Personally, once I made this mental shift, my hair grew back, I grew two inches, and a Lamborghini was suddenly parked in my driveway.
Kidding of course…
However I do believe that implementing this simple mindset change can actually put a couple of bucks back into your agency piggy bank.
More blogs on agency are slow-roasting in the oven, but for now just know that a healthy sense of agency is pivotal for psychological well-being, meaning and motivation, and good social functioning amongst other things.
Some people already know that things like happiness are not hand-outs from the government… that these are things you mindfully work on over time.
But for me, I wrestled with life for many years before I got this. And maybe that’s what I needed to make life interesting.
However, as one of my mentors Randy Gage says all the time, “There are random circumstances in life, but there are no random lives.”
He means that the way we engage the world is more responsible than anything else for the overall aesthetic and even tangible results of our lives.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that assholes will not enter your world, or that you will not have unfair experiences… because you will. Repeatedly.
But it is also true that happiness, a good life(whatever that means for you), positivity, healthy relationships, meaning, and respect amongst other things, do not somehow magically come and find you.
Happiness and meaning are not things you automatically have, they are things that you do.
Lastly, you may even see your efforts just swirling down the drain. Trust me it won’t be the first time, and you are definitely not alone.
But if you wake up the next morning, you WILL have more data. And possibly a bit more insight on what to do next.
So if you’re feeling stuck, or happen to be someone who wants to access the deeper, more satisfying sides of life, one thing I suggest is to practice seeing life as an invested existence rather than something that is owed to you.
I’ll leave it here for now.
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