Agency
Ideas around agency, aka the sense of control that you feel in your life + your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior
unoptimal and
Agency
You could theoretically change your life at any moment. Move here, date that person, work on that startup, write that blog, dye your hair, adopt a dog. Should I stay, should I go? I don’t know if this agency is freedom or burden. Perhaps all the best things are both.
Nixtwitter.comreminds me of the charles broskoski quote that goes something like... and when nobody waits for you at night, and when nobody calls you in the morning - do you call that freedom or loneliness?
Roughly, agency is the capacity to act to satisfy some preference. This breaks down into three parts: 1. The capacity to act. 2. Possessing preferences over outcomes of those actions. 3. Being able to choose to use the former to satisfy the latter.
David R. MacIver • Learning to exercise agency
Musings on agency:
Everyone has command of one self, if one is okay doing what is pleasurable to them in the moment.
The effort to eat a pint of chocolate ice cream is enjoyed.
The effort to do tedious task XYZ is not.
Christopher Smederx.comthread
“The capacity for growth depends on one’s ability to internalize and to take personal responsibility. If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others, a problem to be "solved," then no change will occur.”
― James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife
You are the machine that fuels everything else in your life.
Paying attention to the mindset that drives that machine, is simply one of the most important things you can do.
Every move, every decision, every action will rest on that. Be sure it is as optimal as it can be.
Dr. Julie Gurnertwitter.comjust be your self & do your own thing
discover & express your unique self
forge your own path
make your own rules
Stuart Evans and • 24 cards
Have faith: whatever the goal, the universe will provide lessons. Those lessons will either contain the growth to make you strong enough to accomplish the goal, or the wisdom to see a better goal.