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I find that I can be completely moved by the bravery, energy, and audacity of some people on their missions to uphold and perpetuate the changes they want to see in the world. And yet, I can also be completely turned off and pushed away by others utilizing the same qualities.

I have an example here, but I want to give a standard caveat. I don’t like to generalize at all. This is about a specific instance, not about a group of people. And while I talk about an interaction with a Vegan, I am not speaking poorly of vegans, simply this person’s approach to their mission, without consideration to my missions.

When shopping at a local food store, an acquaintance of mine saw that I had milk in my cart, and they approached me to discuss how I was taking part of destroying the environment because she was the type of person that thought that the production of meat was destroying the Universe. She asked me if I didn’t care about the ozone, and all of the methane produced by cows. I told her that I can only care about so many causes. And she was aghast. How could you not care about this???

Here is the entire point of this post… You cannot care about everything, so I give you permission to tell these people in your life that you care about X, Y, and Z. And that you do your part where you can. You cannot own their mission, just because they brought it to your door step. I give you permission to say no, and hold compassion for that person.

What is your Mission? What activist beliefs do you carry? Do you want to help in politics? Do you want to help treatment of animals? Do you want to help educate youth on money? What good do you wish to do for the world? Pick one, pick two, pick as many as you truly care about. And I would like you to tack on, “And what are you going to do in order to take care of yourself, so that you can work on this item.” (I want to thank Jen Hoffman for that piece of wisdom)

If you select only one thing, and you find a way to help that in whatever small way, and you can take care of yourself to assure you feel good in the long run, you have just successfully stepped towards helping the world. And once you are here, there is no one who can guilt you into their mission because you purchased milk in front of them.

I would also like to point out that you might find that your day-to-day is more than you can do to even keep your head above water… If you are here, I would like you to take the time to acknowledge that you treading is a valuable actionable item. I would like you to still look into that second step: “And what are you going to do in order to take care of yourself, so that you can work on this item.”

Wishing you the best in this new year!