Desire is a limited resource. Any desire you orient toward one thing cannot be shared with another. There can only be one thing you want the most at any one time—even if you are inconsistent in what it is, whether you intend it or not, whether you are aware of what it is or not, and whether you like it or not.
It is possible to desire multiple things at once, but any amount of allocated desire cannot be shared with another objective at the same time. Too often, the reason you have not received something you desire is that you don’t desire it enough to do what it takes to obtain it, because that desire is already allocated elsewhere.
One of the greatest detractions from obtaining what you want in life is holding mutually exclusive aims that ensure you will never make significant progress in any one of them. Even when values are not mutually exclusive, they still compete in the sense that you can only do one thing at a time, and therefore everything has to be more or less important than everything else. It is uncomfortable to think about competing options for our concern this way, but realize that there is no other way to act: every choice is an exchange. Even when you don’t realize it, every choice is the preference of something above everything else.
The word sacrifice has been corrupted to mean something you go without. In reality, it means to increase the priority of something you do not yet have such that it replaces something you do. For example, to sacrifice something for your children means to value providing that thing to your children over whatever it will replace.
Needing to choose one option necessarily means not choosing another, but you should not feel as if these revelations of conflict are an experience of loss. Remember, the value of something must be denominated in the things we view as less valuable than it. The more value you sacrifice for something, the more value it will have to you.
Whatever you don’t have is always a result of either not knowing its cost or not having paid it. You will obtain everything that you desire above its cost, provided you possess an accurate enough belief to describe how to obtain it. Even when you want something more than anything else, you still might not want it enough to meet or exceed its cost.
You are unlikely to achieve anything worthwhile without devoting your full attention to it for at least a span of time. The greatest outcomes in life do not tolerate competition. They require your full attention. Anything that requires everything prevents the contemporary pursuit of anything else. The greatest pursuits cannot succeed while you are only partially committed, or while you simultaneously seek lateral alternatives that sap your limited resources away from the main pursuit.
To make something your highest priority means it is what you want no matter the cost. If there are constraints, such as certain things you would not do or timeframes you would not endure to obtain it, you can’t say it is your top desire. Rather, the constraints are.
This point about constraints may seem subtle to some, but it is very important. Most people are riddled with constraints, most of which they’ve never thought of explicitly. The addition of each constraint on a desire decreases the probability that a complying solution exists. One of the benefits of the life plan is that it helps you be more explicit about the constraints you set, making it more possible to obtain what you say you want the most, as well as revealing when you actually want something else more.
The wrong kind of sacrifice happens when you sacrifice higher priorities for lower priorities. This kind of sacrifice breaks authenticity, and it causes a host of outsized problems within and around you that can be hard to trace to their source. Don’t violate more important priorities to obtain lesser priorities.