Wild Minds Weekly: Freedom starts with this
3 min read
Hello beautiful people,
Last week we talked about the problem with low-agency.
Low-agency keeps you where you don't want to be, and gets you where you don't want to go.
A low-agency person outsources all of their decision-making to other people. I'm not talking about being painfully indecisive about what to have for dinner. I'm talking about the big decisions.
Their answers to "Where should I live?", "Who should I date?", "What should I do?" are all heavily influenced by what other people are doing or have told them they should do.
Low-agency doesn't make a person 'unsuccessful' in the conventional sense. You can be highly capable, and low-agency, meaning you're exceptionally good at getting where you don't want to go. Others may consider you successful, even if you don't feel it yourself.
That makes high-agency one of the most important traits you can develop.
If you define success as living up to your highest purpose, a life where you are not driven by your unconscious social programming, a life you would be grateful living even if no-one was watching, then high-agency is essential.
It's not all you need. You still need to be good at what you do, and ideally a person other people want to be around. But without it, you'll be stuck chasing targets put there by other people.
What does it mean to be high-agency?
It means living as if you have no concept of what your life “should” be.
It means you don't passively accept the story you are told about what life is, instead, you write it.
A high-agency person bends reality to their will. Being told 'no' is not the end of the story.
Steve Jobs was a prime example of high-agency.
“Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” – Steve Jobs
Yes, he was a bit of a d*ckhead, and being a highly agent d*ckhead is a pain for the people around you (not ideal). That said, without his high agency you probably wouldn't be reading this on a smartphone. He bent reality to his will.
Here's how you can develop greater agency, so that you can live the life you want:
1. Ask "why?". If you're reading this newsletter you're probably better than the average person at doing this, but I'm leaving this here as a reminder. Ask "why?" enough times of yourself and the world around you, and you'll realise most of what you've been told is bullshit. This is the foundation of high-agency.
"We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question." - Orson Scott Card
As a person who lived in low-agency for most of my life, I asked myself "Why do I actually need a house?". I didn't have an answer. So I bought a van. That decision, as uncertain as I was about how it would turn out, built my agency over my own life, which leads me to what I'm about to say next.
2. Make more decisions. Your ability to make decision is a muscle you can build. Start small. Accept that you could be wrong. Ultimately even if it's not the outcome you hoped, you will have learnt valuable lessons, and isn't that part of the fun?
3. Get comfortable with uncertainty.
The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably put up with.
The reason most people get stuck on paths they don't want is because they choose they choose the comfort of certainty. Ask yourself, "Do I have enough uncertainty in my life?" If not, can you tolerate just a little bit more?
4. Lastly, stop blaming others. It's not your parents fault, it's not the fault of the people around you, it's not "the system". It's yours. Once you accept this, you're free to change your situation.
Blaming others used to be my first reaction every time something didn't turn out how I wanted. It turns out this is a terrible way to live. Easy to understand, harder to live by.
If you're not happy where you are now, keep those 4 things in mind. Your life will be completely different in a year.
But if you're still feeling stuck, here are two questions to break you out:
"If I had 10x the agency I have, what would I do?" - Nick Cammarata
or put another way
"How can I achieve my 10 year goal in 6-months?" - Peter Thiel
To your freedom and independence,
Rob
Wild Minds Community
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