Believing In Yourself Matters
We are apparently at the end of the beginning of this global pandemic that is wreaking havoc in all our lives.
Now we are all in the muddy middle of this disruptive, and for many, traumatic and heartbreaking experience and we don’t know what to expect from one day to the next.
We don’t know how long it will be until effective treatments and vaccines are developed to address the coronavirus.
We don’t know how long it will be until our lives return to something we could recognize as normal.
If you and yours are doing well that is a wonderful blessing.
Efficacy is the second element in the HERO acronym and is a more formal way to describe effectiveness.
The effectiveness or efficacy of something is how well it works to bring about the results you have hoped for.
Self Efficacy refers to the confidence you have in your ability to exert control over your own motivation and behavior.
Having a strong sense of Self Efficacy helps you take charge of your health and helps you persevere and reach your goals.
It means your solid self confidence enhances your sense of well-being even in the midst of difficulties.
And times do not mean defeat to you, instead a challenge fosters your hope, optimism and resilience and gives you the energy to double down and look for new ways to overcome.
Believing in yourself matters.
Albert Bandura, the psychologist who did the pioneering research on self efficacy, identifies four major ways you can build your sense of confidence and self efficacy:
- Focus on your past success stories or, mastery experiences, appreciate the ways you have previously overcome obstacles.
- Copy other people using social modeling, observing people you admire who are similar to you having success in their endeavors. You can say to yourself if that person can do it, so can I!
- Create situations for success, utilizing social persuasion and accepting verbal encouragement from others. Consider times when someone said something positive that helped you achieve a goal.
- Reframe negative experiences by changing your view of your psychological responses. For example consider that some anxiety may be a sign of anticipation and curiosity rather than weakness.
Let’s take a deeper look at the second strategy and I will give you an example of someone we can admire as an inspiration and a model to follow to build our collective sense of courage, confidence and self efficacy.
I am thinking of Florence Nightingale whose 200th anniversary of her birthday, May 12, 1820 was this month, May 12, 2020, in the midst of this worldwide health crisis. She died in 1910 at 90 years of age, just 8 years before the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic.
Many of you know that May 12 was the date chosen for the National Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, but you may not know it was chosen to honor Florence Nightingale and her struggles with chronic illness.
Florence Nightingale, of course, is well known as “the lady with the lamp” ministering to thousands of wounded soldiers during the Crimean War in 1854-1856 in extremely unsanitary conditions.
More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases than from their wounds. She worked tirelessly to provide care and improve the hygienic practices.
It is generally agreed by her biographers that Nightingale contracted brucellosis, a debilitating bacterial infection passed from animals to humans, in the filthy conditions of the Crimean field hospital.
Brucellosis, although rare in the United States is still prevalent worldwide.
The symptoms of chronic brucellosis will sound very familiar to those of us with fibromyalgia or other chronic illnesses.
These symptoms include severe joint and muscle pain, pain in the abdomen and the back, weight loss, fatigue, weakness, fever, chills, loss of appetite, night sweats, coughing, headaches, etc.
After becoming ill Nightingale never regained her health. She was partially, or completely bedridden, for most of the rest of her life suffering from unrelenting pain and fatigue.
Even though she was confined to her bed, this educated, upper middle class Victorian woman was a pioneering epidemiologist, social reformer, linguist, gifted mathematician and statistician, visionary researcher and administrator and founder of the nursing profession as we know it today.
She wrote some 13,000 letters from her bed as part of her campaigns for reform!
Although we don’t know what she would do and say in response to our current health crisis we do have these words from her writings to cheer us on today:
“Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift–there is nothing small about it.”
“So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard seed germinates and roots itself.”
Although I admire Florence Nightingale very much, I wonder if her level of achievement sounds pretty overwhelming?!
If you do, and some days you count just getting dressed as a major achievement,
I am right there with you! LOL!
The research on efficacy has shown it works best when we find role models that are very similar to us in some aspect to really benefit from their example.
So you could think about people you know that have qualities that you admire.
For example, I admire a colleague’s unfailing good humor, I admire a client’s kindness, I admire another client’s perseverance, I admire my husbands versatility.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Who inspires you in your everyday life?
Notice how they incorporate that character trait you admire into their daily life and think about how you could experiment with developing that positive inner resource in your own life.
And if you feel a lack of efficacy or effectiveness in the way you are handling your chronic illness this is exactly what I work on with my clients.
If so, I invite you to consider signing up below for a FREE Fibromyalgia Wellness Breakthrough Session to see if I can help you get to where you want to be.
I can help you find new positive strategies to cope with your symptoms.
I can help you find some ways to feel inspired and stay motivated to persevere.
