In my case, the strategy is the rest of the course I'm teaching. It involves examining and evaluating one's current perceptions, self-esteem, and interactions with others. If those behaviours are not effective in helping you achieve goals, then there are other ways of behaving that might be more effective. The "how" involves public speaking exercises, role-playing activities, improv and so on. There's a "how". For example, I have a unit I wrote on self-esteem. It's activities that explore who you are and where your ideas of yourself came from. It's a tool for self-understanding. The how involves observing the messages you are sending yourself now and questioning those messages. It has many elements of cognitive behaviour therapy in the context of a course. Ok - How? How do you get realistic expectations. What does "realistic" mean? Consider your past performance and set a goal that is slightly better than that. Failure lowers your self-esteem, but "failure" in many cases is a label people put on themselves when they fail to achieve an unrealistic goal. Each of the items can be translated into a specific to-do list for people -- but it does involve a certain amount of self-monitoring.