The Secret To Success That Nobody Tells (Delayed Gratification)

Everybody wants to know the secret to success. Everyone wants a blueprint that they can follow in order to achieve big things in life. But there is no one way to reach the top. I recently heard this in a podcast,

“Success isn’t some massive event that occurs in your life one day, it is the teeny tiny things that you do throughout your life that define your success.”

Success isn’t something that will happen overnight — it’s the habits you build, your routines, your persistence, your patience, your will to work hard — that’s what defines your success. In one of my previous blog, I talked about ‘5 Habits of Successful People‘ that you can include in your routine to build that sort of lifestyle. These are the habits that you might have heard of already but needed a strong evidence that they actually work.

How Technology Has Led to Instant Gratification

Today, I’m going to tell you about the secrets that nobody really talks about, the Un-sexy secrets to success : Patience and Delayed Gratification. But before explaining them, I want you to think about the time that we are living in today and how science has made everything so easy for us. With technology being the way that it is now, we can easily get anything that we want in just a click. I mean, if we want to learn about any new thing all we have to do is Ask Siri about it. When I was in school I used to be obsessed with encyclopaedias instead. Internet was not as huge as it is now. Now, If you want to have food but don’t feel like getting up, you can order that online and it will be delivered to your door, if you don’t like grocery shopping, just open amazon pantry and you’ll have your groceries in a day. That ‘Information at fingertips’ is not something we had 10 years or 15 years ago.

Internet has become the solution to everything now. Well, not really. While it’s amazing as it is, this is leading us to a world of Instant Gratification, which is making us more impatient each day. Instant Gratification refers to the temptation, and resulting tendency, to forego a future benefit in order to obtain a less rewarding immediate benefit. Example, when we give in to junk food instead of maintaining a diet because we are not able to get immediate results. 

Delayed Gratification Is The Key to Success

We’re forgetting that great things take time. A successful business, great relationships, nice physique — anything that you want to build in your life requires patience and won’t come through Instant gratification. Delayed Gratification is the tendency that involves the ability to wait to get what you want. That is the Unsexy Secret to success — ” You will not get it right away “. Let’s take an example of a business. So many people get an idea for their business. They get excited, make a business plan. And then within 3 months they realise that their business is not making a million dollars and they give up. You need to focus on the long term goal instead of instant results. Think about your 5 year goals? In fact, if you actually put consistent hard work, you’d probably exceed your expectations. But the question is do you have patience and work ethic to get going for this long even when you are not getting results? People see those incredibly successful people and compare the results, instead of comparing the experiences that they had. Andy Frisella — has a net worth of $33 million dollars — slept in a warehouse for the first 3 years and was hardly meeting ends. But he believed in this dream and didn’t give up. 

Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade.

The people who succeed are the people who are okay with setbacks, who are ok with working even when they don’t see results immediately. You have to be ok with delayed gratification. Instant gratification is amazing with technology but to get success, it takes Delayed Gratification.

How Can You Follow This ‘Secret To Success’?

1. Find your dream

Is there something that you’re passionate about? Do you have something that you are willing to work on even when you do not see the results right away? Because here’s the thing, the success that you want is not going to be here in just a year. But if you have a dream that you believe in, you will be ok with waiting for the success to finally get to you. You won’t just give up. ‘Motivation that comes from within is the best motivation’. I know a lot of you might not know what their passion is exactly. And it’s ok if you don’t yet know what you are passionate about. But it’s not okay if you are not in constant search for it. Even if you have the slightest clue, that’s enough. Keep on working in that direction.

Related Post: How to Develop Self Awareness

2. Only focus on the next step on your path to success

Now that you have a dream and a strong reason behind that dream. Set your goal and make a plan. And then just let go. You cannot know your entire journey right now, you just need to know the next step. Because there are going to be detours, there are going to be failures — probably a lot more than the successes — and your plan will also evolve. But you will be able to reach your goals as long as your next step is aligned with that goal. Just start working on it. If you keep on taking actions, you’ll eventually start seeing results and hence start believing in your dreams. Just focus on the next step.

3. Choose delayed gratification over instant gratification

” You don’t fail, until you stop trying.”

Albert Einstein

The reason why you are not where you want to be is because you are focusing on short term pleasures. Most people will go home and choose a Netflix night everyday over working hard to build their life. The question you need to ask yourself is ” What I am doing right now is getting me closer to or further from my goals?” We keep on procrastinating our dreams and that’s only human. We have that ‘living for the weekend’ mentality. Think about it as going to the gym. Imagine if you want to loose 20 pounds. You won’t expect to loose them within the first week of gymming, right? You know that it’ll take 3 months to see the results. But you need to be willing to push for the first month even when you see no apparent results. It’s hard to stay motivated when your goal seems far but a strong ‘why‘ can keep you going.

Reminder

If you have that dream that you want to hold onto. And you are working hard on. Consider this a reminder, to just keep on going. Don’t give up just yet. You are closer to your goals than you think. Comment down below if you liked this topic and want to learn more related to this theme.