Getting Instant Gratification From Delayed Gratification – Episode 436

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[00:00] Hello, prosperity thinkers. Today, we’re going to be talking about sacrifice and delayed gratification for any of the two or three-year-olds in the car. Cover their ears. This is going to be rough. Well, Spencer, we’re prosperity thinkers. I didn’t think we talked about stuff like that. Well, well, well, two or three-year-olds, what are they thinking about? But I think we can convince them. Well, it’s such an interesting aspect because you could say, oh, a prosperity thinker doesn’t think or talk about delayed gratification. And yet that is some of what makes us be able to be a prosperity thinker, don’t you think? It does. In fact, I’m thinking this way. If a person doesn’t have the delayed gratification,

[00:59] they’re not prosperous because they’re often chasing something that is a get-rich-quick scheme or something else. Yes. It is so interesting to watch out in the landscape as I listen to clients, which I get the utter joy of doing three days a week. I usually have eight or nine meetings a day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And I am hearing the thought process that’s out there. And then I know you do quite a bit of research to gather the thought processes that are out there and our society. And this is true of me as well. Us human beings don’t like the delayed gratification of anything. We want a quick fix. And technology has supported the quick fix along with so many other things speeding up. Think fast food is an example that we have not

[01:59] done a good job of continuing to train our brains and our bodies to sustain effort over things. And so it’s interesting to just hear the conversations and the shifts in words that people are saying, because, for example, we have something like Google Drive, the amazing ability to make a change in a document and have somebody else that’s working with that document also see it immediately. We think that should be affecting everything, don’t we? We do. Absolutely. So what is some of the research that you did that brought this topic to mind for us to talk about today? You know, we can we can lump it into some of the cultural things and some of it can be negative and some is positive. And where I’ll go with that is we hear this in the

[02:59] rising generation now that are that are in college or just recently leaving college. And they’re saying things of the nature of I had to spend so much on school and now I’m getting a job where I feel like I’m overworked and underpaid. You’re hearing that, oh, the older generation, the baby boomers, they really caught the timing in life and I’m never going to be able to buy a house that that’s kind of a sentiment that’s coming across where they’re saying, I don’t even there’s no hope. There’s no reason to delay the good life now because I’m never going to get it. You’ve probably heard that as well, right? Yes. And this is what we can begin to work on right away, because all of us need to have a little bit of mix in our lives of delayed gratification and instant

[03:55] gratification. And the thing that’s so cool to acknowledge, and this is the prosperity thinkers lens, is that so much of gratification is in our minds or our brains, if you will. I think some scientists would probably argue that there’s a difference there, but I’m just going to lump them together, minds slash brains. And so because thought can shift instantly, we can actually take something that is delayed gratification and get instant gratification with it. All right, let’s hear it. How do you do this? Okay, was that an okay setup? That was a pretty good hook. I would say if I was a fish, I would I would have bitten I would have taken the bait. Okay, so let’s take a look at something like work. So we have the

[04:53] next generation and any of us because we know that we’re going to live a long, long, long time. Work is something that is going to create an opportunity in our lives for both delayed and instant gratification. And here’s how I see it. As you head into the workforce in your early ages, so this could be part time work, college or high school, it could absolutely be your first job as well. Just acknowledging the fact that work is something that you’re going to do literally for the rest of your life, if you have the prosperity thinkers lens, and that not every job is going to be perfect, but that you can find some instant gratification in every job, you have the most awesome mix of both delayed gratification and instant gratification. So it plays out like

[05:48] this. Let’s say you’re out of college, or maybe you’re at your second or third career. And you’re still young from a chronological age standpoint. And you have a job. Okay, stop right there. We want to be grateful that you have a job and that you have a desire to work because both of those things are awesome. And you can get some instant gratification out of this. And then you go to your job, and maybe the work that you’re doing that day is not your favorite thing, but you’re doing it with somebody that you really like. So there you get both delayed gratification, because you’re getting the good results of doing the work, even though you may not be super happy about it today. And you get instant

[06:31] gratification because you get to work with somebody that you like. And then maybe later in the afternoon, you have to tackle a project that you absolutely cannot stand. And yet you know that by getting that work done, so this is the delayed gratification part, you are going to be contributing to the long term goals of the company or benefiting the client that you’re doing the work for or whatever it is. And so your thought during the time that you are doing the work that you don’t want to do, but that must be done, can enable your physical self to have the impact of instant gratification. If you will train your brain or your mind to be grateful to seek out the good aspects of it, even if all it is, is

[07:25] that you’re going to be done in a couple hours, because psych, let’s see, what’s the word physiologically, I always struggled with that one, not psychologically, right, it’s physiologically, your body is going to be impacted by the work that you do. And the thoughts that you have, when you’re doing the work. It’s also true that the thoughts that you have about the person, whether it’s the end client that you may not even see, or maybe it’s somebody that’s helping you, or maybe it’s somebody that’s not helping you. Like maybe somebody was supposed to help you with the job, but they couldn’t show up that day or whatever. The thoughts that you have during the time that you’re doing that work have an absolute direct connection to your body and how

[08:17] you are physiologically feeling. And there’s all kinds of studies that are showing this connection these days. So much so that I implore people to be super conscious of the thoughts that they have while they’re doing the work that they’re doing or whatever it is that they’re doing. Because this is the best combination of delayed gratification and instant gratification, because the instant gratification is literally thought to body, thought to body, thought to body that fast. And so I know for myself when I have to, as an example, go out and well, this morning, I had to dig into an Excel spreadsheet, which I cannot stand, and do some very specific delineating of some old website archives that needed to have decisions made about them. So

[09:14] I can either be in there grumbling, it was just me in the computer. Okay, Emma Dogg was here as well. But you know, it can just be me grumbling mentally, or potentially even out loud. Or it can be me, grateful that I have a computer, grateful that I get to clean this website mess up, grateful that our clients that benefit from our website and those that just learn from it and are never going to be clients or might be clients in the future, we’ll get to see a clean website without a whole bunch of garbage hanging around in the back that’s slowing it down, etc, etc. How my body feels during that time is a direct reflection of how my thinking is going. So I can take this delayed gratification thing, because

[10:05] I’m not going to experience the fixes of that Excel spreadsheet for a week or however long it takes. And I can get instant gratification out of it. And when I finish the work, there’s another opportunity for instant gratification of like, Yes, I’m done. Good work, Kim, move on to the next thing. And my body feels so much better because of it, which as we now know, because of the science and the proof that’s out there, I will get sick less, I will be happier doing my next job, I will be more productive for the person that happens to be in front of me during that next job, like literally the next hour. And talk about him a dog, right? This is what dogs do. They’re totally present to the moment. And then if they’ve

[10:49] had to have something bad happen to them, they get scolded. And then that they let that go. And they’re back to instant gratification again. So that was a little bit of a soapbox. Talk to me. Was that helpful? Do you have questions? Where’s your thinking? It’s very helpful. I’m going to unpack, unpack a few things in here, because I find it to be something that maybe a couple people might not notice. What happens, you know, when we’re children, oftentimes, is it’s led by characteristic. And, you know, a lot of parenting nowadays, and I’m going to generalize, is over rewarding children, which can, I think we’ll see the long term effects of that. But what’s happening is when you have those external rewards, or you do

[11:38] anything to be motivated to do something difficult or sacrifice, and have that delayed gratification, and it’s external that you’re relying upon, you never actually build the skeleton, the strength, that core you need. And in all that you said, there was nothing external. You didn’t go through and say, hey, you know, lean on to this group to motivate you, or you’re going to need this thing. Everything you mentioned was within your body and your own capability. Isn’t that fabulous? And it all starts in our thought, which is why our brand is now prosperity thinkers. And it then flows through that absolutely every single thing that we work on. And believe me, I have to work on this too. It’s a daily thing. It’s not like

[12:33] prosperity thinking, check, got that done. It’s a constant effort. There’s something and it’s gonna sound like I’m, I’m debating in a way. And I’m not I’m throwing a different position in which is this. There are some things where delayed gratification or sacrifice on the surface looks like it’s good. But it’s actually something bad. So I’m going to pull in the example, 401ks. How about that? Because, because a 401k is one of those things where normal people would say, Oh, yes, please, sacrifice now because in the future, the unknown future, X is going to happen. That’s one that does it make sense really, to go through the delayed gratification and through the typical process. That is a great point for us to wrap this up with

[13:35] because there are absolutely times when delayed gratification and now we’re talking 30 years, right? Your typical 29 year old to 59. Bad math. That is 30. Yes, no. 30 to 60. Yeah, that’s 30 31 years. I think technically. Do I have it right? No, it’s 40 isn’t it? You’re correct. Yeah. Whatever. This is the financial person and made with poor math skills, at least for for quick mental math. This time around the 401k of delayed gratification is one of those times that we should say, Hold on a minute. Is it really, really best for me to lock money up for that long of a time? Or could I make better use of and I’ll admit, maybe we can’t get instant gratification, but shorter term gratification by not following the herd and not just doing what

[14:38] everybody else is doing. We’ve got young adults in our family. And one of them in particular was hounded upon by his colleagues, old and young to do the 401k like what? I can’t believe you’re missing out. It had a very, very small match. And he resisted and kept saying, I do not want to lock my money up. I do not want it to be under government control. And I am not going to do that. And then his friends, same deal. Oh, my gosh, you know, everybody’s telling us to do this. Shouldn’t you do this? He had his own values in his head. And he operated by his values, not what society or the government or his employer were asking him to have as their values. And I think that’s a really important distinction is absolutely we should

[15:35] set aside money for the future. That is delayed gratification. And absolutely, we should be very careful where we set it aside so that if we need to pivot, if an opportunity arises that we need to take advantage of, if an emergency comes up that we need to solve, we can shift the money’s work and purpose and focus to do whatever it is that we need to do based on our values, not an employer’s, the government’s or our friends. So what you did is you just kind of laid in a buffet right there, which is you have certain, you know, the circumstances of us, yes, sacrificing and having delayed gratification. But there’s also, we need to have our values packed in, in control and realize that the North Star that we have

[16:27] as individuals is the one that will dictate that versus what society is saying. Really well said. And if you need some help with values, grab a list on the web, go through, pick 20, go through the 20, pick 10. Some people would tell you go through the 10 and pick five and use those as your values. And it’s an exercise that I do at least once a year to revisit because our values change based on all kinds of things that are going on our lives. And then I match my money decisions to my values. Wonderful. All right, listeners, here’s a call to action for you. If this episode speaks to you and you’re looking at it and taking a quick inventory and you’re saying, okay, well, how can I change up how

[17:16] I view this delayed gratification for my family or for my finances or in my business or my career? And you have a specific question, send those in to hello at prosperity thinkers.com and we can either have those answered by email or as a conversation here on the podcast, because listener questions are absolutely the greatest. We just love them. And thank you for listening in on this podcast. If you’re not already following the show, make sure you do that on Spotify, Apple or any of your other favorite podcast players. Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partners for prosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure

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