Profile in Efficacy

We talked a bit about self-efficacy in the recent past, so let’s continue the discussion today by looking at the profile of someone who is highly efficacious.

We mentioned earlier that self-efficacy is our appraisal of our own ability to do something. Self-efficacy varies from task to task, and situation to situation. For example, you may feel very efficacious about your ability to teach young children, but may not feel efficacious at all about your ability to, say, cook or turn out a beautiful garden. We all have many, many different levels of self-efficacy within our minds – hundreds, maybe even thousands.

But did you know that in any given situation, people with high self-efficacy tend to perform better than others? That’s because they don’t let the outside environment dictate their inner feelings. They place a high value on themselves because they believe they are worth it. Interestingly, people with high self-efficacy also have a high need for achievement.

They enjoy and gravitate toward learning, growing and doing well. They also believe that they have a high degree of control over what happens to them.  In other words, they don’t feel like helpless victims, even when things happen to them that they can’t control, because they know that they can still control their response.

Highly efficacious people don’t give up easily, either. In fact, they see all setbacks as temporary and they do not think of themselves as failures. Instead of dwelling on their mistakes, they use them as learning opportunities for the next time a situation presents itself.

How about you? You know, you can learn to have high self-efficacy, too. You have the potential waiting inside you. All you need to do is loosen up a bit, reinforce your belief in yourself to be and do more than you are today. Fall in love with growing and learning. Take a chance on yourself and your potential, because you are worth it!