So you’ve got a dinner party to attend on a Saturday evening and your best friend is making her famous enchiladas loaded with cheese and your favorite type of dessert, chocolate trifle cake. If you’re on the journey toward Sweet Freedom you know this is going to be the ultimate challenge. Social pressure plus your trigger foods equals a potentially long stop off of the Sweet Freedom train.
You’ve decided that the social interaction and connection you have with these people is too important to go without so you whip up a hearty salad, grab your water bottle and head out. Surely you won’t come off as righteous and rude bringing your own food to the party…
Not coming off as a “debbie downer” or a “nutritional nancy nutter” lies entirely in your intent behind making the decision to bring something healthy to the table. If you’re making this choice because it makes you feel good, the people around you will be happy to see you feeling good. It is human nature to want to see the people you love happy. So if this life journey makes you happy, all of the people around you will be happy to support you in it.
However, if you are making the decision from a place of judgement, your companions will wind up seeing you as trying to act superior to them. The most toxic thing you can serve up is judgement, so remember that every person is on their own journey and not looking for judgment from the external world. Just because you have decided to take the difficult, yet extremely rewarding path to ending your sugar addiction, does not mean that everyone around you is on that same path, and that is OKAY.
Embarking on a journey to better health and wellbeing means making changes. Whenever you make changes in your life, whether they’re positive or negative, this creates shifts in the relationships and social structure of our lives. These shifts may seem difficult and scary to come to terms with but the truth is that each one is an opportunity to become more of who you were meant to be.
That being said, make your decisions from a place of wanting to better yourself. The people in your life that love you and want to lift you up will have no issue with your journey to a better version of yourself. It may seem scary to change the status quo, but you were meant to be on this journey and you were meant to meet these challenges with your greatest effort, because this is your life that you have the opportunity to change. Furthermore, being the best version of yourself and improving that version each and every day is the greatest gift you can give to any of your friends or family.
Giving people your best energy is the greatest gift you can give to any relationship. That means going through changes to cultivate your best energy so decide to be kind and compassionate to yourself and others throughout this journey. You’re in it for the long haul and one day, those scary dinner party challenges won’t seem so scary any more.