The One Thing You Must Understand To Radically Transform Your Life

How To Increase Your Efficacy

I know you wanna better yourself and improve your life.

We all do…

It’s a natural desire best captured in a theory from psychology known as the “self-expansion model”.

This model proposes that individuals seek to expand their sense of self by acquiring resources, broadening their perspectives, and increasing their competency to ultimately optimize their ability to thrive in their environment (Source: Wikipedia).

The motivations behind it are significantly linked to your desire to achieve your goals.

At its core is two distinct but related principles:

• Motivation principle — your inherent desire to improve your self-efficacy, adapt, survive, and reproduce in your environment.
• Inclusion-of-other-in-self principle — the primary way to expand yourself is through close relationships.

What the self-expansion model is effectively saying is that all humans have potential efficacy.

This means you have what it takes to learn how to read, start a business, and make money since they can be acquired by training.

However…

Your ability to realize those potential skills is dependent on who you’re in a close relationship with (i.e., friends, family, network, etc).

Most people optimize their circles with transactional relationships — these are relationships based on reciprocity and needs.

This is when both parties are expecting to receive something in return for their investment in the relationship.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach to relationships except for the fact they don’t promote growth.

To get to where you wanna go, you need to build a different kind of relationship…

Transformational ones.

These are what take you to the next level.

Show me your friends…

Your expectations and beliefs about what’s possible are based on your close relationships.

This is down to the principle of inclusion-of-other-in-self.

The inclusion-of-other-in-self principle posits that close relationships serve as the primary way to expand your sense of self since we use others to incorporate identities, perspectives, resources, and experiences as our own.

Basically…

Your efficacy (ability to produce a desired result) is based on the resources you have to put toward your goals and these resources come from your close relationships.

For example:

• Warren Buffett’s dad introduced him to his love for books and investing, which is eventually how he came across his next transformational relationship with Benjamin Graham (the father of value investing).
• Bill Gates’s parents had the resources to send him to a Seattle private school, which just so happened to be one of the first schools with computers, where he built a transformational relationship with Paul Allen who was his Co-founder for Microsoft. Gates’s mum also sat on the national board’s executive committee which came in handy for Microsoft.
• Jeff Bezos got a $245,573 loan from his parents to start Amazon.

This isn’t an attempt to discredit their ability to execute…

I’m emphasizing the point that your potential is based on the resources you have to put toward your goals, and these resources come from other people in the form of knowledge, perspectives, identities, networks, and money.

These people were fortunate enough to enter relationships with their parents, friends, and mentors that held them to high expectations, which influenced their performance.

In psychology, this is called the “Pygmalion effect.”

The idea behind the Pygmalion effect is that high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area and low expectations lead to worse — meaning both effects lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

All of these people were in close relationships that held them to high expectations (e.g., Gates’s parents sending him to private school and Buffet’s parents insisting he must go to university despite his money-making schemes going well).

These high expectations positively influenced their performance which shaped them into the people they are today.

Who you are today is based on the close relationships you’ve had (e.g., parents, teachers, etc) and have (e.g., current friendship group, mentors, colleagues, etc), which shape the expectations you have of yourself and your beliefs about what’s possible.

The problem with this is that most people enter into relationships transactionally.

Note: I’m speaking only of personal relationships here.

It’s all about what the other party can do for them.

While all relationships are transactional to some degree, entering one with an emphasis on the transaction is a recipe for disaster.

*Cough* situationships *cough*

They set clear terms for the agreement and breaking them can lead to disappointment and resentment as one party feels no reciprocity is being shown or the other party’s goals and expectations don’t align with theirs.

Approach vs. Avoid orientation

Why do most people seek out transactional relationships?

Again, the answer to this question is deeply seeped in one’s goals.

All humans are goal-oriented…

The direction of your behavior is determined by a stimulus.

You can either be driven toward a desired stimulus, meaning you’re emotions, cognitions, and actions are all driven by the wish to achieve a desired result, or you can be driven away from an undesired stimulus, which means you’re doing everything you can to not realize a result you don’t want.

Most people formulate their goals from an avoid orientation (driven away from an undesired stimulus):

• I don’t want to be broke
• I don’t want to be single (you can replace “be single ”with “die alone”)
• I don’t want to work a job
• I want to stop procrastinating

While these types of goals may work since the prospect of loss is more motivating than the prospect of gain (possibly due to loss aversion), they may be more stressful.

For example, someone who’s single can be highly motivated to get into a relationship.

Given their goal is based on the avoidance of being single, which often is due to loneliness, it’s likely they’ll find someone cos their anxiousness is motivating.

But the basis of their relationship will inherently be transactional — “You help me cure my loneliness and I’ll help you X.”

Resentment and disappointment build when one party stops pulling its weight.

The result is stress — and a whole load of other negative emotions.

People who are approach-oriented are far more likely to seek out self-expanding relationships.

They have a far more developed sense of the desired result they wish to achieve, which allows them to seek out people with whom they can form transformational relationships with people who hold them to higher expectations.

Due to the principle of inclusion-of-other-in-self, the mental models of the people they form bonds with will be adopted as theirs.

All of these factors come together to improve their efficacy.

Become the buyer

Increasing your potential efficacy is about changing your perspective.

You must embody the persona of a buyer in all things.

This means you’re the one making the decisive call.

Take buying a car as an example…

You don’t just buy any car cos you’re tired of walking; that’s the avoid orientation and seller’s mindset.

Desperation for change is fuelling their motivation, which means they’re more than likely to compromise.

Buyers have a clear standard for what they expect of a car.

They don’t just want a car that will help them get from A to B, they want the Mercedes AMG G 63 4x4 Squared in matte black with a red interior and tinted windows.

Another example…

I was listening to a podcast yesterday where the guest said he and his co-founder had an interview with Ben Horowitz to raise venture capital for their startup.

The guest said the meeting was going well until Ben Horowitz, “Who’s the CEO?”

And he responded, “Both of us.”

Ben Horowitz instantly ended the interview at that point and they didn’t get venture capital.

When you’re the buyer, you have a clear vision of what you’re looking for which is typically formulated from a range of negative experiences and the close relationships you hold.

Anything that doesn’t meet the buyer’s criteria is grounds for rejection.

In other words, being the buyer means you’ve clearly defined the metrics for success.

Everything that doesn’t meet the bar is rejected.

But this is only the first part of being the buyer…

The next part is about communicating what you want.

As you may or may not know, Ben Horowitz has written several blog posts and dedicated an entire chapter in his book to the importance of having one co-founder.

He’s let what he’s looking for in people seeking venture capital be known by communicating it publicly through various mediums.

Had the guest who was on the podcast properly studied the resources and aligned with them, they would have had a better chance of receiving funding.

What am I saying?

Clearly defining the rules for success and communicating them attracts to you the relationships required to expand you in the right ways.

The more clarity the better.

Being the buyer means you make the final decision of whether something or someone makes the cut based on the rules you’ve defined.

This is how you improve your potential efficacy.

Final thoughts

The people you keep around play a major role in what you can achieve.

Their expectations and beliefs for what’s possible become yours.

If you wanna increase your efficacy you must seek out more transformational relationships.

These are more about collaboration rather than what you can get out of it which makes them much more pleasurable than their counterpart — transactional relationships.

The filter to start building such relationships is to become the buyer.

In other words, define what you want and communicate it unapologetically to attract those that align with your values.

This is what’s required to get you to the next level.

Thanks for reading!

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