Princess or Warrior? A Lesson in Self-Efficacy My Daughter Taught Me

My daughter came to me sad during our recent cruise trip. There is a popular tradition on certain cruises where rubber ducks are hidden around the ship for passengers to find. She had not found a single one. She looked at me with those eyes and said she was unlucky. Then she asked me to find one for her.

I understood the feeling. When something we want keeps slipping past us, it is easy to decide that luck is simply not on our side.

And when someone we love offers to carry the weight, it is tempting to let them.

But I told her something that I tell my coaching clients too. I said I would always be here to help her, but she needed to give her best effort first before looking to someone else to do it for her.

She was not thrilled with that answer.

A little while later, we wandered into the ship's arcade. And sitting right there, impossible to miss, was a claw machine. Packed entirely with rubber ducks.

I looked at her. She looked at the machine.

This was her moment.

She did not get lucky. She got to work.

One attempt, one duck. Then another. Then another. She kept going, focused and determined, until she had pulled thirteen ducks out of that machine one by one.

Thirteen.

The look on her face when she walked away with her arms full was not the look of someone who had been handed something. It was the look of someone who had earned something. There is a real difference between those two feelings, and children know it even if they cannot name it yet.

Research in developmental psychology supports what that moment showed us. Studies on self-efficacy, the belief that your own actions can produce results, consistently show that children who are encouraged to persist through challenges develop stronger confidence, resilience, and motivation over time.

When we rush to remove difficulty for the people we love, we sometimes take away the very experience that would have built them up.

My daughter did not need a duck. She needed to discover what she was capable of when she decided to go after something.

The question I keep thinking about is a simple one. In the areas of your life that feel stuck, are you waiting to get lucky? Or are you willing to step up to the machine and try?

There is a version of you that waits for things to arrive. And there is a version of you that goes and earns them.

One of those versions feels far better at the end of the day.

This is something I explore with my clients regularly. Not just what they want, but whether they are taking ownership of going after it. Building that awareness and then taking intentional steps is where real change begins.

Which version are you choosing right now?