The Challenge With Making Sacrifices

Written by a human, for humans, always.

They say to succeed in life…

You need to make sacrifices.

Now…

Making sacrifices may be very difficult for some people.

Their challenge is getting started.

But there is a different subset of people…

Where the question is not whether they will sacrifice or not.

The answer is simple for them.

They will make sacrifices to reach the goals that they have in life.

This, however, creates a new challenge.

Not “whether” they will sacrifice…

But rather “what” sacrifices they will make…

And importantly…

Whether those sacrifices are truly worth it in the long term.

As humans…

We seem to be extremely terrible at navigating the value of different types of sacrifices.

The classic example here is the parent who is working toward reaching some level of career success…

But discovers by the time they reach that success…

If they ever reach it at all…

Their families have moved on.

Their spouses no longer have feelings for them.

Their children have lives they know nothing about.

By the time they “have time”…

It is too late, and the damage has been done in those relationships.

Other sacrifices may be less dire, but still incredibly important.

Right now, I have a goal to write daily articles…

And I have succeeded with this goal for over 1,350 days now (rounded down)…

And today is no exception.

However…

I’m in the midst of traveling…

It is late here…

I am on a train ride for about 2 hours…

And…

I get motion sickness when reading.

If I write this article…

I will feel awful by the end of this trip…

And…

If I do not write this article…

I will be cutting my time for this article close.

So the solution is easy for me…

I write.

I will not feel great later…

But it is a smaller sacrifice that I am willing to make, and I will be able to sleep it off.

The value of making that sacrifice seems worth it in my opinion.

But…

Generally…

We as humans struggle to navigate the sacrifices in our lives.

We often fail to sacrifice at the best opportunities available to us…

Causing us to begin or continue to establish a habit of denying opportunities…

Until opportunities begin to dry up.

Or…

We believe something is very valuable…

Only to discover later that it was not truly that valuable…

And there were other things vastly more valuable.

I have fallen into this trap with different “opportunities” to get access to marketing tools, services, and education that today are useless and brought no value to my business.

Sometimes you learn the value of a sacrifice the hard way.

But the question becomes…

How do you navigate sacrifices with success?

How do you make valuable sacrifices…

While avoiding making costly and worthless sacrifices?

It is not an easy thing to answer…

But you have to start by understanding what is truly valuable.

For instance…

For the parent…

Time with your spouse and children is vastly more valuable than what specifically you do.

Many parents make the family sacrifice for career growth opportunities because…

They believe that they will be able to provide higher-value opportunities to their family when they obtain that career success.

The problem is that by the time they generally obtain that success…

They have broken their relationships too many times to gain actual value because their families have sadly moved on.

They underestimated the value of time with people and overestimated the value of experiences.

Experiences can be great…

But few people want to go on an experience with a stranger…

Especially when that stranger has appeared to ignore them for years.

You need to begin to rank what is deeply valuable in your life.

For instance…

My number one value in my life is my relationship with the Lord.

I prioritize that over everything.

The second most valuable thing in my life is my relationship with my spouse.

Marriage, to me, is a covenantal relationship where the two become one...

So my spouse’s life is my own life.

Next, I prioritize my family and how I can best serve them.

Family to me is blood, but expand beyond blood to those who have been there for me and with me through thick and thin, equal to blood in my opinion.

Then I have my career.

My work is incredibly important…

But I put it fairly low on the list because I understand that there is greater value in relationships than there is in worldly measures of success…

And I have been blessed with a number of those successes in life, glory to God.

At the end of my list…

I have goals that I would like to accomplish at different points in my life.

This includes things like completing a 100-mile race, doing Spartan’s Project 7, writing a fantasy-fiction book, and visiting different parts of the world.

Would I like to do all of these things?

Sure.

Will they all happen?

I’m unsure.

But this is what I know…

I have other priorities that I would rather make sacrifices for.

If I had to choose to make a sacrifice between my family and one of these things…

I would choose my family every single time…

And I have made sacrifices like that in my life.

I have had opportunities where I could choose between these different paths…

And I choose family.

Even if the sacrifice was painful…

And some of them have been…

I do not regret those sacrifices…

Because I know what is truly valuable in my life.

When you begin to understand what is truly valuable…

You can begin to become wiser in the sacrifices that you make.

I am on a trip with my wonderful spouse right now.

We are having the time of our lives at one of our dream destinations to visit.

I have a small opportunity to write currently, and there is a sacrifice in how I will feel…

But I would not have traded how the rest of the day was spent with my spouse.

That was a sacrifice I was not willing to make.

I have had other opportunities to make money and build my business while on this trip.

I pushed them all off until I return home because my time with my spouse was more important.

When you understand what is actually valuable…

You begin to see what sacrifices occur where…

What the costs will be…

Not just in the immediate, but also in the long term.

When you begin to see these different levels of value with wisdom…

The sacrifices become easier to determine.

Not necessarily easy…

Because every sacrifice is still a sacrifice…

And some will be very painful.

But…

You will not come to regret those sacrifices…

And that is something that very few people will be able to feel when they come to the end of their lives.

What you have to understand…

Is what is most valuable to us as human beings…

Not based on broken cultural standards where most people are left feeling empty and decayed internally….

But what is psychophysiologically needed for us as humans to flourish.

When you understand that…

You can put the right priorities in the right places in life…

And then you will only make the sacrifices that are truly valuable…

Leaving you feeling better than worse.

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