Build Confidence in Your Abilities (Without procrastination)

Often you set goals but seldom do you drive those goals to their final destination. Have you ever

thought about why goals are easy to set and hard to achieve? The reason is obvious. When you

set goals, you just speculate that you will do this and that to achieve your goals. But when comes

the time to take steps for its accomplishment you confront various challenges. The challenge that

you feel confident about is easily overcome by you, but when comes the challenge that tackling

seems like a Herculean task, you just give up. In other words, you cease believing in your ability

to achieve the very goals you set for yourself.

You might be wondering if the above discussion has anything to do with self-efficacy.

Well, it has a direct relationship with it.

The stronger your self-efficacy is, the more easily you overcome challenges and achieve your

goals, and vice-versa.

Have you ever found yourself in a difficult situation and were not confident enough to manage

it? While your friend with similar capability plunged into it confidently? Why is there a

difference in behavior? Well, that's all due to the lack or presence of self-efficacy.

The level of self-efficacy in an individual plays a significant role in how goals and adversities are

encountered. People with strong self-efficacy believe in their abilities when faced with

challenges and get back from setbacks more easily.

Your self-efficacy starts developing from childhood and keeps changing based on life

experiences. An important point to notice here is that self-efficacy is not about having the skills

to get the task done, rather it's a belief in oneself to accomplish the goal.

Different factors play a role in forming your self-efficacy.

By now, we are certain that you will have considerable knowledge of self-efficacy. Now, comes

the part in which you are going to know from where self-efficacy comes and how you can get

more of it.

So, self-efficacy comes from four sources, which are

1) Mastery experience

2) Social Modeling

3) Social persuasion

4) Psychological Response

Till now, you have learned how self-efficacy has an important role in all realms of life. In this lesson,

we'll go deep into how you can handle failures. Ok, let's be honest, isn't it something we all fear

encountering? Although failure is not in our control, how we react to it matters the most.

You might have witnessed that people have different reactions in response to setbacks. Some are more apt

in dealing with it, while others get panicked. Well, this unavoidable experience can be turned into a great

learning opportunity if you know how to handle failures well.

If you keep thinking "I'm a failure" or "I can't do anything, I'm just a loser" will only make the pain

worse. The level of self-efficacy you possess changes the situation drastically. Here, I'll discuss how you

can handle failures and bounce back in a healthy way:

Do you have any idea of how hitting a doll or gently treating it can teach you about how

other people affect your belief in your competence?

What comes to your mind when you think of persuasion? The ads popping on your phone or

billboards along the road, perhaps? Do you remember the time when attractive communicators

changed your mind about something? Yes, that's persuasion!

Social Persuasion is when a person or group tries to influence or change the mind and beliefs of

another person or people. It can also be when an individual's goals and behaviors are influenced

by the real and implied presence of others. These persuasive messages can be through verbal,

non-verbal, media, or direct communication (face to face).

Malcolm Gladwell gave an interesting concept in his book, The Tipping Point; Gladwell

compared persuasion with a virus that spreads the message until the whole society is 'infected.' A

few influential people can support the idea and phenomenon. If a message receives sufficient

traction, it becomes 'contagious.'

As we are cognizant that the mind is the powerhouse of the body, from emotions to actions,

everything is governed by our minds. Be it fear or happiness or any other emotion, the response

to those emotions comes from our mind.

The response that you give towards these emotions is known as a psychological response.

This psychological response of an individual has a huge influence on a person's self-efficacy.

As we know, every individual is built differently. Therefore, they also differ in their response

mechanism toward various situations. A better psychological response to a drastic situation

makes a person's self-efficacy stronger, while an unreasonable response makes it weaken.

Here we are going to shed light on how you can deal with drastic situations properly in order to

have positive impacts on your self-efficacy.

You must have gotten the advice of setting simple and easily manageable goals, huh? But if you

want to enhance your self-efficacy, you have to think big! Setting remarkable goals is a way to

this process and is essential as it gives meaning and purpose to your life.

Research by a psychologist and career coach at the Dominican University of California showed

that setting goals are directly related to achieving success. They help you retain focus on what's

important.

As I said earlier, to increase your self-efficacy, you should set targets that are slightly above your

ability. Wait, what? How is it even possible? Before answering this, first, get into why setting big

goals is worthwhile.

Why has it become inevitable that goals are easy to set but hard to achieve?

It is a universal phenomenon that humans enthusiastically set goals for themselves, but when it

comes to achieving those goals, they confront deadlocks, hindrances, and ultimately failures.

And those failures, in turn, weaken their self-efficacy, which affects their whole life. Therefore,

it is crucial to choose goals wisely, and once you choose, you must accomplish them.