how to actually do the things you want to do
on agency & uncertainty
My definition of agency is being able to do the things you want to do. That’s it. There are some steps along the way—like figuring out what you actually want—but the core of agency is going from vision to action.
Most people think that taking bold action is about forcing yourself to do the thing. They think it’s about saying, hey, I want this, so I’m going to do it, and if any fear or resistance comes up along the way, I’m going to push past it. There’s a whole identity wrapped up in that: I am someone who pushes myself.
In this model, agency is a product of clarity + courage + decisiveness. And those last two are, according to the model, just things you can decide to have. You can just decide to be more courageous; you can decide to be more decisive. The thesis here is: if you want more agency, decide to have more agency.
However, if you look at your own history, this thesis doesn’t really seem to hold up. If you could just decide to be more courageous, why haven’t you done it already? If you could just decide to have more clarity about what you want, why haven’t you made that decision?
If we look at the evidence, it seems like “more agency” isn’t really something we can just will into existence.
We could maybe take the long-term view and say, if I am consistently courageous over time, then I will develop more and more agency. If I take baby steps here and there, I will move towards a more clear, decisive, and courageous version of myself. I think that’s true. But based on my own experience, I suspect there’s a way to accelerate your progress.
getting used to bold action
In the above model of “baby steps towards more agency”, what’s happening is the gradual habituation of your body to a scary experience. Taking action is frightening, and our nervous system’s reaction to that is to flee or hide. But by taking small doses of slightly uncomfy action, our system gets used to it, and we develop a tolerance to doing scary things.
I don’t think we can fully skip that habituation process. But I do think we can speed it up. The reason we can do that is because we can make fear itself a safe experience.
Sounds paradoxical, and in a way, it is, but it’s also very possible. But first, we need to understand the fear that’s keeping us from agency.
what’s stopping us
I would hypothesize that in the vast majority of cases, the thing that keeps us from agency, the thing that we are actually afraid of is: uncertainty.
Uncertainty means not knowing what’s going to happen as a result of our actions. That is, at a visceral level, terrifying. Your nervous system evolved with one primary goal: keep you alive, at all costs. Keeping you alive depends on being able to predict what’s going to happen. Certainty = predictability = safety.
(This is why people stay in miserable jobs and relationships and living situations: because predictable misery feels safer that unpredictable joy. This is a core aspect of the human condition. I spoke about this here.)
Not knowing the outcome of our actions is terrifying because what if it's the wrong thing? What if we make the wrong choice? If we make the wrong choice, what will the consequences be?
Even worse, if we make the wrong choice, what does that say about us? If I'm someone who makes the wrong choice, how am I ever going to make the right choice? If that’s my identity, I can't predict that things are ever going to get better.
So we’re terrified of both what might happen and what it might say about us. This is the dual threat of uncertainty.
let’s just wait & see
As a result of this fear of uncertainty, we wait. We try to wait until we have “enough” information to be certain of the result. If we’re certain of the result, then we know things are going to be okay, and we know we’re going to be the type of person who makes the right decisions. Both are deeply relaxing.
Our fear of uncertainty thus causes us to wait until we solve our fear of uncertainty. That’s the funny little loop.
Of course, the loop never completes. You never “cure” uncertainty. Yes, more information can be useful in swaying the probability, but absolute certainty is a myth. If you think you’re certain of what’s going to happen, you’re lying to yourself.
So how do we get out of the loop? We come back to the body. We realize that uncertainty is a felt experience.
the felt experience of uncertainty
The thing we're afraid of is a feeling in our body, the feeling of “I am a person who makes the wrong choices” or the feeling in our body of “I don’t know what’s goign to happen”. We are scared of a feeling.
And I’m not saying that like, oh yeah, it’s a feeling, you can push past it. “Oh it’s a feeling, it doesn’t matter.” No. It does matter. We can’t just push past it. But we can change our body’s reaction to that feeling.
Your body can get used to almost any feeling. There are limits to this, of course, but there is a lot more space than people think. I remember I once had a very long tattoo appointment, hours and hours. And in that appointment, I tried on this frame of mind that “any sensation can pleasurable”. I sat there, as the artist went to work on my arm, repeating to myself “any sensation can be pleasurable, any sensation can be pleasurable”.
Did it work? Yes, actually, for a long time. I was actually able to enjoy the sensation of being jabbed by the needle. Eventually my body wasn’t able to handle that anymore and it just became painful. But for a surprising amount of time, there was space to create a different experience. An objectively painful experience became subjectively enjoyable. So can we do that with uncertainty?
changing our relationship to uncertainty
To change our relationship with uncertainty, we need to get comfortable with it. What that looks like is really sitting in the fear. “Okay, let's say I have no idea what I'm doing. Let's say I have no evidence that things are going to be okay. What would that feel like for me?” And just really sit with that.
At first it's going to feel terrifying. Maybe it feels overwhelming. Maybe it's hard to access. You might try to squirm or flinch away from it.
But eventually you realize that it's okay. Even if we end up in that worst possible place where we have no faith, where everything's gone wrong, where we have no faith in our ability to make it right… it’s okay. There's a part of us that is still able to feel love, that is still able to feel connection to other things. We still feel connected to the world. We still have breath in our body.
Even in the worst possible outcome, the total loss of certainty and safety, we’re still able to feel a bit of love.
That sounds small, but it isn’t. That’s the most reassuring thing in the world for your body. Your body just wants to know that you’ll be okay. By giving it the experience of the total worst case scenario, and showing (not telling) your body that even then we’ll be okay, you assuage its deepest fear.
(For a step-by-step guide to sitting with your feelings, check out this post.)
Do that over and over again, and watch what happens to your agency.
It's not a perspective shift. I'm not saying “just ignore the terror”. It's more like, “you can be in the terror and also feel okay”. You can hold both of those things at once.
Once we can hold both of those things at once, then there's no reason not to act. We know that the experience we're afraid of isn't that scary, and our body recognizes that we’ll be safe even in the worst possible outcome. We have integrated a new capacity to act.
Your agency is constrained by your fear of uncertainty, but you can change your relationship to uncertainty by allowing your fear to come to the surface. The more you make friends with your fear, as an embodied experience, the greater your capacity to take bold action.
With love & appreciation,
Scott
P.S. if you’re an ambitious creative who’s looking to boldly step into uncertainty & bring your vision to life, check out my 1:1 coaching. 🍊