If You Believe It’s Possible You Can Learn Any Skill

Believe in your ability to learn new skills

“Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right.” — Henry Ford

How come some people devote a lot of time and effort to learn new skills, while others don’t even bother to try?

A defining characteristic of a person who has mastered the ability to learn new skills is their belief that they can learn any skill they want.

This belief is called self-efficacy. If you have high self-efficacy, you have high confidence that you can learn and master a skill if you practice it. In contrast, someone with low self-efficacy has low confidence that they can acquire and master a specific skill.

Self-efficacy influences behaviour in several ways. Learners engage in tasks where they feel confident and avoid those in which they don’t. People with high self-efficacy approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered, while people with low self-efficacy see them as threats to be avoided.

Why does self-efficacy matter?

People with high self-efficacy view the world in a different way than those with low self-efficacy. Researchers have found high self-efficacy to predict several essential components of the skill learning process. Self-efficacy affects how you think, feel and behave, and is a powerful predictor of performance.

People with high self-efficacy…

• persist longer when working on challenging tasks.
• set more difficult goals and see them as challenges to work towards.
• mobilise more effort to learn a skill.
• stick longer to challenging practice schedules that lead to long-term results.

People with low self-efficacy…

• regard certain things as impossible and give up or don’t even try.
• set lower goals for themselves.
• give up easily when facing a challenge.

The one thing that affects your self-efficacy most is how effective you’ve been while performing similar tasks in the past. This means that the more skills you learn and master throughout your life, the higher the likelihood that you’ve learnt something similar to the skill you’re now trying to learn. When you’ve had success in a similar learning situation in the past, it increases your belief that you can also succeed with a similar skill.

Situation specific

Self-efficacy is an attitude towards a specific task in a particular context. It’s possible to have high self-efficacy towards some activities and low self-efficacy towards others. You can have high self-efficacy when learning a sport and at the same time have low self-efficacy while learning a language.

If you’ve had a lot of success learning various sports, your belief that you can learn other skills that involve the control and movement of your body will rise. The more similar the activity, the more confidence you’ll have. For example, if you already played a lot of basketball, you may have a high belief that you can also learn to play handball. The more similar the activity, the higher the effect will be. So, being good at basketball will have less impact on your belief that you can learn to dance salsa or play ice-hockey and low influence on your belief that you can learn to cook or play an instrument.

The same person who had success in learning sports may not have had a lot of success in learning languages. If they previously had a poor experience while learning languages, they may not believe in their ability to pick up a new language. Such beliefs can be difficult to change, as they’re based on personal life experience, and it can be very tricky to convince someone that it’s possible to learn a skill if they only try using a better method.

The more skills you learn throughout life, the easier it is to believe that you can learn other skills as well. If you’ve mastered a lot of different skills in the past, you’ll eventually realise that it’s possible to learn almost anything. This is especially true if one of the skills you’ve previously learned was something you never thought it was possible to learn, but you still managed to do so.

Expectations of personal mastery

How people behave can be better predicted by the beliefs they have about their capabilities than by what they’re actually capable of accomplishing.

If you believe that you’ll master something, you’re more likely to start practising a new skill and keep going when it gets challenging. When learning a new skill, it’s essential to believe that it’s possible to learn. It usually takes a lot of time and effort, and you may not see immediate results. Any doubt about your ability to master the situation can easily make you give up.

When we don’t think we’ll be able to do something, it’s common to avoid the situation altogether. These situations are seen as threatening, and it’s common not to get involved in activities that you perceive as intimidating and too difficult for your capability.

A person with low self- efficacy may believe that tasks are tougher than they really are. If you say to yourself. ‘I can’t learn this’ you’re likely to be correct. You probably won’t even try.

Attribution of failure

Many people have difficulty learning new skills, not because they’re incapable, but because they don’t believe they can succeed. Many have learnt to see themselves as incapable of learning certain types of skills, as they haven’t had much success in similar learning situations previously in life.

When learners lack confidence in their capabilities, they often attribute failure to low ability. This low ability is often seen as permanent and not possible to improve. Failure is a reminder that they’re incapable, and they’re likely to think they’ll fail before they even try. In many cases, people don’t even bother trying, as they’re certain they’ll fail.

If learners attribute an incident of poor performance to their lack of ability, they tend to withhold further effort when faced with a similar task. On the other hand, if low performance is seen as a result of a lack of effort, they’re more likely to increase the effort on the next try.

People with high self-efficacy recover their confidence quicker after failures and setbacks as they attribute failure to not putting in enough effort, not using proper practice methods or not having the right skills yet. As they believe they can learn these skills, they just need to find better learning methods. Failure is a healthy reminder to work harder.

Think of times other people outdid you and you just assumed they were smarter or more talented. Now consider the idea that they just used better strategies, taught themselves more, practised harder, and worked their way through obstacles. You can do that too, if you want to.

Find a role-model that looks like you

When we see that a similar person to us has mastered a specific skill, our self-efficacy for that activity increases. If they can do it, so can we. When we believe we can achieve something, we’re more likely to put in the time and effort to improve. The more similar the person is to you, for example, a sibling, close friend or a co-worker, the more you believe you can achieve the same result. But being from the same region, country or even continent can influence the belief.

This explains why we often see many people from the same country or area, succeeding in specific activities. A great example is that of South Korean female golfers. In 1998, Se Ri Pak became the first South Korean woman to win a golf major, when she lifted the trophy at the US Open. At the time there were almost no other South Korean golfers. But the win gave the belief that it was possible and South Korea has since gone on to dominate female golf. They currently have 37 women ranked among the top 100 players in the world, four in the top ten and the current number one rank, Ko Jin-Young. After the initial breakthrough win, young South Korean golfers got the belief that they could also become world-class players.

Take home message

It’s easy to tell someone just to increase their self-efficacy to become a better learner. But human psychology is not that simple. As a learner, we can say we believe something, but if we subconsciously don’t believe it’s possible, it may not work. You’re then still unlikely to put in the required effort.

The best way to improve your self-efficacy is to keep learning new skills. The more success you have in learning various skills, the more you believe in your ability to learn a new skill in the future. And at some point, you’ll reach a state where you think it’s possible to learn any skill, as long as you put in enough practice.

Good luck with your learning projects!

Thanks for reading, sharing, and following! :)

If you liked this article, you may also like: