Agency and the page-shaped space

Agency, n., The ability to take action or to choose what action to take.

I've been thinking a lot about agency recently.

So much of what happens to us day by day is outside our control, from other people’s/nations' behaviour to the weather to a cost-of-living crisis. Even if we’re not in the grip of truly disempowering circumstances such as illness, poverty, abuse or discrimination, most of us spend much of our time feeling more or less powerless, which is a soul-sucking sort of a state. Over time it can harden into an embedded sense of hopelessness that permeates into areas where we really CAN have agency, actually.

I believe exploratory writing is helpful here. It allows us to transform the page into a small and yet infinite space where we can have complete control – we’re not answerable to anyone else; we’re not constrained by any reality unless we choose to be; we can follow any thought that takes our fancy and imagine any state we choose. You might not feel able to stand up in front of a roomful of people and give a presentation right now, but you can write about doing it, and by authoring that experience you can visualize it in much the same way that an athlete might visualize crossing the finishing line in an Olympic final.

Visualization has been used by sports coaches for decades now: when an athlete mentally rehearses the outcome they want it triggers brain activity similar to the experience itself. The visualization creates a new neural pathway, which primes the athlete to act in a way consistent with that outcome. The result is that they’re more likely to go on to achieve their goal in reality.

You may not be planning to use this mental magic to win an international sporting event any time soon (I know I’m not), but there’s no rule against using it in other areas of your life. Exploring on the page what it would be like to nail that presentation, get that promotion, launch that podcast – whatever it is that you want to achieve, and which seems out of your grasp – can help it feel more possible. And that sense of agency quickly translates into your attitude and behaviour, which can’t help but lead to better outcomes.

Exploratory writing creates a space in which we can regain our sense of being in charge of our own experience. Talking to me on the Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast , Megan Hayes called this ‘self-authoring’: she explained that ‘the feeling that we can make things happen is a very powerful one, and writing is a simulation of that because we can make things happen on the page, we can make sense of them’.

This can feel a little like magic. Often when someone finishes their first exploratory writing sprint they look at me – slightly dazed – and say ‘I don’t believe it!’. It’s as if they’d just watched themself produce a rabbit from a hat (which, metaphorically, is pretty much exactly what they’ve done, of course).

The first few times I tried this for myself I thought I’d just got lucky, but once I’d done 20+ writing sprints and come up with something worthwhile every single time, I started to realize I was making my own luck. And that is very confidence inspiring.

Try it.

You, like me, will start to realize that actually you DO have the answers to the questions and situations that are stumping you: you just needed a page-shaped space and six minutes or so to find them. Which in time makes you feel more able to step up to new, more challenging questions and situations.

I'd love to hear what you discover.

Adapted from Exploratory Writing: Everyday magic for life and work (Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2022).