Last week’s blog talked about the importance of meaningfully connecting to your goal as a way of enhancing motivation.  The next step after deciding you really believe in your goal is to assess if you really believe you’re capable of achieving it.  This second step is often quite subtle, but research shows the assessment of your own potential can be an important factor in whether you succeed or end up giving up on your desired change.

Choosing your goal involves envisioning your ideal result, or the outcome.  Next is choosing the process, or the path you will take to reach the outcome.  Self-efficacy is a term in psychology used to describe a person’s belief in the process.   It involves having both the confidence in your plan and the confidence that you have the necessary skills to enact your plan.   Consistent findings show that people who have high self-efficacy not only perform better, but also choose more difficult goals, show more commitment, are more flexible in their choice of task strategies, and are more likely to stay committed despite negative feedback.  In other words, if you believe you can do it, you are going to try harder and stick to it, even when you have setbacks.

Sounds good, right?  So how do you get self –efficacy?  Actually, confidence breeds confidence.  If you see your successes as coming from luck, or other people’s efforts, it will be hard to feel you have what it takes to overcome a challenge.  So look inside to determine what traits you do have that are powerful and effective – are your creative, stubborn, or funny?  How can you use these natural assets to help support you along your journey? Think about the successes you have had in your life.  What characteristics did you have and what actions did you take to get there?  How can you apply those to your current goal?  We tend to focus on our failure, and forget about all the achievements we have attained.  In this way, we underestimate our abilities and the skills we do have to apply to a new challenge.

Another step to building self-efficacy is to be proactive and put your effort into preparation.  What keeps you from feeling confident?  Once you can identify these areas, then you can address them.  This is a process where it really helps to have help.  Learning from others and gaining new knowledge can do a lot to increase your self-efficacy.  So it may be well worth your time to attend a class, join a group, get some coaching and do some research.  Seeing the path that works for others is a good model for building a plan you can also believe in.

Be realistic in your assessment of your abilities.  If you are too unrealistic about the challenges, you may get discouraged and give up, just as if you are too pessimistic.  Change is an active process, not only in your actions, but in your beliefs.  Plan, practice, share, and reward yourself.   Fill up your bank of confidence, because the more deposits you make, the more you will have to draw from in order to say “Yes I Can!”