Mastery Experiences - The Fastest Way to Boost Confidence
How to build confidence and resilience through step-by-step successes
Read time: 10 minutes
You might have goals you deeply care about, such as managing a team, advancing into a senior role, or exploring a long-held passion. You might also be dealing with challenges, like leaving an unfulfilling career, resolving conflicts with a frustrating coworker, or learning to say no to avoid drowning in tasks. However, despite their importance, you struggle to take action. For example, you might remain in a job you dislike because you don’t see better opportunities, or you may remain frustrated with a challenging coworker, giving up after a failed attempt to resolve the conflict.
The underlying cause is often fear: fear that, no matter how much effort you put in, it won’t be enough. You focus on obstacles and your perceived weaknesses, convincing yourself that the outcome can’t be changed and your efforts are futile. Even minor setbacks reinforce these negative beliefs. What’s the result? You feel stuck, either accepting the situation or endlessly ruminating. Your life becomes a cycle of stress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction. This has a high cost—you live far below your potential and remain frustrated because your problems never truly go away.
However, there is a solution: self-efficacy. Albert Bandura introduced this concept, which refers to believing in one's ability to succeed in specific tasks. By building self-efficacy, you gain the confidence needed to overcome procrastination and build momentum. The best way to increase self-efficacy is through mastery experiences—successes achieved through effort and skill. These firsthand successes provide powerful evidence of your abilities and reinforce confidence.
Mastery experiences bring many benefits. As you accumulate them, your confidence in your abilities grows, making you more resilient, persistent, and motivated to pursue ambitious goals. You see obstacles as growth opportunities instead of threats, so you feel more in control and less stressed. You bounce back from failure more quickly. This is especially important for meaningful goals, which often involve significant challenges—persistence is key to improving your chances of success.
How to Build Mastery Experiences
Whether you aim to overcome a specific challenge or take action toward meaningful personal goals, breaking down the experience into key aspects can make adjusting the difficulty of planning and executing it easier. To craft a mastery experience, beginning as simply as possible is crucial. To fine-tune the difficulty of your initial step and achieve an early win, there are three key levers you can adjust while crafting your action plan. Let’s take a closer look at these levers.
Adjust the Level of Support You Receive
When you plan to take on a new challenge, it's natural that you may not yet have all the necessary skills. You could also be feeling fear and anxiety about taking the first step. Getting help is the most effective way to build mastery, which is why it's the first and most crucial lever. Start by getting as much help as possible initially, then gradually reduce it over time. What are some types of help you can seek?
The easiest and most effective form of help is from someone who can teach, demonstrate, and correct you while you learn. This approach is called participant modeling. It offers several benefits: having someone there encourages you to take action, reassures you that you’re not alone, and gives you the courage to push forward. Plus, their immediate feedback accelerates your skill improvement. For example, imagine you want to improve your conflict-management skills with engineering teams. A skilled mentor could role-play scenarios with you, give feedback on your approach, and gradually build your confidence to handle conflicts in real situations.
Tools are another valuable source of support. Just like training wheels help you balance when learning to ride a bicycle, tools can provide critical support as you take on new challenges. As you grow in competence, you reduce your reliance on these tools. For instance, if you struggle to improve your public speaking skills, you could use speech practice apps (e.g., Orai) or video recording tools to rehearse presentations until you feel comfortable presenting in front of an audience without additional assistance.
Another support option is using videos, articles, and books to learn how to structure your problem, define steps, and determine actions. These resources often include personal experiences shared by others, providing examples and inspiration. However, since these materials are not tailored specifically for you, they might not address your unique challenges directly, which can make the process harder if you encounter obstacles. For example, a self-help book may assist with managing work stress, but if it doesn't bring the outcome you expect, you may need a more tailored solution.
The final approach is to tackle the challenge with minimal help. You define each step independently, allowing for complete freedom but also bringing more uncertainty and ambiguity. This can feel overwhelming, as there are no clear guidelines or structure. However, if you succeed with this approach, you'll achieve greater mastery—not only in your target skill but also in your problem-solving abilities. For instance, if you aim to improve team collaboration, you might design and implement new strategies from scratch without seeking advice, strengthening your decision-making and leadership skills.
Adjust the Difficulty Level
As you work to grow your skills, adjusting the challenge level helps ensure steady progress without feeling overwhelmed. One way to do this is by changing how long you work on a task. If a task feels too challenging, begin with short intervals and gradually increase the time as your comfort grows. For instance, if you're learning to lead meetings, start by leading only the introduction, then gradually take on more responsibilities until you can lead the entire meeting.
Similarly, you can gradually increase the frequency of the task. For example, if you want to improve your 1:1 meetings with your employees, you could start by holding one meeting this week. Next week, add a second meeting, and so on. Tackling a higher frequency of tasks within the same timeframe can be challenging, but as you gain experience, it will become easier, and your confidence will grow.
Another effective approach is to imagine yourself completing the task before actually doing it. This allows you to visualize success and build familiarity before you take real action. Interestingly, imagining you tackle the task can still trigger similar fears and anxieties. However, knowing there is no real danger allows you to practice handling these feelings safely. You’re effectively reducing the challenge by confronting it in your mind first. This technique can be particularly useful for presentations. For example, you might visualize yourself confidently delivering a high-stakes presentation, which will help you feel more at ease when it's time to present.
Additionally, you can change the difficulty of the task. You can begin with easier tasks and gradually take on more complex challenges. For example, if your goal is to get better at managing workplace disagreements, you could start by discussing minor issues with a cooperative colleague. As you build confidence, you can handle more significant issues or deal with more challenging individuals.
Lastly, challenges naturally evoke fear and anxiety, so it's crucial to master its emotional side, too. Start with tasks that stretch you enough to feel discomfort but still seem within reach. You want to feel a little fear but also believe you can overcome it. By repeating these smaller steps, you'll build resilience and become less fearful of more significant challenges over time. This way, you manage your emotional discomfort effectively, and as your confidence and skills grow, the fears will eventually fade away.
Solidifying Mastery
The last lever to reinforce your mastery is applying your skills in different situations. Practicing in different environments helps reinforce your abilities and makes your skills more adaptable. For example, if you've recently developed skills in leading team meetings, try using them to lead an all-hands meeting or a workshop. Practicing in diverse contexts strengthens your skills, making them more versatile and boosting your confidence. It also helps you approach new, unrelated challenges more easily and attribute your successes to your abilities rather than luck, giving you more proof of your competence.
The Right Mindset to Benefit from Mastery Experiences
Take small steps to start: Start by taking on small, manageable tasks. No matter how minor, every attempt is a step forward for you. By focusing on these small trials, you create opportunities to learn and improve without overwhelming yourself.
Measure effort, not results: Shift your focus from the results to the effort you put into every task. The act of trying and persisting is an achievement on its own. In modern video games, gamification techniques reward players for their persistence and progress, not just winning. Likewise, it’s important to appreciate your persistence and dedication, even if the results aren’t immediate.
Attribute your successes to your effort: When you achieve something, remind yourself that your effort made it happen. On the flip side, when you face failures, view them as gaps in effort or knowledge, both of which can be closed with more effort. These challenges are opportunities for mastery, not threats to avoid. This mindset will keep you motivated and curious and prevent you from feeling stuck.
Transform effort into joy: Shift your perspective to see effort as play. Find joy in the process and cherish the time invested in each task, independent of the result.
Don’t take failure too seriously: As kids, we didn't think of our failed attempts as failures—they were just part of figuring things out, and we tried again and again. Why let that change now? Children see effort and ability as two parts of the same coin, but as we age, we begin to view them as separate. Embrace the childlike view that effort is an opportunity, not something to fear.
Develop persistence and perseverance: Cultivate the ability to recover quickly from setbacks and continue your efforts. Keep going even when things don’t go perfectly. Building this resilience will allow you to push through challenges and ultimately succeed.
Be optimistic: Evaluate situations rationally and maintain optimism about your chances of success. People tend to underestimate their abilities because we naturally dislike failure. It's crucial to push forward confidently, especially when the cost of making a mistake is low, such as time, energy, or resources.
Conclusion
Inaction often stems from fear of failure or the belief that no effort will make a difference. By focusing on building mastery experiences, you create evidence of your capability and resilience. To build mastery, take small, actionable steps and adjust the support and difficulty level to match your needs. Start with as much support as needed, then reduce it over time, and gradually increase the complexity of challenges to grow your skills without feeling overwhelmed. Also, see setbacks as learning opportunities; overcoming them strengthens your confidence. The process of gradually accumulating small wins will strengthen your confidence and help you achieve more significant goals over time. With persistence, you can transform challenges into growth opportunities, enabling you to lead a more empowered and fulfilling life.
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