Agency

The second healing principle is Agency. Agency is the ability to take responsibility for our very existence. We take full responsibility for all our decisions affecting our lives. If we can’t take responsibility for our own decisions, it affects our lives negatively because lack of agency brings stress into our lives. When we are free to be who we want to be, stress literally melts away.

People who take control of their own healing, who challenge and ask questions and who fight for the right to make their own decisions, are very often the patients who heal better and faster than the ones who cede all authority over their medical situation to others. However, Gabor Maté cautions, we don’t improve our healing by pretending to have control over situations, which we don’t actually control.

Agency means having choice and control over who and what we are in life. It means renegotiating our relationship with those of our personality traits that no longer serve us. Agency is simply taking the right to evaluate feelings and choosing which authentic “gut” feelings we want to follow.

Looking at being lazy again, if I realize that being lazy is my version of self-care and that is my authenticity, then agency means realizing that I can freely choose to be lazy and it means choosing to get rid of the nagging thought that being lazy is negative. Agency gives me the ability to choose to practice self-care in any manner I want, including being lazy.

Are you living with personality traits that don’t serve you anymore? Do you have the agency to adopt new personality traits that would serve you better? If not, why not?