Don’t sacrifice easily what you fought so hard to attain.

No one, no matter how close, will value the exact same things as another person. They will not appreciate what meeting a certain goal, finishing a certain project, or a one-time experience, feels like to anyone outside of themselves. They might respect it, and they might come close to understanding, but they’re limited by their sense of self. Some are more limited than others, and won’t see any value in another person’s experiences unless that experience somehow furthers their own goals. The most limited will completely discount the value that others place on their personal efforts, successes and losses.

Our time matters. We only get so much of it. Our effort matters as well. Because when we’re putting our effort into one thing we, by default, are not putting that effort into something else. We may have spent money, put endless miles on our car, and spent less time with our family to achieve a goal like a college degree. Even a degree in the famous field of derision called, Underwater Basket Weaving, is worthy because it’s not about the approval factor of the degree, it’s about what we put into the degree.

Whatever we choose to do with our abundance there will always be someone there to tell us how wrong we are. People wouldn’t even mind their own opinions around Jesus, telling him what he should do with his time. They criticized who he had dinner with, he ate with tax collectors and sinners, oh the humanity! They criticized how he used his abundance, and where he turned his generosity. But, each of us has unique skills and interests. We are not meant to all do the same thing, or follow the same path. We don’t need to sacrifice our skills and interests because someone else believes they are of no value.

Sacrifice is a word that is placed in our hands by someone who wants us to sacrifice something we value for something they value. We might change our priorities, we might replace one activity with another, but those are not sacrifices. Tony Robbins said “If you think it’s a sacrifice, you shouldn’t do it”. We work hard to attain our goals and our work needs to be respected by us. It’s part of our abundance that we’ve mastered these skills. While others may treat them lightly, because they didn’t do the work to attain them, that doesn’t mean they have little value. They are our abundance. They are what we are here to do and share.