What If You Have More Influence Than You Realize?
There are moments when life seems to happen to us rather than with us. Decisions are made by others, circumstances change unexpectedly, opportunities disappear, and responsibilities accumulate. We begin responding to whatever comes next, sometimes without recognizing how little space remains for our own choices. Eventually, we may stop asking what we want and focus entirely on what we must endure.
Yet there is an important difference between having limited control and having no influence. We cannot determine every circumstance, eliminate uncertainty, or guarantee desired outcomes. But within many situations, we may still have opportunities to question assumptions, seek support, acquire skills, establish boundaries, advocate for change, or choose how to respond.
This is the agency shift: moving from experiencing ourselves primarily as recipients of circumstances to recognizing ourselves as participants who can influence what happens next.
Agency does not mean controlling everything. It means recognizing where our participation can make a difference.
How We Learn to Underestimate Our Influence
Our sense of agency develops through experience. When our actions produce meaningful results, we become more likely to believe that our efforts matter. When we repeatedly encounter rejection, unpredictable consequences, or circumstances beyond our control, we may become less willing to act.
Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy demonstrated that beliefs about our capacity to perform particular actions influence motivation, persistence, and behavior (Bandura, 1977). Research on learned helplessness also illustrates how repeated experiences of uncontrollability can shape subsequent responses, sometimes reducing attempts to influence situations even when opportunities for action become available (Maier & Seligman, 2016).
These findings do not mean that people experiencing hardship simply need greater confidence. Poverty, discrimination, unsafe environments, illness, and institutional barriers can genuinely restrict available choices. Agency cannot be separated from the conditions in which people live.
The task is therefore twofold: helping individuals recognize and develop their capacity to act while also changing the circumstances that unnecessarily limit that capacity.
We ought to never ask people to become more empowered while ignoring the systems that continue to disempower them.
How Bibliotherapy Helps Restore a Sense of Agency
Books offer opportunities to encounter people navigating uncertainty, conflict, loss, injustice, and change. Through their stories, we witness decisions, consequences, mistakes, adaptations, and unexpected possibilities. We may recognize our own experiences in a character’s struggle or discover a response we had never considered.
Research on narrative transportation suggests that stories can influence readers’ beliefs and attitudes (Green & Brock, 2000). Narrative identity research also suggests that people make sense of their experiences through evolving stories about who they have been, who they are, and who they may become (McAdams, 2001).
Bibliotherapy creates space to examine these stories deliberately. A reader who has repeatedly described themselves as powerless may begin questioning whether that description captures every aspect of their experience. Someone who believes they always make poor decisions may discover evidence of resilience, judgment, and learning that their existing narrative overlooks.
The purpose is not to replace difficult realities with reassuring stories. It is to develop a more complete understanding of ourselves and our circumstances, including the choices, resources, relationships, and opportunities that may remain available.
A book cannot make decisions for us. But it can help us recognize that we may have decisions to make.
The SWEET Four Layers of Agency
At the conscious layer, agency begins with identifying what we want to influence and which actions are realistically available. We ask what is happening, what matters, what options exist, and what resources or support might help. This moves us from vague frustration toward practical understanding.
At the preconscious layer, we examine assumptions that may limit our participation. We might believe that our opinions do not matter, that asking for help demonstrates weakness, that authority should never be questioned, or that previous failures predict every future outcome. Once these assumptions become visible, we can evaluate whether they remain useful or accurate.
At the unconscious layer, agency may activate deeper concerns about safety, belonging, rejection, or responsibility. Someone may hesitate to express a preference because earlier experiences taught them that disagreement threatened relationships. Another may avoid making decisions because responsibility has become associated with criticism or shame. Understanding these patterns can help us approach change with greater compassion and precision.
At the existential layer, agency concerns how we choose to participate in a life that is both finite and uncertain. We cannot choose every circumstance into which we are born or every event that occurs. Nevertheless, we may still face meaningful decisions about our values, commitments, relationships, and responses.
The existential question becomes: Where am I waiting for life to change when there may be something I can begin influencing today?
Agency Is Not the Same as Individual Responsibility for Everything
One danger in discussions of empowerment is the assumption that people are responsible for every outcome they experience. If someone struggles financially, we may tell them to make better decisions. If someone develops a health condition, we may focus exclusively on lifestyle choices. If someone remains in a difficult environment, we may ask why they have not simply left.
Such responses overlook the complexity of human circumstances. Individual choices matter, but they operate within social, economic, relational, and institutional conditions that can either expand or restrict opportunity.
Consider hypertension. Prescribing medication may lower blood pressure and reduce cardiovascular risk. But understanding and addressing chronic stress, financial insecurity, inadequate sleep, food insecurity, and environmental pressures may also improve the conditions affecting health. Both approaches matter. We should not expect individuals to solve structural problems through personal determination alone.
Meaningful agency therefore includes more than encouraging people to change themselves. It involves expanding access to resources, strengthening supportive relationships, removing unnecessary barriers, and creating environments in which people can participate more fully in decisions affecting their lives.
Empowerment is not simply telling people they have choices. It is helping create the conditions in which meaningful choices become available.
Reflection and the SWEET Call to Action
Consider one area of your life where you have begun to feel powerless. What circumstances are genuinely beyond your control? What assumptions might be limiting your understanding of the situation? Which decisions, relationships, resources, or opportunities could help expand your influence? Are there changes you can make individually, and are there barriers that require support, collaboration, or collective action?
Choose one situation and identify a meaningful action within your reach. Ask a question, request support, gather information, establish a boundary, initiate a conversation, learn a skill, or participate in a decision you have previously avoided. Do not demand that one action solve the entire problem. Instead, observe what becomes possible when you begin participating differently.
And if you hold authority over others—as a parent, clinician, educator, supervisor, or leader—consider how your decisions affect their agency. Are you creating opportunities for participation, or are you unintentionally reinforcing dependence? Are you inviting people’s perspectives, or merely asking them to comply?
Do not confuse accepting reality with surrendering your ability to influence it.
The Book Written for This Moment
Before Anything Else, Validate: The Missing Link in Healing, Leadership, Relationships, and Personal Growth
Agency often begins when people experience their perspectives as worthy of consideration. Before Anything Else, Validate invites readers to examine the role of validation in relationships, healing, leadership, and personal development.
Validation does not require agreement, nor does it mean that every interpretation or behavior is accurate or helpful. It involves recognizing and acknowledging another person’s experience before attempting to correct, persuade, or direct them.
As you read, consider how validation might expand another person’s willingness to participate. What might change if a patient, child, colleague, or loved one felt genuinely heard before being offered advice? How might your own sense of agency change if you learned to acknowledge your experiences without allowing them to define every future possibility?
Choose one relationship in which you can practice validation more deliberately. Listen, seek understanding, and invite the other person’s perspective before moving toward solutions.
Every purchase supports SWEET Institute Publishing’s mission to create transformational resources that reduce unnecessary suffering and expand human flourishing.
Final Reflection
Perhaps there are circumstances in your life that genuinely need to change before new possibilities become available. Perhaps there are also assumptions, habits, and expectations that deserve reconsideration. Both can be true.
You do not have to control everything to influence something. You do not have to possess every resource to begin seeking support. And you do not have to guarantee success before participating in the decisions that shape your future.
You may not have chosen every circumstance of your life. But wherever meaningful choices remain, your participation matters.
Selected References
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215.
Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721.
Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological Review, 123(4), 349–367.
McAdams, D. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5(2), 100–122.