change your life in 1 minute (by ranking these 8 things)
Alex Hormozi got roasted for this tweet this week:
Stoics believe that wisdom is not in the magnitude of our sacrifices, but in their meaning.
The flaw in Alex's worldview is NOT about the necessity of personal sacrifice for success - that is obvious. What’s missing is the difference between sacrifice and purpose.
Time is the rarest commodity on earth…unless you're Ed Mylatt, who claims he can manipulate and compress time (spoiler: he told his business partner to work through terminal cancer as a "good example" of work ethic).
So unless you’re clinically delusional, like that guy, you’re stuck with 24 hours in a day like the rest of us.
This makes every second of our day is an investment we can never recover. Most of humanity's existential problems stem from asking ourselves, "What am I doing with my life?"
The hardest part about answering that question? The answer isn't fixed. When I was 8 years old, I was dead set on becoming a cartoonist. That dream faded (though I'm sure it'll resurface as a mid-life crisis).
So how do we figure out what's worth sacrificing? Let's start with a simple exercise.
Rank these 8 items in order of importance:
Time with family
Being fit
Business success
Friends
Travel
Personal time
Hobbies
Sleep
You may need to eliminate items #7 and #8 on your list entirely. You'll definitely need to reduce time spent on items #4 through #8.
This realization shouldn't cause anxiety. Instead, this clarity should bring peace of mind during those moments of internal conflict—like choosing between attending a recital or taking that extra meeting.
When family ranks higher on your list, you shouldn't feel guilty about the sacrifice you make to miss a meeting to prioritize them.
Of course, not everyone has a profession that allows flexibility between work and life (like military personnel, doctors, and first responders). But you - and your family - should recognize that this sacrifice for work extends beyond them: making the world a better place. Your priorities will also naturally shift during different phases of life.
I’ll finish with this: a philosopher named Homer understood his personal sacrifice equation best.
Not that Homer—I'm talking about Homer Simpson:
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