If there's something I recently realized or something I've probably always known but never paid attention to, it is that we indirectly easily discourage people from going ahead to do certain things that they want to do, and I happen to be guilty of this too.
Let me explain.
Recently, I've been paying a lot more attention to the things I eat because apparently, a lot of these things will kill us if we keep on taking them the way we do. Well, ever since I started doing that, I began to notice a lot of things about eating healthy through my research and all that, and being the good friend that I am, rather than keep these things to myself, I always talk about them to my friends, hoping that they too will begin a lifestyle change and hopefully stop or reduce the way they take these things.
Unfortunately, ever since I started doing that, all of my friends now call me a doctor, but not in a good way, almost like they feel I'm now the food police, the guy who doesn't want them to enjoy themselves.
And like I said, they say these things in a way that makes me feel like I'm being mocked, and it does hurt my feelings every now and then. Now if this was happening to someone who isn't strong enough to stand with what they believe in, they could easily succumb to that whole mockery and just go back to being the guy who cares less about what he puts in his body.
But that isn't me, because this isn't something I can just ignore, mostly due to the fact that at the end of the day, it's a matter of life and death because some of these things can kill you if you keep on ignoring the health risks.
The reason I said I've been guilty of this same act is because there was a time back in high school when this friend of mine was a born-again Christian and would always seize every opportunity he had to preach the gospel.
We were young then and would always mock him about it until he stopped. I don't know if he stopped believing or he just stopped preaching to us in order to avoid getting laughed out every time he tried to preach.
These are things people do every day, and sincerely speaking, I don't really see it stopping. All you have to do is work on yourself and your confidence, and as long as you know that what you're doing is right and, most especially, healthy for you, don't stop doing it for yourself. You can stop talking to them about it, because they can't be forced to change, but as for yourself, make sure you continue.