I can’t tell you how many times I hear empty words like, “believe in yourself” / “you can do anything” / some other BS, combined with meditation or who knows what. In the past few years, I’ve dealt with the process of believing (more) in myself – so this blog post is meant to get to the brass text of how you can actually address this issue of believing in yourself, or what some call “self-efficacy”.
Let me start with a story.
My entire life, I've wanted to learn Spanish. I grew up without the ability to communicate with mis abuelos - they didn't know English, so I wanted to learn Spanish. But guess what? I didn’t believe it was possible. I thought I “missed my chance” in school, having shied away from taking the AP Spanish test.
But 10 years later, when I went to business school in Spain, I decided, this was it - this was my opportunity. With that firm commitment, I suddenly saw all the ways in which I would make that goal happen. I took Spanish classes as part of my studies, practiced regularly with friends, watched shows in Spanish, listened to Spanish music, and took advantage of... well...living in Spain.
Let me be clear – if I believed I could have learned Spanish earlier, I would have. But I didn’t. I listened to the research that it's harder for adults to learn language later. But business school changed everything – this was my shot, my last chance, and I was going to give it my all. And here I am, with 75-80% fluency – knowing, I can always get better now that I know I can learn 😊
So if belief / self-efficacy is so important when setting and achieving goals, is it possible to grow and change your belief in yourself? If so…how?
A Quick Exercise
Name a personal goal of yours in the next year or 2. I want you to assess your belief that you can reach this goal on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 = Basically impossible; 5 = It’s possible, but some luck is involved; 10 = 100% you will reach this goal if you execute your plan.
(A) If you scored 8+, I challenge you to make your goal harder...so your belief score is 7 or below. I’m pushing you! That will mean you also get to work on (B) below...😊
(B) If you scored 7-, let’s work on building your self-efficacy!
Why 7 or below? Folks, this is not science, to be frank :) but if you are wavering enough on whether you can achieve the goal, then your motivation, commitment, and ambition are very much in question. You start to shrink away from the goal a bit. 8 and above is a self-efficacy that says “I can do this”, even if achieving the goal is not certain.
Definitions
For the sake of this blog post, I am going to use self-efficacy as the formal term for believing in oneself.
Self-efficacy, from the American Psychological Association, is "a person's belief in their ability to perform a task or achieve a goal. It's also known as task-specific self-confidence.”
Self-confidence refers to a more general way of being confident in what you bring to the table in any situation, while self-efficacy is again more task-specific. Self-esteem is generally your opinion of yourself and whether it’s high or low, which can be context-specific or not. But know that self-esteem is predicted by self-efficacy.
Know that self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-efficacy, while sometimes can be reinforced through rational thought, are more often feelings. So as much as much of the advice below is a thinking process, know that you will have to go through a process of feeling your self-efficacy.
Self-Efficacy and Goals
Those with high self-efficacy:
Set bigger goals
Believe they can overcome obstacles
Form a stronger sense of commitment
Achieve much more, even if not reaching the goal
On the other hand, those with low self-efficacy:
Set lower goals or avoid challenging goals
Assume they can’t get over certain obstacles
Commit less to their goals
Ultimately, they achieve much less
In fact, from Psychology Today: "In fact, when we expect we will fail, we are actually more likely to fail (Bénabou & Tirole, 2002)."
Developing Stronger Self-Efficacy
Albert Bandura published a seminal 1977 paper, "Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change,", which set the pace for future study. Bandura identified four major sources of self-efficacy:
Mastery experiences
Social modeling
Social persuasion
Psychological responses
Mastery Experiences
"The most effective way of developing a strong sense of efficacy is through mastery experiences," Bandura explained. Performing a task successfully strengthens our sense of self-efficacy. However, failing to adequately deal with a task or challenge can undermine and weaken self-efficacy.
Action: Break down your goal into smaller parts, and use evidence of smaller successes to prove to yourself that you can achieve this goal. You can also reflect and point to your past, to show how you’ve overcome obstacles before.
Social Modeling
Witnessing other people successfully complete a task is another important source of self-efficacy. According to Bandura, "Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers' beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed."1
Action: Find examples, whether on the internet, social media, friends, mentors, etc. who have already been on a similar path. Observe them or ask them what they did to get to where they are now.
Social Persuasion
Bandura also asserted that people could be persuaded to believe they have the skills and capabilities to succeed. Getting verbal encouragement from others helps people overcome self-doubt and instead focus on giving their best effort to the task at hand.
Action: Reflect on who influences you and whose opinion you really respect. Tell them about your goals, and give them the opportunity to provide input about how you can achieve them.
Psychological Responses
Our responses and emotional reactions to situations also play an important role in self-efficacy. Moods, emotional states, physical reactions, and stress levels can all impact how a person feels about their personal abilities in a particular situation.
A person who becomes extremely nervous before speaking in public, for example, may develop a weak sense of self-efficacy in these situations. However, Bandura also notes "it is not the sheer intensity of emotional and physical reactions that is important but rather how they are perceived and interpreted."
Action: In times of stress, exhaustion, frustration, and other negative emotions, know that you shouldn’t be thinking about your goals. You should be thinking about your health and wellbeing. Do what it takes to get yourself back to a neutral, if not positive mindset.
For those wanting to work more on mindset and wellbeing, I offer the 6-week Positive Intelligence Program that boosts your “mental fitness” and stay in a positive mind for longer, and improves your resilience to sustained negative emotions like stress.
Making the Abstract Concrete (an additional add from me)
Sometimes a goal seems difficult or unattainable – because it’s more of an abstract idea than a concrete goal. By making the goal concrete – like breaking a goal down by what you need to do per month, or listing out the steps (use ChatGPT or another LLM to help!) so you know the work involved.
When you make a goal concrete by laying out the plan, you realize attaining a goal is mostly 2 things: planning the work, and working the plan.
Action: If you have a goal that you really want, make the goal more concrete by breaking it down into parts. Think about what the work really takes. Understand if you don't think you can reach the goal - sometimes it is something different than belief in yourself that stops you, like (1) fear of failure, (2) cost-benefit meaning the goal isn't worth the work, or (3) some alternative is better.
Closing
Self-efficacy is something that is built over time. Small success builds into bigger success, and our confidence grows. Know that self-efficacy can be changed, and we can go to work on belief if we just take things one step at a time! Big goals can seem scary and insurmountable - we see all these crazy successful people online, but we don't see their failures, we don't see their struggles, we don't see their blood, sweat, and tears. Belief is in our control - we can do something about it. So let's get to work!
For Learning and With Love,
Chris
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