2) Wholeness: From Insecurity to Agency
How often do you feel like you have enough? Are there some areas of your life where you persistently feel behind, insecure or lacking? Sometimes when it seems like our problem is coming from outside ourselves, there is an aspect of the problem that comes from inside ourselves. Being able to shift our mindset to handle the internal before we fix the external can help us go from insecurity to agency.
Insecurity is a significant challenge for lots of people. The stress of financial insecurity can cause attentional shifts which show up as lower IQ, as documented by Anuj Shah and team in 2013. Chronic emotional insecurity can be a self-fulfilling cycle, as documented by Edward Lemay and Kari Dudley in 2009. And when we feel pain, we cause pain for others, as Will Bowen describes in his book “Complaint Free Relationships.”
On the other hand, overconfidence can be associated with narcissism, as researched by Macenczak and team, and lead people to make overly risky or self-focused decisions. Even those of us who are very outwardly confident probably have areas of our lives where we struggle.
Can we find a different sort of security that provides a sense of well-being without overcompensating? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi provides a whole new definition of security in the flow experience. He describes flow as stepping completely outside the worry over control. Living in flow can help us change insecurity to agency, for it changes the unknown of the future from a liability to a constructive asset.
Rather than seeking ways to feel less insecure, we can pause and inquire into why we feel insecure.
Questioning Our Insecurity
Are there areas in your life where you are insecure out of habit? These are not situations in which you have to deal with actual threats—physical, emotional, financial, spiritual, or something else—but cases in which you are reacting to memories from the past.
We can ask ourselves two questions: First, “Am I safe right now?” Second, “Am I safe in the long-term?” To the first question, answers will vary. Am I safe right now? Maybe, or maybe not. But if I feel insecure about my future, especially if I am part of a privileged class, is it really so? Feeling anxious about the future, whether it’s a promotion we want or our children getting into a certain school, is for some of us a habit rather than a necessity.
There is a cost to nurturing negative habits. We are more likely to share information if it aligns with our habitual beliefs, so our negative feelings propagate outward to other. Further, if we focus excessively on one form of security, we may miss other important indicators. We may spend years obsessed with work and then suddenly find our relationship is in jeopardy, something we didn’t see coming.
Sometimes we need to focus on protecting ourselves, but there may be times when we can benefit from shifting our mindset from insecurity to safety. The answer to when and where this applies can come from within. If we look at our big picture and find that we are actually going to be fine, then we can ask at a deeper level why we feel insecure.
Agency comes from inside
Where does real security come from? In some cases, outward strategies are good. Having enough money, having clear agreements with our romantic partner, or maintaining a fair justice system can benefit our feelings of security. But we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that every external problem needs to be solved in order to feel secure. It can be easy to throw externally-oriented solutions at problems whose origin is internal.
Try a quick experiment. Think about the particular array of problems you are facing right now, anything causing you stress. Think of a combination of things—your taxes may be due, and your manager at work may be upset at you, and your child is having difficulty at school—that together provide an undercurrent of stress. Let yourself feel that for just a moment.
Now, think about something happening in your life that makes you really happy—your favorite niece is getting married this month, or you’re getting a raise at work, or someone you love is recovering from an illness. There are almost always things that can bring a smile to our face. Which of these do we choose to focus on? To embrace wholeness is to embrace all of it. And from this wholeness, we can let the joyous aspects of our lives provide a sense of security even when circumstances are uncertain or difficult.
Whether we feel empowered or disempowered, whether we feel safe or insecure, sometimes has more to do with what’s going on inside of us than what’s going on outside of us.
Taking responsibility is empowering
Not everybody has the same opportunities. We can gain more of a sense of agency by focusing on what resources we have rather than what we don’t have. If personal agency comes from inside, then we can focus on aligning our attitude and understanding on the inside before we try to solve problems on the outside.
A given problem that appears to exist outside of us may have an aspect that lies within us. Isabel Wilkerson writes in her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, “A scapegoat unwittingly helps unify the favored castes to be seen as free of blemish as long as there is a visible disfavored group to absorb their sins.” Blaming others, or finding problems with the world outside of ourselves, can make us “feel a relief in being lighter,” because we don’t have to feel the weight of our own mistakes on our shoulders.
Finding someone else to blame feels empowering at first, but it actually reduces our sense of agency. We might start to feel that we are at the whim of life, with no choice in the situation. If somebody at work is offended by something I said, an external solution might be to point out that they are being overly sensitive. But if I look deeper within myself, I may see my own role. If I am able to expand my point of view, I may hear my words through a new lens and realize why they were hurtful.
Recognizing the truth is even more empowering than scapegoating, because in seeing my own faults I have more control over avoiding this sort of pain in the future.
When we feel like the only way we can feel secure is if somebody or something outside us changes, we disempower ourselves. By struggling to get everything right on the outside we may be avoiding inner discomfort. Inner discomfort is just another way of talking about habitual insecurity.
If this speaks to you, focus on yourself for a minute. Ask yourself which worries about your future are factual. If you find yourself defending your own negative point of view, maybe this insecurity is more of a habit than a fact.
If you find yourself feeling frustrated by a situation, the ARGH! process may be helpful. First Accept the situation, so that you can Recognize the pattern. Then remove focus on the external aspects and focus on valuing Growth over outcome. From this mindset you are in a position to change the pattern, and Heal this recurring aspect of trouble in your life.