Updated Version - May 2026

There's a question I've been asking myself for a long time: Where does my strength lie and what do I use it for? Even if it seems simple at first glance. The answer is not so simple. This is because most people have never truly answered this question for themselves. They function, they achieve, they adapt. Some burn out. Others eventually realize that they've spent years putting energy into directions that never felt quite right. Self-efficacy is my attempt to give this question a name and a structure.

What self-efficacy is not

Albert Bandura described something important with the concept of self-efficacy: the conviction that one can handle difficult situations. This conviction is real and it has an effect. But it asks the wrong question. Self-efficacy asks: Will I get through? Self-efficacy asks: What am I here for? This is a fundamental difference. Self-efficacy is reactive; it describes how well someone reacts to what comes. Self-drive, on the other hand, is proactive; it describes the conscious decision of where one's energy flows.

What self-efficacy is

Everyone carries something within them that drives them. It doesn't have to be a grand calling or a life's purpose right away; it's less defined and more dynamic, tied to one's own experiences and life world. It's meant more in the sense that there's something that makes a person get up in the morning and feel right about it, something that they can't let go of, something that excites them, even when no one is watching.

This strength is not a stable personality trait. It arises from a person's entire experiential space, from what they have experienced, what they have learned, what has happened to them, including through setbacks and injustice. Often, it is precisely the difficult experiences that sharpen the direction in which one's own energy wants to flow.

Self-efficacy connects three things:

Recognizing your own strengths.

Decide what to use them for.

And to do so without burning out.

The third element is crucial and is most often overlooked. Whoever does not maintain their strength loses the ability to act. Self-efficacy is therefore not a concept of self-optimization, but one of sustainable effectiveness.

The Scientific Embedding

There are scientific concepts that point in the same direction, but none that fully encompass what I mean.

Aaron Antonovsky hat with his salutogenesis research shown that health is not the absence of stress, but the ability to create meaning, comprehensibility, and manageability. His sense of coherence—the feeling that one's life is meaningful, understandable, and manageable—is very close to what I mean. Self-efficacy concretizes this idea: What exactly is this meaningfulness for me? And how do I act upon it?

Hartmut Rosa describes with his resonance theory what happens when people are in a genuine relationship with the world, when they act and the world responds, when something comes back. This is exactly what self-efficacy generates: not alienation, but resonance. And resonance does not exhaust, but it carries.

Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum remember with their capability approach that effectiveness is not purely an individual achievement. What people can truly do and be depends on structural conditions. Self-efficacy needs space to unfold. Therefore, it not only asks about the individual but also about the systems in which people live and work.

Self-efficacy operates on multiple levels.

What doesn't let go of me about this concept is its systemic dimension. Self-efficacy is not just a personal attitude, but above all has an impact beyond the individual. When a person knows where their strength lies and consistently uses that strength - not just in volunteer work, but also in their job, in organizations, in everyday life - it changes something in their environment. It changes relationships, team dynamics, what becomes possible in organizations, and how a society is lived.

And when like-minded people bring their strengths to bear in a similar direction, something is created that no one could achieve alone. Collective self-efficacy is not a pure addition of individual forces but has its own quality.

Aristotle put it perfectly in his Metaphysics: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. What he meant (and what also applies to collective self-efficacy) is that the interplay of people creates something that cannot arise from isolated individual achievements.

This is why this concept goes far beyond personal development for me. It's a societal concept. A question of how people can be effective together without losing themselves in the process.

An invitation

If you know this question: Where does my strength lie, and what do I want to use it for? then you've come to the right place.

Because I believe this question is worth asking seriously. Again and again. In different life stages and contexts.

More on this can be found in the Self-energizing school of thought and in Manifest, which examines the conceptual foundations in more detail.