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I‘ve noticed lately that a lot of my friends feel the need to constantly sacrifice for others. Whether it’s charging people you know less for a business you’re trying to start up, giving up things you like to stabilize a relationship, or always making someone else’s problems your problems. Although the examples are somewhat specific, we make these types of sacrifices for people all the time. Do you want to know why? I’ll tell you. It’s because we love these people and we don’t want to seem them fail or be upset. It’s all about keeping those who are close to you (or sometimes others) happy. But is it really worth it? Constantly making sacrifices and never feeling like the sacrifice will ever benefit you. I don’t mean the type of sacrifices where someone is actually in need and you don’t need to benefit from it, but sacrifices where it involves a relationships that still needs to establish its two way street.

Pleasing someone and seeing them happy is one of the greatest feelings in the world. It’s something that we all love to do but don’t admit all the time. Usually the people we please are the ones that are insecure, unstable, and confused. We do it mostly for those types of people because we have this magical aspiration that we will be the ones to fix them. Help them out. Make them better. But that’s not the case. You can’t help someone unless they help themselves first and that’s a fact. Everyday we come across different experiences that turn into little lessons we subconsciously remember forever. If we keep making the same mistake and learning the same lesson over and over again, how do we expect to grow. How do you expect the person you’re always sacrificing for to grow. As I said before you have to help yourself before you can even help someone else. And sometimes when you help yourself, it can equate to helping someone else. For example, the next time a “close friend” asks you for a discount for the start-up business your doing, whether it be doing someones hair, fixing a resume, anything, you tell them they need to pay your regular price. This will do two things, teach yourself that you have boundaries and they shouldn’t be crossed without your consent and teach your “close friend” that if they want to succeed they need to serious about their stuff, just like you are.

When you make a change within yourself, you’ll see the change with others. Don’t be fooled though, it won’t happen right away. People are uptight and filled with too much pride for it to happen right away. That’s life. You just have to take it one step at a time and hope that person changes just like you have.

I‘ve always felt that when you’re young, its the best time to be free, make mistakes, act stupid. You know, wild out. Not too much though. It’s all apart of defining who you are. So when you’re busy making sacrifices and trying to please others it only holds you back to become the person you should be. You have to remember that you deserve to be free to do whatever you want to do. And if there are people holding you back from doing that, maybe you should consider buying some scissors and starting to cut.

The most important thing is to be honest with yourself. Ask yourself this: Do I really want to continue feeling this way? If you don’t, then don’t. Finding yourself can be one of the hardest things to do. Some people who are old still haven’t found themselves. So imagine all the time we have now. As we grow older, there comes more opportunities to be honest with ourselves. So just start now. Honesty will always be the best the policy it’s the truth. The truth does hurt but its real. Staying real is clearly better than faking your way through life. It’s tough to tell people you are close to “no” with the idea that they may be really upset with you, but you have to do it.

My advice is to all my young sacrificers, is to stop sacrificing for others but for yourself. Do things that are hard now but will benefit YOU in the long run. We are to young to be dealing with so much. Just be young and try to succeed for yourself. We have so much more to experience and it’s sad that most of us spend it on pleasing others. Other people can’t get to you to where you want to be. Only you can. At the end of the day when you look into the mirror, you only see yourself. Start with you, it’s the answer to almost every problem. You have to think about what YOU can do to make things better before you move to on things. Sacrifice for you not for the world, because we can’t all be Jesus Christ.