Self Efficacy: Unlocking Your Potential For Wellness
Consider your mindset when it comes to achieving wellness. Embrace optimism, resilience, and confidence in your ability to make choices that support your health and well-being. This powerful belief in your capacity to succeed is known as self-efficacy.
What is Self-Efficacy?
Self-efficacy is the key to feeling empowered in your health journey. It’s the belief that you have control over your well-being and the ability to make meaningful changes. This skill isn’t just something you’re born with—it can be developed and strengthened by embracing the natural principles outlined on this page.
When you cultivate self-efficacy in areas like nutrition, sleep, stress management, and overall lifestyle choices, you unlock new levels of well-being, no matter your starting point. With the right mindset, challenges become opportunities, and obstacles transform into stepping stones for growth.
The Power of Self-Efficacy
As Wikipedia explains:
“A strong sense of self-efficacy promotes human accomplishment and personal well-being. Those with high self-efficacy view challenges as hurdles to overcome rather than threats to evade. They recover from setbacks more quickly, attributing failure to a lack of effort rather than ability. They face difficult situations with the belief that they can manage them, which is linked to lower stress and a reduced risk of depression.”
On the other hand, low self-efficacy can hold you back. Those who struggle with it often see challenges as personal threats rather than opportunities. They focus on their weaknesses instead of strengths, making them more likely to lose confidence after setbacks. This mindset increases stress, anxiety, and even the risk of depression.
Cultivating Self-Efficacy for a Healthier Life
By strengthening your self-efficacy, you can shift how you approach health and well-being. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by setbacks, you’ll develop the resilience to push forward, take control, and create lasting positive change.
Empower yourself by believing in your ability to succeed—because true wellness starts with the mindset that you are capable of achieving it.
Take Small Steps First: Building a Foundation for Health
The path to better health doesn’t require drastic changes overnight—it starts with small, manageable steps. Begin by incorporating more whole foods into your diet, like leafy greens and fresh fruits. These simple changes are the building blocks for a healthier life, and healthy eating is at the core of lasting wellness.
Next, consider adding light physical activities to your routine. A relaxing evening walk or a gentle morning yoga session can be a great way to start. Sustainable health habits are all about balance, and taking small steps ensures that these changes become lasting ones.
As you continue with these small changes, they will naturally become part of your daily routine. Over time, you’ll find yourself naturally progressing toward bigger commitments. From my experience, when people begin to feel the positive effects of these initial changes, their motivation grows, and the habits become ingrained, making it easier to maintain a healthier lifestyle.
Avoid Expensive Gym Memberships At First
Many people invest heavily in gym memberships, but when you evaluate what you actually get for your money, the value often doesn’t add up. Gyms thrive on members who sign up with enthusiasm but rarely show up. I’ve personally known several people who lost money this way.
If you’re new to healthy living, it’s wise to avoid drastic changes, like overly restrictive diets or costly gym memberships that you may not use consistently. Instead, focus on gradually introducing healthy habits at a pace that feels comfortable for you. As your confidence and routine grow, you’ll be more likely to stick with it—without the financial strain.
When you join a gym, you typically:
That’s quite a financial commitment! But don’t worry, you don’t need to break the bank to get in shape. There are plenty of cost-effective ways to stay active, and I’m going to share some with you.
Once you get committed and really serious with your health and fitness, you can always join-up. That way you’ll be “broken-in” and have a greater chance of remaining a gym member.
Our Diet And Lifestyle Should Be Top-Priority
When recovering from conditions like Candida infections or any chronic illness, your diet and lifestyle should be your top priority. In my previous book, Candida Crusher (2013), I explored the critical role of diet and lifestyle in healing.
The website you’re reading now offers updated and condensed insights, reflecting the latest research on Candida overgrowth, SIBO, irritable bowel syndrome, and IBD.
Technology has evolved dramatically over the past decade. We’ve moved from 3G to 5G, and the average time people spend online has soared from just 32 minutes in 2011 to over 2 hours per day by 2019.
While technology brings many conveniences, it’s also contributed to a more sedentary lifestyle, where people are becoming increasingly passive.
In the U.S., the average person spends just 3 hours a day standing, with some people sitting for up to 23 hours a day. This has led to what’s called “sitting disease,” which is linked to numerous negative health outcomes. (California State University)
This term broadly describes the rise of sedentary behaviour, which has serious health implications. Later on, I’ll dive deeper into how technology is affecting our health and well-being, with a particular focus on this growing concern. For now, keep in mind: start small, build gradually, and let those small steps lead you toward lasting health.
Change Health Habits For Better Living
The 3 Cs of Life: Choice, Chance, and Change
Life revolves around three crucial elements: choice, chance, and change. If you want your life to change, you must make the choice to take a chance. Sticking to the same routines and habits will only yield the same results. If you want to enhance your health and well-being, it’s essential to fully embrace the diet and lifestyle choices available to you.
It’s time to make decisions. In most situations, you have more choices than you might think—especially when it comes to what you eat and how you live. The first step in harnessing the power of choice is to recognize that you do, indeed, have the freedom to shape your diet and lifestyle according to your desires.
Your mindset plays a significant role in this. If you’re unhappy with your current diet and lifestyle, it’s easy to feel trapped or overwhelmed by outside influences dictating how you should eat and live.
When your health is stable, there’s a temptation to stick with what’s familiar, even if it’s not serving you well. This mindset can lead to a passive approach, where you allow external forces to determine the trajectory of your health and well-being.
However, by shifting your attitude to one of proactivity and understanding that you always have a choice, you empower yourself to take control of your future. You have the power to design and create the healthy life you envision.
Are you thinking about becoming more active? Are you trying to reduce your intake of foods high in sugar, salt, or fat? Perhaps you’ve started making healthier choices but are struggling to stick with them.
Remember, change begins with choice, and the power to change is always in your hands.
Old Habits Die Hard – But It Is Totally Achievable
Changing your habits is a journey that requires making different choices and progresses through various stages. It often takes time for these choices to solidify into lasting habits, and along the way, you may encounter challenges and obstacles. With over thirty years of experience working with patients in the clinic, I’ve seen just about all the common excuses, setbacks, and roadblocks that can hinder progress.
Soon, we’ll discuss how we can establish new “default” settings for our health and wellness
Don’t Worry – It Will All Make Sense.
Adopting new, healthier habits inevitably improves our gut function, reducing our risk of Candida overgrowth or bacterial infections (dysbiosis), whilst protecting us from chronic health problems like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer.
Newly acquired habits, like healthy eating, regular relaxation, and physical activity, can help us manage our weight and give us more energy and improved sleep. After a while, if we stick with these changes, they may become part of our daily routine, our new default.
Your New Default Settings
My son, who is a software developer, once pointed out that the choices you make regarding default settings can be some of the most crucial decisions you’ll ever make—or regret—especially when it comes to computer programs.
When a developer selects good, simple default settings, users find the software intuitive and enjoyable to use. But if the defaults are poorly chosen, life gets complicated, the UX isn’t great and users become frustrated, and the developer ends up dealing with endless tech-support calls. The goal is to set simple, effective defaults that make everything run smoothly.
The same principle applies to diet and lifestyle choices. Poor defaults in how you eat and live can lead to complications down the line—often resulting in frequent doctor visits to address preventable diseases. The further you stray from healthy default settings, the more likely you are to encounter health problems.
Some people think of their new healthy habits as temporary, believing they can return to old ways of eating and living once they’ve recovered. But changing these healthy defaults too quickly can lead to a system crash, just like a computer program. If your new eating and lifestyle habits become your default settings, they’re more likely to stick and become part of the new you.
Your Own Personal Preferences
Think about your mobile phone or laptop: once it’s perfectly set up to your preferences, it’s frustrating when someone else messes with those settings, right? Your phone has personal settings unique to you, just as everyone’s diet and lifestyle should be tailored to their individual needs. That’s why I’ve never believed in a “one size fits all” approach to healthy living.
You might eventually be able to enjoy some of the things you used to, like the occasional ice cream or beer, but it’s crucial to wait until you’re fully recovered. This way, you can clearly see the cause and effect. For example, if you eat ice cream or drink beer and then experience bloating or itching, the connection is obvious. But if your symptoms were only partially resolved before, identifying triggers becomes much harder.
Certain lifestyle choices can not only cause a Candida yeast infection or SIBO, but also perpetuate it, making recovery more challenging. Once you deeply understand these concepts, you’ll be empowered to make lasting changes that support long-term health.
Take your time with this blog post. If you grasp the message and stay committed, great health awaits you. Let’s put aside the fantasies of silver bullets, unicorns, magic wands, and instant cures. We all know such fantasies don’t exist, and anyone promising such a quick fix is best avoided.
The Four Stages Of Change
My aim is to help those interested to learn about the benefits of healthy eating and living. It’s a distillation of my life’s work as a naturopathic physician, involving patients and their digestive system problems, especially fungal, bacterial, and parasite-related health challenges.
I discovered there are several steps involving our transition from poor ways of eating and living to healthier options.
Here, we’ll explore the four stages of change—contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. First I’ll give a brief outline of each stage and then go more into detail and offer tips to enhance your eating habits, exercise routines, and overall health.
Together let’s explore The Four Stages of Change.
Eric Bakker N.D.
Greetings! I am a naturopathic physician from New Zealand. Although I’ve retired from clinical practice since 2019, I remain passionate about helping people improve their lives. You’ll find I’m active online with a focus on natural health and wellbeing education through my Facebook page and YouTube channel, including this website.
