there’s no character trait more essential to individual and societal progress than agency. Agency is the embodied conviction that you have the power to create meaningful change in your life and transform your vision into reality. It’s the engine that powers human progress.
The main paper I've been working on for the last 3 years is out: "Value Capture"! It's about the harms of taking on external metrics and rankings as your own core values.
The argument: you're outsourcing your values. It's fast, but then your values won't be tailored to you.🧵:
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!)
there are 2 (main) ways to work with emotional bottlenecks*:
1. direct emotional processing –– deliberately feel the emotion you're avoiding
2. reality engaged processing i.e. processing emotion thru action –– create tiny, manageable encounters with the scary situation & let
The key insight is that these levers actually make a difference in the way I move through the world. They’re truly levers , in that they provide the Platonic me with mechanical advantage over my larger, messier self.