To SACRIFICE for Love vs
To SERVE to Love

Somebody, somewhere, cue Meatloaf’s 

“I Would Do ANYTHING For Love” as our background music.

I’ve taught you for years that if you want to know 

how somethings going to turn out, just look at the motivation behind it.

If the motivation behind any action, is fear-based, it will fail. 

 These are Universal Laws just like gravity. 
Sorry (not sorry).

If the motivation behind an action is love-based, it tends to work. 

It tends to find away. Miracles and possibilities pull rabbits out of hats when we do things motivated by love.

OK. Now it’s time for me to drop the proverbial cartoon piano on your head. Ready?

When you are sacrificing for your child or family, it is motivated by fear, not love, and that is why it tends to not work well.

Before you even begin to protest, take a look at this example:

Your troubled niece is in trouble again. Now she’s about to be evicted unless somebody can co-sign on the lease of a new place, so she and her infant child can have a place to live.

You know you should not sign that lease. You know she is financially irresponsible and the odds of this going south are very high. But you are…AFRAID FOR HER AND HER BABY.

That fear drives you to “sacrifice” and co-sign a lease (that yes, she eventually defaults on when fleeing an idiot she moved in, which causes you endless financial hardship and drama).

“But Tanya, are you really recommending we turn our back on our family members and people we love at their moment of need?”

I’m recommending you consider your motivation before you act.

You can be there for a family member. You can give a lot. You can even co-sign leases. But do it from a place of love, so it becomes a gift… your act of SERVICE.

When you prioritize Sacrificing, subconsciously you are:

•  focusing on the inability of the person that you are attempting to help, 
• you are elevating yourself to the rescuer and savior role (which we know as Alphas we slide into far too easily) and 
• you’re secretly setting yourself up to want some type of credit for your Sacrifice.

Often that credit is, “see me as the best Aunt in the world” 

or “validate that I’m a very good person.”

You see, sacrificing tends to come with…guilt for the recipient. 

They get to now be “in your debt.” And you get to use that “debt” to control their future behavior.

Yeah. All this should be sounding kind of icky and sticky now.

If you’ve ever known a 15-year-old girl, it doesn’t take too much 

imagination to picture this scene:

Mother: 

“I’ve done everything for you! I’ve sacrificed everything I had to give you the best life I know how and this (something Mom doesn’t like) is the thanks I get!”

15 yr old Daughter:
“I never asked you to give up anything for me! I never asked you to sacrifice for me, just so you can hold it over my head for the rest of my life. I don’t need you or your sacrifices. I hate you!”

That “fictitious” argument probably happens 10,000 times a day across the US.

It’s why I tell parents not to let their children enroll in three extracurricular activities, so they spend every spare waking moment being a permanent taxi cab driver all over the continent and never have a moment to themselves. 

But no…they insist on continuing the “sacrifice”, for which they demand emotional payment: in guilt, in reverence, in winning the local moms leaderboard on “how many MORE hours I was in the car driving kids”.

Sacrifices tend to breed resentment on both sides AND models failure for our kids (watch below).

https://vimeo.com/497911499

The priority I urge you to consider transitioning to is… Serving.

Serving is to give as a GIFT, out of love. 

Once you have completed giving your gift, it is done for you.  You are not looking for payment, financial or emotional, because it is a gift, which by definition is freely given. No resentments attach.

A lot of times this can really come down to just a change of perspective.

I have published this blog weekly, without fail, going into my EIGHTH YEAR.

It’s a very big way that I SERVE you. I do not water down this content. I do not pull punches. I share what is valuable and on my heart.  I teach what I am given to teach, without charge.

There have been a numerable times in the past eight years when getting my blog out could’ve been seen as a sacrifice. Continuing it could’ve been viewed as a sacrifice for which I would’ve held resentment and wanted some type of “payment.“

My blog is not a SACRIFICE  for you, it is a SERVICE of love for you, a gift. Action completed upon delivery,

If you want to know where you’re sacrificing, trace the resentments!

Do you know how in crime movies they say “follow the money”?

You can locate all of your sacrifices by “following the resentments.”

Once you find those resentments, decide whether you want to continue them OR transmute your actions into a service and a gift.  Serving requires no payment, so no waiting and waiting and growing resentful when payments aren’t received.

If you don’t want to continue it for “free”… Prioritize ENDING it.

Stop Sacrificing and excusing what you do “for love.”

The Alpha Priority is SERVING rather than SACRIFICING.