Mastery is that feeling of riding the wave, of knowing what adjustments to make as it tries to throw you off. You may still lose your balance. The wave may win. But you're not overwhelmed, you learn something from the failure and try again.
Mastery is grounded in knowledge, skill, and understanding. Things are coming together: you're getting it. You might have to start with repetition, rote learning, and a lot of falling down flat, but then something clicks, and you're on the road to mastery. You know what to do and if you don't, you know what to do.
Accumulate mastery experiences and you become increasingly confident you can do what it takes to achieve what you want - confident while appreciating nothing's guaranteed. What I'm talking about is self-efficacy.
In other words, self-efficacy is the type of self-confidence that comes from mastery experiences. It is not something we tell ourselves ("I can do this!", "I will succeed!"); it's more a felt assumption than a declaration.
Self-efficacy finds a way to go forward, even if we're anxious - although the very fact of self-efficacy tends to take the edge off anxiety, since it boosts our sense of control and resilience. For most of us, self-efficacy varies across life domains, e.g., work, school, relationships. When we're feeling it, self-efficacy confers a readiness to tackle challenge, whether the challenge is a party or a math problem.
Self-efficacy feels good and is associated with many good things. For instance, academic self-efficacy is the single strongest predictor of academic achievement in college, more than SAT scores or high school grades. Whatever the domain, people with high self-efficacy are more likely to set high goals, respond to setbacks with renewed effort, maintain focus despite distractions, and basically get to where they want to go.
So how do you accumulate mastery experiences and increase self-efficacy? Next.
References:
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Locke, EA. (1996) Motivation through conscious goal setting Applied and Preventive Psychology Volume 5, Issue 2, , Pages 117–124
Onoda, S. (2014). Examining the relationships between self-efficacy, effort regulation strategy use, and English vocabulary skills. Studies in Self-Access Learning Journal, 5(4), 357-371.
Robbins SB, Lauver K, Le H, Davis D, Langley R, Carlstrom K. (2004) Do psychosocial and study skill factors predict college outcomes? A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin; 130: 261–288.
Schwarzer, R., & Warner, L. M. (2013). Perceived self-efficacy and its relationship to resilience. In S. Prince-Embury & D. H. Saklofske (Eds.), The Springer series on human exceptionality: Resilience in children, adolescents, and adults: Translating research into practice (pp. 139-150). doi: 10.1007/978-1-4614-4939-3_10