In the journal The Atlantic, staff contributor and a professor of the practice of public leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School Arthur C. Brooks has an interesting article on voluntary sacrifice and happiness. In the article he writes that by voluntarily sacrificing pleasurable things, one could reset senses and makes them master of themselves.

For my money, though, the most compelling happiness benefit of voluntary sacrifice is that it fosters self-mastery, or—the term that social scientists prefer—“self-efficacy,” which refers to confidence in one’s ability to control one’s own behavior.

There are many traditions, including some ascetic religious traditions, such as Yom Kippur in Judaism and Ramadan in Islam, in which believers repent and reflect on their need for improvement, writes Prof Brook. “About a quarter of Americans—including 61 percent of Catholics—typically observe Lent through voluntary sacrifice, fasting, almsgiving, and prayer”. Similar traditions exist in Hindu and Buddhist religions too, where devotees make voluntary sacrifices like giving up meat, fasting once-a-week fasting and other similar personal sacrifices in memory of their loved ones or for personal improvements.

Because sacrifice is hard and uncomfortable, our instinct is to avoid it if we want to achieve happiness. But equating happiness with pleasure hoarding and pain avoidance is an error.

Prof Arthur C. Brooks in The Atlantic

Prof Books highlights the following three general rules while practicing voluntary sacrifices:

• Sacrifice out of love, not fear. When sacrifice entails changing your behavior on behalf of others, be sure your motive is to improve their well-being, not yours. … Sacrifices made out of love to get closer to the divine will enhance happiness and deepen faith; those made out of fear or guilt—or for self-enhancement—will not have the desired effect.
• Start with “insignificant” sacrifices. A small, voluntary sacrifice strengthens the will by giving you evidence that you have more self-control than you might think. Small successes also tend to predict greater successes in the future.
• Cycle your pleasures. When you think about the sort of thing you’d like to take time off from, you probably envision something that you do primarily out of necessity, not pleasure—work, for example, or a stressful relationship. Time off from unpleasant tasks rejuvenates us and makes the activity easier and less onerous when we resume.

Voluntary sacrifice is an exercise of power over animal instincts. It gives us irrefutable proof that we are fully human, writes Prof Brook.