I Think I Can, I Think I Can

by Don Harkey

If you haven't read "The Little Engine That Could" by Watty Piper, please proceed immediately back to your childhood long enough to read the book and then come back. Go ahead...

This classic children's story outlines the tale of a helpful little engine who overcomes a great challenge to get the toys home safely. While struggling to climb over the hill he utters to himself over and over again, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!" (SPOILER ALERT) When he finally makes it over the hill, he says to himself, "I knew I could, I knew I could, I knew I could!" The story, published in 1954, has become a classic "standard" for American youth.

The tale does a great job of illustrating an important point. Motivation to act is derived from having 3 basic needs filled: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. If a person feels competent, autonomous, and related to a task, they will likely be highly motivated to do the task.

Competence is a person's ability to do something effectively. This could be broken down into 3 components: strengths, knowledge, and confidence. A strength is a lot like a talent. Everyone has God given strengths or aptitudes in specific areas. Knowledge can be thought of as a person's ability to predict the future. For example, an outfielder's knowledge of baseball allows him to stand in the best position possible to catch a fly ball and his experience allows him to run to the location where the ball would land before the ball gets there. The last component is confidence. This is the trickiest component.

A person may have the right aptitude to perform a task and they may even have all of the knowledge they need to perform the task, but they lack a level of certainty about the task. I have known people who refuse to use a paging system or vote at a polling place. These people have the ability and knowledge to perform the task, but they may have never done it before and doubt their own ability.

As you may have guessed, the best cure for a lack of confidence is experience. Experience takes away that lack of certainty because it has already been done before. However, to quote Ben Franklin, "Experience is the best teacher, but only fools learn from experience." Some of the most important decisions we make in life are only made once. Very few people go into their first marriage thinking of it as a confidence builder for their next marriage.

How do we overcome this?

The best thing to do is to get experience doing things that you are uncomfortable doing. In other words, get experience doing things that you are inexperienced at. Confused? Let me explain.

Some people I know seem absolutely fearless. A question arises and they will call someone they don't know and demand answers or they will enter into new business agreements without blinking an eye. These people who do this are experienced at being inexperienced. If you paint yourself into a corner in life, you can become extremely confident within your world. You can eat the same things, know the same people, go to the same job, go out to the same places with the same friends. You will be extremely competent and motivated within this world. Yet when a new world presents itself, you will feel uncomfortable.

The message is simple. Press yourself from time to time. Try new things. Go for new experiences. Practice being uncomfortable. As is often quoted, whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you are probably right!