Sacrifice (v.)- To dispose of (goods, property, etc.) regardless of profit.

Give (v.)- To present voluntarily and without expecting compensation.

“Food For Thought” will be a regular column sharing tidbits of interesting thoughts with you.

The topic today is “Giving versus Sacrificing”. If you are like most people you probably don’t realize there is a difference. But, there is. In doing research on this I couldn’t find anything online that was about this.

You see, giving and sacrificing are the same action but different perspectives. Giving is positive and Sacrificing is negative. For example, if I say “I give a lot to people in need” that is a positive way to look at what I am doing. But if I say “I sacrifice a lot to people in need” that is a negative way to look at it.

People who give, can do so, more, than people who sacrifice. The reason why is because if you go around thinking what you do is hurting you, then you will struggle to do more. When you give, you see what you are doing and you like it. If you enjoy what you are doing then you can do more of it. That is a fact. Let me prove it. Since it is Mother’s Day weekend, I will use that as my example. Today I GAVE my time to helping my mom. I am not going to look at it as ‘today I SACRIFICED my time to help my mom’. That is a more extreme example but it gets the point across. The sentence with the word ‘sacrifice’ in it made it seem as if I really didn’t want to do that.

Next time you speak, make sure you realize what you’re saying. You could unconsciously be saying things negatively.

Remember this, “What you do for yourself, you take with you. What you do for others, you leave behind”

Have a great week everyone.

Sean McKeown