My Journey – My Sacrifices.

My Journey – My Sacrifices.

Every time you embark on bringing a desire to reality, a journey lifecycle is born and for this journey path to end as you wish, it is paramount and inevitable to make sacrifices along the line! People of faith, either as Christians, Muslims or traditionalists would understand and agree that the practice of sacrifices to God and gods is a necessity.

And all these sacrifices can come up in various ways in our daily path which includes but not limited to the following:

Anger: This enemy of progress is not in any form in your way to make things easy but to complicate your journey.  Anger is a normal human emotion and it’s healthy, it’s only a problem when you as human allow the anger to control you rather than you in control. So it’s always wise to control the anger before it controls you – controlling things that switch on your anger before it develops is a sacrifice that must be made to continue your journey. It’s not easy but it’s not impossible either. Embracing this will save you loads of headaches and avoid lots of problems either from your place of work, in your relationship or marriage and in extension make your life worthy and peaceful. You are not responsible for how people treat you or whatever they say but your response to that is completely your sole responsibility.

Empathy: In the process of chasing your desire and during your daily activities, you will meet all sort of people from all walks of life with different orientation, culture, tradition and different ways of thinking and responding to situations. The fact remains that these people are who they are as a result of the influence of their background, upbringing, community, faith, and peers – that they don’t measure up to you or the society expectation doesn’t in any way mean that they are less educated or that you are smarter. The capacity to place oneself in another’s position is an amazing quality to have and the majority of us are lacking in this sector.

To make life easy for you and others, it is important to reason like them, feel like them, be on their spot in order to understand why and how they are how they are. Once in a while make an effort to put yourself in the other people’s spot to understand them better. You can’t know my story or know me if you have no clue about where I am coming from, humans are designed to be attached to their source and this source usually have an impact on their destination.

We humans might respect each other better and understand each other more if we have the ability and the capability to feel what the other person is experiencing. If you are able to train your mind to possess this quality then you will be able to make this sacrifice easily whenever there is a need for it and trust me you will need this every day as long as you work with people and live in their midst. In other words - still living! Empathy is in no way related to sympathy, when you accept someone out of sympathy, that’s only a temporary solution as your original self will still come out to play soon enough but when you apply empathy – you have come to a conclusion to understand that person and accept them as who they are without condition.

Forgiveness:  This is easier said than done and we mostly fail this sacrifice, there is a famous saying that goes like “To forgive is human, to forget is divine”.  It is a lot easy to say sure I have forgiven you but in all honesty, every wound does leave a scar and things are never the same again as we humans are designed to always refer back to history, which unfortunately not a smart idea but we are humans, that’s what we do!

This is one sacrifice one must learn to adjust to so that one can move on in life, so many of us are busy holding on to what we ought to have left behind and that particular thing is not just a hindrance to our development but a stumbling block on our path towards our destined point in life.

We must learn not only to forgive but also to forget and move on.  Either the other party who wrong you apologized or not, feel free to apologize to yourself on their behalf and move on – in most cases, the offender has moved on to next while we hold on to whatever that happened like a newborn baby. Holding on to a wrongdoing is the same thing as creating another wrongdoing, only this time that is a self –made, which is rather unfortunate. Learn to let it go so you can continue on this journey of yours without any blocker.

Distractions: Either you like it or not, this factor will always pop up every day and they could either appear in form of social activity, friends, unworthy relationship or just our own personal creation. The moment you set a goal then distractions are already rearing their ugly heads to get you off your path, they are only doing their jobs and you should remain focus and do yours, hence – the sacrifice that must be made here.

If you are lacking interest in your goal or desire or lack the ability to pay attention and do the needful then there is only one explanation, you are being distracted by something somewhere or somebody.

Take a situation where Nike is engaged to be married to Adamu, and then Nike met her ex-boyfriend at the supermarket, contacts exchanged and communication re-ignited. No matter how smart Anna is, she is bound to get confused if she is doing the right thing by marrying Adam, a few weeks ago she was confident before the arrival of Emeka on the scene, that’s the power of distraction – now she calls Adam less and get irritated by all she used to enjoy! The only mistake Nike did here is to have encouraged and welcome an ex into her journey. If she has summoned the courage to let Emeka go that day without falling into temptation, that sacrifice could have saved her situation and confusion. If Nike is not careful she might lose both Adamu and Emeka and back to Shiloh for prayers!

Most people these days tend to attend to more social life than their actual life, do anything for the glam but against reality. It’s now about what the people think of them and not what they think, it’s more about the society’s comfort against what they are comfortable with – all these distractions are unnecessary and they are only to get you off your path, to bounce back on the path may take a decade!

Postponing the date to kick start your desire is some form of distraction, the fear in you is distracting you from taking that first step towards realizing your dream, the fear of “what if” is robbing you of your joy – start already!

Anything you desire in life, you must make one sacrifice or the other to have it.

• Sometimes to be happily married, you may need to sacrifice your best friend by letting go.
• To have that job you want so much, you may have to relocate far away from home.
• For you to be part of your Children’s growth and life, you may have to work in that local school against accepting that bank job in the city.
• To be happy – you may have to be sad for a brief moment.
• To be warm – you may have to endure that cold for a bit.
• To be wealthy then you have to go through that poor route.
• To be respected, you may have to respect others.
• To be a leader, you may have to be a follower for a while and learn the rudiments of leadership.

Pushing you on the right path of life in order to achieve your desire is part of my own sacrifice to achieve my desire. Identify the sacrifices on your path and do the needful.