What Angela Duckworth Says about Developing Confidence
This morning I was welcomed in my Twitter feed by an article written by Angela Duckworth on one of my favorite blogs Psychology Today. Angela Duckworth is a renowned professor and researcher of psychology and author of the classic book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
Duckworth’s premise on confidence is so simple, clear, and actionable, a Tweet can sum it up perfectly.
If you attempt hard things, again and again, and eventually succeed, you come to believe in your capabilities. In contrast, if you fail repeatedly, you come to believe that you can’t succeed, even if you try.
Duckworth’s conclusion pulls from the father of confidence research, psychologist Albert Bandura and his research in the preeminent book Self-Efficacy. The reason why this Tweet was so fascinating to me this morning was how the concept of doing “hard things, again and again” connects to what I constantly preach to my clients about creating goal progressions.
Until today, I never connected my idea of using goal progressions for practically everything in my mental skills practice to developing confidence. Typically, a progression was the process, and confidence was one of many mindset outcomes.
Now, I can see what one may say is obvious in hindsight. Confidence is not an outcome of mental skills development. Instead, developing confidence is part of the process of developing any mental skill. Indeed, confidence is not a what, it’s a how.
This seemingly minor mindset shift is a major breakthrough. Moreover, if you can make this simple mindset shift you can master anything. Just remember this. Mastery always starts with doing the easiest, hard thing you can achieve to build confidence. If it’s too easy, you won’t build confidence and you won’t move towards mastery. If it’s too hard, the same thing will happen.