Famous Failures
“Whether you can or can’t, you are right.” - Henry Ford
Your belief in yourself will determine whether your success or fail at anything you do.
Let’s take Starbucks for example, “In the course of the year I spent trying to raise money, I spoke to 242 people, and 217 of them said no," Howard Schultz wrote. "Try to imagine how disheartening it can be to hear that many times why your idea is not worth investing in. ... It was a very humbling time."
…and guess where I just got my morning latte from.
Here are a few more people who believed in themselves enough to try again and again:
Can you imagine what would have happened if ANY of those people hadn't believed in themselves enough to try? A world without Harry Potter KFC?! 🤣 What?!
The belief in your own abilities to meet the challenges ahead of you and complete a task successfully is called self-efficacy.
It’s that inner voice that says, “I’ve got this,” or maybe, “Oof, I did NOT have that, but that’s okay because I’ll get it eventually.”
It’s the belief that you can influence your own life.
Want to measure your own self-efficacy? Click here.
How to improve self-efficacy beliefs and expectations:
So maybe you’re sitting there thinking, “Oh wow, maybe the reason I’m not hitting my goals is because I don’t believe in myself enough.”
Here are 4 ways you can start to build your belief system up:
1) Mastery Experiences
We build self-efficacy through the experiences we gain when we take on a new challenge and succeed. The best way to learn or improve a skill is through practice and through proving to ourselves that we are capable of acquiring new skills. Conversely, repeated failures can lower self-efficacy. So set yourself up for success by implementing small changes that you know you can commit to (very impactful for all my clients).
p.s. This is where self-compassion comes into play. If you are too scared to try something new because you know you’re going to feel defeated, judge and berate yourself, you’ll be less likely to try new things to begin with = forever stuck.
2) Vicarious Experiences
When we have positive role models who display a healthy level of self-efficacy, we are likely to absorb some of those positive beliefs as well. This is where finding mentors, role models, and coaches can help. This is ALSO where social media can help (if used correctly). Find people that lift you up and are encouraging (rather than people you always compare yourself too). This work is a bit of follow/unfollow + mindset shift.
3) Verbal Persuasion
Encouragement and positive feedback from others can boost self-efficacy. This can be sharing your wins with an external source (mentor, role model, coach, friends, coworkers) but this is also internal - remembering to always celebrate your small wins and acknowledge whenever you do anything difficult (literally give yourself a pat on the back or say something nice to yourself. It freakin works.
4) Emotional and Physiological States
This highlights the importance of overall health and wellbeing (i.e. if you struggle with anxiety and depression this work can feel harder, but it’s not impossible). It also means how you interpret your emotional and physical responses (like stress, anxiety, or excitement) can influence your self-efficacy. For example, if you feels anxious before a task, you might interpret that anxiety as a sign of potential failure, which could lower your self-efficacy - when in reality, it’s a normal part of change behavior (this one always blows my clients’ minds). So, anticipate it’ll be hard, and you’ll be less likely to get upset when it is.
This newsletter was a summary(ish) of the following two cool articles you should check out if you're interested in learning more: What Is Self-Efficacy Theory? (Article) and Why Self-Efficacy Matters (TED Talk).
