A week ago I was in a cab to pick up my car when I encountered an interesting cabbie.  I was gazing through the window when the cabbie said (translated), “That guy is walking really slow.”

Me : huh?

Cabbie : That guy crossing the road…. he’s walking exceptionally slow.

You see, we were at a junction where pedestrians were crossing right in front of us.

Me : uh huh…

Cabbie : You know, people who walk slowly never achieve anything in life.

Me : oh….. ok… (well I try not to generalize so easily…)

Cabbie : When they walk slowly, they tend to do all other things slowly as well – they eat slower, they read slower, they get work done slower than others.  They will not be as successful as those who walk faster.  If you have friends like that, try to change them.  If they don’t change, leave them or they will drag you down too.

Me : Quite true.. by the way, my destination is right in front, you can drop me here.

And honestly, I agree that there is a lot of truth in what he said.  People who achieve things usually have a sense of urgency.  They want to get things done quickly.  The way you think is reflected in the little unconscious things that you do – like your walking speed.   Of course, I’m not saying we should be Usain Bolts every 100m we walk but we need to discipline ourselves to move faster towards our goals.   After all, time is scarce and we all want to achieve our goals sooner rather than later.

For me, I walked faster from that day onwards.

We all want it now. Quick. Fast. Heck, we wanted it even yesterday.

Almost everyone looks for instant gratification.
We want to have it now rather than later.

We prefer to slack now then later.
We prefer to watch TV now then later.
We prefer to buy that new phone now then later.

But we know that all the choices that we make have consequences. If we choose to indulge in activities that are not goal-achieving, sooner or later we will find ourselves facing consequences that we don’t want.

If we wanted to, we could choose to delay gratification and focus single-mindedly on activities that bring us closer to our goals.

As a matter of fact, a landmark experiment done previously showed that there was a correlation between the ability to delay gratification and future success in life. In this experiment, kids were given a piece of marshmallow each. They were then told that they could eat it if they wanted to but if they were willing to wait 15 minutes, they would be rewarded with another piece of marshmallow. The result was that only 1 out of 3 kids chose to wait for the reward. The researchers then traced these kids 18 years later and they discovered that the kids who chose to wait for the reward were many times more successful than those who did not. You can check out the video below.

The revelation of this experiment is interesting – the ability to delay gratification is one of the key factors in achieving success in any one area of our lives. It is easy to comprehend this principle yet in reality it is hard to apply this knowledge. Because the activities that we have to perform to achieve our goals are usually things that we don’t like to do. Our emotions make us choose tension-relieving activities rather than goal achieving ones.

That is why success is not easy. To demoralize you further , success is hard. Very, very hard indeed. Unless you learn to manage your emotional states. One way to overcome this is to remind yourself that while success is hard, failure is very, very painful. So, if you don’t want to experience that pain, force yourself to delay gratification and focus on doing only the things that lead you towards your goals.

There is a price to pay for success. And because every activity costs you energy regardless whether it is goal-achieving or not, only those who are able to delay gratification can afford to pay that price.

What do you want to do now?

Did you know that 8 million children between the ages of 6 and 14 in India are not enrolled in schools?

Further, data from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) shows that there are nearly 165 million child labourers in India.  The bulk of them work as rag pickers and earn less than half a dollar a day.  This was reported in the news yesterday (link).

In contrast, the kids in developed countries today experience abundance at a level probably not seen before in the history of mankind.  Two meals or more a day  is hardly an issue.  Wants like notebooks, computers, mp3 players, gaming consoles, etc are easily within reach.  Education and easy access to knowledge are almost like birthrights.

Yet in developed nations, we have delinquents who disregard the importance of studying, we have kids who would rather be YouTube-ing or Facebooking than educate themselves with depth.  And we even have working adults who would rather be watching TV, surfing the web aimlessly or idling their time away in some time-wasting activity.

Learning deepens our thinking and enables us to progress further in Life.  It cultivates our minds and makes us more refined and civilized people.  It builds our self-esteem and strengthens our character.  Think about it, our knowledge and thinking is what separates us from animals.  It is that which separates the successful person who leads a fulfilling life from the man on street just hoping to get past the day.

The opportunity to learn is an aspect so often taken for granted.  Many people overlook this when they complain about their conditions and whine about their lives.  If you want your life to get better, you have to get better.

Commit to continually learning to improve your life.  Someone out there is praying for the opportunity you now have.

Street Child Worker