RESOURCES
Getting Started
The 7 Principles of Agency are powerful tools to strengthen your emotional and cognitive capacities. These include critical thinking, self-awareness, mindful reflection, meta-cognition, empathy, creativity and imagination. These capabilities help you to develop and apply your talents in the world and realize your potential. When you have full access to your agency, you're capable of designing a life uniquely suited to your interests and values. Expressing your agency in this way leaves you confident, optimistic and fully alive.
Below is a printable guide to increase your awareness of the seven principles. Keep a copy of this guide nearby for reference - on your desk or tacked to a wall. A quick glance will let you know what areas are going well and which require further attention.
Below is a printable guide to increase your awareness of the seven principles. Keep a copy of this guide nearby for reference - on your desk or tacked to a wall. A quick glance will let you know what areas are going well and which require further attention.
Use The Principles Together The seven principles support and reinforce each another. An example is Control Stimuli and Move. When we move we're less likely to be overstimulated by screens. Conversely, time spent on screens reduces physical movement because at those times we're typically indoors and sedentary. Another example is Deliberate, Then Act. This principle relies on all the others, particularly Position Yourself As A Learner (being open-minded to new and useful information), Managing Your Emotions and Beliefs (guarding against strong feelings and irrational beliefs derailing sound judgment), and Check Your Intuition (tapping deeper intuitive knowledge that can help you solve problems and make better choices). Leaders Build Personal Agency First Leaders model their own agency to those they lead. Executives, parents, teachers, managers, and coaches are among the groups who are using this system. Effective leadership requires building and maintaining a healthy level of personal agency. Before you can help or lead others, make certain you are calm, clear-headed, and using a reliable framework in making your decisions. Building Agency Results in Developmental Strengths Across the Lifespan Putting the 7 Principles of Agency to work in your life will strengthen your ability to accomplish your personal goals and create a meaningful and fulfilling life at every stage. "Everyone is born with a capacity to develop personal agency." |
Helpful Tips
Don't focus On Every Anxious Signal
In today's environment, we face rapid change and high demands. When stressed beyond what we can normally handle anxiety is triggered. This means we've temporarily exceeded our ability to adapt. When in a state of frequent overwhelm, we can't properly grow and thrive.
Heightened anxiety is a normal response to being in a state of "overwhelm". Use anxiety signals as a reminder to slow down, assess what might be causing your mind and body to feel this way, and take steps to improve what's happening outside and inside of yourself. Small changes help, like moving your body, standing up, or relocating to a less stimulating place - preferably outdoors. Change what you can... and don't obsess over what you can't immediately change.
If you hyper-focus on frequent anxiety signals, you likely will become highly emotional and irrational over time. In this state of mind, you lose access to your better judgment. You become impulsive and find yourself feeling less and less in control. This is a state of low agency.
If you pay close attention, you will observe many examples of people anxiously following the herd, not thinking for themselves, and acting in ways that aren't in their best interest. Often people fall into the trap of self-medicating to escape these signals of anxiety, rather than interpreting the signals and taking measures to change what's causing the distress.
Finally, some people shut down and begin to give up when facing chronic signals of anxiety. They isolate themselves and feel a sense of helplessness. In extreme cases, they start to believe that no matter what they do it doesn't make a difference. This is depression, and reflects a collapse of personal agency.
Build Agency in Children
For younger children, we suggest a focus on the first three behavioral principles. These are easy to teach and practice, as they don't require advanced cognitive skills which typically don't start to develop until around middle school.
- Control Stimuli
- Associate Selectively
- Move
As children reach middle school, the cognitive principles become more accessible to them. There are numerous examples in the book to guide parents, educators, counselors, tutors, and coaches on how preteen and teenage children develop agency through these later, more mind-oriented principles.
- Position Yourself As A Learner
- Manage Your Emotions and Beliefs
- Check Your Intuition
- Deliberate, Then Act
Prepare Older Children for the (Real) World
During the junior and senior years of high school, it is important that young adults begin to be viewed (and treated) as adults. When we expect them to behave more as an adult - using their critical thinking skills to solve problems and directly experience the outcomes of their decisions and actions - young adults develop greater personal agency. This process involves helping them to acquire a positive network of family, friends, peers, and resources that supports increased self-efficacy in the world.
Below is a personal agency grid to help parents assess where their children are and the goal to strive for. An important role for parents is to help their children build the skills to get themselves into the AGENCY (upper right) quadrant with greater frequency.
In today's environment, we face rapid change and high demands. When stressed beyond what we can normally handle anxiety is triggered. This means we've temporarily exceeded our ability to adapt. When in a state of frequent overwhelm, we can't properly grow and thrive.
Heightened anxiety is a normal response to being in a state of "overwhelm". Use anxiety signals as a reminder to slow down, assess what might be causing your mind and body to feel this way, and take steps to improve what's happening outside and inside of yourself. Small changes help, like moving your body, standing up, or relocating to a less stimulating place - preferably outdoors. Change what you can... and don't obsess over what you can't immediately change.
If you hyper-focus on frequent anxiety signals, you likely will become highly emotional and irrational over time. In this state of mind, you lose access to your better judgment. You become impulsive and find yourself feeling less and less in control. This is a state of low agency.
If you pay close attention, you will observe many examples of people anxiously following the herd, not thinking for themselves, and acting in ways that aren't in their best interest. Often people fall into the trap of self-medicating to escape these signals of anxiety, rather than interpreting the signals and taking measures to change what's causing the distress.
Finally, some people shut down and begin to give up when facing chronic signals of anxiety. They isolate themselves and feel a sense of helplessness. In extreme cases, they start to believe that no matter what they do it doesn't make a difference. This is depression, and reflects a collapse of personal agency.
Build Agency in Children
For younger children, we suggest a focus on the first three behavioral principles. These are easy to teach and practice, as they don't require advanced cognitive skills which typically don't start to develop until around middle school.
- Control Stimuli
- Associate Selectively
- Move
As children reach middle school, the cognitive principles become more accessible to them. There are numerous examples in the book to guide parents, educators, counselors, tutors, and coaches on how preteen and teenage children develop agency through these later, more mind-oriented principles.
- Position Yourself As A Learner
- Manage Your Emotions and Beliefs
- Check Your Intuition
- Deliberate, Then Act
Prepare Older Children for the (Real) World
During the junior and senior years of high school, it is important that young adults begin to be viewed (and treated) as adults. When we expect them to behave more as an adult - using their critical thinking skills to solve problems and directly experience the outcomes of their decisions and actions - young adults develop greater personal agency. This process involves helping them to acquire a positive network of family, friends, peers, and resources that supports increased self-efficacy in the world.
Below is a personal agency grid to help parents assess where their children are and the goal to strive for. An important role for parents is to help their children build the skills to get themselves into the AGENCY (upper right) quadrant with greater frequency.
In each of the 7 images below, sense your reactions. Track your thoughts. These represent the 7 Principles of Agency. We are not expected to be perfect or to have access to all principles all the time.
Each day, check in with yourself. Take inventory of who you are and how you are. The goal is not achievement or "success' for its own sake, but rather becoming the person you aspire to be.
Each day, check in with yourself. Take inventory of who you are and how you are. The goal is not achievement or "success' for its own sake, but rather becoming the person you aspire to be.