Instant gratification is the desire to experience pleasure or fulfillment Instantly with little or no work or sacrifice.
Instant gratification is something that is implemented into the modern world. Especially as a 20 something year old, many of the practices we are used to come down to instant gratification.
Think about it, dating apps immediately get you a date based on nothing more than a picture. Linked In posts of your accomplishments immediately showcase your talent.
Snapchat immediately grants you communication with someone, a picture of where they are and what they’re doing right then and there.
Instagram, Google, it all will find you all the information, compliments or gratification you need with a click.
All of these practices promote fast and easy value. But a life on instant gratification will never be as valuable as slow, endured, real value.
When our parents were our age they had to walk to someone’s house if they had to get something off their chest. They had to stand up on stage if they wanted their voice to be heard.
They had to look through a library to find the things we search for and find in a matter of seconds. If you wanted a date you had to take the leap, walk up to them and ask yourself -you couldn’t just send a text like we can today.
Quit instant gratification in every way and you’ll find more real value than you ever could before. You’ll find yourself elevating in every way.
Oh, and what about looking to see if someone watched something you put on social media? This instantly gratifies us, and it also promotes looking at our lives through other people’s eyes. It promotes putting their interpretations before ours and your life isn’t your if you’re living it for others.
Slow, tedious, REAL value will always bring way more good into your life than instant, “feel good” shallow value.
If you want to know how you can start to quit Instant gratification in all aspects of your life keep reading.
10 Ways to Quit Instant Gratification
1. Replace Instagram posts of a great experience you had with just being present in that moment.
2. Replace online dating with striking a real conversation with new people and putting yourself out there in real life.
3. Replace Snapchat with speaking to your friends in person or with spontaneous phone calls.
4. Replace junk food or getting delivery with making your own food at home.
5. Replace paying full price right off the bat with waiting for it to go on sale.
6. Replace “2 week Abs” with long term healthy habits.
7. Replace all night studying with a little bit every day throughout the week, making you truly understand the material.
8. Don’t take a loan, don’t ask for something you’ve wanted for your birthday -get another job, work harder, longer, better, be able to buy it for yourself.
9. Go to class in person even if you don’t have to, there could be value in that walk, opportunity in who you bump into, it could change your level of connection with your professor- all sorts of value could arise from this extra effort.
10. Try to learn things yourself before you ask for help, let yourself fail, don’t let yourself take the easy route before you’ve seen your real potential.
Hitting snooze for an extra hour instead of getting up and getting ahead. In the short term, it’s sweet, an extra hour of sleep. Long-term you would wish you had those precious hours back or could have used them to grow tremendously over time. Maybe you could have gone to the gym, gotten an A over a B in a class.
By quitting instant gratification and sticking with it, you not only gain the real value of being more active in your learning and growing but you also teach your brain that it can trust itself and that it will follow through and give you the things you desire.