Monday, August 16, 2010

S is for Sacrifice

Success in any endeavor requires, among other things, commitment and follow through. You cannot simply wish to be successful in any area of your life and really expect that to be enough. If all it took was wishing and no effort beyond that the world would be full of spoiled, unhappy and disillusioned people. There is a sense of satisfaction earned when you reach milestones. As I said before, success is a journey and not an actual destination. You may plateau for a while but you’ll then need to push up to reach another level or risk sliding downward. There is no steady-state.

SO, it stands to reason that there will be trade offs throughout your success journey. You have to decide what is more important to you and what you are willing to put off or give up entirely throughout the process. Some will be easy – you can get along just fine without watching television or surfing the web every night from dinner to bedtime. Some will be hard – do you say yes when asked to chair another committee at your local church, mosque or synagogue, or do you decline so that you can focus more time on family or business needs.

It will not always be easy to decide which path to take, which decision is right for you but let me throw out this one caution. Make sure you sacrifice evenly in all of the five basic elements of personal development (Head, Heart, Health, Wealth, and World). True success comes from a balance among the five. If you consistently sacrifice time in one area then you are slowing down your own development. This leads to an unbalanced life and to a lack of self fulfillment. You can’t find true success down just one path. You may be successful in that one area but the lack of development in the remaining areas will pull you down just as fast as trying to swim with 50 pounds shackles on your feet. It just can’t be done.

Yes, you have to make sacrifices along the way. But you need to balance them out. Give up time this week or month in the area of wealth building, but then not next month. It isn’t always easy but you are not on this path because it is easy. You are on a path of personal development in order to become all that you were made to be. You are on this path in order to shine all the brilliance that is you onto the earth.

Click here for the next blog in the series.

No comments:

Post a Comment