I can hear my mother now (theoretically speaking, Mom 
I’m sure you never said this) I’ve SACRIFICED so much for you! Our teachers told us you’re going to have to make BIG sacrifices if you want to get into college. And our coaches winning this game is going to take SACRIFICE!”
They are all right.
But the energy of it is all wrong. A speaker that I heard this last weekend, Dr. Dain Heer (who is too cool for school if you want to check him out!) asked the question what if what we now perceive as fear is actually excitement? Maybe when we were little we were waiting to get on a giant ferris wheel. And maybe our dad noticed that our eyes were wide, and we were jumping up and down. Maybe he noticed that we were holding on to his hand so tight! And he said Are you scared?” And by asking that question framed our understanding of what fear feels like, when what we were actually feeling was excitement and anticipation. And because we were also taught that we should avoid fear, we’ve been avoiding excitement and anticipation.
Cool, huh?
What if the same idea could be applied to sacrifice? All those people above, the ones who framed our realities and perceptions about what IS, made it seem that a sacrifice was a terrible thing to have to make. Our culture further reinforced the idea, with the belief that you have to toil and sweat and that you can’t actually have everything you want.
At least not without a lot of sacrifices.
Now, what if I told you that The Latin word for “sacrifice” is sacrificium, from sacra “sacred rites” and facere “to do”.
Essentially, a sacrifice is a sacred action.It is the releasing of something lower in the attainment of something higher. It is letting go of everything that you’ve been conditioned to want, obligated to achieve and extraneous to YOU, the real and unattached YOU.
What if we could embrace sacrifice and find more and more ways to sacrifice other people’s opinions, beliefs or expectations? What if we could sacrifice people pleasing, over achieving, self-pity, self-loathing, and self-defeating behaviors in the name of inner peace.
What if by doing that we could actually realize that we can, indeed, have everything we want?
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