How can you improve self-efficacy

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Making a thread about it is a good start.
*Self-efficacy has been described as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals.
*

Basically, it is the belief that actions under your control can change your environment and/or help you achieve your goals.

I tend to fall into despondency about some issues and rather than address them head on, I try to distract myself or become hopeless. So am wanting to work on this.

Has anyone worked on this, or know what factors help or hurt?
This is what I’ve gained so far

Past experience - success or failure in the past affects your views of efficacy today

Observing others - seeing others succeed or fail

Optimism - according to Seligman (who pioneered work on learned helplessness) optimism (how you view a situation’s permanence, cause and scale) is important to efficacy

I wonder what role authoritarianism plays in this. According to what I read by Fromm, authoritarians tend to have worldviews that are based on life being controlled by powerful fates they cannot control. So that is supposedly why political authoritarians tend to have a passive attitude about the all powerful market and all powerful religion (ie just let the market decide. Just let god decide). So I wonder if anti-authoritarianism is correlated with higher self-efficacy.
So does setting small goals and achieving them help?
What kinds of interpersonal interactions could help or hurt this?
I assume CBT will help by addressing negative attitudes.

2

Probably not the answer you are looking for, since it sounds like you are looking to address your mindset via CBT, etc., but I would recommend reading Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People(Amazon link).

It’s basically Common Sense distilled into a book so Covey can get $10 for documenting it for you…:wink:

Seriously, the basic habits laid out are smart; if you find them do-able with some adjustments to your daily habits, you can truly increase your efficacy, and, arguably, your mindset. By the same token, if you look at them and think they don’t seem possible or realistic in your life, you can use that as clear indication that something deeper is worth looking into for you.

My $.02 - hope this helps.

By the way, I have read Seligman and his work is interesting and good, but often more ambiguous (“know your strengths and find ways to exploit them”) whereas this Covey stuff is just common sense. Kinda like setting big diet objectives vs. avoiding sugar, managing portions - good basic stuff that will make you feel better about yourself if you stick with the better habits.

I don’t think there is a magic lightswitch that you have to flip in your head - this stuff is usually about hard work over the long term to chip away and put good habits in place…again, another $.02…