You're an Adult with Agency: Taking Charge of Your Flourishing

Craig 00:01 

Have you ever felt like you were drifting through life, waiting for someone else to cue you to act? Most of us have. But we all have agency … the ability to take action, although we sometimes act like we don’t. Keep listening to learn what personal agency is, why we sometimes fail to exercise that agency, and how you can use practical wisdom to recognize how to take control over living an excellent life. 

Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke. If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you.

Craig 00:58 

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I’m a voracious consumer of podcasts. Sometimes I hear a podcaster say something like, “I’m giving you permission to …” and then describe something that they think you ought to do. Although these folks are well intentioned and don’t mean the phrase literally, “I’m giving you permission …” always bothers me a little. If you’re listening to this, you’re probably an adult with agency. You have control over your actions … you don’t need anyone’s permission to act in ways that are good for your well-being. You’re not a piece of driftwood, floating along with the currents of life, you have a rudder. So, why do we sometimes act like we need permission? 

I think a lot about this. I’m so obsessed with the idea of exercising agency that it’s a bit of a joke around the Van Slyke household. Maybe I’ll tell my wife, Tracy, that I’m thinking about taking a quick nap. She’ll respond with, “You’re an adult with agency. Do what you want.” I often say something similar in response to her remarks. (By the way, we’re always just doing this as a joke, not as a serious response … I think.)

Craig 02:04 

So, let’s talk about agency, starting with defining what personal agency is. It’s really a simple concept. Personal agency is your capacity to exercise your free will and make choices. It’s rooted in three beliefs, that free will exists, that your actions can influence events, and that you have some responsibility for your own life. Personal agency isn’t just your capacity to make choices, it’s also the recognition that you HAVE this ability. 

Why are we sometimes reluctant to exercise agency? Well, I think it comes down to a few factors. First, it’s sometimes easy to forget that we have agency. There are just so many forces at play in this complex world … we have to deal with external events, the actions of others, ever-shifting societal norms and attitudes, the expectations of others … it can all get overwhelming. So, one coping strategy is to convince yourself that your actions don’t matter, or that you need to wait for someone to tell you what to do. This also allows you to feel like you can escape responsibility. After all, if it’s out of your control, you can’t be held responsible if things go badly. Sometimes self-doubt can cause you to feel like you lack agency. You ask yourself something like, “Can I really do this?” and when the answer comes up no, you feel like you don’t really have control, like you don’t have agency. 

Craig 03:34 

A desire to please others is another reason we sometimes feel like we don’t have agency … that you feel like you need permission. Most of us want to please important others in our lives. It’s great to want to do things that please other people, but you need to recognize that you get to make a choice over whether or not you do so. Pleasing others is a decision, not an immutable force. Taking actions that please others is fine, but not at the expense of your values. Quick caution though: Don’t confuse asking permission with asking someone’s opinion out of respect and courtesy. If I decide to shave my head (and no, I’m not thinking about it), it would be a good idea to ask Tracy what she thought. Doing so would not only be respectful, it would also be pretty smart since she’s talked me out of more than a few crazy ideas over the years.

Craig 04:29 

Finally, the perceived need for permission can be an excuse for inaction when you’re afraid. This often happens when you’re thinking about taking some sort of risk. Maybe it’s a new job, learning a new skill, or even something as trivial as a new hairstyle. Sometimes we have a tendency to seek out someone to talk us out of taking the risk. I suppose this isn’t technically asking for permission, but sometimes we treat it that way. “Well, so-and-so thought it was a bad idea, so I guess I can't do it.” I want to reiterate that I’m not saying to avoid seeking the opinion of those you trust; I’m just saying that you don’t need their permission. Say it with me, “I am an adult with agency.”

Now, it’s important to realize that you do face constraints … we all do. The nature and extent of these constraints varies according to your particular circumstances, but constraints exist. However, even within severe constraints, you still have considerable room to exercise agency. The constraints do not negate your agency, they shape the landscape in which it’s exercised.

Craig 05:39 

That brings me to the big idea I want to communicate; it’s one I’ve talked about before, but it’s so important that I want to say it again. Baring some pretty severe mental limitations, you have control over being the sort of person you want to be. Ultimately, it’s up to you whether you’re a good person or a bad person … whether you’re a person of virtue and integrity or an unreliable person of poor character. At the end of the day, you have agency over whether you live an excellent life, whether you live a life that’s consistent with your values and beliefs.   

Craig 06:18 

Let’s shift gears a little and talk about practical wisdom. At its core, practical wisdom is about the practical application of knowledge for the greater good. It’s about understanding how to act well and make good decisions in particular circumstances. For Aristotle, practical wisdom, sometimes called phronesis, is among the highest virtues. Practical wisdom puts knowledge and understanding into action. It allows you to achieve the good life … a life of virtue and reason. (For more about practical wisdom, check out episode 54 at livewellandflourish.com/54.)

So what does that have to do with agency? Well, practical wisdom requires taking responsibility for your actions. Taking responsibility requires recognizing that you have agency but also understanding that you have a moral obligation to exercise that agency. If you want to live an excellent life, you need to take steps to live the right way … to live according to the virtues you seek. You do not need anyone’s permission to live a good life, but you do not get to blame someone else when you act contrary to virtue. If you lie, YOU lie, nobody forced you to do so. You exercised your agency and lied. By the same token, when you tell the truth when it’s difficult to do so, you get to own your good choice just as you have to bear responsibility for your bad choices.

Craig 07:54 

Let me give you a little example. Suppose you’re having a rough day and you take a break and go to your favorite cafe. You order coffee and the cafe owner tells you that she just pulled some cinnamon scones out of the oven. Those are your favorite so you’re very tempted, especially when you start smelling them. The owner tries pretty hard to convince you since she can see you’re having a bad day. But, you’re trying to cut back on snacks and sweets. So, even though the owner tries to twist your arm, you politely decline, exercising your agency to forgo temporary pleasure in the name of your long term health. Yeah, sometimes exercising agency is NOT easy.

Craig 08:36 

The key to all of this is to not only understand that you have agency and the responsibility for exercising agency, you also have to understand which values are important to you. These values give you the standard against which to consider alternative courses of action. Remember that decision making is just choosing among alternatives. For decisions that involve your values, you don’t want to just flip a proverbial coin, you want to weigh the alternatives on the basis of their alignment with your values. Sure, there are other considerations as well. Many decisions have implications for other aspects of your life, such as your physical, mental, and financial health. But values should be the ultimate arbiter of your decisions. To live an excellent life, values and virtues should trump all other considerations. Maybe it's inconvenient to help someone move some furniture, but if friendship is an important virtue to you, acting according to the dictates of friendship overrides the inconvenience (and possible sore back). Of course, making decisions isn’t always easy or straightforward. Sometimes you face dilemmas that weigh virtues against one another. I talked about this in episode 36. But, practical wisdom and the exercise of agency means that you need to do the best you can to carefully think through and make the tough decisions.

Craig 10:02 

So, hopefully I’ve convinced you that you not only have agency, you need to take advantage of it. That raises the question of how. 

After thinking about this quite a bit, I’ve concluded that there are two pieces to the exercising agency puzzle -- awareness and action. You won’t exercise agency if you don’t recognize when you’re feeling a false sense of a lack of agency. In other words, you won’t exercise agency if you don’t realize you have it. There are many triggers to feelings of a lack of agency. Stress, overwhelm, rejection, negative self-talk, low self-esteem, social comparison, social and societal norms, past trauma, uncertainty … the list is long. Time doesn’t permit digging into all of these, so I’m going to discuss just three, stress, social comparison, and norms. 

Craig 10:55 

Stress is a sad reality of modern life for many of us. I’ve talked a lot about stress and coping in previous episodes. You can check them out at livewellandflourish.com. Just click on the little magnifying glass in the upper righthand corner and search for stress. It’s common to shut down in the face of extreme stress. Often, we justify shutting down by invoking a false belief that things are so out of control that you can’t do anything. This is rarely true, but it creates a convenient excuse for inaction. When you’re feeling stressed, an extremely useful first step is to just pause and ponder what IS under your control. There’s almost always something, even if it’s just a recognition that the stress is temporary. I did an entire episode on coping with stress by taking control, so I won’t go further here. Check it that episode at livewellandflourish.com/69.

Craig 11:50 

Social comparison is another bane of modern existence, especially in the age of social media. Sometimes you might feel like you’re constrained by what others are doing. You don’t want to swim against the tide. But as your parents probably told you, you don’t HAVE to go along with the crowd; that’s often just a poor excuse for questionable behavior. Going along with the crowd is sometimes a sign that you’re acting out of alignment with virtue. So, if you feel yourself being pulled by the tide of popular opinion, there's a good chance you’re ceding your agency.

Social and societal norms act similarly. There’s nothing inherently wrong with acting according to norms. Just realize that when you do so, you’re making a choice. You don’t HAVE to follow the norm. When the norm is contrary to virtue, have the courage to break the norm and practice virtue. 

Craig 12:46 

OK, once you realize that you’re not recognizing your agency, how can you actually exercise the agency? How can you take action? Well, I have some ideas.

The first step is to understand that you don’t have agency over external events or elements, but you do have agency over how you respond. So, don’t waste time and energy worrying about what you cannot control; think through the best way to respond. If someone at a party is pressuring you to have a drink, you may not be able to control their actions, but YOU get to decide whether or not you have that cocktail. 

Next, I find it very useful to catalog the important constraints that do exist. There are always constraints, so it’s important to acknowledge them. I’ve talked about this in the past, but it bears repeating. Constraints LIMIT your agency, they don’t ELIMINATE it. Understanding the constraints can help you understand what IS possible. Be careful to not become overwhelmed into inaction. The idea here is to understand the landscape so that you can take effective action. Even under the heaviest constraints, there is virtually always room for positive action; you just need to do the work to find the paths forward. Remember, always be guided by reason and virtue. 

Craig 14:08 

Finally, once you’ve identified the best path, take action. That seems obvious, but humans are very good at realizing what they should do something, then not doing it. It’s a problem I’ve talked about before, in episode 52. Most of us can recall times when we knew the right thing to do, but failed to take the right action. Yeah, it sounds like it should go without saying, but the final part of exercising agency is to exercise the agency by taking action. If you don’t take the final step, all of the other effort is wasted. 

Normally, I’d give you three specific practices to try in the coming week, but I’m exercising my agency to skip that for this episode since I feel like I’ve already given you some things to try. So, I’ll leave you with a closing quote from Epictetus, “It is wrong to live under constraint; but no one is constrained to live under constraint. On all sides lie many short and simple paths to freedom.” Epictetus was a slave.

Until next time, remember my friends, you are an adult with agency.

I produce Live Well and Flourish because of my dedication to helping others live excellent lives. I don't accept sponsorships and I don't want your money. The only thing I want is to help you and others flourish. If you've received some value from this episode, please share it with someone that might also benefit from listening. The best way to do that is to direct them to livewellandflourish.com

Until next time.