Dangermond.org

There is a great article in the WSJ this morning – the psychobabble is that some people succeed because they figure if they keep trying they will succeed. Duh. The best point in the article is how to manage failure and not to let it sideline you – as my friend J is want to quote “your best play, is your next one.”

Psychologists call it “self-efficacy,” the unshakable belief some people have that they have what it takes to succeed. First described by Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura in the 1970s, self-efficacy has become a key concept in educational circles, and is being applied to health care, management, sports and seemingly intractable social problems like AIDS in developing countries. It’s also a hallmark of the “positive psychology” movement now sweeping the mental-health field, which focuses on developing character strengths rather than alleviating pathologies.

Self-efficacy differs from self-esteem in that it’s a judgment of specific capabilities rather than a general feeling of self-worth. “It’s easy to have high self-esteem — just aim low,” says Prof. Bandura, who is still teaching at Stanford at age 82. On the other hand, he notes, there are people with high self-efficacy who “drive themselves hard but have low self-esteem because their performance always falls short of their high standards.”

Still, such people succeed because they believe that persistent effort will let them succeed. In fact, if success comes too easily, some people never master the ability to learn from criticism. “People need to learn how to manage failure so it’s informational and not demoralizing,” says Prof. Bandura, who signs many of his emails, “May the efficacy force be with you!” (“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. That’s why I succeed,” Michael Jordan has said.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.