Self-efficacy relates to a person’s ability to have optimistic beliefs, but in contrast to other features of optimism, perceived self-efficacy explicitly refers to your ability to deal with challenging encounters. It reflects the belief of being able to control challenging demands by taking adaptive action. It can be regarded as having a self-confident view of your capability to deal with challenges. Self-efficacy levels can enhance or impede motivation. People with high self-efficacy often choose to perform more challenging tasks, setting themselves higher goals and sticking to them. Once an action has been taken, high self-efficacious persons invest more effort and persist longer than those who are low in self-efficacy. When setbacks occur, they recover more quickly and maintain the commitment to their goals.