Pure Food Life

Let’s Be Honest Here

Within the life I find that many advocates, teachers, nutritionists, authors, life coaches, and other types of members of the educational aspect of society pride themselves on the notion of their new found perfection through the methods that they proclaim.  My use of the term perfectionist here is very particular in pertaining to members of the health life, but it also applies to everyone.  What I mean is that they may claim to be in balance with nature, to not be tempted by propelling factors of society, or to never be tempted by not so healthful foods, or not so healthful behaviors and thoughts.  As true as their claims may be, I find their mantras to be a little false at times or at least exaggerated.  Members of the health community may want to portray an image of perfection of their way of life to their clients in order to appear more successful and to give themselves a more authoritative voice.  Which is understandable, how can you sell a T.V. set if you tell your clients it doesn’t work right?  It is pretty easy to hide behind a pretty website or a fancy book cover.  Furthermore, it is even easier to hide behind words.  The words in publications by various people tend to stand as the end all of someone’s life style and emotional well being; what they say on their websites and books is what the reader will believe.  It is also what the reader wants to believe.  One smart nutritionist once told me that to be a teacher you have to walk the walk and talk the talk.  But how many of us have talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk, at least once in a while when no one was looking?  Is it not crazy to assume that every life coach’s life is not perfect?  That they are not entirely happy or not dealing with personal battles similar to the ones their clients may be going through?

What is typically more common among people in all of life to want to appear a certain way or perfect to their peers.  For example, this notion manifests itself in the diet aspect of the health life.  Many people who put labels on their diets such as raw foodist, raw vegan, high raw, vegan, place-favorite-blood-type-diet-here, think that is important for everyone to know that they always eat that way.  They may always order a plain salad when they go out to eat with friends but snack on the occasional bag of chips when no one is looking.  Then if asked what their dietary habits are like they may fully eradicate that bag of chips from their answer.  The point here is that not everyone eats perfectly according to their label and may even lie about their habits out of shame.  This simply should not be the case.  Life is about progression not ultimate perfection, because perfection my friends is simply not possible.  Not to mention that everyone’s version of holistic perfection differs from one another.  In another instance one may lie about stress levels, a person who is providing nutritional consultation to an anxiety sufferer may not want to tell their client that they too sometimes suffer from anxious thoughts? This brings me to my next point: that people have no problem telling you the way they were in the past but don’t really dwell on the way they are today.  For instance on many websites holistic practitioners and bloggers may list the problems they had before changing their lifestyle habits but rarely include their current transformations in their textual database.  This is quite sad because it does not dignify the journey.  Those of us who pride ourselves on our journey to a happier state of mind may find themselves skipping to the end of the story before they get there.

Again I want to reiterate that this is a normal aspect of human nature.  We all want our peers to view us in a certain way.  Everyone wants to appear on top of the world and in control.  There is nothing wrong with that.  The one thing that I think needs to change is the level of honesty that we have in our work.  There is nothing wrong with talking about a current struggle we are facing or a slipup that we had “that one time.”  In fact admitting to our imperfections whatever they may be can only increase our levels of integrity and sincerity.  They may also increase our ability to see our own journeys.

Look, I am not going to sit behind this blog and tell you that I’m perfect.  Hey here we go, no I do not eat only vegetables all the time.  Yes I am still sometimes influenced by thoughts that are lodged in a dying eating disorder.  Sometimes I cheat.  Sometimes I sleep too late.  I get stressed out, I over eat, I under eat.  I have not fully understood the capacity of my own mind and do not fully understand the internal forces that have driven me to make both positive and negative social and emotional decisions in my lifetime.  BUT! I have made progress.  I am smarter, stronger, better, more positive, less disordered, and more relaxed than I used to be.  My health is 100 percent better than it used to be, but it still has room for improvement.  Yes I get a headache or a stomach ache sometimes.  If you come to me for advice I would provide you with much more intelligent and wise incite than I would have a few years ago.  But would it be perfect, probably not?  Am I still growing as a person, yes I am.

So the end point of this article is that let’s be honest with each other, I respect the person who tells me that they drank too much last night way more than the person who claims to eat raw all the time and never drink.  For those of us who have reached our goals and practice what we preach, or those of us who admit to imperfection.  Rock on.  When we step out of our humanistic egos we truly embody the holistic spirit.  So come on; let’s be honest here.