The word Decision stems from the Latin word Decidere, meaning cut-off. Every day we make dozens of decisions, 122 in fact, with some adults admitting to spending up to three hours a day deciding what to eat. Add in what to wear and what songs or podcasts to listen to, it is easy to see how you arrive at 122. The preferred outcome of all these choices involves eliminating all other outcomes. Or, better put, the sacrifice of all other outcomes.
I will explore how sacrifice is an inescapable part of life, and it pays to be on the right side of it.
You do not make most of your decisions. Approximately 95% of our decisions are undertaken by our Subconscious mind, according to Gerald Zaltman in his 2003 book Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market. Furthermore, A 2016 study by Psychologists Wendy Wood and Dennis Rünger highlights how habits form outside of our conscious control, automatically steering our actions.
Unconscious habits, governed by the primitive Basal ganglia, ensure survival by freeing up cognitive activity for demanding tasks. Reasoning, handled by the Prefrontal Cortex, controls novel, complex activities like solving puzzles and setting goals. This unconsciousness ensures that you do not think diligently while driving the same route you have driven hundreds of times. It reduces your cognitive load, to not unnecessarily fatigue your mind, and allows it to focus on more cognitively demanding tasks.
Similarly, it explains a proclivity people have for repetition, remaining in their comfort zone, and sticking to what their brain perceives as a rewarding familiarity. Watching TV after work every night immediately springs to mind, or habitualised and mindless alcohol consumption. Without conscious ownership of your thoughts and behaviours, you are at the mercy of your subconscious, resulting in aimlessness. A vessel with no pilot, or a pilot with no tracking system, just flying for the sake of flying.
It may appear insignificant, but an almost apocalyptic sacrifice occurs - sacrificing your most desired and meaningful life through your omission. A lack of deliberate control of behaviours means your cunning subconscious leads you astray with comfortable and mildly rewarding actions.
How do you take a tighter grip on the reins?
By using your prefrontal cortex and activating the executive regions of your brain, you have more control. Dr. Edwin Locke and Dr. Gary Latham found in a study that when the participants had a specific and challenging goal in mind, 90% of these participants reached a higher level of performance than those who had set easily achievable goals. Locke then dubbed this phenomenon Goal-Setting Theory. Distinct, challenging goals and a commitment to achieving them elevate performance. Or as Shakespeare says candidly: “Strong reasons make strong actions."
Either outcome in this study or the two scenarios outlined earlier constitute a sacrifice. In the first instance, that of someone mindlessly wandering through life, with mindless daily activities where they exert just enough for it to be an inconvenient strain on their will, but still enough to keep them in the familiarity of their comfort zone. It could be someone who wants to be an architect but works a dead-end job after work retreats to smoke weed and play hours of video games until the early hours and repeats indefinitely. Their lingering hope is slowly sacrificed through the sacrifice of the actions required to get there. Their goals miscarry as daydreams.
In pursuing a challenging, meaningful goal, you will inevitably need to sacrifice some behaviours and activities you would otherwise deem as pleasurable. But the fulfillment attained from achieving the lofty goal you set yourself far outweighs the menial pleasure derived from the foregone activities. Michael Phelps won an astonishing record of 28 Olympic medals, 23 of which were golds. Extraordinary. Even more extraordinary, however, is that he swam 80,000m a week, swimming 6 or 7 times a week. He didn’t go to the pub with friends every week. He was in the pool.
Very few people have achieved feats like this because very few people have the talent first, but secondly, and probably most importantly, most people cannot get in the pool and swim 80,000m a week, day after day, year after year. It’s an exceptional feat. It is important to highlight that this is an extreme example, and many people don’t dream of being an Olympic champion. Many top athletes sacrifice a lot more than nights out with friends. It may be time with family, relationships, and even their sanity in pursuit of glory. Nevertheless, the price Phelps paid for his success was his phenomenal sacrifice.
One domain of life where sacrifice is inextricably tied to yielding fruitful outcomes is relationships. Acting selflessly, beyond your immediate self-interest, for mutually beneficial outcomes for each other is the lifeblood of a healthy relationship. It is love manifest and the sign of a mature individual.
Picture a baby. They rightfully evoke feelings of warmth, love and are endearing by their very nature, but they are acutely self-interested. Whether they're hungry, tired, or upset, they scream unapologetically until their needs are met. Although excused by their infantile cuteness, there eventually comes a point where they slowly become more aware of others’ needs. They might be expected to share their toys, for instance. It’s been suggested that a child begins to share things and play with other children between two and three, after slowly overcoming difficulties in doing so.
There reaches a point of realisation in our lives that the universe does not revolve around you. With relationships, the absence or lack of this realisation is almost always fatal. A healthy relationship requires a level of service beyond self-interest, to empathetically support your loved one in their endeavours through life - appreciating their humanity being a bundle of experiences unique to them, separate from yourself. Without the appreciation of that, it will inevitably spell the end of the couple's relationship and/or their happiness.
A relationship requires sacrifice and non-sacrifice, and it is to the extent that these are correctly applied that determines the health and durability of a relationship. Let’s say there is a husband who does not want to try the restaurant his wife has often suggested - hinting that she may want to go, he would rather go where he always goes and knows best. Or he will not go to his Mother-in-Law's birthday meal when his football team kicks off at the same time.
Whilst menial in isolation, these events constitute a sacrifice. He is unwilling to sacrifice watching his favourite football team or involving himself in his wife’s family, making her feel unloved and unseen. Eventually, she files for a divorce to his perplexing dismay. He inadvertently sacrificed his marriage by prioritising his immediate self-interest.
In a scenario where the wife feels unsupported in that he will not support her criminal activity, he would be entitled to use his prefrontal cortex, and deliberately decide that it is the relationship worth sacrificing, not his hobbies.
Either scenario involves sacrifice. Would the distraught husband, if asked, rather sacrifice his marriage than watch a football match? In isolation, no, I’m sure. Yet one was sacrificed, and the other wasn’t.
You make decisions every day. You habitually make dozens of small decisions, every day, ranging from what to wear, to what to eat for dinner. They are so menial in size that your subconscious mind circumvents your conscious awareness to decide for you. Yet, without awareness, these habitual behaviours sacrifice any life we may daydream about or desire. These dreams you may have naturally require the foregoing of trivial and empty behaviours.
Sacrifice is inescapable and is a fundamental fabric of your decision-making. It pays to be on the right side. Would you rather sacrifice tomorrow for today, or today for tomorrow?
"The wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends whatever he gets." Proverbs 21:20
The ability to sacrifice the trivial is invariably easier when you have something to sacrifice it for. Which is what I will discuss next.
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