Reclaim Your Power And Rediscover Purpose

In this track, we’ll dive into the concept of agency—what it means to take back control of your life and why it’s essential for your growth and well-being. You’ll learn how to identify where you’ve been giving away your power and how to reclaim it by making conscious, empowering choices. We’ll explore practical ways to move past self-doubt, let go of victim consciousness, and step into your sovereignty. By the end, you’ll feel more confident, clear, and ready to take charge of your life with intention and self-trust. Let’s begin this journey of rediscovery together.

Transcript

Welcome and thank you for joining me today.

If you're here and you've decided to click on this track,

The chances are that you've been in some way feeling stuck in your life or in some area of your life recently.

Maybe you're caught in a cycle of self-doubt,

Frustration,

Or even resentment,

And you're kind of left wondering why things aren't changing despite your best intentions.

And I kind of want to kick this off by saying that you're not alone.

It's a common feeling.

And feeling stuck is,

Yeah,

It's one of the most common struggles we face,

But the truth is you have more power to change your circumstances than you possibly realize.

So in this session,

We're going to explore the key idea of agency,

Your ability to take back control of your life,

To step into your personal power,

And to reclaim your role as the author of your own story.

This isn't about forcing yourself into massive changes overnight or pretending that you don't have limitations.

It's more about recognizing the small,

Powerful choices that you can make,

Even in the face of challenges,

And learning to trust yourself and regard yourself as the primary authority in your own life.

So as we dive in,

I invite you to approach this conversation with curiosity and an open heart.

Together,

We'll explore how to move past feelings of powerlessness,

How to let go of the need for external permission,

And how to start living authentically on your terms.

So my hope is that by the end of the session,

You'll feel not just inspired,

But also equipped to take meaningful action in your life.

So without further ado,

Let's dive in.

Agency,

The essence of agency.

We'll define it,

Make sure we're all singing from the same hymn sheet here.

Agency is the recognition and exercise of your power to make choices and shape your life.

At some point,

This might turn into a bit of a free will discussion,

Right?

But you have always the power to make choices.

And in some sense,

You can forget this,

Or you can not be aware of this,

But it can never be taken away from you.

So there's always that standing invitation to realize that you always have power in any context to make your own choices.

Actually brings to mind,

I heard a kind of funny comment on this once.

I can't remember the context,

But someone asked one of those revered spiritual teachers,

Kind of why is the Buddha often shown as smirking,

Kind of,

You know,

This sort of smirking Buddha.

I can't remember who it was.

So if anyone knows,

Feel free to let me know.

But it's something like the reason for the Buddha's smirk is that he knows you are forever doomed to make choices.

Right?

So there's no way of avoiding that whole free will situation but you can embrace it.

You can recognize your capacity,

Your ability to always make your own choices.

You actually,

In a certain sense of the Buddha's smirking,

You kind of can't not,

But good to be aware of that agency that you do possess.

Right?

You can forget your sense of agency and you can give it away,

But it can't actually be taken from you permanently.

And it's reassuring,

At least to me,

To know that.

So the thing about agency,

I really want to place this in the context of personal sovereignty,

Right?

It's the recognition or the placing of yourself as the kind of primary authority in your own life.

Not society,

Not institutions,

And not external expectations.

I mean,

Obviously you have to modulate your behavior to external factors a lot of the time,

But it's about not giving your power away.

You are an autonomous individual.

You can make your own choices.

I'm sure you know this,

But the point I want to get to is that this idea that you might have more power and autonomy available to you than you're currently giving yourself.

We'll dive more into this,

This is just kicking off here.

The other frame I think that is useful to consider your own agency is this idea of more self-authorship.

The idea that in some sense,

Our lives are very story-like.

And in this context,

Agency is really taking back the pen so you can write your own chapters.

You want to have some measure of direction at least in how the story of your life unfolds.

And there is a certain beauty as well to letting it be,

This is controversial here,

Because this is not what I'm advocating regarding agency,

But there is a certain beauty to letting things unfold without necessarily trying to control everything,

Right?

That's another paradigm as well.

That's not untrue.

It's a beautiful way of doing things,

But the point of agency is that you feel competent,

Capable and responsible in your life,

Which I think we can agree is a good thing,

Right?

Too often,

There's a kind of spiritual bypassing that occurs,

People say,

Oh,

On some level,

Everything's perfect and I'm just letting things unfold.

And they use that as kind of an excuse to just be passive in their lives and not strive for the things that they really truly desire for themselves.

Some of the spiritual principles can get you confused in the sense that some people,

You get to this point where you think it's just wrong to want things for yourself.

And I wanna tell you that it's okay to want things.

Some of that Buddhist stuff about the whole craving and desire,

I got this wrong for a while,

But the point is that what it's basically saying as far as I understand it is,

You are allowed to want to avoid unpleasant things and you're also allowed,

Give yourself permission,

Right,

To want things.

The point about the craving and desire piece is that you have to be on some level still okay if those things don't happen or if they do respectively,

Right?

So it's,

There's a kind of a nuance here.

For me at least,

Some of the time it's been,

Oh no,

Actually it is okay to want things for myself.

It's not inherently bad or immoral for me to want things.

So I wanted to iron that out in case anyone else had been a bit stuck in the same little,

In that same trap there somehow.

The other thing I wanna bring up to kick off the rest of what I'm gonna talk about here is there's a Terence McKenna quote that I really,

Really like and I think it speaks to agency and personal sovereignty here,

Which is this.

You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.

It's a great quote,

As I said,

From Terence McKenna.

I really like this because so often in the kind of self-development world and trying to improve ourselves and develop ourselves,

We're always looking for teachers and things we can learn from,

Sources of knowledge.

And one thing I recognize from my kind of positive psychology study in the past is that every Tom,

Dick and Harry has their own model of how things work or how to go from A to B.

And those models can be useful.

They're useful structures,

They're useful mental models that you can interact with and learn from and absorb.

But ultimately,

The most important thing is that your map makes sense to you.

So everything that you learn from anyone else,

You wanna take that and process it yourself and what's useful and makes sense to you,

Take that and what isn't,

Just discard it because as Terence said,

It's your responsibility to understand the universe because no one else's understanding is gonna be ultimately helpful to you in the way that you go about and live your life and interact with the world.

Also,

I just,

Yeah,

I love Terence.

Well,

What can I say?

So why recognizing your agency is important?

I mean,

It should be fairly obvious it's important but I wanna lay out some of the benefits anyway.

It's about empowerment really.

Without agency,

We're unavoidably gonna just be passive participants in our life,

Right?

You're always gonna be reacting to life rather than creating the life you'd actually like to live.

There's a key point here which is something about responsibility,

Right?

So that word empowerment,

In my mind,

Responsibility is another name for power.

Those two things are,

In my opinion,

Two sides of one coin.

Responsibility,

If you break it down,

Right,

Response-able,

Your capacity to respond to things is in some sense maybe the same or at least directly proportional to your own personal power,

Right?

If someone's unable to respond to what happens,

That would be being powerless.

But if I,

In any situation,

I'm capable of responding,

Then I'm empowered and I don't know,

I really,

I don't know,

That was a big thing for me when I came into the realization of this responsibility and power as being,

At the least,

Very interlinked.

So I think that's worth considering.

Agency is also important.

In a way,

I find it actually quite useful or important for healing,

Actually,

Especially kind of emotional healing.

And we'll go more into this,

But it's about reclaiming responsibility,

Again,

For your internal world.

That might not make much sense initially,

But a lot of the time we see people,

Or I've seen people in healing spaces and what they actually need,

In some sense,

Is to give themselves permission,

Right?

To have forgiveness or to have love.

They kind of need to allow themselves to experience love or to allow themselves to forgive themselves.

But people have blocks to doing that or reasons why they can't,

And they need to be often worked through.

But yeah,

It's that kind of internal,

We'll talk about this later,

It's an internal locus of control.

And this actually speaks to how to avoid the kind of victimhood consciousness,

Which is tempting,

But ultimately not very helpful or empowering place to live from.

Because you take responsibility for everything that occurs,

Which is not the same as culpability or blame.

But the more responsibility you can assume,

The more of an active agent you're gonna be in your life,

Which,

As I'm trying to outline,

Is I think a really good thing.

It's about your personal empowerment.

You can't be an empowered individual and not take responsibility for anything.

Certainly,

If you wanna be an empowered individual,

You have to be responsible for your internal world.

Doesn't mean your internal world has to always be perfect or put together.

Sometimes my internal world is pretty upsetting,

But that's okay,

We're responsible for it,

Not that it has to be perfect and warm and happy all of the time.

So yeah,

The next part of agency matter,

Yeah,

Growth.

It's just about growth in a certain sense.

Personal development hinges on realizing that you're the architect and the builder of your life.

You're kind of making it happen,

You're putting it together.

What's the plan?

Where do I wanna go?

How does that look?

And then making it happen,

Which is going into this idea of vision and intention,

Which I think do follow on naturally from agency,

But I'm gonna keep it,

This discussion today,

Focused on agency.

And I think the core of that,

As I said,

It's getting slightly rambly here,

My apologies,

Is just this sense of giving yourself permission.

That is a surprisingly large part of self-empowerment,

Is allowing yourself to want things,

Allowing yourself to forgive yourself.

It's recognizing that you are a competent agent in the world and you can impact the world in the way that you choose to.

But there are barriers,

Right?

Okay,

Well,

If this agency stuff's so great,

Why are we not all walking around as very capable agents in our lives,

Being very empowered?

There are reasons that it's difficult.

There are some barriers and we're gonna look at them now.

One is just external conditioning.

So all kinds of systems,

Right?

Education,

Religion,

Even self-help actually,

Which actually subtly disempower us as individuals because they encourage a reliance on external models or authority.

And you get conditioning,

Even from quite young,

To be a part of various institutions and view them as the source of all authority.

And it's not necessarily wrong,

Right?

When you're a child,

Obviously your parents are the responsible adults,

So your authority is externalized to them,

Which is natural and right,

Because you as a child can't be responsible for yourself before you grow up and mature and learn about the world and form your own view of things.

But beyond just your own parents,

Who you unavoidably eventually realize are in fact fallible,

You also have the education system,

Likely that you've been involved in when you were a child.

And that is another form of externalized authority that you have to defer to.

And I think some people,

Incoming mature adult individuals,

Never necessarily come to the realization of themselves as the authority in their own lives because they're conditioned to be deferring to some external source,

Right?

From parent to school teacher to corporate boss.

And obviously,

This isn't to say that's always inappropriate,

Right?

There's obviously your boss in your career is in a sense an authority,

Right?

An authority in the context of your work.

But this is more agency here is about you ultimately being the authority for the direction of your life.

That is yours.

And so it's just a comment here about recognizing to what extent you may have given away your sense of agency,

Your sense of personal power to external things.

And how much of that do you want to take back?

Because you can take it back at any time.

It's a choice.

It's all a choice.

That's kind of the key of agency is you've got more choices than you realize and you are in fact free to make them.

There will of course be consequences to the choices you make but you are always free to make your own choices.

That's possibly one of the most important things to take away from our talk today.

The other thing that people can often avoid a sense of their own agency is like we talked about already.

It's just responsibility.

People can have a fear of responsibility because it can be a daunting thing.

It's like,

Oh,

I'm gonna be expected to be responsible for possibly every facet of my life.

I have to,

If a question is asked about this or that I must in fact stand ready to answer it.

And yeah,

You can avoid responsibility if you want but it's gonna come at the cost of reduced personal agency which I think is a bum deal personally.

Yeah,

I guess it's a fear in a way of being made to stand to account for the choices you've made.

But I guess the choice is you make your own choices and you be held responsible for them or you don't make your own choices.

You reject responsibility and remain a passive participant in your life who's disempowered.

And I know which I'd choose but when I lay it out like that it seems like a very obvious choice.

But if you're not looking at this kind of thing consciously,

It's very easy to set your impulses,

Guide you into just avoiding responsibility rather than making what I think is a superior choice.

But again,

Don't care too much what I think.

These are my ideas.

Maybe it's incumbent upon you as an individual who's empowered and has agency to think which of these ideas you wanna take on and which of these are a load of rubbish,

Right?

I don't know,

It's kind of cool,

A bit meta talking about what I'm talking about there.

Anyway,

Yeah,

There's increasingly we see a lot of,

Something I see in the world,

A lot of this idea or awareness of this kind of victim mentality whereby people have this habit of trying to be weirdly enough in a position of power by claiming status as a victim in some sense.

And the core of this is the habit of blaming external circumstances rather than realizing your own power to make different choices.

And the difficult part is that,

Yeah,

Obviously life can be very unfair and sometimes things don't play out the way you want them to or affect you adversely and they're not in any way,

Shape or form at all your fault.

A lot of the time,

There's very good reasons why things were made hard for you or are difficult or aren't fair,

Right?

The problem is that if you approach it from the paradigm of a victim,

You kind of give away that personal power,

That agency.

So even if it may in fact be true that you've been wronged,

You're doing yourself a further disservice to view it that way.

The kind of a better response would be,

What can I do about this?

How can I look at this differently?

What view can I take that's more personally empowering?

How do I want to act differently in light of this situation or event?

But by the way,

People get very hung up on the kind of moral righteousness of being a victim.

And,

But,

You know,

It's not to say they haven't been victimized,

But it's just choosing to see it that way is ultimately unhelpful for your own personal growth and development.

So again,

You make your choice and you take your chances.

But I think that the victim thing is not at all the way to go,

Basically.

But you're,

Of course,

Free to think differently.

You can use your agency to stay a victim for as long as you want.

So I'm probably enjoying myself a bit too much there.

But yeah,

Let's talk about this and reclaiming our agency.

So we've realized this agency stuff actually is pretty cool.

I can be the authority for myself in my own life.

I can make my choices.

And it sounds really obvious to say,

But it's something that's so obvious that we don't often consider it,

The extent to which we can make choices and different choices and create and make things happen in the world.

So this idea I wanna come back to of permission giving.

You can reclaim agency by this sense of giving yourself permission.

Grant yourself permission to feel,

Heal,

And act without waiting for or necessarily needing external validation.

The caveat here is,

This isn't the kind of carte blanche to just do whatever you want all of the time.

You still need to consider the external world and react appropriately to feedback you receive,

Right?

Actually,

That's worth talking about.

This idea of feedback from the external world can be positive or negative,

But there's a view of the world where you're standing solidly in who you are and how you view the world.

And there's a kind of Goldilocks situation whereby if you're too in your own stuff and you're not taking feedback from the world,

You become,

People might say,

Ungrounded or kind of not very easy to collaborate with because it's a my way or the highway,

Right?

So you need to be able to still take feedback from the external world while also holding strong your own frame of reference.

On the other hand,

If every kind of opposing view or different thought or any idea that challenges you immediately throws you entirely off course,

Then you're taking feedback in too easily,

Right?

The proper view,

In my opinion,

Is to navigate through the world.

And when you receive feedback on the outcomes of your choices in the world,

You digest it,

You look at it,

You see what's useful,

What isn't,

Is it true,

Is it not?

And then you take what's useful and you move on.

Bit of a tangent there,

Sorry.

So the other thing,

Ownership,

Right?

It's taking ownership,

Radical ownership,

Taking responsibility for your choices,

Your emotions,

Your actions,

Both in the past and the present.

And I wanna point out again that responsibility is not the same thing as blame.

It's about owning your power to respond,

Not any kind of wallowing in guilt.

The other point to make is about intentionality.

Agency flourishes through clear intentions.

What do you really want and why do you want it?

Intention,

I think,

Naturally follows on from a sense of agency,

But it really focuses your energy and aligns your actions with your values.

Next thing I wanna talk about is self-trust.

Building agency involves trusting your own judgment,

Your own discernment over external opinions or societal norms.

Now,

Again,

There's nuance here,

Right?

You want to be discerning while also taking into account external opinions and societal conventions.

It would be a mistake to blindly always trust yourself over external opinions or societal norms.

It would also be a mistake to always go with societal norms or external opinions and never back your own sense of discernment.

So you've got to modulate between those two things,

But in the sense of wanting to increase agency,

Yeah,

Put some respect on your own discernment.

I think I personally would be tempted to value that over the external things,

But you start to take the external opinions and societal norms into account.

I think that's more or less what I wanna say there.

It's making decisions that might seem unconventional,

But still feel true to you.

Again,

It's coming back to that Terrence McKenna point.

It's the most important understanding is your understanding because everyone else's understanding is ultimately not gonna be of much use to you compared to your own,

But you can still use other people's understanding to inform your own perspective.

And there's a courage piece here.

To have real agency as an individual often involves stepping outside of institutional or cultural expectations,

Right?

If you wanna live a life that's radically true and free to the being that you are,

You're gonna have to step outside the guardrails,

The expectations a lot of the time.

But so the question to ask yourself though,

It doesn't mean,

Again,

It doesn't mean you should always do the opposite of what you're told by society at large.

Question to ask yourself is,

Are the models and teachings you follow expanding or limiting your personal power?

Are there beliefs you're holding onto that actually are disempowering?

If so,

What are they?

And can we remove them?

And what beliefs or models are actually helping you?

And in that case,

Lean more into those.

So yeah,

Agency is important.

In terms of strengthening your agency,

I think mindfulness and reflection is actually a very good tool for this kind of thing.

I mean,

Mindfulness and reflection is great in general,

Right?

But developing self-awareness can help us recognize where we're even subtly giving away our power,

Right?

Whether through blame or compliance.

I think a good journaling prompt to look at this would be,

Where in my life am I waiting for permission to act?

Sometimes we can get stuck in our lives waiting for something,

Something to happen before we can X,

Y,

Or Z.

And often what we're actually waiting for is just,

Is ourselves to step up,

To give or step up,

Perhaps is the wrong phrase.

Waiting to just give ourselves permission to do the thing that we know we wanna do or that needs to happen or whatever it is.

But sometimes you're waiting and you don't realize that you're waiting for yourself.

This awareness of choice,

Right?

The free will thing,

That little thing again.

You can reframe challenges as opportunities to make conscious choices,

No matter how small or big the challenges might be.

You always have a choice.

So an example with this to be,

So a generic example would be just choosing your response to a difficult situation rather than that automatic reaction.

A self-affirmation is really good for increasing agency.

You can regularly just affirm to yourself,

I am the primary authority in my life.

I can make choices and my choices matter.

I personally have one that's similar to this that I like,

Which is just,

I am the sovereign king of my reality,

But it gets a bit metaphysical for people.

But yes,

To see yourself as the primary authority in your own life.

The other thing that's important regarding agency is boundary setting.

Something that some of us struggle with,

I've definitely struggled with this at times,

It's about protecting your energy in a sense and saying no to what doesn't serve your growth or values.

You have the agency,

You can make the choice.

You can say yes or no.

Do I want this thing in my life or do I not?

Is,

Am I being treated in a way that's acceptable to me or not?

There's something here,

And there's a point about this.

To a certain extent,

People treat you in the way that you expect to be treated or in a way that you allow yourself to be treated.

And if you have this strong sense of empowerment and personal agency,

Then when things are not resonant and not okay,

Then you're not gonna be afraid to let them know.

It's like,

No,

Actually,

The way that you just spoke to me there,

I felt was very disrespectful and I'm not gonna continue to engage with you as an individual if you continue speaking to me in this way,

Right?

That's a thing you can do.

This may be very obvious,

But for people who are good on boundaries,

Right?

But yeah,

That's an option,

Right?

If those of you who aren't so good on boundaries are like,

Look,

I didn't like how you did that and I'm gonna let you know about it because I have agency.

It's wonderful.

It's not really a cure-all,

But I don't know,

I've recently rediscovered my own personal agency,

Hence the kind of thrust of this talk.

And it's quite a wonderful thing,

Actually.

So I hope you guys can have the same experience.

I touched on this before,

But there is a kind of paradox of teachers.

I've currently positioned myself as an inside timer teacher in this current context,

Right?

But I think it really helps to view teachers as a catalyst,

Not as an authority,

Right?

I think the best teachers just point you back at your own wisdom rather than trying to replace it,

Right?

I think a good teacher should make themself obsolete.

So,

You know,

You kind of take whatever they're laying down,

Right?

Take it and what's useful and use that to speed up the process of your own realization and thinkings and models of the world.

But don't give your power away to what they say,

What they're telling you is the right thing to do or the right way to be,

Right?

You know,

A question you could ask is,

Does this teacher's advice amplify my agency or does it diminish it?

And if it's the second case,

Then don't listen to them.

Or do if you don't want to listen to me,

Yeah.

Yeah,

There's a cultural piece in there as well.

It's kind of institution.

Institutions often thrive when individuals doubt their agency,

Right?

Because you give away your power to the institution,

Which is actually probably okay if the institutions are earnestly interested in your wellbeing above everything else,

But they often have other incentives.

So this is why I like to inhabit a reality where I think people are basically good.

And because I think people are basically good,

I'm really interested in the empowerment of individuals.

But when you get institutions,

They can often have other aims,

Things that can go awry.

And I don't know,

It's just my personal view.

I'm not a huge fan.

There are good ones,

But I'd like an institution to be comprised of empowered individuals with strong moral principles.

It would be my personal preference.

Even a good institution would be ideally comprised of empowered individuals.

But yeah,

So breaking free from kind of cultural paradigms or societal expectations involves a certain degree of self-inquiry and radical self-trust.

It's not an easy thing to do.

We are a social species,

Right?

So,

You know,

Take from that what you will.

And to speak back again to that self-sovereignty piece,

Right,

It's claiming your throne,

We could call it,

To make it exciting.

Personal sovereignty,

It's about living from your core values and beliefs rather than external prescriptions.

Of course,

Therefore,

You have to sit down and think,

Okay,

Actually,

What are my core values and beliefs,

Right?

If I had to list down,

This is a fun exercise in my opinion,

Right?

If you just write out five core values,

And I think it's good for the purpose of this exercise to limit yourself to five,

Right?

You might wanna have six,

But it's like,

You know,

Of all the values in the world,

Which five,

If I could only say five,

Would I put right at the top,

Right?

What are my core values?

For me,

It'd be something like,

You know,

Love,

Truth,

Wisdom,

Which are a bit generic,

But I didn't have time to sit and think here,

That's off the top of my head.

Maybe harmony,

And I need one more.

Love,

Truth,

Harmony,

Hmm.

Probably humor,

I find that fun.

I think that's five altogether,

I don't know.

Feel free to,

I don't know what,

In the track review,

Put like five values that you think are your top five.

It's good to know that.

Now,

Obviously we all kind of know what the good things are,

But actually,

Even though we all kind of know what quote unquote good things are,

What values are that are commonly held,

You'd be surprised how often your top five,

You know,

Wouldn't be the same as someone else's top five.

They'd probably often include the same things,

If love usually gets in there.

Just knowing what are your most important values is gonna be very useful in helping you navigate the world.

If you can really embrace this agency,

The reward is to just live more authentically.

You get to have more fun being you.

It's a win-win,

In my opinion.

So you end up aligning more of your everyday decisions with your truth,

Because you feel capable to do that.

Anyway,

I feel like I've rabbited probably for long enough now.

So,

A little call to action at the end here.

Ask yourself the question,

If no one could give me permission,

What would I do or feel right now?

You wanna take one small,

Bold step today to exercise your agency.

Treat it like a muscle,

Right?

I'm gonna,

I've got this agency thing.

It's pretty cool.

How am I gonna wield it?

That's where it can be setting a boundary,

Making a choice,

Or just simply telling yourself,

I can,

Right?

You have that Confucius comment.

I think it was Confucius where he said,

You know,

The man who thinks that he can and the man that thinks that he can't are both generally right.

And what he's speaking to here is agency,

Right?

If you have this view,

Oh,

Actually,

I can,

I am capable.

I can impact the world in the ways that I choose.

Then you probably can.

A very large part of that is belief and permission,

Giving yourself permission.

So yeah,

I think I've,

I probably missed some stuff,

But that is more or less the gist of what I wanted to talk about today.

So I hope you've taken a certain degree of value from this discussion.

And yeah,

Go forth and embrace your agency.

Take your power back,

Give yourself permission.

It's okay to want things.

And go and build yourself a beautiful life that you actually are excited to live.

And I think that's what we're gonna do today.

And with that,

I'm gonna sign off.

Have a lovely day.

And yeah,

I hope we can do this again sometime.