Do you doubt your abilities? What if the real obstacle is what you believe about yourself?
You are considering changing careers, but one thought keeps coming back to you: ‘I’ll give up after two weeks,’ ‘I won’t be able to do it.’ You don’t question your desire, but you doubt your ability to see it through. You anticipate failure before you even begin.
This barrier has nothing to do with your actual skills. It has to do with how you perceive your ability to use them in a new environment. And this barrier has a name: self-efficacy.
Le sentiment d’auto-efficacité : croire qu’on peut y arriver change tout
Psychologist Albert Bandura has shown that it is not only what we know how to do that counts, but what we believe we can achieve with what we know. This sense of self-efficacy directly influences how we approach a career change: if you believe you are going to fail, you hesitate, procrastinate, or give up too soon.
What Bandura highlights is that between two people with the same skills, the one who believes in their ability to use them will progress further. Not because they know more, but because they dare to persevere longer.
And this feeling is not innate. It is built up. Or it erodes. Through past experiences, the gaze of others, constant comparisons, poorly digested failures.
To doubt oneself is sometimes to have placed too much credence in the opinions of others.
Luc, 39, wants to retrain in IT maintenance. He confides: ‘I’ve always been good with computers. But as soon as someone mentions training, I feel like my brain is going to shut down. I feel like it’s not the right world for me.’
Anaïs, 46, started training to become a nursing assistant, but she was hesitant: ‘I was never good at school. The word “lessons” makes me feel suffocated. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up.’
These fears are not about competence. They are about conditioning. Phrases heard too often: ‘You’re not cut out for this,’ ‘You’re not very academic,’ ‘You’re going to fail.’ And eventually, they take the place of your own voice.
What Bandura shows is that failure rarely stems from a lack of ability. It stems from giving up too soon, caused by a lack of confidence in one’s ability to learn, progress and persevere.
It is not your image that needs to change, it is your perspective on effort.
Regaining confidence is not about convincing yourself that you are talented. It is about getting used to effort, mistakes and the discomfort of learning again. It is not your desire that needs to be validated. It is your ability to keep going even when things get unsettling.
Changing careers is not about succeeding on the first try. It’s about relearning not to judge yourself too quickly. It’s about moving from the need to succeed to the desire to move forward, without having to master everything right away.
Self-efficacy can be rebuilt. By taking simple actions. By achieving small successes. By receiving positive feedback. By seeing that we can hold out longer than expected.
This is what a well-supported career change allows you to do: put progress back at the centre. Regain confidence in your learning process. And stop deciding for yourself what you are capable of trying.
Three ways to rebuild your sense of self-efficacy
- Take on a simple task that you haven’t done in a long time. Do it all the way through, without rushing.
- Write down a difficulty you overcame last year. Ask yourself what you learned from it.
- Take concrete action towards your project: make a call, sign up, request information. Don’t aim to succeed, aim to get started.
You are capable of more than you think. But you have to dare to discover it, not want to prove it at all costs. Your journey can still be written differently, as long as you dare to begin with humility and perseverance.
👉 Do you doubt your worth? Try the aptitude test to see what your desires say about your abilities.
