You have agency over your actual thoughts and even feelings. Perhaps you do not have agency over everything that arises, but you do have agency over which boats you get on. Thoughts, beliefs, and feelings emerge from the ether and you have agency whether you will direct your focused attention on them.

Attention is different from awareness. As you starve thoughts, beliefs, or feelings of attention, you are very aware of them. You must be in order to intentionally not fall into them and identify with them. You are peripherally aware of that which you do not give attention to.

As you become aware of that which does not serve you, be careful not to direct attention into it. The distinction is subtle but the effect is massive. 

You may find yourself saying, “I am engaged with thoughts that harm me.” This is true only until you say, “I am engaged with thoughts that help me.” Your belief and attention on your belief is the independent variable of your mind. 

You choose your thoughts and feelings. It feels that you do not because you are habitually trained to choose certain thoughts and feelings in response to certain stimuli, but how would you react if you did not how to react?

You have learned that when certain things happen, you should respond a certain way. It feels involuntary because of how concrete the script is, but it can be changed. You can reprogram your mind to respond differently. It begins with unequivocally recognizing your agency. You do something you’ve been trained to consider inappropriate, and you were trained to experience insecurity at the response to this situation. 

If you were trained to spin in a circle three times every time you did something you consider embarrassing, and everyone else did the same, that is what you would do. But you were trained to feel insecure, so that is what you do. It is within your control. The impulse to experience the insecurity may arise due to habit, but you can step further back into your consciousness, and take a seat of objectively witnessing.

From this place, you can be aware of the insecurity as an idea, but you can choose to not manifest it into reality. It may arise, but you can direct your attention through it, not into it. You can notice that you are experiencing it only as a result of your default programming to a given situation. 

This is true of almost all emotions and psychic experiences. You may doubt your level of agency over your mind. Know this: you certainly have agency over your attention. You have control over where you put the microscope of your mind. You are in control over what you bring into focus. Whatever you bring into directed focus will bloom. 

When fear arises, notice it does not have an iota of power over your agency. You alone possess that power over how will react to that which arises. The fear may remain physically, but you have taken a new seat of being able to do whatever you want, unimpacted by the trained arisings of your mind.