Bandura calls this process "guided mastery." I love that term: guided mastery. And something else happened, these people who went through the process and touched the snake ended up having less anxiety about other things in their lives. They tried harder, they persevered longer, and they were more resilient in the face of failure. They just gained a new confidence. And Bandura calls that confidence self-efficacy -- the sense that you can change the world and that you can attain what you set out to do.
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I really believe that when people gain this confidence -- and we see it all the time at the d.school and at IDEO -- they actually start working on the things that are really important in their lives. We see people quit what they're doing and go in new directions. We see them come up with more interesting, and just more, ideas so they can choose from better ideas. And they just make better decisions.
David Kelley, "How to build your creative confidence," TED 2012,
www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence.html.
