You Can Do It! How To Increase Self-Efficacy To Succeed

“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” Mahatma Gandhi

How often have you told yourself that you can’t do something? That you’re not smart enough, not strong enough, not kind enough, not creative enough? This isn’t necessarily due to a lack of self-confidence, but low self-efficacy and your belief in your abilities. In this week’s post, I’ll be explaining exactly what self-efficacy is and how you can increase your belief in your abilities, to succeed.

What Is Self-Efficacy?

Self-efficacy is the belief you have in your capabilities and the belief of whether you can use your abilities to succeed. With high self-efficacy, you have the encouragement that you have the tools and skills that you need to do something, which then drives your motivation and determination to succeed.

With self-efficacy, you do not blindly assume every goal will be plain sailing, but you do believe you can complete a task successfully, and overcome any challenges that may be in your way.

Due to being so closely interlinked, it is easy to see why self-confidence and self-efficacy may seem interchangeable. However, they are different concepts. Self-confidence is your overall belief in yourself, whereas self-efficacy is your belief in your capabilities.

Is Self-Efficacy The Same Is Self-Esteem?

Self-esteem can play a huge role in setting goals, chasing dreams and overcoming challenges. However, self-esteem is not the same as self-efficacy. Self-esteem is your general and overall feeling of worth. Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself in simply being you. Where self-efficacy differs is the belief in your ability to do something. The focus switches from who you are to what you can do.

With self-efficacy, you look at your capabilities and are ready for the challenge. Conversely, with self-esteem, you’ll simply decide how you feel about yourself as a whole.

Self-esteem, self-confidence and self-efficacy, all interact with each other and by building one aspect, you can create a cycle that improves the other aspects.

For example, if you have high self-worth, then you are more likely to be optimistic about your capabilities, which can then increase your sense of self-efficacy. Similarly, if you have the belief that you can do something, then you are likely to feel better about yourself as a whole.

The Self-Efficacy Cycle

The great thing about self-efficacy is that you can continue to grow it and foster your belief in your ability to succeed. It can work in a powerful success cycle. The more you believe in your capacity to achieve, the more motivation you’ll have, which will push your desire to achieve. With every achievement, you’ll have more belief in your capabilities and higher self-efficacy.

But, What If You Fail?

Achieving a goal is not always easy, and you may find lots of challenges along the way. With this in mind, a sense of self-efficacy is important in allowing you to address the challenges you may face. With high self-efficacy, you won’t quit when a problem appears. Instead, you’ll use your abilities to overcome the challenge. This helps to build your resilience. With every challenge you successfully overcome, you will increase your belief in your capabilities. So, even if something feels like a failure, those with high self-efficacy will have a higher level of resilience, making them more likely to succeed and recover from failure.

Self-Efficacy In Context

Due to its closeness with confidence, it can be hard to distinguish exactly what self-efficacy is. Some of the ways you may experience self-efficacy include;

Not feeling talented at something, but knowing you have the tools to learn
Worrying about parenthood, but believe you have what it takes to raise a child well
Taking a new job that you’ve never done before, but believing you are equipped and knowledgeable enough to excel
Having relationship breakdowns, but feeling optimistic about future love.

The Benefits Of Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is a fantastic attribute to have and offers many benefits such as;

Feeling more optimistic
Increasing motivation to succeed
Ability to bounce back and feel resilient
Better decision-making to fuel future growth
Improved health with the belief that you can make a difference in your health
Combat negative habits when you believe you can (e.g. if you think you can quit smoking, then it increases the likelihood that you will)
Not allowing negative emotions to block your future efforts.

Tips for Boosting Self-Efficacy

You can boost your self-efficacy. Here are a few tips that you might find helpful:

Practice. This tip is related to the mastery experiences in Bandura's self-efficacy model. The more you have practice doing something, the more likely you will become better at it, and the more confident you will feel doing the same task in a different situation.
Try new things. Again, this suggestion is related to mastery experiences. People tend to feel more comfortable with familiar situations. Therefore, the more novelty you accept into your life, the less likely you will be intimidated by new tasks. Trying new things might increase the range of skills at your disposal, but you may also be more likely to face situations that share similarities with your past experiences.
Find role models. Here, we use Bandura's second source, vicarious experiences, which states that observing other people's successes can boost our self-efficacy. Witnessing someone else achieve a similar goal might motivate you to follow their steps and imagine yourself as successful. And the more similar that person's background is to yours, the more you can relate to their experiences.
Build a support system. Hearing positive feedback about your performance can boost your self-efficacy, especially if the praise comes from experts, teachers, coaches, and peers who have done well in similar endeavours. You may try surrounding yourself with supportive people whose opinions you value.
Be positive. It is essential to recognize signs of stress and thoughts of self-doubt so that you can address them. You might want to focus on your past victories and positive experiences to keep your self-doubt at bay. Keeping a list of accomplishments that you are proud of might come in handy when you need a quick boost to your self-efficacy.

Let’s Help You To Succeed

Whether there’s a goal you are aiming for, or you don’t have the self-belief to even realise your true capabilities, hypnotherapy can help. Whether through in-person appointments or virtual sessions, I can help you to discover what is holding your self-efficacy back and help you to realise your true potential.