Sacrifices

Fleenor (or Kelly Bryan, I forget) taught us that the word "sacrifice" should only be used to describe something like the offering of a lamb to God, of a human to the sun god, etc.

Who cares?  Not Merriam-Webster.

sac·ri·fice  \sa-krə-ˌfīs\  noun.
...

3 a : destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else

Logic

1. Friends, family, sleep, food, etc. = All very desirable things.
2. Desirable things = Valuable.
3. You get what you pay for.  e. g. You pay a lot of money, you get a huge diamond.
4. You sacrifice valuable things, and you are likely to get dramatic results.  e. g. You sacrifice friends, family, sleep, food, all of the above, or more than the above, and you will experience some huge change in life.

Friends and family are the last things I would sacrifice, and sleep and food are the second to the last.  But if those (or any equivalent other) things were easy for anybody to give up, there would be little value in their sacrifice.  You can't sacrifice what many others can live without and expect something special to come from it.

What are my values... what are the values that I hold highly but not as the fundamentals of my life?  What can I sacrifice?  I have to sacrifice something.