Agency is the ability to self-regulate one’s attitudes, goals, and behaviors. In other words, agency is the capacity to exercise control over one’s own life. Agency can be thought of as a psychological and behavioral characteristic that makes humans distinct. More than any other organism, people have the power of self-determination, to direct their own thoughts, emotions, and actions. As a cognitively advanced organism, humans are naturally equipped with the capacity for agency. However, people need to be aware of their agentic power. That is, people need to understand that they have the ability to self-regulate their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. To live an agentic life, people first need to have an agentic mindset. Understanding one’s agentic capacity is a critical first step to living an agentic life, but to fully actualize one’s agentic potential requires turning thoughts into actions. Agency is more than a mindset. It is a way of living in the world that involves regulating one’s behavior in accordance with one’s agentic beliefs and goals.

Agency is more than a mindset. It is a way of living in the world that involves regulating one’s behavior in accordance with one’s agentic beliefs and goals. Furthermore, like a muscle that is strengthened by exercise, agency can be enhanced with practice. This is why cultural messages promoting agency and institutions, educators, and mentors working to help individuals understand and strengthen their agency are fundamental.

Barriers to human flourishing can be artificial or natural. Artificial barriers are the ones externally imposed. They can take the form of excessive regulation, unjust discriminatory policies, cronyism, obstacles to educational freedom, and so on. Those barriers can be addressed with policy changes and related activities. However, natural barriers are more intrinsic and personal in nature. Agency is critical to overcoming natural barriers. Agency plays a central role in human flourishing because it gives people the power to improve their lives regardless of their circumstances.

To promote human agency isn’t to deny that there are aspects of life that are outside of one’s control, that are not self-determined. For example, people don’t choose their parents, where they are born and raised, or many of their physical and psychological traits. However, people do have a considerable amount of control over their thoughts, emotions, and actions and this allows them to change their lives in dramatic ways.

People can use their agency to build on their strengths and limit the ways their weaknesses negatively affect their lives. They can use their agency to learn new skills, break bad habits, and pursue goals aimed at improving their life circumstances. Victor Frankl powerfully made the case for the existence of human agency even when individuals have seemingly no control over their lives in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, which was based on his own experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He wrote: We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Collaboration between LFMI and Archbridge Institute.

Our mission at the Archbridge Institute is to lift barriers to human flourishing. Through rigorous academic research, sound public policy solutions, and fostering a holistic vision of human flourishing, the Archbridge Institute works to empower individuals to achieve better, richer, and fuller lives by identifying and removing the barriers that constrain their potential and encouraging the aspirations and actions that cultivate their capabilities. This vision emboldens the American Dream and supports freedom and the pursuit of a meaningful life for all people, while building a movement that prizes character and personal agency, positive-sum thinking, entrepreneurship, innovation, and finding common ground. The Archbridge Institute is a non-partisan, independent, 501(c)(3) public policy think tank.