Measuring our values based on sacrifices

You can evaluate how much a specific goal or value matters to you by looking at the sacrifices you are willing to make to achieve it.

But I don't mean every kind of sacrifice. There are sacrifices that are easy to make. There is not much discomfort in enduring them at the moment but they can harm you in the long run. These sacrifices are silent and happen without my explicit commitment. Just because I play video games all day long and sacrifice my health for them, they are not immediately my highest value. Another such sacrifice would be to ignore my friends to get better at painting as a hobby. The act of painting will give me joy (in this case) and the consequences of ignoring my friends or not meeting with them will hit me much later. The pain gets shifted to a later time.

There are sacrifices that need my full commitment. Spending time on a goal that is not always pleasurable or enduring pain willingly to reach a goal is the kind of sacrifice I am talking about. The discomfort/pain is present in the moment. I can feel it. I know that I have to endure it to reach that goal. Despite that pain, I will pursue that goal. I would even endure much more pain to reach it. Some would sacrifice a lot, some everything. That can be a good measure of the importance of our personal values.

Dangers

It can be dangerous to sacrifice a lot because we can convince ourselves that a goal or value is important because we endure a lot for it. So instead of accepting the sacrifices for this goal because the goal is important to us, we value it higher because we already accepted a lot of sacrifices to reach it. This can lead to regrets in the future.