Up this week: How to Advocate for Yourself. 

I recognize it’s not something we typically think about. We see change happening, we get frustrated, we look externally at what others have or have not done, we blame and move on. 

In addition, we are finding that more and more everything is done for us – technology makes everything easy. I speak to many groups who “defer to others,” i.e. wait for someone else to do things for us. 

The problem with this approach is multi-faceted – we can’t expect others to subscribe to our individual timelines and needs. Just because we find something important for us, others would see a different perspective more important to themselves. I think of people trying to buy houses today, frustrated that so many people have “bought the Airbnbs and jacked up the housing prices while lowering inventory.” 

It’s a problem vs. circumstance challenge: problems we can solve, circumstances we must respond to. And 99% of our “problems” are actually just circumstances. 

While there is a collective general sentiment and group need to accommodate a bigger picture, we still have an accountability to ourselves to ensure that we are doing what’s best for ourselves … and putting our best out there to get it. This requires us to be educated, be curious, do the work on what we believe, understand that beliefs don’t mean truths … and so much more. 

Advocating for yourself isn’t just screaming about what you want. It’s about asking good questions and making sure your questions are answered in a way that you can understand. We may not like the answers … but such is life. 

Lots to think about as we set ourselves up for success, but finding your voice is an important first step. 

Enjoy the week! 

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3,2, 1. Welcome to Bellwether, episode 109, The topic today, How to advocate for yourself. And it’s a big topic, very pressing today. I feel like, you know, big picture, I’ll just jump right into it. I’m just gonna jump right into it today. Big picture, everything is done for us, and I think that’s dangerous and we don’t have to work for anything anymore. And one of the big tenants that I realize a little too late, or you hear it and you don’t internalize it too much, is that we are accountable.

We are accountable, period. But we’re accountable to ourselves above all others. And we have a responsibility for ourselves above all others. And, you know, we talk about ethical philosophy, do what’s best for others, and, and you become good yourself, and yada yada yada, and all that stuff. And that’s true. But I like to flip that. And it’s kind of what I wrote the book on. It’s what I, what I had talked about other times, uh, a lot of other times is, you know, I would argue that ethical philosophy has a backwards, where you have an obligation to focus on yourself so that you can be in service to other people.

So they’re getting your best. And part of that, uh, is, is advocating for yourself and making sure you are getting what you need and getting what’s what’s appropriate. And too often we defer to others and expect others to be doing what’s in our best interests. Now, this can quickly go down into a rabbit hole of . What’s the appropriate limit of, uh, what’s best for me versus the, the bigger world? I’m looking at you anti-vaxxers.

Um, but, but we have to, we have to find that balance. We got a little spider here. Hello. Um, and so, you know, there are a few different angles to think about here. So when I think about everything’s being done for us and we expect things to be done for us, and I think that’s dangerous, and that gives us an expectation that things will be done for us in other types of, of scenarios, uh, to often we defer, Oh, that person’s an expert, so that’s okay.

Um, but we expect other people to subscribe to what we need, and we don’t necessarily question it. Um, oftentimes we’re told we’re supposed to be humble and just take what we’re given that’s wrong. Uh, which you’ve heard me talk about the humility. And, and I say it’s, it’s not wrong to be humble. I think a lot of people misinterpret humility and that causes them to have ineffective actions. Um, so it’s, I I would say it’s wrong to be a lot of these things.

So it requires us to, to just think differently, but it gives us an additional responsibility. And that’s what I want to talk about today. Um, because there is a, a much larger picture than ourselves. And so we can ask good questions. There’s an appropriate way to advocate for ourselves, but at the same time, we have a responsibility to the larger world around us. And how do we find that balance in a really appropriate way?

You know, the big news this week was this professor at Princeton who got fired, not at Princeton. He used to be at Princeton. Now he is at nyu. He retired from Princeton. Now he is a, a chemistry professor at nyu. And he got fired because there was a petition of about 80 kids in his organic chemistry class or something who said that the class was too hard. And he got fired. And there are two people on both sides of the camp.

And the people, you know, they advocated. They said, Look, people are getting zeros on these tests. It’s impossible to pass, and you’re ruining our medical careers valid, I suppose. But then there were the people who worked with the teachers saying, Look, we gave them all these resources. It’s more of a recent problem. It’s the same class that we’ve had before. These people never opened the resources that we gave them. And so, you know, they tried to make these adaptations that people didn’t adopt.

Other people were fine, who went through the extra stuff and did the extra work and, and kind of worked hard to do it. And so what’s that balance to advocate for this group? Uh, and making sure that people are getting what they needed to be successful. Um, so you have an obligation to do work. You have an obligation to adapt. You have an obligation to, to mold yourself into what a larger picture is doing.

But at the same time, you have to ask for help and do what you need in, in, in advocating for yourself. So first, what does that mean? Let’s, let’s talk about what advocating for ourselves really means. Because, um, advocating is a big word. It’s not just having, you know, complaining and having people do what you want. Um, it’s making sure that people are answering what you need and asking, answering your questions, asking really good questions to make sure that you’re getting what you, what you need.

This could be in the workplace, this could be medically, this could be, uh, educationally, it could be whatever, whatever you need. And when we, we talk about advocation, it’s not about dictating your will on other people. That’s not advocating for yourself, but it’s openly and publicly supporting ourselves, which is different, very, very different than just imposing your will on everyone else. Um, we need to speak up when something doesn’t jive and we can ask really good questions.

And, and we recognize there may be a general, general sentiment of what’s needed. May need a slight tweak for us. We need to make the tweak. That’s okay. Um, there is a betterment for the the bigger collective group, but we can’t assume that other people are thinking about us in the way that we think about us. So we have to advocate for ourselves within our structures. There are confines of the world that we live in.

Uh, we have a society and a responsibility to society within which we live a responsibility to the educational system within we, within which we live. That would be the NYU story. We have an allocation to, you know, have you just lowered the quality of education because this guy made it too hard, uh, and you fired him. Um, what are our own expectations of ourselves? And what are the expectations that we wanna hold for the people around us?

And these are questions we have to answer as individuals. Uh, when I think about it in the workplace, cause I always like to bring this to the workplace, to bring it to the workplace. Uh, when we think about we can’t assume what other people are thinking about us. We hear a lot of these things all the time. And I hear it, especially in coaching. You know, someone will notice if I work hard enough, work hard, put your head down and you’ll be rewarded.

Um, this person’s the team leader, so they must know what’s going on. Uh, we make a lot of these assumptions that are just wrong because we’ve heard these assumptions or we felt these assumptions over time. Maybe when we first got into the organization and we were young, we just assumed the manager knew what was going on, and we just did whatever it was. Uh, I was told since I was a little kid, work hard.

And people will notice. Um, yeah, they’ll notice, but you’re not gonna be rewarded for it. Uh, you’re gonna be taking advantage of. And so, or you could be taking advantage of, it’s not always true. You know, um, you know, you, you can work hard, but you also have to know how to navigate. It’s your responsibility to navigate. People aren’t necessarily taking advantage of you. You just haven’t navigated in the right kind of way.

And that was my problem. Um, do I, I certainly wouldn’t blame other people for that. Um, but it’s, it’s beyond the workplace as well. And when I think about, you know, how to take action, right? And this is ultimately what it comes down, we have an accountability to ourselves to take action in the best way for ourselves, right? So you can work really hard. Don’t wait for someone to tell you and recognize cuz people are busy thinking about themselves.

How do you speak up and ask questions? You know, am I on the right path? How do I get to that next job? This is the next thing that I want. And articulate that, articulate what’s best for you beyond work. I think a lot, and what really drove me to start thinking about this now that I’m like 10 minutes into the podcast is this constant discussion on housing. Um, nobody can buy a house right now for a lot of different reasons.

Uh, and so this is a big millennial problem, and I hate using the term millennial, but it’s true. They’re in their, you know, thirties and, and I guess they’re in their thirties. That’s the millennial age, the thirties. And this is when you buy houses, and this is when you start families and you do all that stuff. Pandemic hit everyone bought houses, prices weren’t skyrocketing. Now interest rates are crazy. Nobody can afford a house.

You’ve got hedge funds, uh, investing in houses as a safe kind of way to, to funnel money for a down economy. So they’re buying up all the, the houses. So the starter home is effectively gone. But the other thing, and you see people complaining about it, is a lot of millennials bought like seven houses and they’re using them for Airbnb and everything else. And, um, and people are saying, Look, this is why I can’t buy a house because you bought seven of ’em and you’re running out on Airbnb.

This is bullshit. But guess what? Life lesson, um, you waited too long. Or, um, or I mean, to be fair, there’s also people aren’t making what they used to make. So that’s, that’s kind of a different story as well. But, you know, there is a, an accountability aspect of I can’t buy a house because you should not be doing something and or you should be doing something or, you know, we’re pointing our fingers.

And I hate it when somebody says, you should or I can’t because you, um, and there are two, two things to think about. There are problems and there are circumstances and problems you could solve. 99% of our problems are not problems. They’re circumstances. Okay? So problems you could solve, you can’t solve the fact that other people are buying Airbnbs and trying to rent them out, okay? That’s a circumstance in which you have to respond to problems, you could solve circumstances you respond to.

And so we can’t dictate what other people need to do so we can do something we need to adapt. And, and when we say advocating for ourselves, it’s not just speaking up, it’s taking action for ourselves. And so this is the big, this is the big rub in terms of accountability and advocating in all of these things. All these a words is, uh, we need to think hard about what actions we could take.

We’re gonna have to take some risks in terms of getting to where it is, getting to the next level at the workplace. Buying that house is buying house even, you know, this is, this gets into the fun philosophical stuff. Do you even really need to buy a house? Um, and how do you do it in really funky ways? Um, and this goes back to, you know, when I talk about belief systems and what do you really believe?

And can we question everything? What assumptions do we make? And can we do, you know, is a 5 29 really the best way to save for your kids when you’ve got such a narrow way to invest? If I were to put all this money away from my in a 5 29 for my kid, what’s college gonna be like in 20 years? Right? Is it even gonna be a college? Why don’t I just put it into a brokerage account And when they grow up, say, Hey, here’s$500,000.

Start a business, right? Would that be a better way to, to set my kids up for success? Is college really setting your kids up for success? What assumptions are built into all of these frameworks that are around us? You need to think about what’s best for you and your family. And it may not be all of these things that were set up for a general, you know, let’s do this for the collective.

Good, that’s fine. But you may need some tweaks and you may need to thumb your nose at some of those things that, you know, we have these assumptions on, on what it should be. So we have to take action and responsibility for getting ourselves up to success. Now, I will agree with you, the housing market’s a bunch of, uh, bs right now. Thank God we bought a house so long ago. Um, and so I feel that pain, right?

It’s, I’m not saying it’s, you know, it’s not your fault that you can’t buy a house completely, um, or in some cases at all, right? I mean, I know these people who, who made decisions and they’re paying off all these crazy student loans and they’re, they’re raising kids and they’re doing all of these things. And, and there are some people would say, Well, you shouldn’t have had kids and you shouldn’t have gotten to college.

And, um, I think that’s bogus. Don’t say you should or shouldn’t have people made decisions and, and you know, it’s where they are today, okay? So don’t tell someone what they should or shouldn’t do. Um, but what I would say is, you know, it’s now a response mechanism is how are you responding to the circumstance within which you find yourself? That’s where accountability really lies. And that’s where advocating for yourself really lies is past this past, okay, we’ve learned, right?

It’s a life lesson. We find ourselves in this current situation. What decisions can we make today to advocate for ourselves for success tomorrow? And that’s when, when we think about that is it comes down to a lot of questions. We have to ensure understanding of where we are. And we can’t make all of the assumptions that other people are doing, uh, stuff for us. Uh, nobody can do it for us. You have to take control and you have to take action in order to make it.

So a little bit of a ramble today, but I think it’s an important reminder, um, that life is, life gets easy with all this technology and things are done for us. You know, we get all our news just hand fed to us in the morning. We get all of our, you know, our refrigerator tweets us, um, or texts us when, um, we’re low on carrots. Uh, you know, everything is done for us and we forget that we have a responsibility to take action and think for ourselves.

And so advocating for ourselves, thinking for ourselves, and making choices for ourselves are, uh, an incredibly important part of life. And that is true at home, in the workplace, um, and our financial decisions and everything else. So with that, I’m happy to help you think through it. I love thinking about the assumptions we make and, and just blowing them up and getting philosophical on those, you know, why, why do you need to own a car?

Why do you need, you know, to all do all of these types of things? Some of them you just have to, right? We get it. And you could think through it, you know, you could question it and still come to the same realization that the way it’s set up is fine. That’s okay. Uh, but it’s a’s a good exercise to think through it. So advocate, think, think, think, think, challenge the way you’re thinking, uh, as winning the pool would say, think, think, think.

And um, yeah. Good luck. Have a great week. Enjoy your week. I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks.