strong predictor of academic achievement.

• Self-regulation (the internal motivation to achieve)
• Self-efficacy (the belief that you’re capable of something)
• Test anxiety (stress related to test-taking)

each one of them—alone—is a strong predictor of academic achievement.

1. If you want to succeed in a risk, believing that you’re capable is one of the most important things you can do to prepare.
2. The way you prepare yourself for a risk will raise (or lower) your ability to believe you’re capable of succeeding.

If you want to force yourself to succeed at a risk, here’s what you need to do:
1. Build on top of smaller successes.
The very best way to raise your “can do” attitude when you’re about to take on something unfamiliar is to remind yourself of the times you did other unfamiliar things and succeeded.
Your own, personal experience is the best motivator you have in your tool box. Remember, though, that the risks you take should be logical jumps from earlier successes. If you’re a golfer, you’ll struggle to believe in your ability to sink a put from 40 feet if you’ve only perfected your stroke from one foot away.
If 40 feet is the goal, then there’s a lot of work still to be done between one and 39.
2. Devour case studies.
If you’re a new entrepreneur, and you want your business to succeed, a great tactic to use is to devour all the information you can about other entrepreneurs who’ve achieved what you’re trying to do.
While it’s important not to get lost in survivorship bias—forgetting the lessons of others who failed—studying and mimicking the mechanics of someone who’s succeeded in a similar way will strongly affect your ability to believe in yourself.
Again, I caution the importance of making a logical jump, just like when building on smaller successes. You’ll have better results mimicking the success of a friend a step or two ahead of you than a famous entrepreneur many steps ahead.
Think of a young girl learning gymnastics. Watching her instructor do a double backflip over and over is not going to instill any confidence that she will also be able to do a double backflip. But, if she watches one of her more advanced classmates do a perfect cartwheel, she’ll increase her own cartwheel confidence.
3. Find a knowledgeable coach who can give specific, positive feedback.
Emphasis on specific and knowledgeable. Having someone in your corner who reinforces that you can succeed at what you’ve set out to do can be very motivating and raise a lot of confidence. But that person should be chosen with care.
First, they should be truly knowledgeable about what you’re trying to do. If they aren’t, you won’t have confidence in them. If you don’t have confidence in them, there’s none to transfer to yourself.
Second, the feedback your coach offers needs to be specific. Generic motivation like, “You can do it!” inspires little confidence. Instead, you need to find someone who can offer more specific feedback, preferably based on your own earlier accomplishments: “You can do X because I’ve already