Ryan Hanley

There was a season in my career, in my life, where I took a job, a big title, more money than I'd ever made or seen before.

And I was miserable from day one.

The CEO eventually looked at me in a board meeting and he said, haven't you realized by now that you were a vanity hire?

Now, part of me is flattered by that, but the high agency portion hated it because it broke me inside what could have been seen as a compliment, though honestly was not given as a compliment.

I took it as its intended purpose, which was an absolute insult in so much as you might be sitting in this room, but your voice is not appreciated in this room.

And frankly, what really broke me was that he was right.

Not because I wasn't capable.

I got the job because I was capable, but because I had voluntarily walked away from work that I had built, that I loved, that I had spent years putting together to get a dump truck full of money.

That is a low agency reason to pick a job.

That is what hard mode does to high agency people.

It doesn't just drain your energy, it drains your identity.

And a person without a clear identity, I know for me, when I don't feel connected to my identity, you cannot operate in any regard of the high agency framework.

None of the wheels are spinning for you.

You can't figure it out because we don't know what we're trying to figure out in the first place.

The idea of being misunderstood because we're lost on some thread from who we actually are and can't fix what breaks because we're too depleted.

Our energy is too drained to even diagnose the problem.

This is the low agency trap and low agency in the terms that I use in coach is hard mode.

Hard mode doesn't just make you tired.

It makes you low agency.

So here's the argument I want to make for you today.