Self Modelling

Social modeling can help you develop more confidence in your abilities when you’re watching yourself perform tasks successfully.

Consider recording yourself achieving a success or taking photos of your accomplishments. I also find it helpful to write about my successful experiences.

Let’s imagine you’re learning a new language. To improve your self-efficacy, you can record yourself while speaking on Skype with a language partner. You can agree beforehand what questions she will ask you and even the answers you’ll give.

When you listen to yourself having a smooth conversation with a language partner (once you overcome the weird feeling of listening to your own voice), your self-efficacy will grow.

If you’re working on a fitness-related goal, you can record yourself breaking your personal records. I taught myself how to correctly perform weightlifting exercises by recording myself practicing them and correcting my mistakes. Once I learned how to do these exercises, I kept recording my workouts out of habit. Watching myself lift heavier and heavier weights built more confidence in my abilities.

You can combine self-modeling with participating in a group of like-minded individuals. If you successfully resisted the temptation to eat chocolate, write a post describing your success. If you sold your first product to a stranger, then brag on the forum for entrepreneurs. It will inspire people similar to you, while also building more confidence in your abilities.

SOCIAL MODELING:

QUICK RECAP

1. Watching others succeed increases your self-efficacy, while watching others fail decreases it. However, self-efficacy can’t be built on social modeling alone – achieving small wins is still the first thing you have to do to develop lasting self-efficacy.

2. It’s easier to relate to people who are similar to you. You’ll get a more powerful inspirational effect from watching a novice succeed than from observing the elite performers.

3. People expend more effort in a group than they would if they had been working alone. Participate in groups to motivate yourself to put in more effort and get better results.

4. Watching yourself succeed can be as effective as watching others succeed. Record yourself performing tasks successfully to increase your confidence.