Talking Self-Efficacy with Homemade Oat Milk
Self-Efficacy with Homemade Oat Milk
Welcome to Coffee Concepts, where I pair a self-awareness or exploration topic with a fun drink recipe that feels like it fits the mood. Could I tell you why? Not always. It’s a very instinctual process. Are the vibes immaculate? I hope so!
Let’s start with the drink. When I read blog posts with recipes, nothing irritates me more than having to skim through four+ thumb swipes of story or information before seeing the recipe – even when it’s a great story! So, on the chance you got here looking for a from-scratch oat milk, here’s the recipe, right now. If you were looking to read about introspection, it’s only one thumb-swipe below the recipe; I’ll see you there.
Homemade Oat Milk
There’s a particular kind of satisfaction that comes from making something from scratch rather than pre-made from the store. It’s not always feasible because we can’t make everything from scratch – who has the time?! But this one is easy, fairly fool-proof (to my fooling attempts so far), and easy to keep the ingredients on hand for when you need them (there’s technically two). So if you’d love to be able to say, “oh, this? Good, right? I made it from scratch!” without longer than ten or fifteen minutes of effort, then this one’s for you.
Make a jar of it
1 cup of oats
1 cup fresh water (and more for soaking)
Optional:
Vanilla
½ tsp cinnamon
Medjool dates or honey
Instructions:
1. Soak a cup of oats in a bowl of water for a few hours. If you start them in the morning when you make your coffee, you can make it in the afternoon.
2. Rinse the oats. Thoroughly. If foolery is going to happen, it might be from not rinsing the soaked oats well enough. I heard the final product can get slimy if you don’t rinse your oats. I did not test the theory; I rinse my oats.
3. Keep a 1:1 ratio (for now) for oats and fresh water. So, if you use a cup of oats, add a cup of fresh water to the rinsed and drained soaked oats.
4. If you’re using this for coffee, cereal, or just for drinking, I recommend adding a capful of vanilla (did you know that artificial vanilla is actually made from castoreum, which is a compound produced by beavers from a sac between their pelvis and tail, AKA their butt? Now you do, you’re welcome), and, my secret ingredient, a half-teaspoon of cinnamon. If you’re going to be cooking with it, I’d leave those things out. Cinnamon garlic cream sauce was a let down.
5. Again, leave these things out if you’re going to cook with it, but a couple teaspoons of liquid honey (lead with your heart, I’m not watching how much you put in) or a few Medjool dates (PITTED! Skipping this step is NOT fool-proof. Take the pits out.) sweeten things up a little. Since I don’t like grainy textures in my drinks, sometimes I make a date syrup first (which can still be gritty if you’re not careful or don’t have a good enough blender, but I do what I can when I can). Experiment with what works for you and is the least work. The answer here is honey, unless you can’t have it. You can also use agave, or sugar (but melt the sugar in a little warm water first).
6. Use an immersion blender and blend the 1:1 oats and water with what optional additives you’ve used. Some people also add a couple teaspoons of a light tasting oil, but I don’t. I put enough oil in my everything else to not put it in my milk also. If you try it, let me know if it’s good that way! And just a note, the less powerful your blender, the grittier your oat milk will be. I got a new blender. Not just for this, but it was a prominent factor.
7. Keep blending it. You thought you were done? No, you’re not. Keep going.
8. Pour your blended mixture into a jar through a fine metal strainer – not a loosey-goosey one or a colander, and not cheesecloth either. One won’t do anything but make another kitchen utensil dirty and leave you with a chunky porridge milkshake, and the other will take all the oaty-ness out of your oat milk.
9. This keeps well for a few days, so only make what you need. Also, you can save the pulp from the straining step, spread it out on a cookie sheet with some spices and brown sugar, and bake it for a few minutes – “granola” for your yogurt or something.
10. Pour some in your hot drink, get comfy, and keep reading to learn about self-efficacy.
Self-Efficacy: What is it, and why do I need to foster it?
As you’ve probably gathered from context, your level of self-efficacy is the level to which you feel capable of being effective… by yourself. This is not quite the same as independence, but more like your internal sense of your own competency – to complete different tasks, handle hardships, or ride out your big emotions. We can feel more self-efficacious with some things than others, and have a sort of general average.
Albert Bandura, a psychologist most known for his social cognitive theory, researched self-efficacy in depth. He framed self-efficacy as having four different sources: our performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, our ability to persuade others verbally, and our psychological states (Rakhshanderou et al., 2021). He believed that our sense of self-efficacy affects our cognitions, actions, socializing, and our health. So, most aspects of our lives!
Are you curious about your relationship to self-efficacy? Here’s an assessment you can take, just for fun and not for any clinical purpose. If your therapist wants to measure your self-efficacy, they’ll do it with you, the way it needs to be done. This is just for interest’s sake, to give you an idea of how you relate to the concept. High or low scores, that’s okay. It’s about self-awareness: learning to find places to lean in and grow. Life is difficult, and any number of things can affect our sense of self-efficacy at various points in our lives. These scores are not set in stone, they’re very fluid! And you can raise your own sense of self-efficacy – I’ll talk about that a little later.
Here's the assessment for General Self-Efficacy (GSE): https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/26768/1/General_Self-Efficacy_Scale%20(GSE).pdf
(Mental health or medical practitioners often use this assessment in conjunction with other assessments as part of treating larger issues – you can see from the url that this copy of the publicly available GSE is part of working with addictions)
How did you do? Was it what you expected?
Now that you have a general self-efficacy score to work with, let’s talk about what a higher level (versus a lower one) of self-efficacy does for you. These scores are relative, and on a scale. So these are generalizations, but should give you an idea of what your sense of self-efficacy is, and could be, doing for you.
Let’s talk about a high sense of self-efficacy first. People with high self-efficacy:
o Have more self-confidence
o Solve problems more quickly
o Try new things more often
o Follow through on their promises and meet their goals/deadlines more often
o Process stress more readily and experience lower stress levels
o Are less likely to view new things as dangerous unnecessarily (they feel more “ready”)
o Experience more satisfaction and a deeper sense of well-being
o Are more likely to have a developed spiritual sense of purpose (You’ll probably find me talking about spirituality a lot, as it can do a lot for us whether we are religious or not!)
But what about low self-efficacy? People with a lower sense of self-efficacy:
o Are more likely to self-sabotage
o Are more likely to experience new or worsening symptoms of depression and anxiety
o Avoid behaviours or places that are unfamiliar or anxiety-inducing – they encounter a fear of failure more often
o Procrastinate. A lot.
o Catastrophize (that is, they think that the worst-case scenario is the one more or most likely to happen – they assume danger or failure)
o Struggle to make decisions
o Be inconsistent with their goals and plans
o Feel lost, or unmotivated
Did you see yourself in either of these lists? Did that tell you your sense of self-efficacy is healthy, or do you think you might have forgotten to water your Self-Efficacy Ficus?
If your self-efficacy is feeling low, you’re not stuck that way – you’re just experiencing a difficult season. That’s okay. No season is permanent, and there are things you can do to bolster your sense of self-efficacy. It’s work, but it can be fun, too!
Here are some ideas for fostering a stronger sense of self-efficacy in yourself:
o Pick up and learn a new hobby. Expect to be bad at it when you start, keep at it, and watch your improvements! It feels good and increases our sense of competence to master new skills. Plus, having a little fun is always good for us.
o Make and keep small promises to yourself every day – consistency is key with this one. Create some routines! Routine is important to us as humans in general – we might think we don’t like them, but that usually just means we haven’t found the right one. Find a rhythm in your day and lean into it. Give yourself a pat on the back when you show up for yourself and keep a routine. There are habit tracking apps that can show you when you’ve hit streaks, which can give you that “ah, sweet success” hit of dopamine. Use it to your advantage, but don’t judge yourself if you miss a day or two. It’s a practice, not a competition.
o Explore your sense of spirituality and purpose.
o Address places where you’re procrastinating or avoiding doing something. Why? Can you narrow it down to a particular skill you don’t feel you have, and then specifically develop that skill? Your sense of self-efficacy will thank you.
o Examine your goalposts for success and failure. Are you too quick to call an endeavour a failure? Too harsh on yourself before you let yourself have a win? The goal should be to find places to grow without shaming ourselves for not knowing or struggling with something, and to celebrate our progress. We don’t need to be in first place or setting world records to be efficacious and successful. Let yourself see how great you’re already doing!
Do you want to see the sources I used when I wrote this (in addition to my Master’s degree and general experience)? Here are my references.
References:
Ng, A., & Lovibond, P. F. (2020). Self-efficacy moderates the relationship between avoidance intentions and anxiety. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 20(6), 1098–1103. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000594
Rakhshanderou, S., Safari-Moradabadi, A., & Ghaffari, M. (2021). Structural Equation Modeling of the Spirituality and Self-efficacy Among College Students. Journal of Religion & Health, 60(1), 488–499.
