When Force of Will Becomes Force of Habit

I advocate every day.
Yep.
Every. Day.

This wasn't always so. I didn't ever really understand what advocacy was until my thirties. So, how does one go from not doing anything about poverty at all to taking action to fight it every single day? How did I go from overcoming my nervousness and writing to my member of Congress through sheer force of will...all the way to phoning my elected officials by force of habit? For me, it started with a Lenten promise and a ONE bracelet.

By 2001, I'd done plenty of fundraising and service charity work, but "advocacy" was an odd, scary sounding word to me...until I realized that it's simply speaking out about something you care about. It took some Bread for the World members at my church to show me that it could be just a simple act of writing a letter, an email, or making a phone call. Yet that didn't mean it was easy. I was rather afraid someone from a senate office would call me back to challenge me, saying, "What did you mean by that!?" For me to write that first letter was not the most natural thing. My heart raced when I made my first phone call to my U.S. representative.

Once I realized I could have more impact with advocacy than direct service and saw that it fit into my life better, I recognized that advocating for better anti-poverty programs was hard for me, but something I wanted to do more because of the potential to have so much more impact than serving people at the soup kitchen one person at a time. So, I decided that for the 40 days I observed Lent (a Christian time of reflection, discipline, and sacrifice), I would put the white ONE bracelet on in the morning. When I had taken some sort of action - wrote a letter, made a phone call, sent an email, wrote a letter to the editor, etc - I got to take the bracelet off. I found that once I'd come so far, I wanted to keep going. After 40 days, I was just used to doing it. I also learned from congressional offices that persistence is a critical characteristic of people who get their attention.

Some UK researchers concluded that it takes an average of 66 days to form a habit. I believe it takes the doing of something regularly and repeatedly to get used to it. Plus - and I find this with exercise - it is inspiring to set a goal and keep up a good habit. I'm reluctant to let go of my goal when I don't want to lose progress I've made. Hm...this is Alcoholics Anonymous strategy, too, isn't it? Well, I also found that when I was happy with myself and impressed with what I had accomplished, I wanted to do more. That's likely why the RESULTS core values resonate with me:

"Instead of waiting to be inspired to take action, we realize that being in action inspires us." 

Now, it's years later and I have even more reasons to do something every day. Now that I've even travelled to Uganda to meet families who need such basics as vaccines, clean water, education for their kids, how can I stop when I've looked into their eyes and shared smiles together? 

Insider Images

I love it when I find campaigns that encourage other people to be in action every day as well...like the Shot@Life Blogust campaign where leaving a comment on a blog each day in August unlocks a donation for a vaccine for a child in the developing world. I like promoting that campaign because it's fun and by sharing it, I inspire other people to get involved and take action every day.

Every. Day.

The Power to Empower Your Children

If parenthood is a constant practice of empowering children, then what should we be empowering them to do? And who else could we be empowering along the way? Could it be ourselves? Here are four thoughts on my mind today about power, empowerment, and raising kids.

1) To raise powerful kids, you're going to have to tap into your own inner super-hero

Kids learn best by example, that's a fact. I don't have to fabricate a completely unrealistic facade of being Wonder Woman perfect (or even Mary Poppins practically-perfect), but I do think my kids have a better chance at tapping into their own potential if they see me striving to improve myself and setting high goals. Goals like helping others, standing up for justice, running really far...you know, superhero stuff.

In our house, sometimes that does actually mean putting on the cape.




2. No one succeeds or gains power totally on their own
I think it's a great American myth that everyone makes their own destiny and we should expect everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to make it on their own. Presidents are given power by common everyday voters. Famous athletes have a retinue of people who helped them...trainers, maybe sponsors, and - as Proctor & Gamble emotionally pointed out in their 2012 Olympic-aired commercial - parents. (Thank you very much P&G for glorifying the everyday and consequently making me feel good about my laundry detergent brand decisions)

In the forward to a book about Nelson Mandela, I found the following quote from Mr. Mandela talking about this very idea:

"In Africa, there is a concept known as ubuntu - the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world, it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievements of others." 

I think about this when I see certain members of Congress trying to defund programs that give a helping hand to empower the powerless, like Head Start early childhood education for impoverished pre-schoolers. I believe we could all do with a little more ubuntu. Can we perpetuate a cycle of generations of people helping each other by empowering our children to support their families, friends, and people in need that they don't even know? I think we can.

3) Empowering others makes us more powerful ourselves
Power can be like candlelight. When I ignite the candle in your hand, it in no way diminishes my light and it allows us both to see more together in the darkness. Look to successful social movements to see this idea in play. I see it every day in my advocacy work. One person will have a hard task to draw the attention of a senator, but one person who teaches another and another and another how to organize can spread the mission and turn the tide of politics.

But let's bring it down to the little people of the house. Parenthood, it occurs to me, is the ultimate form of empowerment. When I taught my children how to tie their shoes, I was giving them the power to master a very common skill. It may seem rather insignificant, but it gives a child a beautiful sense of mastery that she can do something all by herself and not have to ask for help. Tying that bow is one of thousands of small skills that will allow a kid to become a functioning, independent adult. Maybe teaching a child to use the potty is an more powerful example knowing that we can now choose just to wear velcro shoes all the time and knowing the dreadful consequences of improper management of poop. :) The point is that all those little skills add up - eating with utensils, hammering a nail, planting a flower, reading a book - and parenting is a constant stream of helping them do things on their own.

 

Don't get me wrong. This did not make me feel powerful when I was doing it. It was hard to be patient, kind, empathetic, persistent, and respectful with my toddlers. Honestly, I did not achieve those things all the time. Or even 80% of the time. But it actually did make me more patient, kind, empathetic, persistent and respectful in all my relationships- even with adults. These are incredibly useful characteristics for coaching new adult advocates and lobbying members of Congress.

So, in empowering my children as they grow, I am still becoming more powerful in at least two ways. First, by my growing influence through the ripple effect of the ways my own children are changing the world around them. Second, by my constant improvement of my own relationship skills.

4) True empowerment also means letting go
If you truly empower someone, you can't control how they use their own power. Their autonomy has to go along with it or it isn't real. New advocates I train and my own children are going to make their own choices to work for their own goals and do things their own way. It is a little scary, isn't it? I mean, Yoda and Obiwan trained Anakin Skywalker and ended up giving us Darth Vader. But, they also gave us Luke Skywalker as well, so....oh, you didn't come here for Star War analysis? OK...but it's too bad because I've got two more pages of thoughts on that.

Anyway, the idea of letting go of the one empowered is never so prominent nor poignant as in the relationship between parent and child. When it really comes down to it, we have little idea who our children will become, what they will want for themselves, or what the world will require of them. I do believe that when all is said and done, the best thing you can do for your children is to open their eyes to the larger world, teach them to be good and kind, give them a podium to practice at...

...and help them see themselves as leaders.

Who will you empower today?

What the heck is "Blogust"?

If you could save a child's life today, would you? What if you didn't have to dive in front of a speeding train or even donate any money at all? I'm going to tell you how to do it by doing exactly what you're doing right now...reading a blog. By participating in Shot@Life's Blogust campaign in the month of August 2013, all you have to do is click on a blog entry inspired by Shot@Life, leave a comment, and voila! You will unlock a donation to purchase a life-saving vaccine for children around the world who need them the most.

"Blogust" is a month-long digital dialogue bringing 31 of the most influential online writers together to help change the world through their words. The 31 Blogust bloggers will participate in a blog relay, with one blogger posting each day for the month of August 2013.  Every comment they receive to their posts throughout the month will trigger a donation by Walgreens to provide a vaccine for a child in need around the world through Shot@Life. For every comment on any of the 31 posts, Walgreens will donate a life-saving vaccine (up to 50,000 vaccines) to give children around the world a shot at life.

Last year, more than 11,000 comments surpassed the goal of 10,000 comments...which meant life-saving vaccines against polio, measles, rotovirus, and pneumococcal virus were delivered to 10,000 kids around the world. This year, we're shooting or 50,000 vaccines!

YOU can play a part in this history-making effort to translate internet activity into real, life-saving action. Visit Shot@Life's Blogust webpage and find the magic blog o' the day. Leave a comment to save a life. Then, spread the world using Twitter, facebook, or email. Heck, you can even share this post if it helps explain it to your friends. If you liked doing it, you can even sign up to get an email reminder to automatically send you to the appropriate blog each day in August.

For further inspiration, click on the video at the top of the post and read some of the blogs. Every day, a writer is celebrating a particular year of child development in a personal way. (August 1 was about being 1, August 16 will be about turning 16, etc) Maybe you'll think of your own experiences being a kid or raising a child and consider what it would be like to lose all those milestone moments to an easily preventable disease. I hope you do...and then decide to do something about it by leaving a comment even as simple as "Thank you!"