Effective problem-solving increases confidence in your competence
Stress for Success
February 4, 2014
Here’s
something that drives me nuts: When someone has something wrong with them,
health-wise, and do nothing about it but go to a doctor for drugs. There are so
many other tools that can be as effective, if not more so, and with no negative
side effects.
Arthritis
is an example. Arthritis, we know, involves inflammation. A strong immune
system fights inflammation and infection better than a weak one. Regular
meditation enhances and strengthens the immune system. If you have arthritis,
why wouldn’t you commit to doing meditation daily for a month or two and see if
it helps.
But
why do so many people refuse to take such action even if only on a trial basis?
For
some, it may be due to having low self-efficacy. Perhaps they don’t believe anything they do will have
a positive effect on their condition. If they believe only doctors have the answers
they won’t look beyond a medical option.
Better
self-care is only one reason to develop strong self-efficacy: the belief that your
actions can be effective.
Improving
as a problem solver is an excellent way to raise self-efficacy. Even if you
don’t trust your own problem-solving abilities in certain areas you can learn
to improve. Consider the following characteristics inherent in you confronting
your stressors. You have:
- The coping skills you have learned along the way;
- Your assessment of the situation;
- Your own general self-efficacy;
These
traits are not part of the
stressful situation but are part of you and greatly influence your ability to
handle the situation.
Beyond
these internal traits are characteristics inherent to the stressor itself,
which have little or nothing to do with your internal characteristics. These
external aspects also influence your ability to meet the stressful demand:
1. Strength
and context:
How serious is the stressful event? The context in which the event occurs plays
an important role in determining it. For example, the stress of your phone losing
power during a meeting when you probably shouldn’t even notice it is of lower
intensity than occurring after a car crash when calling 911 is imperative.
2. Length speaks to how long the stressor
lasts. A headache that lasts an evening is obviously shorter than caring for
someone with a chronic disease.
3. Stress
landscape
refers to how much stress you have going on in your life when the new one hits.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back,” takes on new meaning when even a small
stressor can cause overblown anxiety when it’s on top of many others.
4. Self-efficacy points to how skilled you
believe you are in handling the stressor. Handling the new stressor is typically
easier if it’s familiar than unfamiliar.
To
increase self-efficacy, you must approach stressors with a level head and take
into consideration the previous four traits. If the stressor:
1. . . . is of low strength
because its context is less important, don’t catastrophize it. If the strength
is high because the context is urgent, address the situation immediately and
seek help if you are unable to cope.
2. . . . is of significant length,
handle it as well as you can while at the same time take better care of
yourself to avoid running yourself down physically, emotionally and mentally inhibiting
your ability to cope.
3. . . . is piled on top of many
other stressors, begin a methodical process of choosing perhaps the easiest
stressors to solve immediately. Doing so effectively automatically raises your
self-efficacy, which facilitates handling the tougher ones better, too.
4. . . . is something you have
handled successfully before then do so now. If it’s unfamiliar to you, figure
out what you need to learn and who can help you learn.
Any
and all progress you make in increasing self-efficacy will serve you very well
in many ways, not the least of which is becoming a much better stress manager.
It’s a wonderful cycle: improved problem-solving creates greater self-efficacy,
which motivates you to problem-solve more stressors.
Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S. is an
international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach. Order her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html. Email her to request she speak to your
organization at jferg8@aol.com.
