Unveiling the Power of Vegan Diet: Your Path to a Cruelty-Free and Nourishing Lifestyle

6. Identifying Your Values and Sticking to Then

Veganism is very much about finding your morals and sticking to them. Sometimes, we don’t know what we are passionate about until we see something that we realize we do not want any part of. Veganism often hits us hard as a way not to participate in the deliberate slaughter and sometimes torture of innocent animals.

Or maybe it’s about holding corporations accountable for their practices and creating more rigorous guidelines for them to follow. Perhaps going vegan is not just about the animals for you, but for the environment as well. Maybe understanding how factory farms can pollute the water supplies and create extreme deposits of methane gas that can wreak havoc on the ozone layer is as much of a motivation as preventing the needless suffering of animals to serve a purpose that isn’t entirely necessary in today’s day and age.

Back when surviving was difficult, humans as a species utilized animals in many ways to ensure their survival. Things are not that cut throat anymore. We have many options now that once didn’t exist, and a better understanding of the way that nutrition works. If we don’t want to eat meat, for whatever reason we choose, we don’t actually have to eat meat. While it is of course important to look after your health and make sure you are getting the essential vitamins and minerals to ensure your body is functioning to the best of its ability, the same is true of anyone. People eating a meat-based diet have to watch their health as well. It is easy to get high cholesterol and other issues that can cause heart attacks, which are the leading cause of death in the United States alone.

To make going vegan diet the most valuable for you and ensure the likelihood that you are going to be able to stick with it, you need to sit down and really think hard about what it is you would stand for. If someone looked at you and asked you what you believe in this world and what you are doing to back up those beliefs, what would you tell them? Are you on the road toward being the person you want to be? Are you doing things that make you proud? Do your choices reflect your values?

It is one thing to agree with something morally. It’s quite another to see the implications of your choices and avoid a life of hypocrisy. For example, if you agree that sweat shop conditions are horrible, but still wear clothing that is produced in sweat shops, it is clearly not enough of a value to you that you are willing to sacrifice comfort and convenience for products that are affordable from sweatshops.

On the other hand, if you know sweat shop labor conditions exist, and you do research into brands that do not support it so you can wear clothes comfortably knowing that you are not making it possible for sweat shops to continue operating, at least not with your money, then this is clearly a value you care about and you are going the distance in practicing your values. Money talks.

Watching documentaries is a good way to get informed about the way the world works, and business practices that make products easily accessible but that cut corners and often hurt people, and animals, and the environment, in the process. You can learn a lot about the way things are run and how you can make a difference by speaking out about it and boycotting the businesses you know are guilty of things that you do not agree with. Every little bit can make a difference, and finding fair trade goods and living a healthy, ethical lifestyle is possible.

Once you know what it is you stand for, then you will start to learn more about what it is you are against. If you are willing to sacrifice conveniences and other things that are comfortable to you in your life in order to stand by your ethics in every possible way, that strength of character will be something you will always have to fall back on. It feels good knowing the choices you are making are not indirectly causing harm to others or the world around us, and it makes it that much more likely that the choices you make will have a lasting positive impact, on you and on your community as a whole!
So sit down, get out a sheet of paper and a pencil, and get to work in identifying your personal values. Once you have done that, you can watch documentaries or look online for ways that you can begin really applying your values to your life.

Video the Power of Vegan Diet! : Capitulo 06