I saw a post today that stopped me.
“You want a better life? Go build it. Don’t tell me what you want. Tell me what you are willing to give up.”
And I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
We spend so much time looking at what we want. The career. The body. The relationship. The life. We see it on social media, we see it in the people we admire, and we think I want that. But we rarely stop to look at the full picture.
When you admire someone’s life, you are only seeing part of it.
Along with everything they have, you also get everything they gave up. Or don’t have. Maybe it was a painful divorce. Maybe a public scandal. Maybe years of loneliness. Maybe a parent lost along the way. The highlight reel never shows you the cost. But the cost was always there.
And it is real for all of us.
If you decide to pour everything into your career, you might miss moments with your kids that you can never get back. If you step back from your career to be present for your children, you might miss the promotion, the opportunity, the momentum. If you decide to build something of your own, a brand, a business, a vision, you might get married later. Or not at all.
These are not wrong choices. But they are choices. And every single one comes with a price.
Some prices are easier to pay. You want to be fit, so you give up unhealthy food and show up for the workout when you don’t feel like it. You want to build your side hustle, you give up the social events, the lazy weekends, the path of least resistance. Those trade-offs, when you see what they’re building toward, feel worth it.
But then there are the harder questions.
Do I want to be the most successful version of myself, and am I willing to give everything for that? Do I want to build an empire, and what does that cost the people I love? Those questions don’t have easy answers. They require you to sit with yourself honestly and think it all the way through. Not just what you want but what you are willing to lose to have it. And whether you can live with that.
Because here is the thing we forget.
The cost shows up whether you thought about it or not. The difference is whether you walked in with your eyes open. The choices you make have consequences, good and bad, and those consequences are yours to live with. Nobody else’s.
So think deeply. About everything you have. Everything you want. And everything you are willing to give up to get there.
There is always a price.
The only question is whether you have decided consciously, honestly, that it is worth paying.
It is not all or nothing.
This is not about choosing between your career and your child. Your marriage and your ambition. Your business and your life. That framing is too binary and too heavy.
What it is really about is consciousness. When you are aware of the cost, you can make conscious choices. And conscious choices give you something powerful,
Your non-negotiables.
The things you decide, in advance, that you will not compromise on. Not because someone told you to, but because you know yourself well enough to know what you cannot lose.
Maybe it is every Friday evening that is for your spouse. No matter what. Maybe it is not to miss a single one of my son’s performances. Not one. Maybe it is Sunday mornings belong to me. Maybe it is something else entirely. Only you know what those things are.
But when you name them, when you actually decide them, they stop being things that slip through the cracks of a busy life.
They become protected. Intentional. Yours.
You get to choose your battles. You get to decide what you are building toward and what you are holding onto along the way. The key is that you are deciding. Consciously. Deliberately. Not just letting life make the choices for you and wondering later how you got here.
What I’m Reading
South to Freedom - Alice L Baumgartner ( Finished)
A historical account of enslaved people fleeing south to Mexico and how this challenged U.S. slavery laws. This was very research-oriented, and I have to say I didn’t know a lot about that period. It gave me an insight into those times and people’s mindset.
Think Faster, Talk Smarter — Matt Abrahams (Still Reading)
A practical guide to improving spontaneous speaking and clear communication under pressure. I want to improve how I think and speak, so I am trying this highly rated book.
What Else Dropped This Week
Off Script
Julie Castro Abrams on Power, Privilege & Funding Women’s Future
Under the Hood
The Art of Starting Over: How Bobbi Brown built 2 empire
Note to Self
Everything you want has a price. Know it before you pay it.
And as you chase your dreams remember that life happens along the way. Things you didn’t anticipate. People you didn’t expect. Priorities that shift. Dreams that change. And that is okay.
Just don’t forget to check in.
Reevaluate what matters to you. The things you are building toward and the things you are holding onto. Because sometimes what you wanted at the start is not what you want anymore. And sometimes the things you took for granted became the most important things of all.
Are you still willing to pay the price for the life you want? And is what you are giving up still something you can live without?
Only you can answer that.
Choose consciously. Protect what matters. And keep checking in with yourself along the way.
Be bold. Be real. Be Anomalous.
— Sai Menon
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