What Really Matters in Life: Agency, Mastery, and Belonging
We live in an era of infinite hacks, but are they really making a difference?
Every scroll, podcast, and self-help book promises a new framework, protocol, or shortcut to living better. The whiplash is real. One minute it’s cold plunges, saunas, and AG1, and the next day it’s kettlebell workouts, ayahuasca ceremonies, and red meat only diets.
Just on the other side of these bio-hacks, intended on making us happy, healthier and live longer, is the promise of a perfect life. At least that what the influencers are claiming. But it’s a paper thin promise.
There are no shortcuts. We need to build a solid foundation. That means working on the timeless stuff. As performance coach Pieter Bulsink says, “Underneath the helmet, the title, or the three-piece suit is the same fragile machine: a body that breaks when ignored, a brain that overheats under pressure, and a nervous system that keeps the lights on, until it doesn’t.”
Without the right mindset and principles, no supplement or workout routine will actually make a difference. With the help of experts like Pieter, the deeper we go into the work at Second Harvest retreats, the more one truth becomes obvious:
What truly matters has always been simple: Having agency over your life and being part of something bigger than yourself is the foundation of all growth.
Brad Stulberg, the human performance writer and coach, has a no-BS approach to finding out what works. For the past few decades he’s researched and written about the things that actually matter. His research point to 3 simple ingredients for a high-performing, meaningful, and resilient life: autonomy, mastery and belonging.
This resonates with my own experience interviewing and writing about leadership. People who find clarity and maintain a grounded presence tend to display high agency behavior and love to sink their teeth into something that bring both meaning and connection to their lives. These things are available to all of us, so what are they and how do we get there?
Let’s start with autonomy.
Autonomy
Having autonomy means you believe you have agency over your life. This is a fancy way of saying you feel like you can determine your path and you’re not just a victim of fate. Stulberg writes this about autonomy, “The ability to exert yourself independently and have control over your actions… Humans thrive when they have agency.”
At the extreme, these are people who don’t need permission, credentials or certifications to do anything. The only degree they have is a GSD — Get Shit Done. Children have this quality in buckets but as we get older our agency gets knocked out of us by all the rules and naysayers.
This is also where so many of us lose the plot in midlife.
We build successful careers. We hit milestones. But then slowly, bit by bit, life becomes structured around what’s worked in the past and other people’s expectations. Unfortunately, what got us here isn’t necessarily going to get us to where we need to be next. We need to reclaim our agency.
For decades, we prioritize our clients, our industry, and our families. This has the strange effect of creating a sense of learned helplessness. “I can’t make that big change because my [fill in the blank] won’t understand” or “I’m afraid of doing that because I’m worried I’ll disappoint [insert person you care about].” It’s well intentioned consideration, but it’s also low agency behavior.
At Second Harvest retreats, we see it constantly: founders who’ve built great companies but now feel trapped inside them or corporate leaders who climbed the ladder only to find themselves with no ladder left to climb. We see parents that gave up everything to be there for their kids, now wondering what to do with the empty nest and lots of time on their hands.
The first gift of making a change is giving yourself back a sense of agency. Simply start with a lot of “how might I…?” questions. Asking these questions is an old trick but it really works. By creating just the possibility of something new, we alter the chemistry in our brains. Our imagination gets to work. Questions are magic.
Questions have the power to pry open our minds to possibility without activating all the defense mechanisms we’ve learned. On our retreats we call this living the questions. We ask questions, discuss them, and even debate them, but we don’t demand answers. We just live with them. Letting them marinate and work themselves out.
By putting our focus on the why of the questions, we leave the how to our brains to ponder. Studies have shown that where you don’t put pressure on yourself for answers, your mind gets creative and comes up with better solutions than if you forced it into an answer. Generally we find answers and sometimes we find better questions, but we’re never disappointed.
From there, we guide people through the hard questions: What do you actually want to say yes to now? What parts of your life need to be reclaimed? What needs to be discarded? What does a life of agency look like for you — not for Instagram, not for your peers, just for you?
As Brad says: without autonomy, even great opportunities feel suffocating.
Mastery
You know you’re mastering something when you can feel yourself growing beyond just the knowledge. If you’re learning a new language, for example, you’ll feel the empowerment and confidence that comes from being able to navigate a new world. The new language isn’t just a communication tool, it’s a gateway to growth or expansion. This happens when you master any skill or pursuit.
The magic of mastery is in the process, not the outcome. You feel a clear path of progress tied to your own daily or weekly effort. There’s really no end goal to mastery. It’s counterintuitively about holding the mindset of a student, not a master. Remaining curious brings you closer to mastery.
One of the reasons why mastery is linked to happiness is because mastery creates deep satisfaction. You see your growth unfold and that gives you a sense of agency. Mastery can also create autonomy. It’s all delightfully connected.
One of the most disorienting parts of midlife is when your old areas of mastery no longer satisfy or serve you. You’re bored. The records stuck on repeat and you know how the song ends. Your mind and body start to go into decline. One study found that retirement shortens your life by 6 years on average. Being without something to master can literally kill you.
As your interest wanes or your ability to grow runs out, it’s not surprising that people drift into aimless busyness to fill the void. Playing calendar Tetris with their day to avoid the reality of boredom is real.
At Second Harvest, we invite people to imagine the next arc of mastery. That’s why we design the retreat around experimentation. One skill we orientate participants to is designing “thin-slice experiments.” These are small, testable actions toward new skills or identities. Not surprisingly, they link back to the “how might we…?” questions but take it a step further to making a prototype, or testing a new business idea, or creating a way to learn more about a new topic or path. Low risk experiments that generate answers to the question, “what will I do next?”
Unsurprising, adventure activities are a perfect way embody these change metaphors. Putting our guests into physically different environment (we travel to remote locations like I AM ESCAPE) and giving them an opportunity to learn new skills by doing adventurous things, tells their brains that more is possible. “I can learn new things. I can get out of my rut. I can overcome fear.”
Finally, we bring people who have a diverse mastery of skills — from athletes and Buddhist monks to artists — to remind people that mastery is a lifelong game. When our participants leave, they’re not chasing mastery out of ego, they’re pursuing it because it creates deep meaning in their lives again.
That’s real fuel.
Belonging
Being part of something isn’t just the antidote to loneliness, it’s the fundamental thing that makes us humans. Feeling like you’re disconnected from others is the original wound that we all work towards healing through relationship and belonging.
While being part of a community that is working toward similar goals is a good start, creating alliances is the jet fuel that brings you closer to your purpose and goals. Alliances mean you’re aligned with each other as you pursue some goal. Belonging to an alliance anchors you to something larger than yourself.
I believe belonging is the single most underrated ingredient in adult life today. The loneliest demographic in America right now? Men over 50. And many women leaders face a similar loneliness after pouring themselves into family or career for decades.
Before participants even arrive at a Second Harvest retreat, we’ve already had several calls and meals with them. Connection and empathy happens weeks before the guests even set foot on the retreat soil. It’s not hard to see how quickly people come alive when they belong to something that makes them feel safe to connect again.
It’s primitive stuff but we all want to sit around the table or fire and share our stories. Belonging isn’t optional for humans, it’s fundamental. When you’re part of a community that cheers for your growth, that reminds you that you matter outside your job or bank account, life feels deeply different.
Belonging is the soil where autonomy and mastery grow best.
Final Thoughts
For all the reasons above, we should seek out communities and alliances that support our mastery and autonomy. These are the foundations upon which cognitive, physical and spiritual practices can be built. It’s seems counter to Maslow’s pyramid but in today’s modern society where so many of our basic material needs are taken care of, we need to shift our attention to the intangible qualities.
Anything that reduces your agency or inhibits your ability to grow should be met with skepticism. That’s why we design Second Harvest to be tribe-first, not guru-first. It’s not about experts telling others what to do. There’s no speaker on a stage, or a book to buy, or a certificate to collect. Our guests have as much to contribute as our facilitators. We’re all students sitting in a classroom of our own making.
Even if we conflate belonging or the satisfaction of mastery with happiness a little bit, it still brings us to the place we are all looking for — a sense of freedom. It turns out that’s what we all want. The freedom to express our creativity in the company of others who choose to do the same.
