agency

The truth is, becoming often begins in a moment of lack and a glimpse of difference. You meet someone vivid, and you realise you’ve been blurry. You hear someone speak with clarity, and realise your own voice wavers. In that moment of contrast, in the quiet sting of comparison, you begin to articulate a new self and name the shape you want to grow ... See more

We learned to be "good" - to follow the rules about putting others first, never being selfish, always being agreeable. But in doing so, we lost touch with our own trickster energy: the cunning, vivifying power that could help us steal back what's been taken from us.

Investigating whether things are really as hard as they look. Usually, they aren't. Many things look super hard, prove to be quite easy. But to discover that, an attempt must be made. Effort must come before success.

Most subject matter is learnable, even stuff that seems really hard. But beyond that, many (most?) traits that people treat as fixed are actually quite malleable if you (1) believe they are and (2) put the same kind of work into learning them as you would anything else.

The reason having Maud in my life made me more agentic was that it was the first time I experienced what it means to surrender to my values. I had a lot of idiosyncratic opinions and values when I was younger, too, but I held onto them in a rather flimsy way. Whenever things got too hard or people disapproved of what I was doing, I tended to give u... See more

The logic is simple. Most people ask “Can I have a raise?” or “Can I get a free upgrade?” The framing of these questions allows room for a simple “No,” and when you’re asking for something wild (e.g., “Can I get into the VIP section with only a GA ticket?” ) the answer ought to be “No.” By reframing all your requests with “What will it take” you ge... See more

Often, agency is almost gentle—an attunement to the world and the self, a feeling out the details of reality, and a finding of the path of least resistance