Self-efficacy: Why Is It So Important To Believe In Yourself And How Can You Achieve It?
Why should you believe in yourself? How can we believe in ourselves? Discover the keys behind self-efficacy and why it is so important for your mental health.
Do you constantly doubt your abilities? Do you feel like you are not capable of achieving a goal? Do you think you won’t achieve your goals? By believing in yourself, you are giving yourself a boost that allows you to face both defeats and successes in the most proactive way. In psychology, this refers to self-efficacy, that is, the belief we have about our capabilities. So how can you believe in yourself more?
The self-efficacy It consists of a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory established that these beliefs determined the way we thought, behaved, and felt.
What Bandura proposed is that self-efficacy not only influences believing in oneself, but also by believing in you (in regards to your capabilities) also makes it possible for you to achieve each of your objectives or goals in life. Perceived self-efficacy plays a very important role in how we interpret the situations around us and our attitude toward them.
Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy: Believing in yourself and its effects
According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy It is the perception or idea we have about our abilities to organize and execute the courses of action necessary to manage potential situations. Therefore, believing in oneself or rather, believing in one’s abilities implies a person’s belief in his or her abilities to successfully get out of a particular situation.
It has been shown from various investigations that perceived self-efficacy It has an impact on everything from our emotions to the way we behave and the motivation we have in our daily lives. In fact, self-efficacy It also determines what objectives we choose to pursue, the way in which we can achieve them and how we perceive our performance.
Why should you believe in yourself?
Bandura identified thatto self-efficacy It played a very important role in the way goals, tasks and challenges were approached. Thus, people with a strong sense of self-efficacy have the following abilities.
They develop a deeper interest in those activities in which they participate.
Form a greater sense of commitment to your interests and activities.
They tolerate failure better
They see challenging problems as an opportunity
On the other hand, against them are people who cannot believe in yourself they usually experience the following.
They believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond their capabilities.
They focus on personal mistakes and negative results.
They quickly lose confidence in their personal abilities
We don’t leave our comfort zone
We are more conformist
Tendency to compare oneself more with others
They are more conformist
Why is it a problem not to trust myself?
There are different problems associated with having a low self-efficacy Primarily, those people who have negative perceived self-efficacy tend to view difficult tasks as threats that they should avoid. Therefore, goals and objectives are established with very low levels of commitment.
By not trust yourself If you have setbacks you end up giving up very quickly. This also contributes to perceiving more stress in certain situations that are difficult to handle. He believe in you or it is not very linked to having good mental health. Therefore, if you see signs of low self-efficacy, it is important to go to a professional psychologist.
Fortunately, perceived self-efficacy you can work. In fact, it is a psychological skill that can be encouraged and strengthened. To do this, it is important to follow the following tips.
Celebrate your successes: For believe in yourself (focusing on your abilities) it is vital to learn to value what we achieve and not downplay its importance. In this way, you should try to celebrate those goals in your life that you have already achieved.
Get inspired by others: The self-efficacy It can also be enhanced if you see others strive and achieve success. To do this, the person you are inspired by must be a role model.
Recognize our achievements: Seeing the positive of what we have achieved can also help us improve your sense of self-efficacy A good method to achieve this is to try to write down every day the achievements we have achieved during the day. It is important that our self-efficacy is based on ourselves and not on others.
Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions: Identify, recognize and manage our thoughts and emotions. This may seem like a challenge, even when the perception of self-efficacy is high, there is fear, so it is important to put it in its place in such a way that it gives us information but without incapacitating us when it comes to achieving our goal. On the other hand, sadness, stress, nervousness, etc., influence how we perceive, so managing our emotions and thoughts here is also essential so that they do not interfere decisively in our path.
Set small goals: Creating mini-goals can make the path to achieving our achievements easier. Thanks to these small steps that we challenge ourselves to take, we can better achieve our goals.
Hold on to motivation It is not so important what you want to achieve but why, this motivation will give us the push even when we are afraid. Without motivation, that fear, stress or any other emotion can erase the path to our goal and generate a feeling of failure.
Do not generate expectations, but goals: If we want an expectation we usually think about every detail we want to achieve, and it may not happen. However, if we have a goal, that is, a motivation, we will have several ways to achieve it. For example, expectation would be: Go with my friends to Eurodisney, let it be sunny, let’s ride all the attractions and be happy. Instead, an objective would be: Enjoy with my friends. Within the objective you can evolve and there are several options to achieve it, not achieving one of the options will not give us a feeling of failure. Having an expectation implies a greater probability of feeling like failure because there are variables that we do not control.
The self-efficacy or the ability to believe in yourself It is very necessary for you to feel good about yourself. Therefore, if you think that you do not believe in yourself, it is important that you seek help from a mental health professional. The art of trusting yourself is difficult to achieve but together with this ability you will obtain many rewards on a professional and personal level.
