Moxie Living: Courage and Confidence

You ask, ‘How do I know when I’m not living my core values?’

I say, ‘Do you mean you don’t know which way you’re heading in your life? You’re lost? You have no idea what you want? Lack a guide or plan? You’re fed up making decisions and choices based on sheer frustration and desperation?  It feels that you’re doing the exact opposite of what you’re meant to be doing? Is that what you mean?’

You say, ‘Yes’.

I say, ‘Let’s talk about moths!’

Although it’s not 100% proven the theory and science is this: moths navigate by the night sky, in particular the moon.

When you see a moth frantically flying around a light in your house, or notice one coming heading into your headlights at night, it’s pretty much a given that the moth is confused, overwhelmed, stuck and totally lost because it’s trying to navigate itself using the wrong light (the values).

Now, the moth doesn’t actually think it’s going to get to the moon, it’s merely using it as a guide. As you can imagine it’s pretty startled and freaked out when it thinks it’s landed there on craterville, when it’s just your lamp or headlights. It’s disorientated and freaking out. We see this by the way it flies round and round crashing over and over.

Eventually it stops and goes and sits on the wall. It needs to orientate itself. It knows something is up. Maybe the moth knows it’s made a mistake and is gently pondering what it’s best move is next.

I try and navigate my life with my core values as the guide. Mostly – but not always – I don’t get stuck in headlights or lamps of others, or feel as if I’m flapping about, I’m usually pretty good at knowing when I’m taking action that is clashing against them.

But that’s not always been the case, I’ve been the moth. Lots.

When you’re following the ‘wrong’ guide or light (values) for you, when you are not in alignment with your core values you may feel like the moth: disorientated, overwhelmed, unsure, lost and – the biggie – you can’t sustain where you are at. It isn’t right. You know it.

You eventually have to take yourself off to the wall to figure out who you are, what you stand for, what is meaningful and important to you in – and for – your life. You can – at any moment – stop trying to navigate yourself by the light (values) of others and discover your own night sky.

If you find yourself crashing around a lot because you’ve veered from the core of who you are, try this: 

Realign yourself.

How long will it take? 

A moment, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a lifetime? I don’t know. But remember you don’t need land on the moon, you merely need the night sky.

In other words, you need a simple guide, something to at least walk you in the right direction for you.

Here’s the key: you have to write your guide, you can download the core values workbook to create your first draft.

Are your values your guide? What happens when stop listening to your own inner core and try to navigate your life by those belonging to someone else?

What’s great about just pausing when you are following the wrong light for you? What may happen if you spend your entire life being overwhelmed because you are trying to follow the light belonging to others?

In short,

Self-efficacy is your own belief and judgement in your ability to succeed in a specific situation. It’s not really about your skills and what you know, it’s about your appraisal of your ability in using those skills. Its your belief in yourself: how you think, behave and feel about you.

It’s was the Psychologist Albert Bandura who brought us the term self-efficacy, “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.”

Take two people – one with high self-efficacy and one with low self-efficacy – with the exact same skill set, research has shown that the individual who sees themselves as efficacious will perform better than the person who doesn’t.

Let me rephrase that, the person who believes in their ability will perform better than the person who doesn’t believe in their ability.

It’s the ‘I can try’ v’s ‘I don’t think I can’.

Or the difference between, ‘This is harder than I thought, but I’ll try another way’ to ‘This is too hard, what’s the point’.

Don’t be misled. It’s not a you have it or you don’t, it all depends on the situation.

Unlike confidence and self-esteem which is about you feel about your overall value and worth, self-efficacy is about how you perform certain tasks.

You may have high self-efficacy when you’re doing your job, but you may have low self-efficacy in a new hobby. You could have high self-efficacy in writing and spelling, however that doesn’t mean you have the same self-efficacy when you have to work with numbers.

Maybe you’ve felt low self-efficacy. Perhaps you’ve noticed a time in the past where you avoided something because you thought you would fail anyway. Playing the X-Box with my nieces and nephews is one of mine. In that situation, I’m pretty much Ms Low Self-Efficacy. But they think it’s funny, so I’ll play anyway.

Maybe you’ve noticed someone – perhaps a child – where the displayed high self-efficacy: they stuck at the task, they had problems and difficulties but still the persisted, they put in the effort, didn’t sweat it and faced each challenge as they came along. They expected to do well, but at the same time – which is a massive part of self-efficacy – they also didn’t really mind how things would turn out.

Self-efficacy is all about the task or situation at hand.

Having high self-efficacy doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually will succeed. But low self-efficacy is usually a guaranteed unsuccessful attempt.

Efficacious people just believe – think, feel, behave – they can do.

What we believe to be the truth about who we are and what we are capable of –  is the present truth – until we change the beliefs.

Some of our beliefs we hold so dear and they could be exactly what is holding us back in become more of who we are.

Sometimes we have to question, sometimes we are holding on to beliefs that were ‘hand me downs’ from decades ago and we have just accepted them as true without question their validity or where they came from.

Keep questioning, sometimes you have to put some down in order to pick up new ones.

Want More?

Self-efficacy is one of the lessons you’ll cover in-depth in The Moxie Project Group Coaching Programme. You’ll spend a lot of the programme questioning your dearly held beliefs that are preventing you from being who know you can be. Self-efficacy is a massive part of making sure you are saying yes to life and the opportunities that are presenting themselves to you. Click here to find out more. The next class starts August 3rd.

Have you ever said, ‘Its 95% ready!’, usually referring to the CV, the website being built, the thing being created, the new idea to be launched into the world for others to see?

Is [insert thing of the 95%],

1. Genuinely not ready?
2. Ready, but you’re scared?

A 95% grade anywhere else then you are doing pretty darned good.

If you really wanted to slap a mark on yourself or a grade, that’s probably an A? A+? So, what’s really going on with you?

If No 2, do you mean, ‘Its ready. I’m not. There is 5% of my thinking that is holding this whole thing up. In that 5% are all my fears of what could or couldn’t happen. 5% of my thoughts of what if it bombs, fails, looks stupid, is silly, doesn’t work, people judge me, I feel like a fraudster, I’m not as ready as them over there’?

I wish I had a one liner for you to help here, but I don’t. We could talk about permission slips. And nods. But we’ve done that already.

100% is accomplished. It’s done. It’s finished.

95% is a lovely place to be. It gives you 5% to play with.

A grade C (about 70 – 76%), that gives you more room.

If it were someone else’s 95% story you were listening to, you’d probably encourage them to act, yes?

Then allow me to do the same for you, ponder these:

• Why did you select 95%, rather than something lower or higher? 
• What would need to happen for your 95% to be seen as good enough right now? 
• What would take it from 95% to 96%? What are you grading yourself against anyway?
• What do you think you might do to lower and release the importance of grading a piece of work that is going to change and grow as you do?
• What are some of the good things about being 95% ready? 

Just in case I’m not making myself clear: It’s typical in this being human that we don’t ever want to be seen as the one who is unprepared. That we have to have everything lined up, so that we aren’t seen to slip up.

95% is ready enough.

Love.

Dawn