This powerful belief can help you accomplish more

In the 1970s, academic psychology escaped from studying just behavior to start studying mental life. Albert Bandura, the father of this cognitive revolution within social psychology, led the way in 1977 with “self-efficacy.” An “efficacy expectation” is the belief — the conscious thought — that you, yourself, can bring about the goal you desire, and this is distinguished from an “outcome expectation,” which is the belief that your goal will happen, even if you are not the agent who brings it about. Self-efficacy implies the existence of much more than the bare fact that depriving people of control results in passivity or the bare fact that control is rewarding. Those effects may or may not be caused by thoughts. Self-efficacy claims that there are conscious expectations of the future that cause trying in the future. Indeed, this turns out to be true and is the strongest sense of efficacy.

Richard Lazarus, across the bay from Bandura (at Stanford) in Berkeley, proposed appraisal theory. When an event occurs, the person first assesses the consequences of the event (“primary appraisal”). Then the person asks if he has the ability to cope with the event and its consequences. This is “secondary appraisal.” Importantly, Bandura and Lazarus were both explicit about agency: It requires conscious expectations.

Bandura’s idea caught fire, and today he, after Sigmund Freud, is the most cited 20th-century psychologist. It led to a cascade of international research on conscious efficacy as causal. There are now hundreds of studies showing that more — much more — achievement occurs, over many domains, when conscious efficacy beliefs are present. When, moreover, they are enhanced, achievement goes up.

The cognitive revolution was crucial because we now know from the laboratory that conscious beliefs in agency robustly cause achievement.

Increasing efficacy

Albert Bandura defined efficacy as your belief in your capacity to execute behaviors that will produce specific outcomes. It is not about having the actual skill, but about believing you can have it and you can succeed. First, the ideology you hold influences your own efficacy. If you believe that God’s arbitrary grace does everything, or fate, or chance, or destiny, or the system, your own efficacy will be low. If, on the other hand, you believe in the power of the human will, or even cooperating with God, your efficacy will be higher.

Beyond ideology, Bandura identified several practical ways to build self-efficacy. Four stand out for their power and ease.

Start absurdly small, and let success cascade

The most potent source of efficacy is actual mastery — the direct experience of success in challenging tasks. But here’s what makes this counterintuitive: The size of the success doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think. Your mind registers completion, not magnitude.

Why does this work? Every completed task, no matter how trivial, sends a signal to your brain: I set out to do something, and I did it. That signal is what builds efficacy, not the impressiveness of the accomplishment. This is why someone paralyzed by a messy apartment shouldn’t try to clean the whole thing — they should wash one coffee cup. Not because a clean cup matters, but because completing that single act often triggers a cascade. One cup leads to washing the rest, which leads to clearing the counter, which leads to making the bed.

Each micro-success builds momentum for the next action. The cup is a psychological domino, not an end in itself. If you encounter a cup too stained to clean, throw it away. Don’t let a defective object undermine the cascade.

Someone like you who succeeded

Seeing others succeed at similar tasks boosts your own efficacy, but only if you attend to the right details. The key is similarity. If they can do it, you can too — but only if “they” resemble “you” in meaningful ways, and only if you understand how they did it, not just that they did.

Why does this work? When you watch someone similar to yourself overcome an obstacle, your mind makes an automatic inference: If someone like me succeeded, the task must be possible for people like me. This is why representation matters psychologically, not just politically. A first-generation college student gains more efficacy from reading about another first-generation student who graduated than from reading about a legacy admission who graduated. The obstacles matter.

But observation alone isn’t enough — you need to study their approach. What specific actions did they take? What did they do when they got stuck? The value isn’t inspiration; it’s instruction. This is also why you should cultivate other people pursuing similar goals and ignore the daily news, which specializes in depicting people utterly unlike you encountering problems you’ll never face.

Reframe failure

You will fail. The question is what story you tell yourself about why. People with high efficacy attribute failures to controllable factors — like not preparing enough or using the wrong strategy. People with low efficacy attribute failures to fixed limitations — like lacking talent or being stupid. The difference between these two explanations determines whether you try again or give up.

Why does this work? Imagine you bomb a job interview. If you conclude, “I’m not good at interviews,” or “I’m not the kind of person they want,” you’ve identified a permanent, intrinsic deficiency. There’s nothing to be done. Efficacy craters. But if you conclude, “I didn’t research the company thoroughly enough,” or “I need to practice answering economic questions,” you’ve identified a correctable error. Efficacy survives because the path forward is clear: research more, practice more. The objective outcome is identical — you didn’t get the job — but the psychological outcome is opposite. One interpretation ends the game; the other starts the next round.

This is why you should analyze what you learned from setbacks rather than dwelling on what went wrong. The right question isn’t “Why am I like this?” but “What will I do differently next time?” At the outset of your freshman year, write down what grade point average will count as success. If you recorded B+ and you achieved it, don’t let that one A− you missed in chemistry undermine your efficacy. You hit your target. That’s the story.

Reframe your body’s signals

Sadness, anxiety, fatigue, and physical illness all undermine efficacy beliefs, but not because they directly prevent action. They undermine efficacy because of how you interpret them. When your heart pounds and your palms sweat before a presentation, your mind asks: “What does this mean?” If you interpret it as “I’m panicking because I’m not capable,” your efficacy drops and your performance suffers. If you reinterpret the identical sensation as “My body is mobilizing energy because this matters,” your efficacy holds and your performance improves.

Why does this work? Physiological arousal is ambiguous — your body produces similar responses for threat and for challenge, for fear and for excitement. The interpretation you assign determines which psychological state you enter.

Reappraising anxiety as readiness doesn’t eliminate the sensation, but it changes its meaning from “evidence of incapacity” to “preparation for action.” This reframing has been shown to improve performance on everything from public speaking to math tests. Your body is giving you energy; the question is whether you’ll treat that energy as an enemy or an ally. When you feel overwhelmed, create “if-then” statements in advance: “If I feel my heart racing, then I will recognize my body is getting ready to perform.”

This article is featured on Big Think.