Yes I Can Use the positive power of selfefficacy
[Music]
alright
[Music]
foreign
i’m laura ritchie that was part of a
piece called
resonance written for me as a soloist by
the composer
jill jarman i started to study the cello
seriously
the summer before i was 18 and i knew
i had a long way to go about 10
000 hours of practice but i was full of
wild ambition
and i felt nothing was impossible
i remember in one of my early cello
lessons
my teacher looked straight at me
and being realistic he said you’ll never
be a soloist i felt
angry and i fought hard not to cry
but inside i felt determined
and i thought yes
i can
i can and i did
that wasn’t the first or last time i
heard
can’t or won’t there’s a lot of
no in the world no
is one of the top 100 most frequently
used words
where yes doesn’t make an appearance
until nearly 200 places down the list
i did learn and i rose above
the nose despite his realism
my teacher saw the spark of yes in me
and he watered it like a seed i’ve never
stopped growing
self-efficacy what gives that sense of
yes you can do something and
agency is when you go and do it
i’ve spent my academic career
researching how we cultivate
and act on our yes
understanding the psychology of
self-efficacy
is key to unlocking your personal agency
in the late 1970s albert bandra
initially defined self-efficacy as a
personal belief
in our capabilities to do a certain task
it gives our sense of yes of can
of drive towards agency it’s a good
thing
but all around us society tells us what
we can
or can’t do bombarding us with messages
that echo in our
personal bubbles and it’s up to us
to somehow make sense of it all
and manage our beliefs
we have to ask ourselves what do we
believe
are we tricked into giving up our agency
has the way we view ourselves and our
capabilities
changed or do we take a view at all
i think sometimes we’re taken for a ride
in life it’s like being on a tourist bus
or sitting in the boat on the
it’s a small world ride at disney you
know the one
everyone loves that happy songs you
gently float along the river
while mechanical dolls go by singing and
dancing representing lots of countries
as you sit in the boat and float through
displays from around the world
you see so much
but when you leave instead of having
learned about those cultures
gained some wisdom through the
experience
most people walk away with little more
than
a memory of a famous tune
just because you’ve been on the ride
gone through the motions
doesn’t mean you’ve learned anything
it happens in education as a teacher
i can coach you through writing an essay
or studying for a test i can
tell you just what to do to get the
right sounds out of the cello
unless you’re aware of the process
you’re just like a mechanical doll
owning the process makes all the
difference
after doing something could be passing a
test
baking a cake writing a song any task
it’s easy to be swept up in the magic of
wow i did it
but that frozen
insta moment gives us
a false sense of accomplishment
and we need to wake up from that fancy
photo world
where society tempts us to show we’re
prose
even though we’ve only just had a taste
developing complex skills like learning
a trade
becoming an expert takes
time it would be like saying once you’ve
made a
cake out of a packet mix that somehow
you’re a chef
whatever your goal whether playing the
cello
cooking designing a house making an app
becoming a civic leader
these take years to master however
they are not only for a select few
and out of reach for others
nobody can tell you what you can
or can’t do only you
can decide whether you believe in your
capabilities
only you can have self-efficacy
to do things people with self-efficacy
are far more likely to be resilient
persist in what they do and get results
research has shown that developing
expertise takes
thousands of hours and seeing the road
from that first note to becoming your
own soloist
understanding the progression knowing
how to navigate getting from here to
there
does take years of dedication
self-efficacy may be a long-term
superpower but it doesn’t make you a
quick fix
superhero and you’re not going to leap
the mountain of your dreams in a single
bound
we start with an individual task
and it’s processes there are
notes to learn fingers to toughen up
with calluses
muscles to train a whole palette of
skills to develop
no matter what you’re doing
when we consciously think
about thinking and learning processes
that’s called metacognition
understanding what’s required
knowing you have the skills realizing
how you feel and do being
aware and owning your self-efficacy
suddenly makes things seem possible
this is the key to unlocking agency
but modern life has been constructed for
ease and people don’t need
to learn things we’ve made huge advances
to automate
and simplify creating space
and time where years ago
we would have had to work
to figure out things and now
there are gadgets to do things for us
heck i can turn on the hot water
with an app
actually with most things in my house
i neither need to lift a finger
nor know how anything works to be
perfectly comfortable the very nature of
automatic means it’s done for
us when things are done
for us where’s our agency
it’s not enough to simply
have self-efficacy beliefs
it’s really important to know what we’re
believing in
what a task involves to have
accurate self-efficacy beliefs
i studied 600 school children in england
who were beginning to learn musical
instruments and
i asked one boy who was cheerful and
confident
what he was learning and he said
the elbow
he really didn’t understand but he made
sense of the situation by using the word
that
sounded closest to his actual instrument
the oboe
what are the component parts
the skills the processes
how do we get from a to b
there’s a big difference between an oboe
and
an elbow self-efficacy
has to be something people own in their
daily lives
beyond a gut feeling that simply exists
it involves active reflection and
strategic
thinking about skills processes
and our surroundings maybe you
already engage with metacognitive
and reflective processes without
realizing it
but for many this is not obvious
and even for those who already believe
in their capabilities becoming aware
of our choices thoughts and actions
gives us ownership instead
of allowing ourselves to coast on
autopilot
along the path of habit
in another research study i asked
university music students to learn
a new instrument and analysis of their
practice
showed that without specific instruction
they reinvented the wheel on the new
instrument
starting from scratch seeing the
differences
instead of the similarities
although you may use the breath to play
the flute and the bow to play the cello
many of the core skills are the same
they didn’t carry their experience
knowledge and self-efficacy with them
to the new task even though they could
have
this makes me wonder if we’re taught
to think believe
be self-directed and have
agency or just to fit in as we
flow through society
without agency without thinking without
belief
are we set up for failure the question i
ask myself
is what am i doing
what are you doing really
what are you doing
are you content to just go along for the
ride
or are you the one driving in your life
that inspiring teacher of mine had a
practice competition once
it wasn’t about how many hours you put
in
but it was about how much progress you
made
how much you learned and i was in that
competition
i did put in my hours but i also used
every strategic fiber in my body to
learn effectively
and efficiently listening
watching paying attention to details
taking care to eat
sleep focus reflect and plan and
in the end i won
that day i was not just riding through
my life
i was driving a
1981 chevy malibu classic
that’s right i won a car that was the
prize
it it was in pretty bad shape and
it didn’t last very long but
i was in the driver’s seat
it’s not such a small world
and there’s a lot to explore
out there and in here
we need to think and take responsibility
for owning our self-efficacy
and realizing our capabilities
through agency
even if you are happy to ride through
life
the one thing that
doesn’t happen for you that can never be
automated
is your own thinking
someone can trick you into not thinking
for yourself
but nobody can take
away your capacity to think
and believe in yourself
only you can believe
in yourself as we gain awareness
and perception of our self-efficacy
beliefs
knowing what factors in our lives affect
and influence us engaging with
metacognitive
thinking and consciously making
decisions
we move beyond awareness to actually
develop our self-efficacy beliefs
awareness allows us to transfer
from one setting to the next by
linking processes beliefs and skills
the foundation of skill and the
confidence of
yes leads us to act
action is our agency
a base of self-efficacy skills
and agency it’s a recipe for change
and the road to more confident
accomplishments with self-efficacy
you may well find a way to be a soloist
maybe not textbook like
carnegie hall or singing halftime show
at the super bowl
but believe me
yes you can
and with each accomplishment your
self-efficacy
is strengthened this goes beyond
thinking you can learn or grow
it’s different from a mindset that
persists through
grit or force people who are aware
of their self-efficacy use
these beliefs as an active source of
motivation
toward untapped possibilities
we engage with ourselves our
surroundings
and we move from belief
to action from self-efficacy
to agency we think
and use strategy to take charge
of our beliefs when you
own your self-efficacy
believe in your yes and know you can
then you have the keys to agency
it’s your turn to be in the driver’s
seat
it’s your turn to go solo
[Music]
you