I think we are all like this. People are not just high-agency or low-agency in a global sense, across their entire lives. Instead, people are selectively agentic.

Let’s say that life is divided up into three theaters: work, relationships with others (all kinds) and relationship to self (physical health, introspection, emotional development, all of... See more

But struggling is not evidence that you’ve tried everything. To the contrary, the continuous need for willpower may be the sign of a badly-engineered life.