The Power of Self-Belief: Telling Yourself You Can

‘I can and I will’ has never seemed so relevant.

When I was a teenage worrier, my mother had a mantra that she used to make me repeat: ‘I can and I will’. Simple enough — and common enough, too — but it echoed like an affirmation throughout the drama of exams, job hunts, driving tests, and every other little thing I tended to go into a tailspin over.

However, while helpful, it seems there should have been something extra to round out the phrase: ‘I can and I will — because I already have’.

That’s because a new study has discovered that the simple act of reminding ourselves of overcoming past adversity could be enough to make us more resilient when we encounter future challenges.

Research paints recall in a new light

The investigation involved a team from Zurich’s Department of Psychology and University Hospital, along with researchers from New York, who wanted to take a closer look at how psychological resilience can be boosted during trials such as global pandemics.

Professor of psychology at UZH and director of the study Birgit Kleim explained it was all about self-efficacy: “By self-efficacy, I mean the belief that we have the ability to influence things to at least a small degree, even if some things are unchangeable.”

The team examined 75 people who reported having been distressed by a negative emotional memory. They were split into two teams and required to recall and subsequently reassess this negative recollection.

However, the first group was asked to think about a positive event such as an experience in nature beforehand, while the second was instructed to bring to mind a situation in which they felt they had been especially self-efficacious, such as passing a difficult exam.

It was found that people in the second group found it far easier to reassess a negative situation and view it in a different light that those in the first. Indeed, they typically perceived the original negative incident as far less distressing — and doing the exercise once was enough to achieve a positive effect in many cases.

Discussing the team’s findings in the American Psychological Association’s PsycNet publication, Professor Kleim said: “Our study shows that recalling self-efficacious autobiographical events can be used as a tool both in everyday life and in clinical settings to boost personal resilience.”

What exactly is self-efficacy?

The theory of self-efficacy was first put forward in 1977 by Albert Bandura, a Canadian-American psychologist and professor at Stanford University. In his seminal paper ‘Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change’, he defined the phenomenon as “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations”.

Essentially, it uses optimistic self-belief to determine our competence when it comes to executing a plan of action or achieving a goal.

There’s an important distinction to make between self-efficacy and self-esteem, though, as the latter is preoccupied with a person’s sense of worth and not with the perception of their own abilities. Similarly, self-efficacy is not about the more abstract notion of confidence, because that doesn’t require as much specificity.

Bring to mind the famous quote by Gandhi and it’s possible to see just why self-efficacy is seen as so powerful:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.”

Studies have shown self-efficacious people to have better problem-solving abilities and persistence than their counterparts without as much self-belief, as well as greater brain activity in areas linked to emotional regulation.

Because they are convinced they have the power to overcome challenging situations, they empower themselves further. In doing so, they may have better coping mechanisms in times of potentially traumatic events and even be less likely to develop stress-related illnesses.

On the other hand, people with lower self-efficacy tend to:

· Avoid difficult tasks

· Focus on their personal failures

· Assume particular situations are beyond them

· Quickly lose confidence

Importantly, being self-efficacious doesn’t mean a person sails happily through life and never fails or makes mistakes. Instead, they take on their errors as further challenges and redouble their efforts to reach their goals.

The four sources of self-efficacy

In his famous 1977 paper, Albert Bandura laid out what he saw as his four main sources of efficacy beliefs, which are:

1. Mastery experiences — how mastering a task will build self-belief. This requires experience in overcoming obstacles.

2. Vicarious experiences — observing people around us succeeding and feeling as though we can too.

3. Verbal persuasion — having our belief in our own abilities strengthened by people such as parents or teachers.

4. Emotional and physiological states — how the state of our wellbeing can impact upon our self-belief. For example, depression can hinder our faith in our own abilities.

Psychologist James Maddox also added a fifth source (Maddux and Meier, 1995): imaginal experiences, which involves visualizing yourself achieving in a particular area and feeling more able to do so as a result.

Measuring your own self-efficacy

A method of measuring your own self-efficacy was developed by psychologists Matthias Jerusalem and Ralf Schwarzer, which is comprised of a series of statements that are ranked from ‘strongly agree’ (one point) to ‘strongly disagree (five points).

The statements are as follows:

1. I will be able to achieve most of the goals that I have set for myself
2. When facing difficult tasks, I am certain that I will accomplish them
3. In general, I think that I can obtain outcomes that are important to me
4. I believe I can succeed at most any endeavor to which I set my mind
5. I will be able to successfully overcome many challenges
6. I am confident that I can perform effectively on many different tasks
7. Compared to other people, I can do most tasks very well
8. Even when things are tough, I can perform quite well

You can work out your scores and then take the average of the eight responses to calculate your own final tally. The higher it is, the greater your level of self-efficacy.

How to build your own self-efficacy

So, is there anything you can do if you find your score to be low? The answer is yes, and the techniques with which to do so are surprisingly simple.

You might like to try these to get started:

1. Make a list of your achievements

Just like making a gratitude list, compiling a visual representation of the positive things you have achieved can help you realize that you have already done more than you probably thought possible. In turn, this will help you to see that there is no reason why you cannot go on to do more.

2. Repeat affirmations

It turns out that my mother was right: affirmations really can have a positive impact on self-efficacy. According to the self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988), repeating uplifting mantras can help us to maintain a positive narrative about ourselves, which subsequently persuades us that we can achieve greater things.

3. Collect inspiring people

Based on the idea of vicarious experiences, finding examples of positive role models could help to spur you on in achieving your own goals. You might want to consider building a Pinterest board of people in sports, for example, if you’d like to get fitter or pick up a new active hobby. Alternatively, quotes from successful people in business may help if it’s your career you’d like to build upon. After all, if they can do it, why can’t you?

4. Set goals

Research has shown that goal-setting is crucial when it comes to building self-efficacy because it allows challenges to be faced and overcome. Importantly, as we discussed earlier, it also shows that achieving success is as much about perseverance through failure as it is being talented to begin with. These goals should be measureable and achievable — although not too easy — to ensure continued motivation.

So, the next time you feel yourself getting overwhelmed by a task or even your ability to cope with what the world throws at us next, follow my mother’s advice and say to yourself: I can and I will — because I already have.

References:

1. APA PsycNet, Recalling autobiographical self-efficacy episodes boosts reappraisal-effects on negative emotional memories, available at https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Femo0000949 (accessed March 12th 2021)

2. EurekAlert!, Reflecting on your own capabilities boosts resilience, available via https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/uoz-roy031021.php (accessed March 12th 2021)

3. Bandura A. Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review. 1977;84(2):191–215

4. Oxford Handbooks Online, Self-Efficacy: The Power of Believing You Can by James E Maddux, available at https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195187243.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195187243-e-031 (accessed March 12th 2021)

5. Measurement Instrument Database for the Social Sciences, General Self-Efficacy Scale, available via https://www.midss.org/content/general-self-efficacy-scale-gse (accessed March 12th 2021)

6. ScienceDirect, The Psychology of Self-Affirmation: Sustaining the Integrity of the Self, available via https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065260108602294 (accessed March 12th 2021)