Ways to Build Self-Efficacy

Stress and anxiety have a huge impact on the personal and academic life of a college student. Katya is a

freshman with a 3.0 grade point average. She experiences severe anxiety and stress before her exams

fearing that she might lose her scholarship if she does not do well. Her chemistry exam is two days away

and she has been studying very diligently throughout the semester. The stress of the exams and fear of

losing her scholarship has made test anxiety so bad that she experienced a panic attack while trying to

study and she needs help. Her self-esteem and her future depend on her academic performance. Hence,

she needs to build a high level of self-efficacy to be successful.

My personal experience is that of Katya. I do experience anxiety and stress in hopes of doing well. I try to

remain calm and take long and deep breaths when my anxiety and stress levels go up. Sometimes, it is

important to experience a little bit of stress which can be positive to stay focused and improve

performance. But you cannot let the stress and anxiety overtake you and that is when the negative

consequences take effect. When I am stressed or worried, I try to look deeper into the problem and start

asking questions about what would happen if the worst happened. This helps me to be prepared for the

worst and the problem does not look as big as I had imagined.

Katya has low self-efficacy, and this has detrimental effects to her academics if she does not improve.

She can try a few daily self-practices before seeking professional help. The daily practices include

awareness of stress by monitoring her reactions to her stressors (in this case, exam), dynamic relaxation

for 20 min per day, changing energy drains and energy gains, reducing events that drain energy and

increasing events that gain energy, creating a memory of wholeness, recollecting a past memory when

they felt healthy and well and practicing effortless breathing and changing body posture. If any of the

above does not help, she can then seek medical help which includes joint therapy, cognitive behavior

therapy and mindfulness sessions. It is also important that Katya evaluates her self-efficacy level to
assess her ability to handle difficult situations and perform under pressure. Self-efficacy is a person’s

belief to succeed in a specific task assignment. Students with an internal belief in themselves focus

primarily on their effort and not worried about external factors such as fate, luck to succeed, whereas

students who lack the internal belief worry about external factors for their outcomes. Hence, self-

efficacy is highly context-specific and dynamic in nature.

Katya can follow simple techniques such as building optimistic beliefs with a positive attitude to promote

the motivation to work on new and difficult tasks and facilitate the engagement in and completion of

task assignments. She can also celebrate success however small it is to get a sense of accomplishment

and help her push through. She can also seek feedback from professionals on her physical, mental and

psychosocial behaviors.

Self-Efficacy is a psychological skill that plays a key role in almost every aspect of life. It is important to

develop high levels of self-efficacy to deal with challenging situations in life. Higher self-efficacy can be

developed with a positive attitude and belief in your abilities. Katya has the ability to succeed and with a

positive attitude and an internal belief, she can succeed in her upcoming exams without having a panic

attack.

References

 Peper, E., Harvey, R., Cuellar, Y., & Membrila, C. (2022). Reduce Anxiety. NeuroRegulation, 9(2),
91–97. https://doi.org/10.15540/nr.9.2.91
 Liane Kaufmann, Manuel Ninaus, Elisabeth M. Weiss, Walter Gruber, Guilherme Wood
First published: 26 May 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14797
 Web Reference - https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-efficacy-2795954