How to Delay Instant Gratification - Think Deep

How to Delay Instant Gratification

Delaying instant gratification is a crucial skill to develop in life. It helps us cultivate patience, self discipline, and keeps us mindful of the bigger picture.

Willpower is often cited as the antidote to instant gratification but there’s a time limit on that. It will run out eventually. Is there another way that doesn’t require as much fight?

There is if you break down the structure of desiring instant gratification.

Instant gratification obviously entails really wanting something but you have to understand that whatever it is you want is a REPRESENTATION of something else, something deeper.

What is that something deeper?

It’s a FEELING.

That’s the root of what you REALLY want.

So the first step is to identify the feeling BEHIND what you really want.

Once you clearly identify that, then simply ask yourself:

What’s another way I can get that feeling directly?

Come up with a list of substitutes, try them out and you’ll find the substitutes will suffice. No more instant gratification. You got what you really wanted – only in a different form.

If that doesn’t work, you can come up with a list of things that will give you FAR BETTTER FEELINGS than the feelings that you really want from instant gratification and try them out.

Do either of those strategies and either 1 of 2 things is going to happen.

You find something to help you easily delay the gratification OR you find that you don’t want what you thought you wanted real bad in the first place.

Here’s 2 examples, big and small, to illustrate.

You’re at your local burger joint, you order a burger and fries and you’re pretty thirsty and you really want a huge ice cold soda, but you’re trying to cut down on drinking soda for a variety of health reasons. How can you delay that instant gratification?

What’s the feeling you want from drinking that ice cold soda?

The feeling of something cold and tasty quenching your thirst.

What’s a substitute for that?

You can use a substitute that a ton of other people do – ice water with lemon.

It might not sound appealing, but try it and you’ll find it’s a good substitute and at the very least, it’ll stop you from craving soda right then and there after a couple sips.

Over time, if you keep on doing this, you won’t miss soda at all.

Now if you can’t find an equalizing substitute, find a far better one that gives far better feelings than the ones you’ll get from drinking that soda. I remember one person saying that he sees each soda he buys as money he could use to play the lottery instead so the feeling of winning millions of dollars and imagining what he’s going to do with it is far greater than the feeling he gets from drinking soda and that allows him to easily delay buying that soda.

Now for the big example.

You want to buy a really nice car but it’s pretty expensive. You want it real bad. It looks gorgeous. The monthly payments are just out of your reach and you’re beginning to rationalize you can cut back on other areas because you really, really want the car.

Why do you want it?

What’s the feeling you’re after?

Maybe you want it because you want to feel admired and respected by others when they see you driving it.

Now from here, we can go 2 ways.

You can ask yourself why you feel the need to feel admired and respected by others which might lead you down a journey of self discovery of insecurities in the past and that whole spiel and figure out a way of resolving it so you don’t feel that need anymore or you can find another substitute like being known as the person who keeps their word or for being known as the person who’s really good at a certain talent and be admired/respected for that.

Or you can find a far better feeling – do the whole investing compound interest thing and realize you can retire 10 years earlier if you keep your old car and invest the money you would’ve spent on the new car because the feeling of waking up Monday morning not having to work while watching others fight through traffic is the far greater than the feeling of buying that new car you really desire.

If you take the time to analyze the structure of instant gratification, it’s sort of like taking the time to analyze the structure of a lock.

Once you figure it out, you can easily figure how to pick it and gain access to what it is you truly want.

That’s the smart way of delaying instant gratification.

If you keep on fighting it, it tends to back off and then comes back with a vengeance that overwhelms you and ultimately makes you cave to it.

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