Chichester lecturer promises "“essential guide to finding our YES"

Professor Laura Ritchie, cellist, author, chartered psychologist and professor of learning and teaching, offers the book as a practical and personal book that teaches us all – from teens to professionals – how to use the power of self-efficacy.

It is founded on the psychology of the self-belief self-efficacy, Yes I Can: Learn. Laura aims to bring a sense of empowerment to the reader through developing perception, awareness and a sense of believing you can do it.

“My research background heavily informs Yes I Can and is based on the psychology of self-beliefs. These personal beliefs in capabilities directly impact choices, actions, and outcomes. After 2020, riddled with Covid and lockdown restrictions, this book about finding Yes and giving people tools to create something positive from within and move forward in the cultural landscape is refreshing and timely.”

Yes I Can marks a departure from Laura’s previous academic writing. Through an approachable, personal voice, she introduces the reader to the influences of self-efficacy and demonstrates how metacognition – the processes inside our thinking: between noticing, deciding and doing – can enable a shift in perspective toward unrealised possibility.

Laura said: “Yes I Can guides the reader to find awareness and openness, incorporate the pause that inhibits habit, equip themselves to make choices and see differently. You can learn awareness and openness from young children … the key to findings your ‘yes’ is in being aware.”

Laura sets out to make core psychological constructs approachable, demystifying them as completely relatable, framed through everyday, practical experience. As a lecturer, performing cellist, speaker, academic researcher, author, mother and avid lover of walking to chase the sun or moonrise in the countryside, she says her perspective is nothing if not wide and varied. She paints pictures with words, taking readers on her journey, and then encourages each one of us to live it, finding our own Yes I Can: “My hope is that through telling some of these stories and explaining what’s behind them, you will be able to find your ‘can’ too, and unlike me, it won’t take you 20 years after some of the experiences to figure it out.” Yes I Can: Learn to use the Power of Self-efficacy is released as an ebook on Amazon. The audio book, narrated by Laura and featuring original music composed and recorded by Laura on the cello, will be released in February.