[Boothroid]

Your action might feel self willed but may in fact follow inevitably from all prior events. Individual agency could just be a creation of the mind. Personally I try not to dwell on these thoughts, but the philosophical discussions around free will cannot be dismissed simply with a wave of the hand, as you seem to be doing.

[naasking]

Whether outcomes and desires follow from prior events isn't relevant. The fact is that outcomes follow from my desire that it be so, regardless of the source of that desire. So if you can muster the desire, there are good causal reasons to believe you can achieve that desire.

The true nature of free will and its connection to determinism simply isn't relevant to whether desires are causally connected to outcomes, and so whether this belief is well founded.

Edit: the only way out of this is to be a fatalist, whereby outcomes will always happen no matter how hard you struggle against them, that they are independent of our desires. Few people subscribe to such a view though, and if you happen to, then I can only say I'm sorry.