“I want it all and I want it now!”
Does this sound familiar to you? This way of thinking is exactly how 95% of the world’s population brains operate. The I want it all and I want it now mentality is more present than ever because of the technological advances we’ve gone through the last couple of decades that has allowed everything to come to us extremely fast.
In a time long past, sending someone a message by writing a letter used to take days or even weeks before the letter reached its receiver. Nowadays, if we want to share information with someone, we simply send them an email or an instant message and hop, like magic, in less than a fraction of a second, the other person receives a digital message.
In order to survive, our species needed to be extremely patient. We needed to hunt for prey in order to get a quality protein source. Often times, the hunt was unsuccessful and multiple attempts were needed before reaching success and bringing home a fresh kill to feed the tribe. Sometimes, all attempts were unsuccessful and the only thing available were what the gatherers brought home. Certain times there was no food at all and people were hungry for days without knowing when and where the next meal would come from. Nowadays, if we need something, we simply to go the nearest grocery store and are able to buy more food than our ancestors could gather in one week.
Want to buy new clothes? Or maybe the latest Nike sneakers? Most things that we want are just a few clicks away without us even physically needing to move our legs. And in most cases, because of the fierce business competition, companies promise to deliver your newly bought item the next day or definitely within the first week of the purchase. Believe it or not ladies and gentlemen, but there were times where your ancestors actually had to perform a lot of effort to make new clothes themselves and had to find out how to craft solid footwear for the climate and terrain they lived in.
In other words, pretty much everything that we can think of that we want or think we need is instantly available to us. While I’m extremely grateful to live in an era where everything is readily available to us and where we are able to live lives that are so much more easy than compared to the lives our ancestors had to live, I notice that not everything is that positive about it. This is especially true when it comes to some of the most important life lessons regarding our reward system.
Most people don’t realize what an amazing era they live in. They don’t realize how lucky they are that they don’t have to face the grueling challenges their ancestors had to face in order to stay alive and pass on their genes to the next generation. Our ancestors had to work, fight and often times risk their lives for everything they everything they wanted to posses or for every (basic) need that needed to be satisfied. We however, have everything we want without any significant risk in a fraction of a second. Simply put, 95% of people are slaves to instant gratification.
With each generation, our technology advances even further and the speed at which we receive our dopamine spikes increases. Unfortunately, as time goes on, the human species has lost a couple of extremely important qualities that have played a crucial role throughout the entire human history. These qualities are hard work and patience. There’s this saying that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Well, today’s generation of young men and women expect 1000 Romes to be built today without putting in any effort.
With everything being so convenient and our rewards so easily within reach these days, thanks modern gadgets and services such as television and streaming services, gaming systems, unlimited high speed internet porn, fast food, etc., people are getting their reward systems firing in their brain and an explosion of feel good chemicals takes place in the brain. As a result of this we have conditioned ourselves to receive our rewards without performing any significant effort. Everything comes easy and you become lazy. Trapped in this cyclen of instant gratification, you’re constantly chasing the next easilyt available high and feel good stimulation, which distracts you from doing something significant with your life. This is exactly the reason why the majority of the world’s population don’t amount to anything significant and never realize their dreams. Most people are just like drug addicts, but since this phenomenom has become the norm, nobody questions the system
IMPORTANT THINGS TAKE TIME TO REALIZE AND ACHIEVE
Just like Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor were the great pyramids of Egypt. Everything truly impressive anywhere in the world has demanded time to be realized. Sometimes, people take a lifetime to achieve something worthwhile that will change the world. These sacrifices of hard work and patience are things that with each new generation are more and more foreign to us.
Building the body of your dreams, building a business, learning an instrument, and so many more things that are amazing and that people admire take time and effort. It’s not from going to the gym once and eating properly for one day that your body will change immediately. It takes consistency. Consistent action to go to the gym and to eat properly for months to see impressive results. But to truly make a masterpiece of your body, it will take years. It’s not from being productive for one day that your business will be a great success. It takes planning, taking action and trying out new things, tweaking things that fail, learning from failure, getting up after defeat, day in and day out working hard consistently towards your goal. The first few years you won’t see any significant profit. Until one day, the fruits of your labor pay off and you have a solid income from your business that exponentially increases as time goes on and you keep putting in the required effort, improve your product or service and every single aspect of that business. This will take years. Want to master an instrument? Same story. To train the nervous system to be one with the instrument, one needs to practice consistently for years. One must overcome failure and frustration until one day, the things that used to be extremely hard and required the most of your concentration, now doesn’t need any thought at all and has become an automatic response of your body to the instrument, which has become an extension of your body.
Putting in the hard work and being consistent for as long as required is what delivers truly magnificent outcomes. The key is to delay gratification. By delaying gratification, you won’t see immediate results in what you’re attempting to achieve. This is exactly what puts so many people off of trying to do great things. People are addicted to instant gratification, to receiving instant rewards for doing the least possible amount of work in the shortest time frame. This is the exact opposite of what successful people do. It’s the exact opposite of what is required to achieve big things.
Training yourself to being able to postpone your reward is one of the most important traits you can acquire. It requires belief, discipline and a strong character and isn’t easy, but once you do get to pick the fruits of your labor, once the reward comes to you after working hard for an extended period of time, the rewards you will receive will be so much more valuable and give you so much more satisfaction than any reward you’ll receive through the way of instant gratification.
If you want to transform your physique, build a successful business, master an instrument, master a martial art, become the best in whatever area of life you pick to become the best in, then you better embrace the concept of delayed gratification. The key to achieving all of the things I’ve just mentioned is again: hard work and consistent repetition. As you get better with each time you repeat the necessary actions such as lifting weights, dealing with clients, practicing chords and scales, performing your fighting combinations, etc., your big reward will find its way to you.
Working hard consistently will become a habit. Excellence is defined by your habits and if we take a close look at successful people in the world versus average joes, we see that their habits are the exact opposite. Whereas one focuses on productive habits that leads to one improving in all areas of life, the other focuses on instant gratification and never gets anywhere.
Set goals, work hard, be consistent, patient and trust the process.
Kevin Mahjoubi