When you receive or discover new information, especially material that piques your interest, the first question might be, should I take notice? If you are among those who are ever ready to advance your personal growth, business, career, or spiritual path, your response will most likely lean toward the affirmative. Also, if there is an opportunity for you to expand your network to include insightful and practical information, your response is probably “sign me up”. Some subjects, while important, are not common topics of discussion or included in your daily discourse. Advocacy is one of those subjects typically introduced in conversations only when you or others are speaking about a position or stance being shared about an issue, concern, or to support something or someone. But there are times we can interject it when speaking about the personal support of an individual, and specifically, yourself. In this sense, friends can be great advocates.
Over the years, you’ve probably found that curating a circle of friends and associates who believe in you has been beneficial. It’s important to have supporters who are candid with you yet are caring and always looking out for your best interest. The more allies you have, the better. However, your chief advocate should be you. Now is the time to place yourself at the top of this list. It’s time to learn how you can become your best advocate, absence of self-centeredness, insensitivity, and aggressive, intimidating behavior. There are genuine advantages for you to become your #1 advocate. The first step is to understand why it’s essential to your continual growth and transformation.
Understand Why It Is Important
You need to be an advocate for yourself because it ensures your views and contributions are being assigned an appropriate priority. Advocating for yourself versus engaging in advocacy around social issues and passionate concerns is slightly more nuanced. When healthily promoting yourself, your moral stance guides the tone of your message and the degree of involvement. Assuming this role for yourself is essential because you’re building your confidence. It is important because, with each action, you declare your belief in your abilities, skills, and emotional IQ. If others serve in this function, it’s terrific, but ultimately, appropriate self-advocacy minus arrogance, exploitation, or disrespect of others is worthy of your pursuit. The value added by your steadfastly committing to showing up for yourself will yield immense benefits.
Anticipate Resistance
Once you understand the necessity of including personal advocacy as a crucial staple in your growth process, it’s time for the implementation phase.
However, embracing self-advocacy as a way of living requires practice. And with any routine, we know there will be times you experience resistance. When making a lifestyle change, you will encounter situations demanding deliberate and calculated decisions to stand up for yourself. Inevitably, you will experience varying levels of discomfort and challenge. It cannot be avoided or wished away, so expect resistance and move forward, anyway. Commit to working through the mental pain and potential insecurities that will be revealed.
Also, be aware of your murmuring inner voice of self-doubt that can be very deceptive. Instead, muzzle its effects by focusing on presenting your authentic self.
Even with acute awareness, there will probably still be times you revert to a seemingly safe place of inaction, hiding, or not taking the stance you know you should. Do not beat yourself up. This, too, is part of the resistance you should expect. Don’t let it dominate your thoughts and cause you to retreat. It’s just human nature to resist change, so recognize it for what it is and take the next step of reframing to habits.
Reframe Your Habits
How do you go about becoming the best self-advocate? What habits should you focus on, and which ones should you reframe? In other words, how do you holistically become your best advocate, whether it’s referring to your mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical health?
Start by confronting dysfunctional patterns. Next, challenge traditional thinking. Followed by an honest and sobering examination of personal hidden agendas. While mentioning these necessary steps, I do not want to oversimplify them. Sometimes, you may need to address psychological and emotional issues that are more deep-rooted. If this is the case, I encourage you to do so. However, if you’re in the typical spectrum and among those who just need a boost to get on the right path to self-advocacy, let’s start with reframing your approach. It is crucial to start with acknowledging and assessing old detrimental habits. Followed by employing new practices and behaviors to position you for success.
Reframing your habits is going to be an ongoing way of living. Accept it and develop a plan that includes incremental changes. They have proven that gradual modifications are more sustainable than massive or rapid behavioral adjustments. Take one step and if a whole step is too intense for you to make, take a half-step; the goal is to keep moving with no judgment about how big the step you’re taking.
Become very conscious of the patterns that need to be addressed. Be honest with the behaviors and habits you must tackle. It’s the only way you can truly make a change and reframe pathways. Remind yourself that inconsistency is the enemy; therefore, to ensure protection from this enemy, arm yourself with steps to confront and defeat it with a well-planned strategy.
It may seem reasonable to assume that the reframing process is simply modifying some habits. Still, it also means that you need to break some habits and stop engaging in some familiar behaviors all together.
Embrace The Shift
For most people, it’s easy to listen to or read new information. What’s difficult is deciding to embrace your newly gained knowledge so your patterns can shift, moving you in a positive direction.
Remember that a new way of thinking will only promote change in behavior if you embrace it, followed by continuous action over a prolonged period. It can’t be stated enough that adopting your role as a self-advocate is a gradual process. As you will discover, intellectual precision is only part of your journey. Shifting behavioral practices that are familiar and comfortable requires more intentionality.
What prompts will you put in place to ensure your success? Will you meditate, engage in self-reflection, journal, or ask for help from friends? What are your constraints? Radical change will only happen with redundancy. I caution you not to confuse radical change with change that is accomplished and sustained, only by engaging progressive, measured efforts.
Now is the time to embrace power, so your daily actions will be deliberate. It will be clear that you are incorporating new practices to support your shift by taking daily measurements of your progress. Caring for yourself in this new way helps to fortify your self-assurance, trust, and faith in self-advocacy, as well as other areas of your life.
Do Something – NOW
How do I activate my expanded knowledge? What additional measures do I need to become the best advocate for myself? Now Is the Time to step up and take the rightful place of being a fierce advocate for yourself, not for a moment but as part of your ongoing behavior. How do you make use of this new information so it sparks a shift in your conduct that will allow you to experience a genuine transformation by applying practices that are more aligned with your values? While each generation has different skills, thoughts, and aspirations, there are findings to support that value alignment is essential to Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Y/millennials and boomers. There is further evidence that these populations are increasingly investing in transformation instead of just information. Enlightenment is critical, but how to reproduce and sustain your experiences into meaningful change is what each generation desires.
Each day you should commit to choosing “you”. Ask “how will I show up for myself today?” The goal is “do something” daily. How you know that you’re moving forward will be determined by examining and measuring your selections and choices.
Another thing to do daily is to keep promises to yourself, and at the top of the list, is for you to show up, routinely as the best advocate for you. With each step or half-step, your actions are supporting your new reality.
Remember that advocacy requires activism. Your commitment to creating a take charge mindset that creates opportunities for you to manage how you present yourself to others with authority. Doing this regularly is liberating and offers a correct lens of how you and others view you.
Decide to be the driver of the change in your life. You no longer must depend solely on others to champion you and what’s important to you. Decide now that today is the day that become your best advocate.
