How You Spend Your Time, Your Effort and Your Life – A Sacrifice or a Choice?

“This is your life. Are you who you want to be?” – Jonathan Foreman

Your life – choices or sacrifices?

We all make choices in life. Whether they are short- or long-term choices, it affects every aspect of our lives. With each choice we make, we end up spending our lives giving a lot of ourselves, our time, our love and our energy. These choices often are in the pursuit of a better version of ourselves, whether its physical, mental, financial or all of them above.

A lot of the time we believe that the choices we make are actually sacrifices. So often we feel this is a sense of “giving up” something of yourself for the greater good of the world. Each of these choices could be viewed as a sacrifice, or are they just choices? At the end of the day, it all depends on your mindset.

Whatever your goals are, achieving them requires a certain amount of time and effort. And at times, it can be emotionally and mentally draining. When we use the term ’sacrifice’, we often perceive it with a negative meaning. Often enough, sacrifice means a suffering or a loss. If you feel you have made sacrifices, it generally implies that you have done so for someone or something else. You might not only feel a sense of loss yourself, but also develop a sense of frustration, negativity or resentment on to the other person or situation. Therefore, the problem is not because you are sacrificing, but it is how you define your choices. 

It’s all in the mind

The real issue is how your mind determine your choices. Even if it also has a feeling of being the hero or the nobleness about its intention, it can carry a sense of resentment. We also tend to emphasis on all the things we gave up for, the things we never get to do or have. Having a positive mindset is the beginning of a positive change in our choices. We have to determine and then focus on our goal, the intention, the why and how we can achieve them. Once your mindset is positively motivated, you begin to see your choices as opportunities presented in front of you.

At the end of the day, the choices we make affects our mood, our physical health and most importantly our goals. Are the choices we make daily letting us to be the best version of ourselves? Are these choices giving us more quality time with those we care about most? If we can wake up everyday fully engaged, energised and enthused, we find our mood are elevated and we form better relationships with the people around us. Ultimately, we can live the best version of ourselves. 

Here are some tips and tricks on how to get your mindset and lifestyle right: 

1. Build good habits and develop a consistent routine

Over the years we develop certain habits where we tend to perform certain actions without really thinking about why we are doing it. We need to start asking ourselves are these choices being made are with intents or are they just merely choices we are in a habit of making.

Good habits may lead you reaching your goals sooner. Bad habits may lead us to wasting necessary time, energy and even money. Evaluate your habits and consciously be aware whether they are helping you reach your goals in life.

Put together a list of good habits you want into a daily and weekly routine to increase productivity, mood and success

2. Make Plans

We cannot predict everything that will happen to us in life, but it doesn’t mean making plans are not necessary. Start a calendar with your days scheduled out. We suggest to plan and schedule even the little things because every small step adds up! Dedicate a bit of time each week to plan ahead. Make good choices (not sacrifices) in all your schedules. Also spend a bit of time and the end of each week to evaluate what works and doesn’t.

3. Aim for consistency and not perfection

We are often met with unrealistic goals we set for ourselves and soon enough, we find ourselves giving up on our goals. Start realising small steps are important and continue to build a momentum making good choices and good habits. Consistency is key and be realistic with your goals.

4. Pause, Reflect, Re-evaluate and breath

We live our lives in a constant motion. Like a steam train huffing and puffing along the railway tracks without ever stopping. Some of us never take a break and reflect whether this train of ours is actually taking us to somewhere we want to go or whether the motions are just going around in circles without a destination. Take time off to start incorporating meditation and breathwork practices in your daily routine. Not only it is a time of reflection during meditation and breathwork, but it can improve your mental focus and awareness and also your multi-tasking skills.

5. Journal your progress

Whether your goals are short or long term, it is important to journal down your progress. This is a great evaluation tool to work out what is working or not. This way, you can even work out how much time you should be spending each choice you make to help reach your goals. Work out what choices are not making an impact towards your goal so you can spend less time on them or completely cut them out.

The Awareness and Mindset Solution

The message I am trying to portray is to bring awareness and a positive mindset to the choices you make in life. We need to become aware of how, where and who we are spending our time and energy.

Because the choices we make in life affects us physically, mentally and emotionally. Take some time and take a break, sit back and close your eyes and ask yourself these simple questions:

• Are the choices you make worth your energy, your time and your efforts?
• Are the choices you are making benefiting to your relationships?
• Are you being present and available for the people around you?
• Are the choices you are making ethical and morally aligned?
• Are the choices you are making motivating you every day?
• Are you likely to see yourself reaching closer to your goal?
• Are the choices you are making giving you and the people around the best chance of living a better life?

If not, it’s time to re-evaluate your choices and priorities. Be aware of what kind of choices you are making in your life. Make them selectively. Give them your full attention and handle them with the care they deserve.

A recent quote I came across: Your higher self is always leading you to short-term sacrifices exchanged for long-term benefits. Your ego leads you to long-term sacrifices for short-benefits.

This is such an important way of explaining how we make our choices. Listen to your higher self and the rest will follow. Trust the process. Trust the universe.

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In the mean time, remember to check out our existing top selling Cork Yoga Mat and Eco-friendly Handstand Mats and start your conscious living journey.