Tools Of Love: Delaying Gratification

The Second Tool:

Being able to truly love ourselves involves delaying gratification.

This can be best explained by the experiment conducted with children aged 4 to 6 at Stanford University in 1972.  They were offered marshmallows on a condition. Those children who would eat it right now, would get only one. Those who would chose to eat 30 minutes later would get two. Those who would choose to eat after an hour would get three.

Majority of the children chose to eat now. A little less opted for half an hour wait and further less number of children opted for wait for a full hour.

Years later studying the careers of the children, was discovered that those who were able to delay or defer the gratification had achieved a significantly higher level of success in their career.

Delaying gratification would thus mean postponing instant relief and joy for a much higher cause.

For that first, we have to have a higher cause; a direction or a destiny which we want to achieve. It is a fact that people with aimless lives are not able to exercise delaying gratifications and they can fall for any thing that brings instant joy to their five senses.

We face countless situations in our daily life, where we have to delay our gratification.

There always exists a deferred achievement and an instant gratification for every emotion we feel.  The gratification for anger for example is to take it out, immediately, instantly, with all the frustration on the person whom you think is responsible.  Yet there is a higher achievement reward if we chose to delay our bursting out. It is a high mutual trust, respect and strengthened bond between us and the  person involved.

The gratification for a news paper reading is that no one disturbs us but if our 4 year old kid comes to us with a drawing book, we have to delay our gratification and attend to the child. For a higher reward of bond, love and value.

Step to do: Despite all the lazy day and a dull mood and a grey sullen sky, chose to do the difficult task first. Choose the hard nut to crack first. Begin with the hardest problem. Begin by taking a small step towards the hardest problem. Begin!