1. When I was a kid, I attended a sports camp. After a few days of track and field week, my best long jump was 9 feet. The next day, the counselor marking our distances in the sand pit laid a stick in the sand and shouted out to me before I started my run up to the pit—“Here’s the 9-foot mark!” I landed about a foot short of it. Frustrated, I went back to the starting line, built up more speed, timed my takeoff, and still landed about 6 inches short of the stick. As I walked back for my third try, I told myself, “I know I can jump 9 feet. I did it yesterday!”

Sure enough, on my third attempt, I cleared that stick. As I smiled and brushed off the sand, my counselor whispered, “Hey, I’ll let you in on a little secret. The stick is actually at 10 feet.” I had jumped past that stick not because of a new technique or a training regimen, but because I believed I could. Bandura would have been proud of my counselor for knowing how to maximize the effects of self-efficacy in his campers.

Can you recall any situations in which your own self-efficacy—your belief that you could achieve something—was a primary reason why you were able to actually achieve it?