I was recently speaking on the issue of sacrifice. Most people don’t really like the idea of sacrificing because they believe it is all about giving up something that is of value to them. However, consider the proper definition of sacrifice: “The forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of something of greater value.”

Another word that is akin to “sacrifice” is “self-discipline.” A wise person knows that he must place certain restriction on his life, though it may be difficult and painful. He knows it leads to his ultimate good.

Stephen Covey demonstrates this is his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

“Self-mastery, self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.”

Of course, we don’t often think that way. That’s a foreign thought to many of us. He goes on to say:

“Some people say that you have to like yourself before you can like others. I think that idea has merit, but if you don’t know yourself, if you don’t control yourself, if you don’t have mastery over yourself, it’s very hard to like yourself except in some short-term, superficial way. Real self-respect comes from dominion over self.”

It’s similar to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, when he writes:

“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.”

In other words, I won’t let anything in the world have mastery over me, where I become a slave to it. And then Covey says this:

“The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but who we are as people.”

Back in January of 2019, I wrote a blog titled, “A Life Without Constraints.” The idea for this blog came from Jonathan Haidt’s popular book, The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and seems to have good insight into the human condition.

In the book he speaks of Émile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology in the late nineteenth century. Durkheim performed a massive scholarly study, gathering data from all across Europe, studying the factors that affect the suicide rate. All of his findings can be summarized in one word; “constraints.”

He discovered that no matter how he parsed the data, people who had fewer social constraints and obligations were more likely to kill themselves. Durkheim concluded from all of his research that people need obligations and constraints to provide structure and meaning to their lives. This is what provides order and keeps out chaos. It is a key to finding joy and happiness in life.

For so many modern people, this becomes an issue of freedom—being free to do whatever their heart desires. They believe this is the key to happiness.

The great scholar Os Guinness shares some profound words on this. He says freedom is not simply being able to make whatever choice your heart desires. It is making the right choice, the good choice, the wise choice:

“When everything is permissible, no one is truly free. It is ironic, but not accidental, that millions of people here in America, ‘the land of the free’ are in recovery groups for one addiction or another.”

Richard E Simmons III is the founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership and a best-selling author.  (Photo credit: Miller Knott)