Self-Efficacy and Other “Best Kept Secrets” to Success
How often do you steel a quick glance around of your peers to pass a judgment on their progress in relation to yours? While there is no way that we can know what other folks have going on, inevitably we measure ourselves to our perception of their accomplishments. To imply otherwise is, in my opinion, a lie. The intention can be there, right? “Don’t look at what others are doing”. “Just focus on your path”. The energy sent out to “read the room” could have been used to keep progressing your journey. Yes, comparison is the thief of joy. It also happens to be a very normal, human thing to do nonetheless.
When we pop our head up during an exam to note the temperature of the room at large (is everyone else sweating profusely, too?) it either affirms or upset our current progress. In the real world, though, we’re surrounded by a bunch of folks masking their real experience as a way of maintaining social norms. It’s all cool and great, but somewhere along the way we might feel further behind because the masks that we see mute the internal screams of panic that everyone else is also screaming.
Through these same masks, coaches tout their methods- affirming the value of buying into their particular program. Let them tell you how to live and you’ll certainly end up looking just like them*.
With great power comes great responsibility. Unfortunately, the coaching industry’s exponential growth moment has not come with regulation. As a result, we’ve ended up with harm done and poorly researched information disseminated. The coaching industry can be highly toxic at it’s worst. Because we don’t make money when you don’t spend money on us, coaches are likely to retain you through disempowering practices that keep y’all feeling incapable of “going at it on your own”.
Below, you’ll find a quick list of real, results driving practices that are free to explore and readily a part of your self-preservation toolbox already :)
Self Efficacy
Self efficacy is a belief that you can persevere. We are able to adapt through the constant process of learning, failing, recounting, and realigning to attempt better outcomes. When we are inundated with imagery that reflects the oxymoron that everyone else is okay and succeeding alongside the impossibility of making ends meet in this current capitalist culture, the essence of self efficacy is harder to adopt.
Us believing that we can persist, regardless of past failures, is a manifestation of “the american dream”. As an institution, America was founded on the backs of othering, subversion, and abuse. The American dream was established for the folks who reaped the rewards of the systematic subjugation and abuse of anyone else who didn’t fit that mold. Due to the deep seated fractures in our current state of things, self efficacy became a privilege only affirmed for the few that were given the advantage of believing that they could.
The brain constructs its reality based on continually confirmed behaviors by the folks who rear you and the community that you’re brought up in. These realities create a unique system of optimization for resources that the command center needs to survive each day. At this point in late-stage capitalism, we are all targeted by strategic marketing boosted by research that has proven the mechanisms for human behavior. Us believing that we can persevere is something that disrupts the system enough- not all can, otherwise the system will collapse. It wasn’t built for one-for-all.
When your systems optimization methods don’t quite mesh well with practices that will yield positive results, it takes an extra effort to unlearn and relearn in a new way. Humans who are categorically kept from equal access are immediately at a disadvantage from believing that they can. It’s exhausting. Now that megacorporations have the research and the tools to keep us looking away from the “man behind the curtain”, our global sense of self-efficacy feels at-risk.
To recenter yourself and your outcomes, consider all of the trials you’ve overcome so far. When you find yourself in a rut, return to examples of times that you’ve felt the same and ended up with a positive outcome. Persistence doesn’t have to be grandiose, it can be simply getting up and completing the intentions for the day when you were particularly dark, ya know? Wins are wins, you’ve made it this far, and you can keep making it onward as a result.
Agency
A sense of agency, I believe, is our easy act of revolution. Agency is our sense of self-determination. When we feel “agency”, we see ourselves in the driver’s seat. We are the director, the performer, and the audience determining the success of the performance. Our agency is taken from us when we’re constantly inundated with messaging that leaves us feeling helpless. Whether it’s content that we directly engage with or the sounds, sites, and sensations that surround us regularly, it’s easy to have taken when we’re most vulnerable.
Us reclaiming our sense of agency is us returning to our roots, serving our needs, and standing in our power. We aren’t ideal consumers when we are in our skin, on our feet, and thriving. We are sold on dreams that we’re told to have, and encouraged to match and outdo our peers in the rat race for attention. Not only do we need to carry the burden of the daily stress of showing up right, we also end up exhausted in our pursuit of some ideal that we believe we need to experience.
We can begin to reclaim our sense of agency from within. Our thoughts become our words which are spoken into action which persist as habits and we leave this earthly form by way of the legacy that those actions have left. When I’m feeling particularly disempowered, I’ll imagine my perfect day. “Your Perfect Day” exercise is meant to inspire the steps necessary to get you from the moment you’re in and to motivate you towards just where you can go. Imagine your perfect day, take note of the sounds, the locations, the feelings, and (most importantly) the actions that you take to make that day most perfect. How do you get there? What can you do this month, this week, this day to realize that dream? That’s action, that’s agency. Uncontrollables aside, knowing just how much you can influence your outcomes is addictive.
Simplicity
Finally, and one of my hardest pills to swallow: Simplicity. The quality of being easy to understand or to do except as it pertains to personal growth. Everyone has an opinion and, if you open yourself up to those opinions, you may be at risk of having your own opinions elbowed out. For those of us who can’t quite accept things at face value and who worry that the simplest solution might, in fact, be the most negligent, accepting simplicity is scary.
For a broader system that gives all voices something like a platform, elevating the most clickable and provocative voices, simplicity isn’t sexy so it’s unworthy of amplification. Other than the clickbait-devoid-ness of simplicity, the hyper-productivity driven information economy relegates simplicity to the margins, unworthy of a second glace. That’s it, that’s the post. Simplicity doesn’t play into the narratives that want confusion in order to facilitate buy-in for the solution.
When we’re just setting out on a fresh day, there may be a million things we want to do, there may be a handful of things we need to do, and there may be the grey area tasks that we neither want to nor need to do (but that we might be more than happy to use to procrastinate). It’s useful to map out this brain clutter into a handful of buckets: high priority, low priority, exciting, distracting. Categorizing the mish-mash in our brains is a helpful way to simplify, to clarify the intentions of our actions, and make the choices that will most efficiently get us where we need to go so that we can exist how we want.
All in all, and if you’ve gotten this far, remember that you are the driver of your life. You have all of the tools, they just may take a bit more practice than you expect. Believe in you, advocate for your best interests, and watch your energies shift :)
Breathe Better, Live Better
How Breath Works
Breath serves as the perpetual dance between Oxygen and CO2- these two opposite forces balance pH levels in the blood, support brain functioning, metabolic processes, and nervous system regulation.
As with all opposite forces, the balance comes from the conflicting qualities that contribute to homeostasis. With the breath, Oxygen serves as the energizer- it builds heat and lightness (getting light headed). In contrast, CO2 is a depressant, it cools and grounds.
When the body senses too much CO2 building up in the blood stream, it will signal the respiratory diaphragm to contract which, in turns, triggers and intake of air into the lungs. Once in the lungs, Oxygen reaches the vast surface area of capillaries and alveoli, teeming with vessels and capillaries, to shuttle Oxygen into the blood.
Thought CO2 gets a bad rap, it’s active participation in our everyday health should be celebrated. Because CO2 is a depressant, it down-shifts an accelerated nervous system by relaxing the smooth muscle tissues like those within the heart. In addition, an increased CO2 build up within a breath cycle may support more efficient Oxygen reuptake- this is how breathwork works!
5-minute Practice
Box breathing is arguably the easiest breath practice to follow. It regulates the nervous system through equal in breaths and out breaths with equal retention in between.
Set a timer for 5-minutes and, if possible, pull up a metronome app. Using common time, close your eyes and let the rhythm guide your pace as you breathe in for 4-counts, hold for 4-counts, breathe out for 4-counts, and hold for 4-counts.
If you feel your mind wander or you notice you’ve dozed off, realign and return. The process is the destination.
we are star stuff
a new perspective
variety is the spice of life. as we age, it’s easy to let certain constants fall to the back-burner as we face the onslaught of uncertainty that life offers us. some of these constants are as simple as having awareness of the way you sit down or carry your groceries. others of these may be a bit more complex, like our approach to new political ideas. somewhere in between these poles, we get use to our perspectives on wellness and we go on autopilot as we travel our avenues for health care. there is room for both reactive and preventative medicines, eastern and western disciplines— you just have to be willing to find the space, and offer yourself the grace to explore something slightly outside of your typical path.
we are elemental
in ayurveda, the whole of the cosmos is made up of just five elements. in an alternative story of creation, space began to move and created air, that air moved so much that it combusted into fire, the fire cooled and thawed into water, and the water solidified into the earth and planets. these elements can be found in all matter (organic and not) and are qualities in all things tangible (or not).
this perspective offers us an opportunity to simplify the way we see the world and our interactions with it. imbalances can be viewed through this elemental lens and the steps that we take to resolve them can be pared down based on simple understandings of ether, air, water, fire, and earth.
if you’re dealing with insomnia, you could notice the etheric/airy quality disturbing your sleep— so something that invigorates these elements in your body will probably not be of much help. as the saying goes— like increases like, opposites balance. on the contrary, if you’re sleeping a ton and having a hard time getting up in the morning, looking for comfort in more earthy-quality behaviors will most likely exacerbate the issue.
what does this mean
before we get big sick, or body sends little warning signals towards us. unexpected freak accidents aside, it’s uncommon to wake up one day with cancer having had no other red flags (such as systemic dysfunction, lethargy, pain, constipation, inflammatory responses). it’s in these small memos that we can begin to take preventative steps in our wellness and longevity— allopathic medicine reacts to the instance of disease, ayurveda (and similar disciplines) acts as “quality control” daily to keep your human system in balance in order to keep any progression of disease from happening.
i circle back to my earlier statement about there being space for both. you can’t make a painting if you don’t have paint or you don’t have a canvas— when you are ill you see the proper medical professional, but how episodic is that. the point i’d like to wrap up with is this: when you’re not urgently seeking care for an unavoidable ailment, what are you doing to keep yourself healthy and through what lens are you looking through.
ayurveda, defined
what it is
ayurveda is an eastern medicine science that comes from the vedic tradition. translated into english, ayurveda means “science of life” and is classified as a “biocharacteristic” medicine. this discipline uses a systematic approach to assess the individual and the relationship it has with the world around it. through diet, lifestyle, and herbal support, ayurveda is an experiential approach to wellness. it is less a “new approach to health” and more a “return to intuition”— serving to complete the picture of your healthcare team.
what it does
unlike allopathic disciplines which tend towards treating the singular “cause of disease”, ayurveda takes a big picture approach by identifying patterns of stressors on the unique constitution of the person. it is a categorical approach to disease through assessment of body type (or dosha) as well as imbalances of the qualities (or gunas) and elements in and around the body. we can boil it down to quality vs quantity— there is always a place for both.
instead of looking for answers for each disease in the body, ayurveda streamlines the complexity of disease and supports the healing process through easy to implement lifestyle and dietary routine. using a qualitative approach, ayurveda understands that all of life is a series of relationships— and in those relationships are patterns. through pratice and awareness, ayurveda integrates all of the parts of each relationship to find the path to balance in the body daily and seasonally.
what it do?
quality of life comes from daily living, not in the occasional visit to the doc (both planned and unplanned). ayurveda is a practice of preventative health care to support your individuality in the time in between. think of it like this— when your car is broken down, you may need a tow to take it to the mechanic to get a repair. it might take a few days to get it assessed, parts delivered, and installed. when you’re car needs an oil change, you take it to get serviced and within an hour you’re back on with your day.