Tough Sacrifices and Harsh Consequences

Oprah likes to talk about things that she has learned so far. In this piece I will try to do the same. I come to this from a different perspective. When I was a child, one of the things that I learned early on in life was that there were definite and severe consequences to actions. There wasn’t much a learning period and failure was met with harsh consequences. As much as this was traumatizing for me, it would be a good training for life.

As I grew older, one of the other things I learned a great deal about was tough sacrifices. Life is far from easy and it’s high-input. You can’t just expect things to happen, you have to reach for them and that means making tough sacrifices.

I recently read:

You can have:

• A career
• A Social life
• A Family

Pick 2.  That’s a tough sacrifice, to knowingly give up on having a family (for now) in order to achieve other goals and priorities.

Speaking of Oprah, she also mentioned something important: “You can have ti all, just not right now.”

One of the biggest “ah ha” moments that I had as my 20s came to a close was that I could not have it all. I could not have a great job and a writing career and a great relationship and….and… and….

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I had to choose, what were my real priorities? Tough sacrifices…
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The consequences for not realizing this have been pretty harsh and get worse the more that is at stake. Trying to jam everything into a single life at any given moment means that something is going to get neglected. That pretty much defined my 20s. I spent time not sleeping and doing everything and just consuming life like it was a commodity that I couldn’t get enough of. However, this came at a cost because my health was no stable, I did not eat well all the time, and I did not tend to myself emotionally. I depended on others to do my emotional maintenance for me instead of taking care of my own feelings and my own emotions. It was easier to deny that I was feeling something than to deal with the implications of what I was feeling and what I might have to change because of it. I was too afraid of the consequences to make the sacrifice.

I suppose it’s a basic human fear. We want to avoid the painful and reap the reward, the plenty and the easy. In our day and age of easy instant gratification, life is quick to remind that the matters of life do not come with Amazon prime. The selection is not unlimited and there will be things that you will do without either by force or by choice and that in order to gain something, something must be paid. Everything has a price and often the currency is our hopes and dreams. That might sound dire, but let’s face it, we get ideas about how life is like or how it should be and we start to hang our plans on these ideas but the sad reality is that you really can’t have it all. You have to make Tough Sacrifices.

Sometimes it seems like all there is in life is tough sacrifices and harsh consequences. It makes things seem so cold and difficult. Realizing this has made me want to curl up in a ball in my bed and never come out ever again.

However, this life principle can be to our advantage if we time things correctly. Because what this experience has done for me is caused me to focus. I didn’t really understand why almost every successful person says that focus is so important. Focus is clarifying, it helps you to say no to things when it’s not right or not the right opportunity for you at that moment.

It’s a boundary, knowing what you can do  and what you WANT to do is vital to making decisions about what to pursue.