Vegans and Paleos, Unite?

Vegan - One who does not partake in food or products that have a face.  Or someone who choses not to use animal products.

Paleo - One who strived to eat like a caveman.  Or someone who choses to eat mostly vegetables and healthy meats.  Strives to not eat processed foods.

First off, I am a natural Einstein...  In this weeks live video, I started the live broadcast and had my cast iron seasoning on my stove.  Not 1 minute into my video, I smell burning... and decide to take a little journey.  Thats why there is some traveling in the early part of the video.

Gotta love live video! 

One of the thing I have been thinking about this week has been how sometimes completely different ideas have more in common than they do differently.

A specific example are the vegan and paleo communities.  They actually have many ideas in common:  

• Clean produce - without treatment with pesticides or other chemicals
• Ethical treatment of animals - Animals that are free to roam, without hormones or antibiotics 
• Eat delicious food!

The one BIG difference is the eating of animals.  You may argue which style of eating is better, though with all these things in common we could do some good on improving how we grow food and treat animals in society.  There is opportunity to create win-win situations bases on our common interests.

There is a cool lesson here for how to influence people.  If you can find the common interests, and speak to them when trying to solve a problem you will be much more likely to succeed versus pointing out where the other people differ from you.

Here are three more ideas to help you influence for good, and not evil.

1. Empathy - If you understand how other people will feel,  you can make sure you cover their interests.
2. Find the win-win - Knowing other peoples interests, share how everyone wins by taking on this project, believing this idea, or by doing this "thing"
3. Lead with a complement -  People love to help people they like. One simple idea is to acknowledge the good and awesome in others.

Will vegans and paleo ever unite?  Maybe not but someday I hope so!

Have a wonderful week!