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
In the other direction, I think there are skills and dispositions which increase your agency in general. Practical wisdom, the skill of knowing that to do, is generally agency-increasing because it makes it easier to find paths to act on your preferences, so gets you used to acting in general.
David R. MacIver • Learning to exercise agency
you can be high agency without being highly ambitious. That might describe somebody who is highly agentic in shaping the kind of personal, emotional, or spiritual life they want, but who is not especially motivated to succeed financially or professionally.
Can You Just Do Things?—Asterisk
Belief → Will → Action → Habit → Character → Destiny
"Life begins when you realize that you are not just who you are, you are also who you can become. You are a being who is also becoming. Life begins when you truly realize that you are free to act and become who you want to be."
But there is tremendous power in defining ideals, even if they ultimately remain out of reach. Considering all that is at stake, we have to at least try.
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substack.comin order to develop agency, one needs to be psychologically ready to embrace it (i.e., change their worldview) once they spontaneously discover it. For instance, abandoning a victim mentality and being open to taking risks.