stuck in your ways, you need to find a solution. Whatever you were doing was not working, and you had to find a creative solution to resolve the problem that was giving you trouble.

Learn From Past Failures

Second, you can learn from your past failures. Rather than viewing your failures as something you could not do, you can view them as a chance to learn more about yourself. You may not be the best at whatever you are working on. That may be a sign that you should move on to something else.

Learning from your failures instead of being angry about your mistakes shows maturity.

Give You Ideas For What To Do

Third, your failures may give you ideas for improving yourself or a project you are working on. You will have tried things that you know you are not good at, don’t enjoy, and don’t have the skills to do. This could eventually keep pushing you by giving you ideas to try something different until you discover what you are passionate about it and skilled at.

Better Version Of A Project

Fourth, failure can help you make a better version. You may have to go through one-hundred different versions of the same project to create the final rendition finally. The first version of something is always flawed. The same applies to learning from mistakes and failures.

[bctt tweet=”Each mistake is an opportunity to learn from and to work to improve yourself.” username=”@secure_single”]

Make You Not Want To Repeat Past Mistakes

Finally, failure makes you want to avoid repeating past mistakes. You will want to prevent yourself from repeating your past failures. You will remember what your core failures were. After learning from your mistakes, you will take precautions to ensure they do not happen again. You will learn better habits, organization skills, or anything to limit your chances of failing.

Failure Teaches You Success

Failure can teach you success. Once you have learned from your mistakes, you know what not to do. If you are willing to learn, mistakes can benefit your future. That knowledge can help you in future projects so that you know the best practices rather than doing things incorrectly.

The lessons from past failures can be used as a ladder to work your way up to success or choose to stop. You learn resiliency by not giving up and learning from your mistakes. Determination is a characteristic of many successful people. You can continue despite your failures until you can solve the problem you have been trying to resolve.

Recommended – What Is Self-Confidence And Why Is It Important?

Summary

There is nothing wrong with failure. It is one of the three main ways how you learn. Failure can be the most demanding teacher, but it can teach you excellent lessons if you are willing to pay attention. You can then apply those lessons to other areas of your life.

Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!

How can self-confidence help you? Why do you want to be confident? What is self-confidence and why is it important?

Society does not want you to be confident because you are easier to control. When you have self-confidence, you will stand up to authorities and know you can do what you want. Self-confidence is freeing.

What Is Self-Confidence And Why Is It Important?

What Is Self-Confidence?

[bctt tweet=”Self-confidence is belief in oneself. Self-confidence is having or showing great faith in oneself or one’s ability.” username=”@secure_single”]

When you believe in yourself, you will more likely stand up for yourself and achieve your goals.

You will allow other people to trample over you when you do not have confidence.

Self-confidence is a form of internal validation. You validate yourself each time you improve yourself in little ways. Confidence is critical in self-development and helping you realize personal ambitions.

Why Is Self-Confidence Important?

When you lack confidence, it will be easier for people to use and manipulate you. You will also suffer from being a people pleaser and social conformity. Instead of having the confidence to stand up for yourself, toxic people know they can use you. You will do what they want because you haven’t learned to tell people “no” yet.

[bctt tweet=”Simply being able to tell someone “no” is a sign of self-confidence because you show that you value your time and can stand up for yourself.” username=”@secure_single”]

3 Reasons Why Self-Confidence Is Important

How Can Self-Confidence Help You

Self-confidence can help to better your life in many ways. These are three ways self-confidence can help you.

3 Ways How Self-Confidence Can Help You

Set And Achieve Goals

You will want to set and achieve goals. When you are confident, you can prioritize completing tasks that will help you to achieve goals. You can then work to accomplish the steps that must be done to realize your objective.

You can begin by setting realistic goals for yourself. It could be getting up each morning at 6 am. You can then work towards developing more advanced plans, such as I want to make six figures a year, then increase it to seven figures. I want to lose my belly fat.

You can learn how to become productive. You can create a schedule that will help you realize your objective. You can break your goals into short-term, medium-term, and long-term.

[bctt tweet=”You can then practice self-discipline and time management to achieve those goals. Before you know it, you will have accomplished your first goal.” username=”@secure_single”]

Stand Up For Yourself

You will start to stand up for yourself. You will stop letting other people use you and manipulate you. If you have been the person that allowed others to use you for too long, then once you start to stand up for yourself, you will feel much better.

You will primarily spend time with people who share your values and goals. You will only spend time with people you find interesting and working toward similar objectives. You will begin to slowly let the people who you longer find interesting or who are from your past fade away.

You can create boundaries with people. You will decide where to draw the line with toxic and negative people. Some toxic people you can eliminate from your life. There may be some negative people you may have to put up with at work or some social events, but you may be able to find ways to limit your interactions to the bare minimum.

You will start to tell people “no” and not allow people to push you around. This can help you to let manipulative and controlling people dictate your life. When you tell these types of people “no,” you can regain your precious time. You will then have more time to focus on yourself to achieve your goals.

[bctt tweet=”Taking back your life first requires you to stand up for yourself.” username=”@secure_single”]

Better Yourself

When you are confident, you will work to better yourself in every area of life. You are secure in who you are. You do not need validation from others. This can help to improve your health, relationships, and finances.

You will take more ownership of your health. You know that you can make a plan to deal with a health issue or to lose weight. You can do research online or meet with a professional. You will come up with a strategy to better yourself when it comes to your health.

You will start to take control of your relationships. You will eliminate toxic people who only add negativity to your life. You will become pickier about the people you spend time with. That is because you will value your time more. You will want to spend time with people working towards the same things.

You will work to come up with a plan when it comes to your finances. You may want to get out of debt. You may want to find ways to increase your income. You may want to make passive income. You may want to retire early.

[bctt tweet=”Self-confidence is the key to many things. Once you become confident, you will do things that you thought were impossible. You will begin to surprise yourself.” username=”@secure_single”]

Recommended – Why Inflation Won’t Go Away In 2023

Summary

Self-confidence is critical to self-development. It can help you to stand up for yourself, better yourself, and work to achieve your goals. You can tell people “no” to get more of your time back. You will feel better about yourself when you are confident.

“There’s no such thing as luck. Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” ~ Unknown

“There is no such thing as luck, merely opportunity meeting preparedness.” ~ George S. Patton

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” ~ Seneca the Younger

“I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.” ~ Denzel Washington

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.” ~ Brian Tracy

You may recognize some similarities in these quotes. Instead of luck being perceived as mythical that you have no control over. Luck is when the right things happen that you have put in the hard work for, resulting in a positive impact. It did not happen by chance. These are the five things you control that determine luck.

5 Things You Control That Determine Luck

Preparation

The first step is proper preparation. You can first prepare by becoming familiar with whatever topic or skill you find interesting. You then want to work to master that topic or skill. It will take you time, but eventually, you will become a subject matter expert on the topic you spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours learning about.

You can then discover other related skills you may want to learn to continue improving yourself and be a subject matter expert. Depending on your knowledge and skills, this can later turn into opportunities. While you lay the groundwork, don’t be afraid to take chances.

Take Chances

The second step is to take chances. Taking risks is how you get things that others people don’t. The greater the risk, the higher the potential return. Every opportunity you take may not pay off, but you may still learn something from it. At the very least, you may learn a practical skill that you can use later on.

Risks are needed because that is another way that you learn. You are putting yourself out there for others to see, which will attract haters to you, but you are doing something while others continue to do the safe thing. It can also open doors that can turn into opportunities.

[bctt tweet=”The best way to learn is by doing something in the real world rather than theorizing and discussing abstract ideas. Leave the abstract concepts that won’t improve your life to academics. Focus on and invest in yourself.” username=”@secure_single”]

Opportunities

The third step is to be open to opportunities. As you prepare by always continuing to learn and improve your skillset, you are preparing yourself for opportunities that could come your way. It could be someone messaging you over LinkedIn who wants to talk to you, which could later spin off into a business idea. It could be discovering ways to turn your thousands of hours of work into passive income streams.

An opportunity could be an idea that comes to you in the middle of the night. It could be you sending or receiving an email from someone who can introduce you to someone. It could be taking a digital course where you learn another income generation strategy.

It could be talking with someone in a social media group that leads to the two of you working together on a project that is larger than both of you. That project could end up giving both of you a purpose more significant than what you had before doing what you were doing before.

You could decide to start something other people say you should not do.

You are open to the opportunity rather than turning it down. You act on the opportunity. You say “Yes” to the options instead of “No.” You can control the opportunities by responding to them when they come your way.

Be Active

The fourth step is to be active. This does not mean being as active as in exercise, although that can help you think more clearly. You can be active every day by working to achieve your goals. You may need to write a blog post daily, make YouTube and TikTok videos, grow your presence on social media, and always find ways to build what you are working toward. You want to be active where people are today, primarily by being involved online.

The problem is many social media platforms today, so you must figure out where to direct your time, attention, and energy. You want to be most active on the things that you have control over. Those things you want to work to grow as large as you can are the ones you have the most control over and best fit your strengths.

You can be active by directing your energy into growing the project that you are working on. It may not blow up overnight, but each little thing that you put out there is going out could reach someone. All of the energy that your directed can eventually snowball into a successful giant project because you never gave up. You put in the work each day. It may not have felt like it, but you started from nothing and then began to multiply until it was the point where it skyrocketed.

You don’t necessarily need a huge audience to succeed. It never hurts to work to grow it to as big as you can, though.

Show Up

The final step is always to show up. This requires you to develop self-discipline, time management skills, and never give up.

Self-discipline is critical to success because you practice self-control by directing your energy to things that could lead to the best results. You do the same things every day throughout the week. This can eventually become a habit.

Time management can help you to succeed. You can create a list of tasks you need to complete the next day and list five to ten tasks. The list can be a combination of small, medium, and tasks. Small tasks could be going to the grocery store to paying your bills. A medium task could be filming a video or writing an article. A large task would be a project that could take six months or longer to finish, like writing a book, creating merchandise, or creating a digital course to sell.

You can direct your energy where it will lead to the best return on your investment. That will require you to know and understand your strengths. When you are first starting, you will have to put in the sweat equity until you can make money from what you do. You always want to do something for yourself, especially something you enjoy and are good at. After all, you must pay the bills, save, and plan for your future.

“If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” – The Joker

Bonus!

You will be an exciting person to talk to because you took a different path than most people. People will more likely want to talk to you because you probably are working on a new project, discovering new ways to do something, and decided to take risks when everyone else took the safe option.

By taking these five steps, people will want to talk to you because they can learn things from you, and you may be viewed as unusual. In a society that wants everyone to be mediocre and creates hurdles that trap you, being unconventional is a superpower. There is nothing wrong with being weird.

Summary

Most people contribute to luck where hard work, showing up daily, and always being open to opportunities come together. You then want to find ways to monetize them. In the Internet Age, you have many options outside the traditional job route.

Views expressed in this article are the author’s opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views of Secure Single. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment or financial advice. James Bollen is the author of Thriving Solo: How to Flourish and Live Your Perfect Life (Without A Soulmate). Now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon. Subscribe to Secure Single’s Substack for free!