Melinda Beck from the Wall Street Journal  wrote a great column Tuesday about “self-efficacy”, the unshakable belief some people have that they have what it takes to succeed. Stanford professor Albert Bandura first described it in the 1970s and it has become a key concept in educational circles. Don’t confuse it with self worth. Bandura says, “it’s easy to have high self esteem…just aim low”. Self-efficacy is a person’s judgment of specific capabilities. Professor Bandura, still at Stanford at age 82, says there are people with high self-efficacy who “drive themselves hard but have low self-esteem because their performance always falls short of their high standards.” Bandura adds, “People need to learn how to manage failure so it’s informational and not demoralizing.” Some notable failures who didn’t give up? Take Julie Andrews who was told at 12 she was not “photogenic enough” for film. Or J.K. Rowling who was turned down by 12 publishers until she signed with a small London publishing house. Then there’s local nerds Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who were turned away by Atari and HP when they tried to sell an early Apple computer. Some are born with the determination but self-efficacy can be acquired by mastering a task; by modeling behaviors of others who have succeeded and by effective encouragement tied to achievement as opposed to empty praise. Good stuff. Read the article here.

In our Blind Date  year Tchaikovsky wrote Sleeping Beauty and Henry Cavendish Jones convinced the “All England Croquet Club” to replace a croquet court with a lawn tennis court in… 1875.

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