Delayed gratification
Nikola Man
I want everything right now.
Losing weight: “In two weeks you will completely lose all your fat and you will have your dream body”
Banks: “Quick cash loans and enjoy your vacation now”
Facebook & Instagram: Reactions (likes) to photos happen instantaneously
Advertisements: Get our product with no effort
Internet: Get anything by simply clicking
Food: Delivery
Lottery and gambling: I think I’ve exemplified my point
The common thread between these examples is rather obvious, everything is based on a “get it now” mentality. The reality of success and results worth having cannot be further from this. For real results, for real success you need time, sacrifices today and tomorrow so that the future may hold something nice. My area of expertise has probably the best examples of this, there are people who’ve been gaining fat for 20 years and expect to lose it in a month or those who desire a body similar to those who are on the cover page of a magazine in 3 months, yet the person on the cover invested a decade.
My advice to you is to calculate your progress in terms of percentage. Let’s imagine an abstract starting point of 100 points now imagine your rate of progress is 30% on the last months improvement. Let’s now imagine that our first month’s growth is only 0.1 point. The 12th month of the third year (only that month) your growth would be 973 points while the total growth for the period would be 4215 points.
I admit that this isn’t practical, but you can apply it to any situation. Progress in the gym? Adding 2.5 kg to a lift is 30 kg in a year. Playing an instrument? Learning a language? Reading fast? Losing weight? Literally anything and everything that is your path to success, fulfilment and happiness will be slow in the beginning, but the longer you work on it the more efficient you will be and your later steps will be much larger.
I suggest to you that you should resist that desire and the “programmed” way of behaving that today’s society instilled in us. Resist the temptation to believe that everything should or even worse that everything can be achieved immediately because then you will not be disappointed, you won’t think that the system is rigged against you and you won’t think that you are an incompetent individual. A small investment each day will become a huge investment down the line with an even bigger “profit” so just go forward each day and with each day become A Tiny Bit Better than yesterday.