Strengthen self-efficacy and confidence with acting tools.
In the complexity of everyday life, you often encounter situations that can cause your self-efficacy to falter. It’s not just the obvious setbacks that test your inner strength, but often the quiet, unexpected moments that make you hesitate. I’ll show you how to maintain your confidence with the performance hacks for more self-efficacy in everyday life.
This is where acting tools come into play – acting offers an arsenal of tools to regain your self-efficacy in these moments. They teach you how to change your inner attitude and thus strengthen your external impact.
Understanding self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is more than just a buzzword. It is the deep conviction that you are the captain of your life. But what happens when unexpected storms hit? Everyone has an individual threshold up to which they can cope with setbacks. If the level of challenge exceeds this limit, a process of doubt begins. It is a natural, human phenomenon that your belief in yourself begins to waver, especially when you fail repeatedly. Every time you experience a setback, a piece of your self-confidence erodes. These repeated experiences of failure isolate you. In moments of failure, you tend to withdraw. This isolation reinforces the feeling of powerlessness and distances you further from your goals and your belief in yourself.
Communication as the key to self-efficacy
The foundation of good communication is not laid in noisy halls or on large stages, but in the silence of your own inner self. The way you communicate with yourself is the first and perhaps most important step on the path to self-efficacy. A positive, supportive inner conversation can work wonders. It strengthens your self-confidence and enables you to tackle challenges with an attitude of strength and confidence. Unfortunately, we all tend to speak less kindly and understandingly to ourselves than we do to others. In a future post, I will dive deeper into the topic of how to improve the quality of self-communication.
For example, Lisa had a tendency to lash out in stressful or overwhelming situations, which often led her to shout at others. This behavior, which was already causing tension in her personal life, was also threatening to affect her professional career.Lisa decided to use an acting tool – an action – to control her reactions and set boundaries. She developed a certain gesture that she used as soon as she felt the tension rising. Over time, she was able to intervene earlier and earlier. This small change in her behavior enabled Lisa to remain more relaxed even in stressful moments.
Performance hack: Establish your neutral observer
One of the most effective ways to develop more self-efficacy in your life is to establish a neutral inner observer. This observer helps you to take a step back in moments of tension or excessive demands and look at your reactions from a more objective perspective. Here is a simple exercise to establish this observer: Prepare a neutral sentence to say to yourself when emotions are running high, like “That’s interesting…” or “Oh, exciting, I’m feeling/thinking/doing…”. Use this phrase in real-life situations to create a moment of calm and look at your thoughts and feelings from a neutral perspective.
Remember, self-efficacy is like a muscle that you can train. And if you would like to find out more and deepen your skills, you are cordially invited to my speaker retreats. There, you will learn how to present yourself confidently and to really make a difference with your ideas. If you would like to find out more about the retreats, visit my retreat page. And if you want to start improving your speaking skills right away, I recommend taking my free Speaker Test. There you will find many more hacks to help you on your way to improving your communication skills.
