If you're unsatisfied you have two options. Change your experience or change your relationship to experience. The first is agency, the second is spirituality. Both capacities are important, and it takes a lifetime to get the balance right
If you're unsatisfied you have two options. Change your experience or change your relationship to experience. The first is agency, the second is spirituality. Both capacities are important, and it takes a lifetime to get the balance right
Agency can be formally defined as the subjective feeling of having control over one’s actions and their consequences…Put differently, you don’t feel as though life is just happening to you, with your only choice being to sit back and accept it all. Instead, you feel as though you are an active participant in your life; you are making things happen.
sundus • agency: it's only human
You always have three options: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you could leave it but not leaving it and not accepting it. That struggle or aversion is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase I probably use the most ... See more
Eric Jorgenson • Almanack of Naval Ravikant
The opposite of agency is learned helplessness. If people believe that we can’t do very much to stop the world’s problems, it’s unsurprising that they’d be terrified to bring children into the world. But this seems like a mental trap that we can, and should, teach people to resist falling into. As Clare Coffey writes in “Failure to Cop
... See moreNadia Asparouhova • Cultivating Agency
The psychologist Bessel van der Kolk defines agency as “the feeling of being in charge of your life: knowing where you stand, knowing that you have a say in what happens to you, knowing that you have some ability to shape your circumstance.” People who exhibit agency have been shown to be happier and healthier, and have a higher quality of life.