Motivational experts know that for anything to change, you must take action. Just knowing something, or just believing in it, doesn’t make anything happen. If you really want to go vegan, you actually have to take action and make it happen.
One of the best ways to motivate yourself is find something that has extreme leverage over your current habits. What does this mean? Well, here’s my personal example: Before I went vegan, I was an absolute cheese addict. I always say in my lectures that the day before I went vegan, my four food groups were Swiss, Havarti, Cheddar and Chocolate! If you had told me that I would be going vegan, I never, ever, would have believed I could do it. However, after reading Diet for a New America, in just 24 hours things changed overnight. What I learned in that book about how food affects our health, how the animals are treated in the factory farms, and how food production methods are affecting the environment, literally shocked me into giving up meat and dairy products instantaneously. The knowledge was so compelling that it had leverage (or priority) over my current habits.
This is not uncommon when people tell you how they went vegan. It is very much like when my neighbor, who smoked for 54 years, was told he had a mass on his lungs. Until that day, he always laughed and said he didn’t mind dying of lung cancer because he was 72 and was going to die soon anyway. When that mass showed itself on his lungs, boy, did he change his mind quickly! Just like I quit eating all animal products overnight, he also quit smoking overnight. This is the power of leverage.
So if you notice that I often encourage people to read books like Diet for a New America, The Food Revolution, The China Study, and watch videos like Earthlings, this is why: these resources have been known to provide people with so much leverage over their current habits that they don’t need motivation or willpower anymore! If you’re still struggling to commit fully to the vegan diet, go pick up one (or all!) of the resources I just mentioned. My book, Vegan in 30 Days, also helps to break the diet down into manageable chunks. Good luck!
I have been toying with the idea of going vegan over the past year. My mom recently passed away from colon cancer and in all the reading and researching I've done, eliminating meat, dairy, eggs and chemicals from your diet is the number one preventative measure to take. My two boys and I did a project last summer to reduce our carbon footprint and we learned so much about the toll that the meat/dairy industry takes on the planet and its resources. Between those two significant life events, I read your book, read many other books, watched Earthlings and just yesterday finished the book Skinny Bitch. Something switched for me last night as as of today I am a vegan. One of my boys is switching with me and the other one is willing to go vegetarian. I know without a doubt that I will never again (knowingly) chew and swallow meat, dairy or eggs.
ReplyDeleteThank you for being part of my change!
Diane
Sarah, thanks for the great work you're doing to help motivate folks to make this important shift. We heard John Robbins speak and read his book, "Diet for a New America" in December 1989 and became vegan on January 1, 1990. We've never looked back. I'm just finishing a relatively new book I think your readers may find compelling:
ReplyDelete"Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer.