The Creation of
Sheri Lives Wellness
After my first bike ride across Kansas, in 1999, my mom asked me, “How did you know you could do it?" My initial reaction was to say “How could I not try?” What I could not articulate then, but came to realize later, was that her question encapsulated the essence of the development of self-efficacy – my belief in my ability to accomplish what I set out to do. Since then I have recognized that there were several reasons that I knew I could do it.
The first was my own experience with training and the success I had previously had in the realm of physical activity. One of the defining moments in my sense of self-efficacy around exercise was the completion of the 1996 New York City Marathon as part of the Leukemia Society (now Leukemia and Lymphoma Society) Team –in-Training, which assured me that, with proper coaching and hard work on my part, I could complete a marathon. I did. In that moment, I was transformed from someone who exercised into a marathoner, an athlete. From there, my confidence in my physical capabilities soared. I knew that I could hurt and keep going. I knew that I could push my body farther than most people would think reasonable. I continued to build on the physical success that the marathon gave me, and my sense of mastery grew.
Next, I knew people—real, regular people—who had done it. The most prominent in my life was my boy friend (now husband) Kenny. He had ridden not just across Kansas, but across many other states and even across the country. I cycled with him, and he was teaching me a lot about biking. I admired his skill, and I aspired to improve my cycling skills so that I could share in the successes I witnessed in him.
Kenny was confident that I could ride across Kansas, and our other cycling friends conveyed the same enthusiasm for the ride and the same assurance that it was a doable undertaking for me. Like the Team-in-Training staff had done a few years prior, our friends provided the catalyst I needed to believe bigger things about myself and my capabilities.
Finally, my body and mind held ingrained memories of the exhilaration of completing a tough physical challenge. I was hooked on that feeling. It made all of the pain and pushing to get there worth it. I had experienced some success already in cycling with Kenny, and I knew that completing the cross-state ride would generate the exhausted euphoria that I loved.
It was not until several years later, while completing my second Master’s degree, that I recognized my mom’s question and my own experience for the perfect example of self-efficacy that it is. Albert Bandura (1986), a prominent researcher in the area of self-efficacy, defines self-efficacy as “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute sources of action required to manage prospective situations.” According to self-efficacy theory, there are four primary mechanisms responsible for the development of self-efficacy: personal successes, witnessing others experiencing success, verbal encouragement from others and physiological and affective states. I realized that the reasons I “knew I could do it” represented these four mechanisms.
Further, I recognized that I was finally at a place in my life where the back-of-my-mind dream that I have so long held about helping others find the avenues to thrive in their own lives through physical activity and psychosocial support could be developed into a workable program. Hence, I created the “Answer Within” Workshop to foster the development of self-efficacy among people living with HIV.
After some evolutions of the workshop, the time has come again to expand the reach of my wellness education work. The basic message of building self-efficacy through exercise has guided the creation of my wellness education business, Sheri Lives Wellness, in order to more broadly teach the Wellness Lifestyle, thus enabling more people to enhance their quality of life, increase their personal and professional productivity and make greater contributions to the good of society.