I think you can accomplish anything if youre willing to pay the price.

Vince Lombardi

Nothing in life is free. You pay for everything you get and you get paid for everything you do, whether it is good or bad.

Lets talk about the pay for part of that statement first. The obvious example is buying things: when you purchase a product, you pay for it with money. But this goes way, way beyond spending money.

Virtually everything in life involves a trade-off. When you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else. Think about it for a moment, and youll see the clear truth in that statement. Weve already established that you can do only one thing at a time, so it naturally follows that, whatever you are doing at any given time, there are thousands of things youre not doing.

When you go off to college, you must leave your family and most of your old friends behind, and put off starting your career, at least for the time being. If you get married, you commit yourself to one person exclusively, forsaking all others. If your marriage doesnt work out well then, theres a steep price to pay for that as well. Think of any example you want, and youll see that this rule applies.

Now lets consider the get paid part. This is also referred to as the cause-and-effect law of nature. Remember Sir Isaac Newtons Third Law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This applies not just to physics but to all of life. You reap what you sow. Serve others, and you will be rewarded accordingly the rewards may be financial or personal, and probably both. Live just for yourself, and youre asking for trouble.

You really cant get something for nothing. Weve talked about it in several ways: To have a friend, you must be a friend. To be rewarded, you must first serve others. Nothing worthwhile is accomplished without sacrifice. It all boils down to this: the less you put into anything, the less you will get back from it; the more you put in, the more youll get in return.

Earl Nightingale once used the analogy of a person sitting in front of an empty fireplace and expecting it to produce heat. You cant get heat until you supply the fireplace with wood and light the fire. As Nightingale would say, Pile on the wood. The heat will come.

Excerpted from The Graduates Book of Practical Wisdom: 99 Lessons They Cant Teach in School by C. Andrew Millard, published by Morgan James Publishing, available in bookstores and online. &opy; 2008 by C. Andrew Millard; all rights reserved. For more information visit www.wisegraduate.com.