You can't outsource advocacy

What Office Space teaches us about high-stakes situations

Your Five-Year Plan is a newsletter about embracing life’s profound uncertainty.

Maybe your own plans went up in flames; maybe you’re considering a big, scary leap. This is your trusty companion while you’re writing the next life chapter.

Welcome to the conversation—and to the adventure that unfolds when your plans go sideways. This is letter #10. ✨

☀️ How was your week?

One of my deerest friends

I finalized some summer travel logistics. I’ll spend a week in Vancouver, Victoria, and Squamish with my dad and stepmom, and enjoy a girls’ weekend in the Colorado Rockies with my oldest and dearest friends. I’ve been so happy to stay grounded at home in recent months—see above, Washington is a forested paradise!—but I’m also excited to see people I love in other beautiful locations.

On to today’s letter!

You can’t outsource advocacy

I didn’t fully understand the meaning of advocacy until a trip with my mom to the hospital. (Fortunately, this was one visit we navigated successfully.)

One afternoon, when her IV line somehow slipped out of her arm—the one passing pain medication directly to the large veins surrounding her heart—these were the stakes we confronted in the emergency room:

• Getting her triaged ASAP and admitted to a room,

• Navigating her transfer into the unit that could replace her specialty IV line before those doctors clocked out for the day, and

• Coordinating with her third-party hospice provider and the hospital pharmacy to get her back on pain meds before she got “behind” on the pain.

As for the implications of those stakes: without intervention, each of the steps above would take many precious hours to unfold—or stretch into the next day. If we didn’t navigate the hospital bureaucracy as expediently as possible, I’d be watching my mom suffer in the days that followed.

The stakes were incredibly high. And they were deeply personal to me. That transformed me into a fierce advocate.

I learned something that afternoon. You can be surrounded by competent, caring people—as we were in the hospital—but without a dedicated advocate for your needs, the best resolution will remain firmly out of reach. When the stakes are high, a “good enough” resolution for someone else will probably not be nearly good enough for you.

In any given situation, how we show up depends on two major factors:

1. How high we perceive the stakes to be, and

2. How personal those stakes feel.

Allow me to illustrate:

Let’s take a quick tour of each quadrant.

When we don’t feel personally invested, and perceive the stakes to be low, we come along for the ride as a Passenger: someone who’s there to check the necessary boxes, but not a single box more.

Think of Jennifer Aniston’s character Joanna in Office Space, her Chotchkie’s server uniform adorned with just enough flair to avoid being fired.

When we perceive the stakes to be low, but the situation involves more personal impact, we show up as a Co-Star: a supporting actor in our own life (no #MainCharacterEnergy here).

Continuing the Office Space theme, let’s look at Ron Livingston’s character Peter Gibbons. After a fateful hypnosis session, he starts speaking his truth about those godforsaken TPS reports. But as the stakes at work grow objectively higher, he still perceives them to be low—and thus maintains his IDGAF attitude.

If we perceive the stakes to be high, but don’t feel personally invested in the situation, we show up as a Consultant.

Think of the Two Bobs: they care passionately about eliminating redundancies at Initech! But because they’re hired guns, they naturally have a higher degree of emotional remove. Even with better-developed empathy skills, they could never care quite as deeply about Milton’s payroll issues as he does.

Only when we perceive the stakes to be high, and feel personally invested, do we show up as an Advocate: someone who takes ownership of our situation and effectively communicates our needs.

We tend to think of advocates as loud or outspoken, but that’s not a necessary feature of advocacy. Sometimes, quiet and steadfast determination will do, like when long-suffering Milton finally—spoiler alert!—sets the building on fire.

Of course, only in Hollywood is there any overlap in the Venn diagram of “effective communication” and “arson.”

Aside from identifying these archetypes, and making us want to watch Office Space for the tenth time, how can we use this knowledge? What lessons can we apply in our own lives?

✅ Lesson #1: When the stakes are low, we can get by with co-star energy. When the stakes are high, we’re called upon to become advocates.

It’s rational to preserve our energy when a situation isn’t make-or-break. But when the stakes rise, we need to make this transition:

✅ Lesson #2: In some moments and areas of life, the stakes are inherently higher.

Areas of life whose quality is foundational to our well-being are always higher-stakes, regardless of our perception. That includes our money, health, closest relationships, career, and passions.

And some moments are inherently higher-stakes. That includes moments of transition and high uncertainty—for example, when our plans go up in flames.

That doesn’t mean that every higher-stakes area is always our top priority, or that we have equal energy to devote to each of them. It simply means they’re areas whose stewardship is, fundamentally, our responsibility.

✅ Lesson #3: If we don’t answer the call to advocacy, we cede our power to larger forces, or other people.

If we’re in the passenger seat, somebody else has taken the wheel. They have their own route and preferred destination, which may or may not align with ours.

✅ Lesson #4: In most circumstances, we can’t outsource advocacy.

Unless your health requires that someone else make decisions on your behalf, you’ll need to take ownership—or co-ownership—of high-stakes matters.

Too often, we find ourselves struggling with a high-stakes situation and think, “I’ll just pay someone to take the lead here.” Someone with Big Consultant Energy: maybe a financial planner on the money front, or a personal trainer on the health front.

Your planner or trainer might be plenty proactive and empathetic, but they’ll always be one step removed from your experience. They won’t be with you at the cash register each time you make an impulse purchase, or next to you on the couch while you consider skipping the gym.

✅ Lesson #5: If we’re struggling to “level up” as advocates, someone with consultant energy can help us help ourselves.

So what can these professionals do?

We can enlist their help with the solvable problem of acquiring advocacy skills. The aim is to help us navigate this path:

When we struggle with one high-stakes area in particular

Consider the career superstar who struggles with communication in relationships, or the brilliant artist who ignores their bills.

We might show up as an excellent advocate in one high-stakes area of life, and bring mediocre co-star energy to another. This is exceedingly normal! And it speaks to the utility of bringing on targeted help from a “consultant” type—a paid expert, or just a wise friend—with the precise kind of passion and expertise we need.

When it’s harder to advocate for ourselves than for others

Becoming an advocate has a learning curve and comes with growing pains. As a caregiver, I found that learning curve to be steep but short. But advocating for myself? That’s been a lifelong learning curve.

I know I’m not alone here. Taking responsibility requires a lot of maturity. Communicating our needs requires that we identify those needs and recognize their importance. Communicating those needs effectively requires high-level relational skills. Fortunately, they’re all skills we can learn with time, practice, and professional help.

Learning to show up as an advocate is tough work. But high-stakes, uncertain moments—like when our plans go up in flames—are clarion calls for self-advocacy.

Many aspects of life lie firmly out of our control. Becoming an advocate doesn’t change that fundamental truth—but it does strengthen our sense of ownership over the unfolding of our lives. By taking responsibility for our circumstances, even the ones we don’t control, we step into our own power.

It’s a pretty great feeling, knowing that your greatest source of power has been at your fingertips all along, and all you have to do is start using it.

💬 What do you think?

I’m curious to hear from you. How have you stepped up as an advocate for yourself (or your loved ones) lately?

Had your own plan-in-flames experience? Taking a leap into the unknown? I’d love to hear more. Just hit “reply” to get in touch, or introduce yourself here.

Warmly,
Maddie