Video: Self-Efficacy, Wellbeing, and Mastery—My Personal Experience

Self-efficacy is the belief that you can succeed in the life challenges presented to you. The greater your self-efficacy, the greater your chances of succeeding in everything you attempt to accomplish. What you believe about yourself makes a difference.

You can cultivate and strengthen your self-efficacy skills. Here is how I personally have worked on strengthening my own self-efficacy.

Over the last several years I have continued my studies of the mind and health, reviewing fascinating data on new discoveries in cognitive neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, and other scientific disciplines. At the same time, I have dedicated myself to daily, moment-to-moment mindfulness practice, building and strengthening my awareness that virtually all my behavior, including the smallest act, impacts my health and happiness—for good or ill.

Like a trio of parallel tracks running through my life, brain science, behavioral science, and applied mindfulness have moved me ever forward toward greater understanding and helped me build skills in mastery and wellbeing: the belief in my own capability to handle life as it comes. And it has been my increasing sense of mastery and wellbeing, developed through engaging in the practices I offer in my book and website, that has allowed me to live with far greater wellbeing than you might imagine possible for someone with so many chronic medical conditions.

Committing to the mindfulness-based mastery and wellbeing practices put forth in my book and website can dramatically improve quality of life, and sometimes even health. I have seen the efficacy of these practices in the studies I have reviewed, in my mind-body medicine practice, and in my own life. Though I can furnish no hard evidence to prove my subjective experience, I firmly believe that continual commitment to these practices in my own life has made all the difference in living with chronic illness, allowing me to stabilize certain conditions that are considered degenerative and even improve others.