Doing what you want with your own life, is an incredibly powerful and empowering experience.
Building self efficacy is one of the most important skills we can teach our children and develop within ourselves. It can be severely damaged by trauma, abuse & addiction.
Self efficacy is:
one’s own belief in being able to succeed in specific situations or with certain tasks.
Remember how good it feels when you hold back on eating that huge packet of crisps until the weekend – or decide to lose weight. Psychologically you commit. Take action and then follow through. Climbing on those scales and seeing the results of your hard work is a wonderful experience.
That slight sense of euphoria has been tapped into. Chemicals haven’t been needed, alcohol not involved. You have connected your need and want, to create a powerful response within.
If you can tap into it once in a healthy way – then as an individual or even a unit or team. It can be tapped into again and again.
Many years ago – life pushed me out of my comfort zone and sent me into the world. Travelling with my husband and children for nearly a year.
How I began to develop self efficacy.
My urge to feel my freedom and care for my family simultaneously.
My need had always been to develop security for my children.
My want had always been to travel extensively.
My desire – to have fun and heal from my grief.
My thinking – sort out the logistical problems, financial expenditures and societal judgment making such a decision created.
It wasn’t until I was able to connect and combine my need with my want, was I pushed out into the world. One does not have to supersede the other necessarily. It’s how you develop, incorporate knowledge, experience and adapt that to suit your style and life which makes all the difference.
Recently I’ve lived and worked on a little thai island called Koh Chang in a luxury Addiction Rehab. I lived alone for the first time in a long time, without my husband of 29 years. I lived in one room, onsite. Enjoyed the most amazing sunrise outside my balcony, when sipping my morning tea. This connected me with my happiness.
Here I had to deal with both limitations and abilities. Strength and weakness. In the process developing a deeper sense of living and understanding into life. What helps others thrive or simply survive.
What self efficacy does, is enable you to build the strength within, to deal with life and keep building success for yourself. Recognise your abilities and keep you moving towards, as yet, unformed goals, experiences and decisions. It is exciting and unfortunately at times, it will be others around you who will feel that more than you – as you move through the internal fear, anxiety and concern as you build this willful muscle.
Travelling connects me with my personal energy, it’s a flow of movement which is positive for me. It shows me my tiredness. Enables my therapist mind to observe the healing of grief within. Enjoy the physical challenges presented to me, from my own desire and framework. Get to know my avoidance techniques. The areas where I really lack confidence, what causes it and how I can heal it. It recognises both the good and bad and supports me through the tough moments. It enabled me to protect my children. Show them what the world had to offer and give them choices, from my own parental perspective.
Our minds are extremely powerful tools when used wisely and correctly. If you can harness its power and use it to good effect within your life and the lives of those around you, then you can begin to make the changes you want to see and experience – recognise your own development and connect with your self efficacy, to build more belief for what you want to do, who you are, want to be and how you want to achieve it.
Building belief in yourself by chanting mantas and simply mentally trying to create change is just mind washing. It can be used as part of the process but is not the whole.
So if you want to develop self belief, it is time to start looking at building self efficacy, because the only way out is through!
Originally published at wildaboutwellbeing.com