Home / Agency Is the Antidote (January 2025)

I've been fortunate to feel pretty happy recently. It feels weird to write that, partially because I didn't always feel this way. I was thinking back on some harder times to try and glean insight into what changed.

I realized that most of the difficult chapters in my life coincided with feeling angry at one big system or another. When I was struggling with leading a nonprofit, I felt angry at the nonprofit industry, and when I was feeling upset about politics, I felt angry at the government.

It's obvious that I was subconsciously projecting anger about my current situation onto a larger system to make myself feel better. What was tricky though, was that I wasn't wrong about the flaws in those larger systems, and understanding how to navigate them helped me to a degree.

But once you get the message, hang up the phone.

What ultimately made me happier was not spending another day being mad at the system, it was imagining that I had complete control over my life. For example, while the nonprofit system might have flaws, it's my choice whether I work in it or not. And even with things I can never change, like death, I have control over how I respond.

Pretending I was in control, even if I wasn't, made me feel better. It tricked my body into believing I could change things instead of feeling trapped. It also tangibly made my life better because I started actually changing all the little things that were within my control to change and eventually that had a noticeable compounding effect.

The imaginary line that represents my quality of life, which for me is a combination of purpose and play, never stays flat. It only trends up or down. And any change, no matter how small, causes a chain reaction. For example, thinking one positive thought gives me a little dopamine boost that makes it easier to exercise and that makes me feel happier and then I'm a little kinder and so on. And my bad choices compound too, albeit even faster.

More and more people around me seem to be getting mad at the heavens. I'm not sure if it's politics or social media or the economy or maybe I'm just more aware of it, but people are mad at Republicans and Democrats and Women and Men and Capitalism and Socialism and Immigrants and Nationalists and Trump and so on. Nothing is perfect and some things are really bad, but as I've learned the hard way, being mad is only the first step toward a solution.