Within the first five minutes of declaring to meat-eaters that you are vegan, one of them is going to feel they have the right to start judging you. Don’t ask yourself why they will do this, just realise it will happen, and decide how you want to react when it does happen. How do you react now when someone tells you that you are doing something wrong? Are you especially attracted to people that tell you that you are doing something wrong? Most people are not! Most people hate other people telling them they are doing something wrong. Most people hate it so much that they dislike other people that arbitrarily feel they have the right to criticize them. Hopefully these people that criticize you are not your friends. Most of us do not tolerate this sort of behaviour from friends. Most friendships end very soon after one of the friends begins criticizing the other.
The first point to take from this is that it will happen, so be prepared for how you intend to react. Do not put any value on the person’s opinions. Just let it wash over you and disappear into the distance.
The second point to take from this is that other people do not want to hear your criticisms of them, their values, and their behaviour. If you criticise your friends for not living consistently with your standards, expect them to react exactly the same way you would react if they did that to you.
Many new converts to religion, multi-level marketing, and (unfortunately) veganism seem to feel the urge to immediately start telling other people how they should behave. If you do this to your friends, expect them to de-friend you. If you do it within your workplace or social circle, expect people to isolate you. And what is even worse, these people will become anti whatever cause you are promoting simply because they do not like being judged by arrogant fools. Many people are negative towards veganism simply because they have experience of this sort of behaviour from some newly converted vegan in the past.
It is good and healthy to judge your own actions. But rather than judging your actions as having been right or wrong, it is more helpful to ask yourself ‘if I ever find myself in the same situation again as I was faced with today, will I react the same way or is there a better way I could choose to act next time?’ This way your self-judgement becomes self-improvement.
If you want to learn how to influence other people, then commit to learning this skill. A good place to start would be reading Dale Carnegie’s classic book called ‘How to win friends and influence people’. Once you have read that, read it again. There is a lot to absorb.