Increasing Your Confidence to Succeed!

Hello Internets

               

 Today I’m going to talk about one of the “heavy hitters”, so to speak, in the world of behaviour change psychology.  This theory stems from social cognitive philosophies, and is strongly linked to exercise behaviour across age, gender, ethnicity, and health status. The purpose of this blog post is to get you thinking about your “thinking” when on the road to becoming and maintaining a physically active lifestyle.

What I’m talking about is self efficacy, which simply put is “situation specific self confidence” or your perceived capability in performing a task (Bandura, 1977) . 

For example, if I am self efficacious in regards to climbing the grade “5.9”, or running for 10 minutes, that means I have high confidence that I can successfully perform those tasks. On the other hand, I may have low self efficacy when it comes to running an hour or boxing. 

Although this concept is logical when we think about it in regards to exercise behaviour (i.e., the more confident I feel about my abilities in regards to this type of physical activity- the more likely I am to do it), increasing one’s self efficacy in regards to a particular activity (e.g., running, climbing, biking), can seem like a daunting task!

So, in a 3 part series I will be talking about some sources/strategies that are effective, and some not so effective, and increasing SE in regards to physical activity. 

Note: When applying these strategies they must be focused at a specific task and not just physical activity in general. For example “my confidence in running for 15 minutes”, “my confidence in making it to the gym 3 times this week” rather than “my ability to become more physically active”.

Strongest Source of Self Efficacy: Mastery Experiences!

Mastery experiences have the strongest effect on one’s SE. This is essentially the positive psychological benefits one achieves by successfully performing a task. This is an important concept for both people doing the physical activity and those helping others to become physically active (i.e., trainers). Why? Because if you adopt this principal as a primary goal when training (either as the client as the trainer), the one attempting to adopt physical activity is more likely to continue the behaviour.

So how does one ensure mastery experiences? Well there are several different strategies that may be helpful...

1.    Pick activities you are naturally inclined to do: 

This means pick activities you are more likely to view yourself as successfully performing. If you like being outdoors start hiking, trail running, or climbing. If you played volleyball in high school, sign up for a league. If you’ve had previous success with a personal trainer, try that route. Put yourself in situations you’re more likely to be successful in, rather than setting yourself up for failure. (Note: this takes acknowledging the fact, that, as wonderful as you are, you are NOT good at everything).

Like the outdoors? Like heights? Go climbing!

2.    Look for previous mastery experiences and use them as motivation:

 

An awesome way to increase your SE is to look for previous experiences when you have been successful and using them to motivate you. Haven’t been to the gym in 3 months, well look back to a time you were regularly attending and say “If I could do it then, why can’t I do it now?” It’s important to frame this in a positive way instead of a negative critical way, which will un-motivate you.  

A good way to do this is to write it down. For example, say your goal is to regularly attend the gym 3 times a week, and you have done this before about a year ago. When those barriers come up that prevent you from going to the gym (i.e., you’re too tired, too busy, ect), write down that you know you can overcome come this barrier because you have overcome it before. This should increase your SE to perform the task at hand!

3.    Acknowledge and capitalize mastery experiences when they happen! 

This sounds like a no brainer, but it is very commonly over looked. For whatever reason, I have repeatedly found that people (including myself) tend to focus on their failures instead of their accomplishments, and this can zap your SE faster than you can say “holy potatoes”.

This relates to a previous post of mine on perception and negative selftalk, because essentially you have to change the way you speak to yourself when you do fail and when you do succeed to increase your SE.

I’m going to use rock climbing, because I see this all the time in climbers (aka me). It comes along with the sport as climbing involves a lot of failure...over and over... in order to get better. So, say you are on a climb that you have done before and you fall. An initial reaction could be to say to yourself “I suck, I did this before, I shouldn’t have fallen, I’m the worst rock climber ever!” This will lead to a decrease in motivation to continue the task (either that day or indefinitely depending on the situation).

It's all part of learning!

Alternatively, you could focus on the accomplishment that a) you’re rock climbing and being physically active, b) you’re being social and having fun, and c) You are training, and the fall allowed you to learn what you can improve on. Focusing on these accomplishments will increase your SE regarding rock climbing, and you will be more likely to continue.

This scenario can be applied to any situation. However, changing negative self talk and acknowledging your accomplishments is easier said that done. Hopefully, this blog helps prime you to recognize when these situations happen and jump all over them.

Well there you have it. Try these strategies out. In subsequent blogs I will talk about other sources to increase your self-efficacy, which include a) vicarious experiences, b) social persuasion, and c) physiological and affective states.

As always, comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome!

Stay Strong

Byn