A Guide for Advocates and Activists to Staying Healthy, Inspired, and Driven offers help and hope for folks involved in social action or justice work. Folks who serve others, fight for change and address wrongs can experience uncertainties, burnout and conflict. Tools in this book help us find our path and stay the course.
The authors help readers discover the causes that matter to them. And they offer tools to manage various challenges that occur on the path of helping.
I appreciate the mixture of social justice examples. While the content relies heavily on political causes, it also includes academic, community and charitable causes.
One thing I liked is how the authors refer to themselves in third person. And they include mistakes and failures they’ve made, not just triumphs. I appreciated their realness and humanity.
In addition to including first-person references, the authors include examples from other activists, too. This feature adds value to the content and makes it even more accessible to me.
This book is one I will reference for years to come.
Favorite quotes:
“How wonderful it is that no one has to wait, but can start right now to gradually change the world!” Anne Frank
“Pivot toward what matters.” Steven Hayes
“Working toward what one values not only brings a sense of satisfaction but changes what one becomes in the process.” Albert Bandura
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” attributed to William James
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Gloria Steinem
“Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.” Pema Chodron

How will you make your mark in the world? What changes can you do that will make a positive difference in the world?
Being the Change is a book that helps you assess your values, time, and emotions to shape your community and effectively navigate barriers and challenges. It's intended for readers who want to be engaged in social action or justice work. It also supports those who wish to have more of an impact in their current role, such as a care provider or volunteer.

The book's authors realize that taking time to participate in social-action activities includes additional responsibilities. As a result, the book helps people regulate their emotions, so they have a healthy and sustainable approach. In addition, they suggest ways to shift mindsets to handle difficult situations and improve communication and organization skills.

As academic clinical psychologists, the book's authors took a particular interest in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. However, as they focused on cognitive models and scattered relative terms throughout the book, it began to read more like a psychology textbook.

Personally, I was looking for more actionable approaches regarding how to make an impact in the world, like how I could volunteer my time, how I can effectively reach out to a lawmaker, and how to find additional resources.

I suggest the book to anyone starting a significant social-action initiative. It can help change makers thoroughly think through their efforts.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Dara G. Friedman-Wheeler and Jamie Sue Bodenlos’s ‘Being the Change’ puts a psychological twist on advocacy and what it takes to be one, how we become one and how to stay healthy in the process. It’s an easily understandable book but more suited towards someone who has little knowledge of behavioral therapy. I only gave it 3 stars because mental health is an important topic but the authors fall flat on understanding activism and change.

The book sets out to help readers maintain and enhance their ability to be effective agents of change but doesn’t meet that goal. As an activist in my personal life, I never get a sense the authors understand activism at all.

Dara G. Friedman-Wheeler and Jamie Sue Bodenlos's "Being the Change" is practical and easy to understand manual to being an advocate. As someone that has actually started their own Foundation based upon the loss of several loved ones, I would have loved to have this book when I started. It's almost the quench's central road map on how to and why be an advocate.

And looking at the image that was chosen for the cover of the book it immediately shows the reader that the colors of our world and the leaves give us strength which is the tree. The visual meaning of this and the fact that this is what they chose did you pick the book is very impressive.

I like others were a little hesitant to pick up the book at first simply because I expected it to be full of scientific jargon and not depicted in layman's terms. However, I was incorrect. This book is written in layman's terms easy to understand and tends to repeat itself every few paragraphs so that you gather all of the meaning of what is being said.

By utilizing the ACT we are shown how not only to become an advocate, but why are we an advocate in the first place. It shows us ways to take this world on from working for a non-profit to starting your own foundation.

Yes it is full of scientific jargon however the way it is explained tells the reader that they are worthwhile. I really enjoyed learning how to determine my why and my activist role and not just saying I'm an activist. Learning my role helps me change my mindset to understanding that my meaning has to keep me going not my purpose alone.

This book also helps me especially as an advocate understand how to cope with the ups and downs of my cause. It's helping me keep balanced using the systems that are explained in the book and also to trudge forward and continue to change myself so that I have the right mindset to be effective in my role, in my Foundation, and as an example to those around me.

I cannot say enough about how incredible this book is not only just to advocates that are wanting to change the world, but to those of us that need to be an advocate for ourselves and our family. I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of this book, read it, and share it with those around you.

I am one who often feels like 'well what can I really do to create change?'. Being the Change provides readers with concrete steps and actions to move forward, help recognize where one wants to create change in their community, and cultivate a more positive, forward moving mindset. I love how the authors incorporate cognitive behavioral therapy throughout their strategies. For anyone who feels helpless in today's world and wants to start cultivating change I highly recommend this book!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Dara G. Friedman-Wheeler and Jamie Sue Bodenlos's "Being the Change" is described as a " practical guide that helps readers maintain and enhance their ability to be effective agents of change," a book designed to support change agents working in organizations with social missions and those who are involved in social change outside of their jobs.

"Being the Change" has as its mission to empower readers to learn how to clarify their values, identify their strengths, manage their emotions and relationships, and incorporate self-care as part of their personal and professional development.

Unfortunately, "Being the Change" is, in actuality, a paint-by-numbers journey through basic psychological principles, especially cognitive behavioral therapy, designed to empower activists and change agents but never really establishing a need for the subject, effectively connecting these methods to the world of activism, and/or never effectively communicating an understanding of activism.

As nearly any psychologist worth anything would tell you, understanding your client's world is an essential ingredient in helping them change their lives. In "Being the Change," I was never convinced that the authors truly understood the world of activism enough to make person-centered recommendations. Instead, much of "Being the Change" ends up reading like "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is great. You can use it to be a better activist and here's how!"

There's a difference.

While it's noted that there are a "rich catalogue of case examples" included, these never feel like authentic human beings as their "case examples" are more like footnotes and the examples seem designed to serve the clinical point rather than the other way around.

I wanted to love "Being the Change." There's no question I'm the target reader for the book. I'm a longtime public servant in both my full-time paid gig and through a long history of activism in areas like violence prevention where self-care is essential. I should have resonated deeply with "Being the Change," but I came away from it feeling like the authors lacked an understanding of activism and activists and simply tried to plug-in established psychological concepts and theories.

It may be appropriate at times, but it doesn't work here.

"Being the Change" is disjointed and structured in such a way that even potentially impactful material is muted by what I call "clinical speak. In a book that seeks to get to the heart and soul of activism, there's a disappointing lack of heart and soul contained within these pages.

On the flip side, "Being the Change" makes it clear that Friedman-Wheeler and Bodenlos are extremely comfortable in the psych world and they communicate these concepts with ease and with clarity. They provide a wealth of basic resources that are, in fact, valuable even if the applicability here is lacking. As someone who worked in crisis intervention for ten years, I embraced some of the underlying ideas here even if I also wished that "Being the Change" had tied them together better into the world of activism and activists.

Ultimately, I can't deny being disappointed in a book that never quite lives up to its potential and never really establishes the relationship between the applicability of psychology and the unique, inspiring world of the world's changemakers. "Being the Change" sets out on a noble mission that it simply never achieves.