Greetings!
Many of the people I work with are dealing with lawyers, be it for engaging a divorce or dealing with what I call post-divorce cleanup. One of the most common complaints I hear from my clients working with a lawyer is how the lawyer is not advocating for them. When I ask them what that means, they respond with how their lawyer is not taking care of what really matters to them with the divorce. I then ask them if they have talked with their lawyer about what matters to them, and if they respond with “the lawyer should know”, I know it’s time we talk about learning to advocate for themselves.
Learning to advocate for yourself is essential not only when working with a lawyer, but as a life skill required for being happy in relationships and in life. As my clients know me to offer, love does not equal being able to read minds. We need to use our words to help others know what we like, want, and don’t. It seems especially challenging for people to take this up with people they love. “If they really loved me they’d know what I like/want/don’t” I’ve heard more times than not when helping a client with a relationship challenged.
It can be hard to speak up about what one likes, wants, etc after earlier learning that being accommodating was what others wanted from them. Like children who do so as they rely on their parents for their needs in life. Yet when an adult continues to accommodate with the belief that in doing so they will be liked, cared for, and more, it rarely ends well. They get taken advantage of and what matters to them does not get taken into account. In love, they can struggle to engage as a partner, deferring to engaging with less power than the other person and then becoming unhappy with the results.
So what is it to learn to advocate for yourself? In short, it is to know and believe in yourself. And then to show up and speak up in confidence that what matters to you is taken into account by those you engage with in life. This doesn’t mean you will get everything you want and every time. It does mean you don’t treat others as the authority on your life and yourself as helpless and powerless. Easy? Not at first. Yet with practice, your willingness to take a risk on yourself, and with remembering that change can be uncomfortable at times, you can learn how to advocate for what you want in your life and relationships.
There is a freedom that comes when you lean into taking responsibility for your happiness in life. And, as the saying goes, freedom is not free. To learn to advocate for yourself will have times of discomfort, of risk, of disappointment. And, it will move you into more times of joy, more times of success, and more times of living what is truly meaningful and of delight to you. There is a cost to every choice we make in life. Learning to make the choices which result in feeling happy with yourself, feeling more self-confidence, and that have you delight in who you are, is priceless.
If you or someone you know would like to talk about stepping up how you care for yourself, sign up for a Clarity Session. 45 minutes by phone for you to share what you’d like to make better in your life and for me to offer a few thoughts on how that could be made so.