agency: it's only human

Reminder that a sense of agency means feeling like you have control over your actions and their consequences . I think people tend to forget that second part; owning your mistakes and their consequences is extremely difficult, which might be a motivating factor for some people to adopt victim complexes. (A victim complex is learned!)

A victim mentality is, in my opinion, one of the biggest threats to cultivating a sense of agency. Perpetual victimhood cannot coexist with agency.

I was realizing how many personal and interpersonal issues ultimately traced back to feeling like one has little to no agency. Everything from confidence to motivation can be traced back to agency, at least to some extent.

in order to develop agency, one needs to be psychologically ready to embrace it (i.e., change their worldview) once they spontaneously discover it. For instance, abandoning a victim mentality and being open to taking risks.

You might have independence, and you might be an ambitious person—but if you can’t even begin to fathom creating and playing by your own rules, do you really have agency?