It means believing in your ability to perform a task and achieve goals. There are 3 ways to build self-efficacy:<ul><li>Ensure early success. When first starting out, choose activities you're certain you can do successfully. </li><li>Watch others succeed in the activity you want to try.  This is particularly effective if the person you're observing is similar to you (friends, neighbors, co-workers).</li><li>Find a supportive voice. Personal trainers and coaches are skilled in giving appropriate encouragement, as are good friends (usually).</li></ul>

Self-Efficacy

Internal motivation, the drive to achieve that comes from inside a person is the kind of motivation that can lead to life-changing improvements and well-being.External rewards (like compliments, fitting into a smaller size, or winning a race) might get a person started but it won't last in the long-term.

Internal vs. external motivation

<ul><li>Emotional reasoning means if a person feels something, they automatically assume it must be fact ("I feel like a loser, so I must be one").</li><li>Predictions of failure: when a person makes predictions using FEAR, or False Evidence Accepted as Real ("I know I'll make a fool of myself in front of everyone in the gym when I try to lift weights, and I'll fail").</li><li>"Mind-reading". A person assumes people are reacting negatively to them when there's no evidence for this assumption.</li></ul>

Examples of destructive thinking 

A fundamentally independent thinker understands that nothing makes a person upset, angry, or depressed; rather, what a person thinks about the world determines how they feel.

Fundamentally Independent Thinking (FIT)

A person commits to a behavioral change and then establishes a "contract" (with a partner, a friend) whereby some consequence (usually a monetary one) results from the person failing to achieve their goal. The idea is that the desire to avoid the consequence helps keep people more committed to success.

Commitment Contracts

SMARTER goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely, developed Enthusiastically, and attached to Rewards).SMARTER goals take the guesswork out of routines, so we're more likely to stick to them.

SMARTER Goal Setting

When it comes to motivation-especially for health and fitness goals-being an "inny" or an "outy" can make all the difference. The "inny" I&#39;m talking about is "intrinsic motivation," or a drive to achieve that comes from inside a person and isn&#39;t motivated by external rewards.

Internal vs. external motivation

Four Strategies that Build Lasting Motivation (and How to Use Them to Achieve Your Goals)

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