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?