How to Be More Agentic

From the outside, agency is often misinterpreted as ambition, but I learned through observing these two types of people that they are actually quite different. Ambition means you're motivated to play games that others have already created in the world, while agency means you're driven to play a game of your own. It quickly became clear to me that

The opposite of agency is learned helplessness. If people believe that we can’t do very much to stop the world’s problems, it’s unsurprising that they’d be terrified to bring children into the world. But this seems like a mental trap that we can, and should, teach people to resist falling into. As  Clare Coffey writes  in “Failure to Cop

Agency is so important that even deluding yourself that you have it can improve your life. Merely understanding a problem, even if you can’t do anything about it, gives you a sense of control. By forcing yourself to learn what’s happening to you, you come to accept it. You become an agent in your own meaning-making.

CAN YOU CONTROL YOUR FUTURE?