I had to unfollow someone today in social media. It bothered me to click “unfollow”, but I felt I had to. For at least the second time, I was reading not-exactly-accurate information they proclaimed as absolute truth. It wasn’t the misinformation that bothered me as much as it was the delivery.  Delivery makes all the difference to me. There are plenty of people I follow, whose opinions I disagree with, but I still follow because their information is presented as an opinion, so I am fine with that!  I guess all this comes with platforms like social media, but I am extremely guarded about who I let speak into my life, and since I was reading this person’s posts daily, I needed to cut that “speak” out of my life. Not because they believed something differently than me about food; I’m all about learning new things, but because their one-sided opinion was presented as broad-sweeping truth with no distinction made between good — and bad —, and therein lies the rub, for me anyway. (I do have opinions regarding absolute truth, but they are spiritual, and have nothing to do with food choices.)

So, I am writing this post to encourage you (especially my young readers) to be discerning in life, and be careful who you allow to speak into your life on a daily basis. Don’t take advice from someone just because they have a blog, Instagram, or Facebook page where they give advice. Think for yourself. Research for yourself. That’s one of the reasons I put a zillion links all over my blog, because I want you to read & decide for yourself if you believe that too. In general, don’t take advice from people who have not experienced what you want from life. For example, I am not “skinny” at size 8-10. I cannot give you advice on how to get skinny, so don’t follow my blog to get skinny. But I am also never sick,and I have a long list of ailments that have been relieved since I started living this way. It has worked for me, but I am very careful to try not to use words like “never”  or  “always” when it comes to food (I realize I used it describing “sick” above, but that was describing my life, not food).

So, what about you? Do you follow people you know you don’t agree with? Do you try to educate them by commenting, or do you just keep quiet, or un-follow when they say something blatantly wrong in your opinion?

I follow many different kinds of foodies and enjoy reading many opinions. I consider myself pretty open-minded when it comes to food and food lifestyle choices.  I’ve described on my blog that I “eat the fish and leave the bones” when reading something I do not agree with. I can do that because I read and think for myself, and I’m better at it at 44 than I was at 24 (at least one good thing to turning 40something! Can I get a witness?!)  What I’m asking about are the people you really pay attention to on a constant basis; the ones who “speak into your life” consistently at some level. Who might you need to unfollow because they’re leading you away from  truth? Who is speaking into your life in a way that is not helping you reach your goals or encouraging you? If it’s a spouse or parent, that’s a whole other issue you may need some professional counsel on, but if it’s just a “friend”, or a blogger, a tweeter, a poster of information that you can easily unfollow, maybe you should evaluate that. Evaluate and make corrections. There are many UNfollows in life, some more painful than others. Make sure you’re following those who lead well.

Encouraging Health,

Organic Eater

Here is a picture I posted on Instagram after creating this post…