Today I wanna talk briefly about a concept called personal agency. And what that really means is it's the ability to act in the environment that you're in with as sort of a maximal amount of autonomy and capability. Now there's, there's legit psychological definitions of agency, and for those interested in the subject, I recommend you go look them up. But when it comes to, you know, our purposes, it's easy enough to say the, the acquisition of agency in as many different environments as possible should be the intent of the master mason. So when you put on that apron, you're looking to identify what your, your opportunities are for growth and development of agency. So an example here is learning new skills, obviously an easy example. So we wanna learn as many skills as we reasonably can, as master masons to essentially increase our capability as workmen.
Those skills, including the intrapersonal stuff, the stuff inside you, understanding your own sort of emotional content, understanding your own space, understanding what's going on and how you respond. And noticing trends and themes is something we've talked about quite a bit here on the podcast. But one of the things that should be your constant care is the acquisition of more light there. Understanding what, what that means for you personally and what that looks like is the product of a couple of things. So how does one acquire agency and how do you know where to go and, and sort of what to add to the toolkit. So there are some sort of cornerstone, keystone skills for things like agency. The first one is the ability in, at some level to, to conduct a honest self-analysis. Honest self-analysis is really, really quite difficult. And it takes some time, I think you'll find with, with most folks, you know that the honesty comes not as a true false kind of switch, but more as a gradient where you can be more and more honest with yourself as you advance your understanding. So when you start looking at things like the other cornerstone skills, honesty is gonna be, you know, that self, self analysis, that honest self-analysis is gonna be pretty key as you move forward because it's from there that you get to really start to evaluate any other
Feedback you're gonna get, any other sort of environmental data that you're gonna see in, you know, as you pursue additional skills and things like that. So, honest self-analysis is, is the first level of emotional intelligence is is right up there as well. And that means, you know, being able to understand how you're feeling, being able to understand how others are feeling, being able to manage and manipulate your own emotions as needed, and being able to manage and manipulate the emotions of others, you know, in a, you know, light side of the force Jedi kind of way. So those two are probably the best starting point. So if you're stuck in trying to figure out how to develop personal agency, start there. If you've got those sorted out, the the other skills that you want to start to address, the interpersonal, interpersonal social skills, stuff like that, you'll be able to approach those additional skills.
All the other ones, language, mechanical, mathematical, you know, pick your, pick your skillset, all of those you'll be able to approach with a real strong foundation knowing that you are both not lying to yourself on a regular basis and that you understand your own emotional content well enough to know when, when your feelings are deep seated and sort of quasi, I would say permanent, but coming from a, from a longer term timeline or when they are, you know, sort of weather based and you know, something that will pass. So as you pursue your Master Mason's work, you know, grab those two skills first for sure. I say grab them in, in a almost cavalier context, but they are literally the hardest skills to get and it's gonna be a lifetime to get to sort of the highest levels of those. And, and you may never ever get to the top. That's kind of the, you know, perpetual perfection we're pursuing. So the, the other skills that are gonna come along the way, we'll cover some of those in other episodes, but there are, like with any skill, there's gonna be tons of little overlaps and nuance and things like that. So not to be dismissive about any of it, there is some, some other really, really deep and important skills that you're gonna pick up along the way. And we'll get to those in another episode.