Success Habits – Delayed Gratification
First of all, you have to define success for yourself. Where do you want success? What aspect of your life? Once you have a goal in mind, then apply the success habits that will take you to your success.
This will be a series as there are many success habits that can be applied. You see we already have habits and many of them are not really good habits. The way it works is that the bad habit needs to be replaced by a good habit.
So, let’s address immediate gratification versus delayed gratification. An example of immediate gratification is we see something we want like ice cream and even though we are on a diet, we have the ice cream anyway. We want the immediate tasty treat and at that moment are not thinking of our desired outcome. If we delayed the gratification, then we would think of our desired outcome attaching pleasure to that and skip the ice cream.
Another area that this shows up is when we go to buy something. When we use our credit cards and can’t pay them off that month then we are using immediate gratification for whatever we are paying for. But when we delay the gratification, we have saved for what we want to buy and use cash or have the available resources.
Being able to delay satisfaction isn’t the easiest skill to acquire. It involves feeling frustrated, which is why it seems difficult for people who haven’t learned to control their impulses. Choosing to have something now might feel good right now but making the effort to have discipline and manage your impulses can result in bigger or better success in the future.
Over time, delaying gratification will improve your self-control over your impulses and ultimately help you achieve your long-term goals. Delayed gratification can yield tremendous rewards while helping you develop a tolerance for delaying. You may be delaying saving for that future dream house, choosing a healthy lifestyle, or putting up with a difficult job to help boost your career for the long-term.
A well-known study conducted at Stanford University explains a lot about why it’s beneficial to delay gratification. In the study, children were placed in a room with one marshmallow on a plate. The lead researcher gave the children an easy instruction: You can eat the marshmallow now or wait 15 minutes and receive two marshmallows.
The researchers found that the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow without eating the first one scored higher on standardized tests, had better health, and were less likely to have behavior problems. Even after four decades, they had better SAT scores and were better at coping with stress.
It basically showed that delayed gratification is one of the most effective personal traits of successful people. People who learn delayed gratification thrive more in their careers, relationships, health, and finances than people who give in to immediate gratification.
If you can manage to turn delaying gratification into a regular habit, you are more likely to achieve the success you are looking for. If you need help with this, be sure to reach out.
To your success.
Charlene
