How do I become less materialistic? I've identified that the weaknesses in my game are:


Materialism: Most of my wins are where I've won some material and converted the advantage in an endgame. However outside of this plan, e.g. launching a mating attack, my knowledge is not up to scratch
Missing strong sacrifices: I can see pawn sacrifices in exercises, but I know in a game situation I would not make them. After all, my materialism screams "don't make a material concession!"
Undervaluing the initiative: I tend to underestimate an initiative advantage based on superior development, both for myself and my opponent. E.g. I might lag behind in development to ensure a superior pawn structure


My question is, can you recommend a training plan to boost my understanding of the initiative and making sacrifices?

Background info:


Rated 2050 Elo
Playing 1. d4 as White, Slav and Caro-Kann as Black
A suggestion I have is to start playing gambits, and high-risk-high-reward openings. For example, playing the King's Gambit as White forces you to utilize any initiative you are given. Playing the KID as Black will force you to sacrifice pieces now and then to win istead of losing.

Basically what you need to do is to start appreciating initiative by experiencing it for yourself. Otherwise it becomes very difficult to dare making risky decisions based on tempo and piece activity, if you've never done it successfully before.

Based on what you wrote, I guess you tend to play mainly rather slow and positional setups in the opening. Then you have to expect it to be rather difficult to learn about this style of play, as you are probably not very familiar with it.

Other things you can do is to look for inspiration in games by e.g. Kasparov. He was excellent at utilizing the initiative, and just crushing his opponents with daring attacks. Just look at the notable games at his personal page on chessgames.com, some of them are rather amazing examples of this.