DELAYED GRATIFICATION – The Secret to Successful Life

I was thinking about something interesting this week, after I finished reading a book titled Strategic Thinking published by Harvard Business Review. One question has always fascinated me: Why do most people find it difficult think? Why do they cause themselves problems and fail to "see" that they are the architects of their own predicament?

The one thing I've found that smart successful people have in common is long-term thinking and a mind that's wired for delayed gratification. The one thing all the non-smart unsuccessful people have in common is short-term thinking, and a mind that's wired for instant gratification.

People who succeed in life are able to think far into the future, set a goal for themselves, reverse engineer it back to right now, and then get to work on the small. seemingly insignificant mundane tasks required to get there. Successful people’s actions don't create effects, feedback, or rewards until a distant time in the future. And they're totally ok with that, that's normal.

Unsuccessful people don't think out into the future beyond a few months, they don't set goals, they don't reverse engineer, and they never get started on the mundane tasks required to get there (because there is undefined). Their lack of future vision means they can't optimize their daily decisions and actions, so they fallback to, and optimize for, shorter-term rewards.

I have realized that reading a book is slow, there's no flashing lights, there's no feedback. The gratification doesn't happen until you get deep into the book, which is 30m-1h (beyond most people’s ability to concentrate). Most successful people read books, most unsuccessful people watch social media, Movies and what others do. If you want to succeed in life, un-hook yourself from instant gratification and start training your brain to enjoy the pattern of delayed feedback.

Another analogy I will like to use “FAT”. Being fat is the same as being unsuccessful (in your brain), How? You may wonder. Obese people have short-term thinking, instant gratification brains. Their mind has been trained to crave instant feedback from glucose (sugar), even when it comes at the cost of their health, and makes them fatter.

They don't want to be obese, they want to lose weight, but they can't take the actions required today in order to make that distant goal come true. Their brain has been trained to go for the instant reward (sugar) right now.

What's fascinating is that unsuccessful people’s brains work the same way. Being unsuccessful is the same as being obese, the same as using debt. The sacrifice of long-term desires, for the instant reward of now. Having a better today at the devastating cost of tomorrow, and denial of that fact.

Don't be like this. It's not good.

For me, the first task that needs to be cleared is self-actualization. You need to be aware of yourself and be discipline enough to implement the changes. If you want to know how I trained my brain to go from the confused, neurotic, instant gratification, social acceptance seeking, problem creating mess it was -- to -- the problem solving, focused, intentional, and always aspiring for greatness but still far from perfect brain it is now, Hang on,  i've got something for you!

You don’t need to limit these “training exercises” to big things.  You can train yourself every day with small rewards for small delays. In fact, this may be more effective because you get more practice. For example, I have trained my brain to only request for breakfast when I have completed a task for the day. This could be sending an important email, assigning tasks to subordinate or even planning the day’s task.

You can also do this yourself by promising yourself a treat at a later time if you do XYZ and then actually following through.

Tell yourself you can buy that new pair of shoes after you put in 100 hours of study time and then actually buy them if you do it.

Tell yourself you can treat yourself to pizza after you have completed two workouts this week, and then actually eat the pizza.

Each time you assign stakes and follow through, you are training your brain and teaching it that delaying gratification is a good thing.

After a while, you’ll find that delaying gratification becomes a habit and you’ll be accomplishing more meaningful things in your day-to-day life because of it.

Practice these steps and thank me later!...