Suggestions For Building Higher Self-Efficacy Beliefs

Here are some suggestions to help you generate and maintain high self-efficacy beliefs which contribute to high motivation.

Highly-motivated students:

• Try to build a history of success. They put themselves in situations where success is highly likely and then gradually increase the difficulty.

• Don't focus on failures or allow failures to make them afraid of trying again.

• Listen to encouragement from other people, especially those whose opinions are valued.

• Ignore discouragement from others.

• Pay attention to how their bodies react in different situations. This attention will reveal the level of confidence in each situation (e.g., sweaty palms probably indicate low confidence).

• Recognize that self-efficacy beliefs are related to goals. For instance, unrealistically high goals can lead to lower self-efficacy. Reasonable and challenging goals can lead to success and higher self-efficacy for similar academic tasks.

Remember, as you progress through the next few screens, try to keep this last suggestion in mind. Focus on how all of the beliefs that we are discussing relate to the goals that you set and your motivation for reaching those goals.