Do You Have “Good Agency?”
Have you ever heard a word you don’t know very well, and something about it made you pause? Have you had the experience of hearing this same odd word more than once in the same day? That happened to me yesterday. I heard a strange word three times, by three very different people. And they all seemed to be using it in the same way.
I was listening to a podcast and the speaker said, “I want to improve my sense of agency.” What was that? I speculated he meant he wanted to be able to do something better, to know he could be better, or just know he had the skills to accomplish something. But I wasn’t sure if I was right. I didn’t think more about it until I heard the word again while listening to the audiobook Stress Proof by Mithu Storoni, MD. The author was talking about having a sense of agency as one way to make our brain more resilient. Ok, strange new word, two times in one day.
Then I heard it a third time when I was watching the evening news. There was a reference to someone having “good agency.” Something was up and clearly I needed to know more about this word because a word like that didn’t just drop into your lap three times in one day by accident. Wikipedia says this about a sense of agency:
Turns out having a “sense of agency” means having a sense of control. And it means more than this. The sense of agency (SA), or sense of control, is the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one’s own volitional actions in the world. It is the pre-reflective awareness or implicit sense that it is I who is executing bodily movement(s) or thinking thoughts.
If I understand the definition, it means awareness of self and what we are doing, how we are acting, moving, sensing, and being in the world. It’s knowing where we are in relation to other objects, other people, and maybe even where we are in accomplishing a goal or task. As I thought more about this curious word, I wondered how it might apply to now, during a pandemic and this time of political and social change, justice and reform.
When we are in times of chaos, uncertainty, and crisis, our field of vision becomes tunnel like. This is basic biology at work. Our vision, literally, narrows so we can focus, and concentrate on getting out of the danger we perceive ourselves to be in. This is a survival instinct, BUT, it has a huge drawback. When we narrow our vision, we cannot see things on the periphery. We tune out any information that does not directly and immediately support our need to just survive.
Having “GOOD AGENCY” means we are able to stay aware, stay perceptive, attuned to our world, and others around us. We resist the urge to see only that narrow strip of light. But it takes some work especially if we don’t even recognize we’ve entered the tunnel state. There are a lot of ways to practice keeping good agency and one of them is simply bringing our attention to our thoughts. We can ask ourselves “what am I thinking right now?” The simple act of noticing will widen our lens, letting us take in more of what is happening around us. When we are free from myopia, we have more “agency” and that leads to a greater sense of awareness and a greater sense of control over ourselves, what we are doing, what we choose to create, and how we relate.
Let’s face it, it can just be easier to keep our heads down, our vision narrow, and our thoughts contained, or to even ignore them. But that doesn’t lead us to having good agency, and over time it makes us less, not more, resilient. Right now, especially now, we can all stand to be more resilient, to be building this muscle stronger. Tough times call for strength of awareness, not tunnel vision. I think the wide gaze allows us to see opportunities that a narrow focus occludes. And we sure could benefit from the light of opportunities.
