Making Life Good

Time to ramble some......

People like to say that Jacob had a good life - I say that a lot. He was fortunate to have parents that were willing to do anything to provide him with the best medical care available. He was VERY lucky to have a brother and sister who knew that they would have to put aside their own wants and needs when he was sick. I have lots of stories to tell about this. He also had an extended family and many friends who loved him and helped support him through many difficult years.

His dad, in his amazing way with words, put it into the right perspective. Jacob didn't have a good life - he made life good. This has started me thinking about one of my favorite subjects and that is the idea of self-efficacy. I know, you didn't see that one coming. Self-efficacy is a social cognitive theory that was developed by psychologist Albert Bandura. It basically is the belief that a person has in themselves to succeed in something.

For example, if I have a high degree of self-efficacy in myself, then I am more likely going to be successful at it. It is not an over-inflated sense of optimism, but rather a pragmatic view of one's skills and limitations and a determination to be successful at what you attempt. This can be something as simple as trying to learn a new skill. For example, I have a terrible voice, so my degree of self-efficacy is very low for this. No matter how hard I try or even if I took voice lessons, I would still sound terrible. However, I can play the piano and organ, thanks to many years of piano and organ lessons (thanks, Mom). So, if I wanted to learn a new piece to play, I could spend a lot of time practicing and since my self-efficacy level is fairly good for this, I could probably learn to play it.

Self-efficacy does not mean you can do anything you want to do. For example, I can't just wake up and decide to be a heart surgeon or an Olympic figure-skater. I can decide, however, that I want to learn to ice-skate and take lessons, practice, and learn how to stay up on skates. It basically boils down to determination - how determined you are to be successful at something or to survive difficult circumstances.

I think this is what fascinates me about self-efficacy. Why do some people encounter extremely difficult circumstances and survive and emerge stronger - while others, who encounter similar or less difficult experiences, succumb to their experience and wither away? I always think of the Holocaust experience - you hear the stories about those who endured years of horrible abuse and yet managed to find beauty, humor, etc. in their surroundings, while others did not and their lives ended in anger and bitterness. Those with a high degree of self-efficacy felt like they still had some control over their horrible situation.

Right now, you are probably wondering where I am going with this. I have always wondered why do people react so differently to the same circumstances. I did two graduate research projects on self-efficacy - one on self-efficacy with parents and the other on teacher-efficacy so I was forced to do a lot of reading about it. Okay, I'll stop and move on.

Jacob didn't have a good life - he made life good. He had parents who were determined that he was going to live and have a good quality of life. When I was pregnant with Jacob, that was the key factor in our decision to pursue this experimental surgery. We were driven by the question - what would his life be like? I have a 62 year-old uncle who is completely disabled - physically and mentally. He is fed through a feeding tube, can't talk, his body is shriveled and he has not control over his bodily functions. He still lives at home and he requires 24 hour care by his siblings. I did NOT want this to be Jacob's life and if this was what he would have been like, then we would have let him be born and not pursue aggressive treatment and let nature takes its course. Dr. Norwood - the original surgeon assured us that if all went well, he would have a good quality of life. It did and he did.

Well, everyone is waking up and I better stop. More later about this self-efficacy and how it relates to grief. I would love to know your thoughts on this and how self-efficacy relates to you and your life.