Improving Relationships by Improving Your Nutrition

I wrote this article for IntuneWoman Magazine

“The only control you have over any relationship with another person is what falls in your domain: your attitude, effort, thoughts, actions and commitment. The only way you can improve a relationship with someone else is to improve these elements on your side of the relationship.”

Most of us have learned by now that it is futile to hope or plan to control or change others. Improving relationships with family, friends, co-workers, and your general community members begins with improving your relationship with yourself, the only person in the world who you can and have the right to control and change. If you find yourself arguing with or displeased by those around you, you might be arguing and displeased mostly with yourself.

Self-Talk

Your self-talk may be more brutal than anything you would ever say to another person. Rarely are people who are at peace within themselves cruel or rude to others. Of course there will always be tough conversations and debates, however they can be handled with respect and with an earnest desire for a solution or understanding. There need not be drama, aggression, bullying, manipulation, or other forms of fighting to achieve desirable results. One way to develop kindness toward others is to practice kindness toward yourself.

Daily Food Choices

Something we do every day, several times a day, often gets overlooked as an opportunity for kindness practice. Daily food choices matter in physical, spiritual, and emotional ways. Paradoxically eating a kind diet is not only kind toward yourself but inherently kind toward sentient others. An optimal human diet for personal health, environment, and all sentient life is a whole food, plant-based vegan diet. Kind, intelligent acquisition and kind, intelligent consumption can lead to a level of inner peace and self-respect never before experienced.

Soul Purpose

Your relationship with the world that feeds you informs your relationship with yourself which impacts your relationship with others. When you feel fantastic inside your body – energetic, clear, motivated, happy, rested, positive – and you like what your body presents to the world – strength, fitness, softness, beauty, health, inner glow – then you have a foundation for a healthy relationship with yourself. Our bodies are magnificent tools entrusted to us for the purpose of doing the work of our soul here on Earth.

Biochemistry

We need to take good care of our bodies and keep them in optimal condition. How you eat influences your inner biochemistry, thoughts, physical sensations, weight/ body size and shape, and energy. Food impacts your mind, body, and soul with every meal. If you feel unbalanced chemically, if your thoughts are predominantly negative, if you are in pain, if you are carrying too much stored energy (fat) or if you feel sluggish, it will be challenging to be kind to yourself which impacts your ability to be kind toward others or make kind choices.

Healthy Boundaries

I have found that the better I take care of myself, the more willing I am to control and edit my boundaries. I am able to set them wide, or I am able to draw them close. With people or situations I may not want to become close to, I set a wide boundary. With a select few people with whom I want to share my soul, I bring my boundaries close. I feel safe being vulnerable, raw, and unedited around those few people I allow really close into my soul space. People with weak or inappropriate boundaries often do not claim responsibility for themselves and solicit others to meet their needs for them. Are you taking good care of your needs? Do you meet and protect these needs yourself or through healthy, interdependent relationships like partnership, marriage, or friendship? Are you not meeting your needs or are you manipulating others into meeting your needs for you in unhealthy, co-dependent or manipulative relationships? It has been through the process of changing to a whole food, plant-based vegan diet for health, environment, and animals that I have been able to exert more control over my boundaries and fulfil my needs in healthy ways and improve my relationships.

Happiness Potential

If you do not feel energetic, you might be annoyed by those who are or you may try to unfairly siphon their energy. If you don’t feel uniquely beautiful or handsome according to your own standards, you may feel intimidated and try to minimise those who you do consider beautiful or handsome. If you don’t feel positive about your life, you might negatively try to tarnish the happiness of others because their joy will annoy you. Instead of bringing others down to our unhappy level we need to rise up to our own happiness potential. When others try to siphon your energy, minimize your beauty or handsomeness or negatively comment on your joy, you need to establish healthier and broader boundaries with these people.

Clarity Within

Establishing clarity within yourself about what you will tolerate and accept from yourself or others helps you to flow through life with fewer emotional snags, manipulative hooks, and energy draining relationships. Your healthy boundaries help you to edit out life’s junk and receive life’s gems. When you can say “no” to yourself – temptations, weaknesses, denials, bad habits, misaligned cultural norms – you are better able to say “no” to other people when necessary. Healthy boundaries with others begins with healthy boundaries with yourself. Period. Is eating well the only way? Of course not! No matter what self-development platform you position as the engine on your Change Train, the rest of the boxcars will follow. When you up-level the standards of one area of your life, the others are inevitably affected. You can use food, exercise, or spirituality, for examples, as the engine of your Change Train.

HERE’S HOW IT’S DONE:

1. When you make the decision and effort to feed yourself as best as you know how as often as you can, you establish a regime of acute self-care that tells your cells and the universe that you are placing yourself as a high priority. This builds your self-worth.

2. When you set standards for yourself which you are rarely willing to bend, you send the message that you are committed. This builds your self-loyalty.

3. When you demonstrate long-term, consistent, acute self-care, you demonstrate to those around you – family, friends, co-workers, community members – that you take full responsibility for your needs & wellbeing. You show that you adhere to your beliefs and that your actions match your beliefs. You have integrity and sovereignty. You walk your talk and you exude authority over yourself. This builds self-actualisation.

4. Those observing you over time will learn your standards and beliefs and will honour them or the relationship will dissolve. This builds self-respect. When you are able to generate self-worth, self-loyalty, self-actualisation and self-respect, you are more inclined to value, stand by, truly see and respect other people, other lives, and our global home

When we eat in a way that positively impacts all the touch-points in the chain of food production, we empower our food with conviction and purpose which becomes a part of who we are as we eat. When you notch-up your personal standards, some relationships will naturally dissolve. You need to decide for yourself what is more important: your personal standards of self-care and respect or the relationship. We’d prefer for those whom we love to grow & change with us, however sometimes we must let go of a relationship in order to take better care of ourselves. It’s not easy but sometimes it is necessary.

“You are what you eat and whom you don’t eat. A better relationship with yourself and others can start with your next meal.”

Eating well doesn’t prevent all future challenges with yourself or other people, however the more you love and care for yourself, the greater the chances are of you handling those challenges with grace, kindness, and respect…for yourself and others. These words may sound far-fetched to some of you and years ago I would have thought the same. However as I learned about food production and the food industry, as I listened to and learned from medical nutritionists, environmentalists, and as I felt deeply how horses are no different from cows, how similar pigs are to dogs, and how chickens can be as beautiful as swans, I became acutely aware that I didn’t want to knowingly cause any pain or suffering to feeling, breathing animals who don’t want to be separated from their families or killed.

Purpose, Conviction & Voice

I no longer wanted to participate in the system that breeds and inflicts torture to produce food that pollutes and destroys our external environment and causes disease in our internal body environments. I became aware of these realities, and I learned that by making different food choices that I could be an agent of positive, kinder change. In the process I found my purpose, conviction, and voice. I stand for unconditional compassion in all my interactions with humans, animals, and planet. I can’t control everything or anyone around me, but I can control myself and my choices. I am healthier, happier, and more passionate in my work than ever before. This too can be your story. Your path will be different than mine yet the same motivations can drive you. Begin to educate yourself. Watch films. Read books. Explore websites. But first, buy an excellent whole food, plant-based vegan cookbook and start eating delicious food infused with compassion for yourself, others, and the planet today.

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Stanley March 7, 2016 at 9:25 pm

I like this one

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Carla Golden March 8, 2016 at 10:44 am

Thank you Stanley for taking the time to read and comment!

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saad March 8, 2016 at 4:03 am

Thank you Carla for the topics and treatises that containing a considerable benefits to those who are specialists or otherwise

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Carla Golden March 8, 2016 at 10:41 am

You are welcome Saad. Thank you for taking the time to read & comment!

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