Whether you’ve been vegan for one month or ten years, you’ve likely been here before:

There you are, out for dinner with your friends, anticipating the arrival of your orders; a veggie burger, some fries, and a salad for you. A cheese platter, shrimp cocktails, and medium rare steaks for them...

You don’t want to be “that” vegan, so you bite your tongue and avert your eyes as your friends tear into the flesh of dead animals. Immediately your stomach turns as flashbacks of graphic scenes from the latest documentary highlighting animal abuse, disease, and environmental degradation race through your mind.

Although you use every ounce of willpower to refrain, you can’t help but silently judge them for their inability to see what you see. You can’t help but resent the fact that they don’t care.

Then, ridden with guilt because of your negativity towards the people you love, you distract yourself from the pain—push it aside to deal with later—even though you know by now sweeping it under the rug just slowly adds to the pile of disconnection and isolation.

Monday morning rolls around, and it’s time for a meeting at the office. The table is covered with donuts, muffins, and coffee cake. You sit quietly in your chair while everyone digs in, asking why you’re not eating.

Fearful of being chastised for your choice to abstain from animal products, you mumble something like, “Oh, I already ate,” while the other part of you is screaming inside, demanding you to shake your co-workers awake to the cruelty happening behind closed doors of the dairy industry.

Perhaps you’re a vegan entrepreneur or work for a vegan company, and you feel like you’re under the pressure of a ticking time bomb to spread awareness with your product or service—anxiously biting your nails as you continuously put yourself out on the line—risking rejection and ridicule for sharing your truth.

Before resting your head on your pillow at night, you scroll through Facebook and find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of memes and videos spreading the message of animal agriculture—how it’s the leading cause of species extinction, water pollution, and ocean dead zones. Your chest tightens under crushing waves of helplessness, hopelessness, and fear.

You desperately want to make a difference, but you don’t know how. Your fiery passion has no outlet—causing an electrical storm of chaos in your mind—and you’re overwhelmed with bouts of sadness and frustration.

As you can see, this burning desire we have to fix this world—to help others change for the better—often leads us to an internal state of unease from which all our efforts to help others are made in vain.

It’s as if we get lost in the bigger picture and forget about ourselves under the pressure of this responsibility we feel so compelled to carry as vegans.

How do we go from point A to point B—from waking up to the reality of the world to making a real difference—if in the meantime we burn all our bridges, alienate ourselves, and fall into a deep pit of anxiety and despair?

The fact is what we want fixed in the world must first be fixed within ourselves, and the most effective way to make an impact is to first and foremost exemplify in ourselves whatever changes we’d like to see in others.

This means we must be willing to explore the inner landscapes of our being—the places we fear to go alone—to question the limiting beliefs and patterns living within us; to understand them and transmute them, so we can cultivate a higher consciousness through self-awareness.

We must be willing to care for ourselves holistically—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—so we can be strong, inspirational, and dependable catalysts for change in a world of suffering.

We are being beckoned to morph into vegan warriors—a vegan who nurtures the interconnection of all life and routinely trains in the mastery of both the inner and outer dimensions of the self with the goal of aligning with his/her core values and operating from a state of clarity, harmony, and balance, so they can lead a more fulfilling, purposeful, and heart-centered life from which sustainable change can sprout.

In his article, The Six Paramitas, Dr. Will Tuttle states, “as the vegan movement becomes increasingly a movement of people who are authentically doing the inner work necessary to explore and purify our individual consciousness, the movement, through this, is becoming increasingly unstoppable.”

This inner work on a holistic level takes time, patience, motivation, and a lot of self-love and forgiveness. At times we get lost and give up without a road map. That's precisely why we created our 9-step method (inspired by our own healing journey) to take you on a quest to find vibrant health, long-lasting happiness, and profound connection within your vegan lifestyle, so you can not only live a fulfilling life but also make a difference in the world from a place of wholeness and stability.

Come share the Apple Stage with us at 2:55 PM on Saturday, January 20^th, 2018, for inspirational story-telling and details on each step of our Vegan Warrior Total Immersion 9-step method. 

About the authors:

As holistic personal mastery coaches, creators of the Vegan Warrior Academy™, and hosts of the Soul in Wonder Podcast, Christopher & Sara are on a mission to create a compassionate, connected global community of happy, healthy, and balanced vegan change-makers.