Building your sense of agency by granting yourself permission to do the things you are already allowed to do
I no doubt shared this when I first read it, but I had reason recently to re-find this excellent post from Milan Cvitkovic containing a list of “things you’re allowed to do.”
Brewing in my mind is a longer post over at my main blog about what it means to have agency, and how to develop it in yourself and others. It’s not a fixed state, but something which fluctuates over time. It needs feeding, sometimes by giving yourself permission to just do things.
This is a list of things you’re allowed to do that you thought you weren’t, or didn’t even know you could.
I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones).
Note that you can replace “hire” or “buy” with “barter for” or “find a DIY guide to” nearly everywhere below. E.g. you can clean the bathroom in exchange for your housemate doing a couple hours’ research for you.
Source: milan.cvitkovic.net
Image: Are.na