• Placing flower petals as a sacrifice
(click here to read a summary of this post)

 

To live an extraordinary life, you need to make huge sacrifices.

But do you know that to live an average life, you also have to make huge sacrifices?

Let me explain.

The concept of sacrifice dates back to thousands of years since civilisation.

In ancient times, many cultures would offer a sacrifice to appease the gods they worshipped.

These sacrifices could take the form of meat, fruits, gold, blood or even life itself.

The key idea was to give away something that you deem valuable, in exchange for the prospect of something more valuable.

To an outsider, it may seem completely pointless.

If you were starving, why on Earth would you give away the precious remains of your food… for a non-guaranteed POSSIBILITY of getting something more?

And yet today, many cultures around the world still practise such customs.

While you may not actually make any tangible offerings of food to ‘appease the gods’, you may already be making sacrifices in your daily life already.

If you go to work every day, you’re already making a huge sacrifice.

You’re sacrificing time (which you cannot get back) and effort (which you could’ve spent on other activities) for money.

If you divide your monthly paycheck by the number of hours you work – you’ll get the value of how you much you’re ‘selling’ your life-time to your company.

Is your time really worth that amount?

If you believe your time is worth way more than what you’re actually paid, then congratulations you’re making a sacrifice!

What about relationships? Every single commitment you make is a sacrifice.

For every person you commit your time and attention to, you’re trading away your time and attention for other people.

Occasionally, you’d have situations where you’re obliged to spend time with other people (e.g. having to follow your partner to spend time with their friends and family).

Maybe you dread it. You dream of being somewhere else instead of putting on a fake smile pretending you’re enjoying yourself.

You sigh, knowing that it’s part of the package you signed up for.

Is that a sacrifice? Absolutely.

What about choosing to live a healthier lifestyle? This can be a tremendous sacrifice.

It’s a painful, day-to-day sacrifice of choosing to turn down what you’re used to – whether it’s having that cigarette, munching that delicious bag of chips or savouring that sinful bowl of ice-cream…

But if you pull through, it can lead to a longer, healthier life where you have the energy to do the things you love without the burden of a weak body.

And that is ultimately priceless.

The bottom line here is: for EVERYTHING in life, there’s a sacrifice. There’s always a cost to whatever you get to enjoy now. 

You could choose the laziest, most comfortable life right now, where you have no commitments.

You get to do whatever you want, whenever you like…

…but you can’t run away from the fact that you need resources to have such a life.

And to acquire those resources, guess what?

You have to sacrifice.

I mentioned at the start of this article that when you choose to live an average, mediocre life where you are unchallenged – that too is a sacrifice.

But what are you sacrificing?

You’re sacrificing your potential – the incredible possibility that you can achieve extraordinary things with the time you’re allowed to spend on this Earth.

Every minute you spend in mediocrity is a minute you could’ve spent in excellence. 

If you fast forward to your last day on Earth – how would you feel knowing that you could’ve spent all those years challenging yourself to become an extraordinary person that everyone is inspired by… instead of choosing a hamster-wheel life, doing the same mediocre days over and over?

We don’t get to live forever.

And we don’t get to run it back after we’re dead.

So it’s absolutely critical that we pause and ask ourselves this ONE important question:

‘What kind of sacrifice do I want to make in my life?’

This is such a great question because it frames our minds to think rationally and understand that ‘success has a price’.

Are you willing to pay that price? If the answer is yes, then you’re choosing the right path.

You’re not asking yourself if you ‘have’ to. You’re asking yourself if you WANT to. 

And that distinction shows you where your motivation lies.

This question reminds me of an article by Mark Manson when he states that one of the questions you want to ask to find the purpose of your life is: what kind of sh*t sandwich are you willing to eat?

It sounds really disgusting but it is a powerful question that can help you rediscover who you are.

Let’s take for example a professional athlete.

For professional athletes, their struggle is immense physical pain, exhaustion, risk of injuries, a lack of social life, the resources invested in perfecting their skills, and the very real possibility of investing everything and still losing.

Waking up every day with an aching body. Paying with literal blood, sweat and tears.

There’s a tiny chance they come out on top and win a prestigious gold medal, but the likelihood of losing or having a career-ending injury from intense training is so much higher.

This is the struggle a professional athlete is willing to take. This is their sh*t sandwich. This is their sacrifice.

Another example is a successful public speaker.

Excellent public speakers invest countless hours on rehearsing their speeches over and over, hard-earned money on professional coaching and painstaking effort to perfect their craft.

Along the way, they risk social embarrassment, agonising nervousness and being laughed at by their audience. Over and over again.

To become the world champion of public speaking, multiply that sacrifice by a thousand. And even then – the odds of winning the title is incredibly slim.

And yet this is the struggle a successful public speaker is willing to take. This is their sh*t sandwich. This is their sacrifice.

Choose A ‘Worthy’ Sacrifice That Will Make It All Worth It

I believe in order to achieve anything significant in life, we must be ready to choose our sacrifice even more than we want to achieve our goals.

Not all of us are professional athletes or successful public speakers because not all of us are willing to make that kind of sacrifice.

And that’s okay.

Forge your own path and choose a struggle which you can deal more effectively than other people. 

A gazelle’s struggle is protecting itself from hungry predators, but it is built with agility and nimbleness that helps it escape them. So its struggle is suited to its strengths.

Likewise, choose something that the combination of your strengths, personality and talents will make you more resistant to handle a specific struggle that nobody else could.

Determine: what would you be willing to achieve that is worth the sacrifice? Then from there, choose a worthy sacrifice that is related directly to that desire.

Never stop at just choosing your goals.

Take a realist’s approach to goal-setting by choosing your sacrifice, and you’ll find that despite the struggle, you know deep in your heart that the sacrifice will be worth it.

Summary

Everything in life requires sacrifice.

By living an average, mediocre life, you’re sacrificing your POTENTIAL: the incredible possibility that you can achieve extraordinary things with the time you’re allowed to spend on this Earth. Every minute you spend in mediocrity is one minute you could’ve spent in excellence.

Ask yourself: What kind of sacrifice do I want to make in my life? This question frames our mind to think rationally and understand that ‘success has a price’, and we then find out if we’re willing to pay that price.

Choose something that the combination of your strengths, personality and talents will make you more resistant to handle a specific struggle that nobody else could.

(click here to read a summary of this post)

 

To live an extraordinary life, you need to make huge sacrifices.

But do you know that to live an average life, you also have to make huge sacrifices?

Let me explain.

The concept of sacrifice dates back to thousands of years since civilisation.

In ancient times, many cultures would offer a sacrifice to appease the gods they worshipped.

These sacrifices could take the form of meat, fruits, gold, blood or even life itself.

The key idea was to give away something that you deem valuable, in exchange for the prospect of something more valuable.

To an outsider, it may seem completely pointless.

If you were starving, why on Earth would you give away the precious remains of your food… for a non-guaranteed POSSIBILITY of getting something more?

And yet today, many cultures around the world still practise such customs.

While you may not actually make any tangible offerings of food to ‘appease the gods’, you may already be making sacrifices in your daily life already.

If you go to work every day, you’re already making a huge sacrifice.

You’re sacrificing time (which you cannot get back) and effort (which you could’ve spent on other activities) for money.

If you divide your monthly paycheck by the number of hours you work – you’ll get the value of how you much you’re ‘selling’ your life-time to your company.

Is your time really worth that amount?

If you believe your time is worth way more than what you’re actually paid, then congratulations you’re making a sacrifice!

What about relationships? Every single commitment you make is a sacrifice.

For every person you commit your time and attention to, you’re trading away your time and attention for other people.

Occasionally, you’d have situations where you’re obliged to spend time with other people (e.g. having to follow your partner to spend time with their friends and family).

Maybe you dread it. You dream of being somewhere else instead of putting on a fake smile pretending you’re enjoying yourself.

You sigh, knowing that it’s part of the package you signed up for.

Is that a sacrifice? Absolutely.

What about choosing to live a healthier lifestyle? This can be a tremendous sacrifice.

It’s a painful, day-to-day sacrifice of choosing to turn down what you’re used to – whether it’s having that cigarette, munching that delicious bag of chips or savouring that sinful bowl of ice-cream…

But if you pull through, it can lead to a longer, healthier life where you have the energy to do the things you love without the burden of a weak body.

And that is ultimately priceless.

The bottom line here is: for EVERYTHING in life, there’s a sacrifice. There’s always a cost to whatever you get to enjoy now. 

You could choose the laziest, most comfortable life right now, where you have no commitments.

You get to do whatever you want, whenever you like…

…but you can’t run away from the fact that you need resources to have such a life.

And to acquire those resources, guess what?

You have to sacrifice.

I mentioned at the start of this article that when you choose to live an average, mediocre life where you are unchallenged – that too is a sacrifice.

But what are you sacrificing?

You’re sacrificing your potential – the incredible possibility that you can achieve extraordinary things with the time you’re allowed to spend on this Earth.

Every minute you spend in mediocrity is a minute you could’ve spent in excellence. 

If you fast forward to your last day on Earth – how would you feel knowing that you could’ve spent all those years challenging yourself to become an extraordinary person that everyone is inspired by… instead of choosing a hamster-wheel life, doing the same mediocre days over and over?

We don’t get to live forever.

And we don’t get to run it back after we’re dead.

So it’s absolutely critical that we pause and ask ourselves this ONE important question:

‘What kind of sacrifice do I want to make in my life?’

This is such a great question because it frames our minds to think rationally and understand that ‘success has a price’.

Are you willing to pay that price? If the answer is yes, then you’re choosing the right path.

You’re not asking yourself if you ‘have’ to. You’re asking yourself if you WANT to. 

And that distinction shows you where your motivation lies.

This question reminds me of an article by Mark Manson when he states that one of the questions you want to ask to find the purpose of your life is: what kind of sh*t sandwich are you willing to eat?

It sounds really disgusting but it is a powerful question that can help you rediscover who you are.

Let’s take for example a professional athlete.

For professional athletes, their struggle is immense physical pain, exhaustion, risk of injuries, a lack of social life, the resources invested in perfecting their skills, and the very real possibility of investing everything and still losing.

Waking up every day with an aching body. Paying with literal blood, sweat and tears.

There’s a tiny chance they come out on top and win a prestigious gold medal, but the likelihood of losing or having a career-ending injury from intense training is so much higher.

This is the struggle a professional athlete is willing to take. This is their sh*t sandwich. This is their sacrifice.

Another example is a successful public speaker.

Excellent public speakers invest countless hours on rehearsing their speeches over and over, hard-earned money on professional coaching and painstaking effort to perfect their craft.

Along the way, they risk social embarrassment, agonising nervousness and being laughed at by their audience. Over and over again.

To become the world champion of public speaking, multiply that sacrifice by a thousand. And even then – the odds of winning the title is incredibly slim.

And yet this is the struggle a successful public speaker is willing to take. This is their sh*t sandwich. This is their sacrifice.

Choose A ‘Worthy’ Sacrifice That Will Make It All Worth It

I believe in order to achieve anything significant in life, we must be ready to choose our sacrifice even more than we want to achieve our goals.

Not all of us are professional athletes or successful public speakers because not all of us are willing to make that kind of sacrifice.

And that’s okay.

Forge your own path and choose a struggle which you can deal more effectively than other people. 

A gazelle’s struggle is protecting itself from hungry predators, but it is built with agility and nimbleness that helps it escape them. So its struggle is suited to its strengths.

Likewise, choose something that the combination of your strengths, personality and talents will make you more resistant to handle a specific struggle that nobody else could.

Determine: what would you be willing to achieve that is worth the sacrifice? Then from there, choose a worthy sacrifice that is related directly to that desire.

Never stop at just choosing your goals.

Take a realist’s approach to goal-setting by choosing your sacrifice, and you’ll find that despite the struggle, you know deep in your heart that the sacrifice will be worth it.

Summary

Everything in life requires sacrifice.

By living an average, mediocre life, you’re sacrificing your POTENTIAL: the incredible possibility that you can achieve extraordinary things with the time you’re allowed to spend on this Earth. Every minute you spend in mediocrity is one minute you could’ve spent in excellence.

Ask yourself: What kind of sacrifice do I want to make in my life? This question frames our mind to think rationally and understand that ‘success has a price’, and we then find out if we’re willing to pay that price.

Choose something that the combination of your strengths, personality and talents will make you more resistant to handle a specific struggle that nobody else could.