What are you willing to sacrifice?
How do you know if the sacrifices are worth it?
You know the saying “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” It’s more true than we often realize.
Here’s a saying you may not know but should be on your lips and mind everyday moving forward “There are no solutions, there are only tradeoffs”
This is a famous quote by legendary economist Thomas Sowell concerning how to ‘pay for things we think ought to be free.’ If you want ‘free healthcare’ for example it doesn’t magically appear, but has to be paid for somehow.
This makes perfect sense when thinking about our effort in exercise and sport.
If we want to achieve something with our bodies we need to make a lot of trades.
We need to trade our time to train.
We need to trade being lazy for being active.
We need to trade our physical energy in the action.
We need to trade our effort for the glory we hope to gain
This is the honesty that sports and exercise demands of us. We realize there is no such thing as a free lunch.
The truth about trade-offs
Perhaps a better word to use here is sacrifice. Afterall, when talking about sports and exercise we must recognize that they are at their heart, religious activities.
The Ancient Greeks believed that the athlete sacrificed themselves to the heavens in order to please the gods. Each athlete, through their tiring efforts and determination to succeed at all costs, sacrificed their arete (excellence or virtue). The athletic effort is a sacrifice of our best elements in order to transcend them.
An athlete who won the Olympic crown for example was said to transcend mortality for a that brief moment of athletic perfection. If the sacrifice was correct, character would be revealed and new heights could be reached by breaking through limits of body, mind, and spirit.
But if they made the wrong sacrifices, represented by their motives and intentions, athletes would lose out on their opportunity to transcend.
The ancient philosopher Plato argued that athletes who aimed for money or to simply look good badly missed the mark. They didn’t make the right sacrifices of character, virtue, and honor. This effectively shut them out from the transcendence athletes who make the proper sacrifices experienced in victory and defeat.
This connects deeply to the importance of the ‘right type of sacrifices’ I’ve been reading about in the Old Testament.
In the Exodus story, the Israelites sacrifice security and stability in Egypt for freedom and uncertainty in the desert. For that trade, they receive the truth, represented in the laws of g-d being given to Moses at the summit of Mt. Sinai.
But once they have the truth, they spend months building the Ark to properly house it and prepare to make the right sacrifices towards it. There’s a dramatic story around the first sacrifices done in the Ark. Aaron, the high priest and Moses’s brother, is terrified to enter the Ark to perform the necessary sacrifices (animal) but through the process of preparing himself and the animals properly he gains courage and performs his roles. His two sons, arrogant and unwilling to wait, enter the Ark without proper preparation and diffidence to the necessary sacrifices and are struck down instantly.
Just like the Ancient Greeks the message is clear. Make the right sacrifices and you’ll be exalted in the truth and transcend. Make the wrong sacrifices and you’ll be punished.
What are you willing to give up?
The lesson for us is clear: we’d better be making the right sacrifices if we want sport and exercise to provide us with deep meaning, purpose, and the ability to transcend our current limitations.
Taking inspiration from the ancient Greeks and Isrealites here’s how I think we need to think about this.
When we make a trade off it needs to come from our hearts. Our motivations must be pure so that when we give something away we are grateful for what we receive in return.
In athletics that looks like being appreciative for losing because it allows us to find humilty and work on the limits that held us back.
If we simply traded everything to win, would it be worth what we gave up? If you cheated, maliciously injured an opponent, or betrayed your integrity, are the sacrifices worth it?
Each of us does the same when thinking about our own athletic endeavors.
What do we need to give up in order to gain?
If we are motivated by selfish desires and negative emotions, our sacrifices won’t lead us to transcendence. Even in ‘victory’ we won’t find satisfaction.
We’ll start taking away from others instead of pouring back into them.
So my challenge to you: How do you know your sacrifices come from the heart?
If there is one place where you are giving but aren’t receiving back that’s your signal. It could be “I’m moving 3x a week but I’m still not seeing the numbers on the scale go down.”
Are you giving enough effort in the gym?
Are you limiting your sessions in frequency or duration?
Are you trying new exercises that force quicker adaptations?
Are you paying attention to other elements of your health like sleep and diet?
To me, this looks like ‘going through the motions’ not making the right sacrifices of character in order to move beyond your current limitations.
So don’t be afraid of taking an honest look at the truth of what you’re giving up and if it’s the right type of trade for what you’re hoping to gain from the process.
I know that once you start noticing it, you won’t be able to see your efforts in sport and exercise any other way.
If you struggle to know what sacrifices to make, or lose the willpower to make the right choices in the difficulty of the moment, a proper understanding of why we sacrifice and where it needs to come from will help you. If you’re unsure of how to start the process, reach out to me using the DM button below to see how my coaching approach can help you start living with the right sacrifices.