Delaying Gratification

 

Photo Credit: Medical News Today

Delaying Gratification

We live in a world where we want everything yesterday. Our wants and desires are so superficial and there is so much temptation out there along with money at our disposal that we fail to make any distinction between our desires and our needs! If we could just experiment with our will power and see if we can delay our desires and need for instant gratification – will this have a beneficial effect on my overall well-being? Just give it a shot and find out for yourself! As part of an experiment in Stanford University, psychologists had studied the impact of marshmallows on children. Those who could delay their urge to eat the marshmallow and who were rewarded with an additional one, were found to have better outcomes later in life – including academic success, physical, psychological health and social competence!

The fact that you can delay your gratification by resisting the temptation of a smaller but more immediate reward in preference for a larger and more enduring reward later is actually the key to long term success in life! When one can delay one’s gratification it relates to other similar skills such as patience, impulse control and will power, which are all a must for success in life.

Today, the general culture teaches us that ‘more is merrier’. We look for progress and we want it quickly and fast. But with this comes the risk of paying a heavy price. We spend time on acquiring unnecessary items, we spend resources on things we don’t need and we accumulate a mess for the future generation to clean up! We live a selfish life by seeking what we are living for today – instant gratification, the deep desire for fulfillment without any kind of delay or wait. The biggest problem with instant gratification is that it does not give one any lasting satisfaction. Its entire purpose is to substitute lasting pleasure of earned enjoyment with a fleeting pleasure of instant joy. It is easy for us to be blinded by our immediate wants over what we need over time.

This same principal applies to spirituality, there is no instant gratification – for spiritual progress one has to keep at it with full awareness. Meditate regularly then over time you will actually begin to feel the progress. Instant gratification does not work – neither in the material world or in the spiritual world – lasting benefits come from long term investments – both for wealth creation as well as spiritual progress. Money cannot buy you the kind of inner bliss, joy and happiness which comes from achieving an inner state of equilibrium and peace. Don’t look for immediate results – long term and lasting growth comes by staying invested over a period of time – both financially as well as spiritually.