Exactly how do you get situated for the life you want?
Situational agency has four essential elements.
First, set up your space. You may not be able to control the world at large, but you reign supreme over your immediate surroundings. What will you choose to add or subtract, once you become aware of the gravitational pull of objects within sight and reach?
Next, pick your peers. Whether or not you’re blessed with siblings who are soulmates, you can find a tribe that shares your values and interests. Whose company will you keep when you understand the power of peers?
Third, attract mentors. You don’t get to choose your parents, but you do get to choose your mentors. How will you invest your time differently once you understand why mentors are a need-to-have, not a nice-to-have, and how anyone can become a mentor magnet?
And finally, choose your culture. You can’t change where you were born, but you can change where you work and live. Once you understand status quo bias and its antidote, will you decide to make a move?
There’s a reason I’m inviting you to examine your situation in this particular order from near to far, from concrete to abstract, and from what you can change immediately to what may take weeks or months to figure out. My hope is that unpacking your situation in this sequence will make the idea less intimidating.
Below, you’ll find a short quiz called the Situated Scorecard, and it follows the same order: space, peers, mentors, culture. The quiz helps you zero in on specific areas for improvement.
Why all the scaffolding? To show you what’s possible. Very often, the greatest obstacle to getting situated has nothing to do with money or privilege or power. Rather, it’s assuming it can’t be done.
To get started, I want to share a story.
One night, many years ago, I was putting five-year-old Amanda to bed after a long and weary day. The details have faded with time, but I vividly recall Amanda being especially difficult — including, more than once, erupting into full-body tantrums, her tiny arms and legs flailing, her little lungs howling with all their might.
“Amanda,” I said sternly, “today you were . . .” Amanda looked up at me innocently.
“Today . . .”
Big eyes. I took a moment to collect myself. I wanted to tell Amanda she’d been a pain in the you-know-what, but needed a word that was appropriate for five-year-old ears.
Finally, I said, “Today, Amanda, you were . . . trying.”
Amanda beamed. Then she patted my hand, as if I were the child who needed the world explained. “Mommy, everybody’s trying! Everybody’s doing the best they can.”
It took me a beat to realize that Amanda had misunderstood. Whereas I’d intended to communicate that she’d been impossible to deal with, Amanda had heard me describe her earnest effort.
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in two decades of studying behavior change, it’s this: Amanda was exactly right. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “Today I’ll deliberately make poor choices. Today I intend to be foolish. Today I’ll take pains to undermine my goals and sabotage my dreams.”
Sure, everyone makes mistakes. But what Amanda had to say that night is more profound, and more helpful, than the message I’d originally intended to deliver. Truly, everyone is trying.
The thing is, some ways of trying are better than others. For instance, perseverance is good. But trying hard and then harder in an impossible situation can be tragic. Effort pays off when you make your situation your ally.
Situational agency means taking charge of your circumstances, choosing to be with people and in places that bring out your best.
Excerpted from Situated. Copyright © 2026, Angela Duckworth. Reproduced by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.
