Uncle Akin: To The Singles With Love: Be Humble (Part Seven): Self-Efficacy

I Believe I Can.

“Be able to decline a date so gracefully that the person isn’t embarrassed that he or she asked.” ― Marilyn vos Savant.

Keeping the House:

Glad to be back for yet another visit. I don't know about you, but I am enjoying these visits. I am just about visiting myself happy and blessed. I am probably cheating you all. That is if you are not getting anything out of these visits. I am, but it was all meant for you in the first place. The unplanned but highly welcomed and supposed side effect has been changing my own life for good.

I hope you can say that for yourself also. That is my desire, but I can't force it. My job ends with feeding you with the material. What you do with it is what will possibly make a difference in your own life. Jesus teaches, it is HOW you listen that will make a difference in whether the words will justify and promote you, or judge, sentence, and take away from you. Either way, the ball is always in your court, not mine.

On this visit, we latch to the third of the four (4) dimensions that define a person's disposition to life. In the past five visits, we had discussed the first two, being Locus of Control (LoC) and Neuroticism. On this visit, we progress to the third, Self-Efficacy.

Self-Efficacy: What is it?

According to Albert Bandura, the psychologist who originally proposed the concept, self-efficacy is "the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations." It is a person's belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation.

Doesn't that sound rather familiar? Remember famously repeated quote by Henry Ford, "Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right." I like the fuller version even better. He said, “You must never, even for a second, let yourself think that you can fail.”

He continues, “Our first principal is that failure is impossible. You may not get what you’re trying to do right the first time or the second time or the tenth time or the 100th time, but if you shut out of your mind the possibility of being licked, then you are bound to win.”

A similar line of thought was toed, in 1905, by Superintendent John Herbert Phillips in a set of speeches delivered to High School students in Alabama. This was included in a speech titled “Knowledge and Power.” He said,

"Have faith in yourself; develop confidence in your own power, reliance upon your own resources. If you believe you can, you will; if you think you can’t, you will fail. There is much truth in the old Latin motto: “Possunt quia posse videntur.” They can because they think they can."

Mahatma Gandhi wraps these up by saying,

“Keep your thoughts positive because your thought become YOUR WORDS.
Keep your words positive because your words become YOUR BEHAVIOR.
Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes YOUR HABITS.
Keep your habits positive because your habits become YOUR VALUES.
Keep your values positive because your values become YOUR DESTINY.”

Those men surely understood the power and purpose of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy plays a role in how we think, how we act, and how we feel about our place in the world. It determines what goals we choose to pursue, how we go about accomplishing those goals, and how we reflect upon our own performance.

Self-efficacy is the belief that we can achieve influence over the conditions that affect our lives. It is the belief in our own ability to succeed in achieving a goal - having the confidence to know we can do whatever we set our mind to by managing how we think, feel, and behave. It is the fuel that drives change.

Interlude:

Well, we are at another stopping point. Wish I could go on and on, but that would be rather selfish and a waste. We are each human, meaning we are limited in the attention span and processing of information per time. So, I'll leave you to digest this little. Feel free to send in whatsoever question you have. Never forget, this is a communication channel. We'll pick up from here next time around.

Thanks for your time. Hope this helps you. Let me know—a special welcome to all our new faces on the "Single and Blessed" community page. Thanks for being God's stamp of approval on what we are doing. Thanks for entrusting us with your time. I trust you'll not regret it in any way. Take a snapshot of your life today. Transformation is going to hit you like you've never seen before. Welcome home.

You know I love you. Keep occupying. Keep reigning. You have been activated to breakthrough. You have the mandate.