Do you need more resilience? Most of us do. This series is all about how you can build more resilience. We just talked about growth mindset. Now we’re going to get into one of the secret engines of having more mental health, and that’s self-efficacy. Please subscribe, please share this video. Give us some comments below because we want to help you engage with your mental health and build mental fitness. Everybody, I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey. I’m a board certified psychiatrist and therapist with over 25 years of experience in mental health, helping people build more resilience.
Let’s get into self-efficacy. So self-efficacy is the belief in your ability to do a specific task. With growth mindset, we’re thinking about your ability to be flexible, to learn, to take information from your failures and improve your processes. Self-efficacy asks us, do I believe that I can do this specific task right now? Can I take the dog for a walk? Can I call my therapist when I need an appointment? Can I cook dinner tonight? These basic things, so many of which we can do, and this is absolutely key to building resilience and better self-esteem.
Why does self-efficacy matter for mental health? Well, the research shows so clearly that high self-efficacy is related to lower rates of anxiety and depression. You have more tenacity and ability to change some of these health promoting behaviors. We talk so much about in mental fitness, your ability to engage in exercise and improve diet. When people have low self-efficacy, they give up on challenges more easily. They don’t follow through as much. They have higher rates of anxiety and depression. And the great news about self-efficacy is it’s not fixed. It’s one of these skills and abilities that we can grow and we can enhance. Let’s talk about how you can do that right now.
Let’s talk about the four science-backed ways that you can increase your sense of self-efficacy. Number one, master small wins first. Bandura called these mastery experiences and they’re the most powerful driver of self-efficacy. In my clinical practice, I talk about putting points on the board, which is finding things that we know we can do and doing them. These wins matter because it tells your brain on a biological level, you’re capable. So we want you to stack these wins because they compound over time and enhance your feeling of self-efficacy.
Number two, watch someone like you do it. This is called vicarious learning. And it’s a really important and easy way. We want to pick someone like you, not a superhero, not some Instagram fitness model. Because when your brain sees someone like you achieve something, it kind of recalculates. It re-estimates what’s possible and it lowers the bar for you to achieve that. So seek out communities, role models, or even stories of individuals who are similar to you or struggling with something similar, and that provides evidence to your brain that you can do it too. Their wins become evidence that yours is possible.
Number three, pay attention to your body’s signals. And I’m going to add onto this, interpret them correctly. Bandura’s research showed that so often when people get aroused, when they get nervous or anxious, we interpret this as a failure. I’m nervous, anxious, I must not be able to do this. So we want to use what’s called a reframe. Like an athlete does when an athlete walks up to the starting line and they feel nervous, they begin to visualize, they begin to get into their routine. They know that they’re nervous because they should be. They’re about to start a race. You want to reframe some of your physiological arousal and notice, okay, I’m nervous because I’m trying something new, which is great. I’m feeling a little anxious because this conversation is a big deal. How appropriate. You want to make sure and use that physiological signal as an indication to you that you’re building self-efficacy. You’re challenging yourself, not that you’re an incompetent failure. So try this out before something hard next time. I want you to take a deep breath. Name that feeling and see if it can help you understand that you’re gearing up for something. You’re not falling apart.
Number four, encouraging words. As a therapist, I’m really well versed in this and it’s something I love about my job, which is being able to see a little bit more objectively sometimes, the hope or the possibility or positivity that’s waiting for somebody in their future and encourage them with some good words. We’ve got to do this for ourselves and for those around us. Encouraging words are really simple. It starts with, you can do it. You’ve got this. I know that this is a big challenge. Using our ability to understand that encouragement is necessary. Why? Because when we’re building self-efficacy, we’re up against challenges. Building more resilience, building self-efficacy, a lot of times this is kind of branded as, I don’t know, like easy, simple work. It’s not. This is about addressing yourself in the face of some of your biggest emotional and personal challenges and making sure that you’re there for yourself. We do this by encouraging ourselves that we are up to the challenge and that if we’re struggling, if we’re failing, if we’re not meeting the mark, that’s okay. That’s information. And that information allows us to build more skills, build more processes, have more resilience and get back to that challenge another day.
Self-efficacy is so specific and key to our mental health. It’s your confidence in your ability to do stuff, to get stuff done. And it’s so important to rack up these points so that you begin to, as we’re going to talk in the next video, build self esteem. There are four ways that we’ve talked about building self efficacy in this video. Please comment below which one really resonates with you. Please subscribe so you don’t miss any of these videos. And most importantly, please share this with somebody who needs a little bit more self efficacy, a little bit of help building more resilience. I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey everybody. I’ll see you in the next video. Thank you.
