Imagine coming home one day and finding a genie sitting in your living room. You’re startled, but the genie seems friendly, so the two of you get chatting. He tells you he can grant all your wishes – whatever your mind can conjure is up for grabs. You’re thrilled beyond measure! You start running through your list – a lavish home near the beach, some Porsches and Ferraris in the garage, a muscular body and top-notch health, a billion dollars or so in the bank, a loving partner, awesome friends, and so on. Genie gives it some thought, then declares you can have it all. There’s just one small caveat, though. Instead of snapping his fingers and teleporting you into a universe of abundance, he hands you a thick stack of papers. You sift through it and see: study 5 hours a day every day of the year; gym for an hour; cakes, burgers, and soda are forbidden forever; 50% of your earnings go straight to a savings account…Your eyes start to glaze. It’s too much work. You thank the genie for his time, show him the door, and get back to Netflix with a tub of ice cream.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. We all want everything right now. But success and prosperity demand that we delay our gratifications – that we give up immediate pleasure for a better future. Resisting temptations is considered a virtue in almost every religion and culture. Philosophy counts it amongst the highest moral virtues a human can attain. But why is this one ability accorded with so much importance?

Why Is It Important to Delay Gratification?

Imagine you’re a four-year-old marshmallow fanatic playing a game. A researcher places a plate in front of you; there’s one marshmallow on one side and two on the other. She tells you that she has to step out for a bit. You can have the one marshmallow whenever you like. But, if you wait until she returns, you can have two. Now you’re in a torturous dilemma. What do you do? Do you gobble that heavenly ball of fluff the moment the researcher is out of sight? Or do you wait to double your delicious reward?

This is the template of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment— one of the most popular experiments in psychology ever conducted in 1972 led by psychologist, Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University. The goal of this study was to see how children manage to delay gratification. The creativity of the children didn’t fail to surprise the researchers. They employed all kinds of tactics — pushing the plate to the edge of the table, as far from them as possible; singing or talking to themselves to divert the attention away from the treats; staring at the walls or ceiling. The experiment was illuminating, but the most stunning revelation came years later – as the researchers followed each child for more than 40 years – when the researchers decided to follow up on how the kids were doing.

The children who were the most adept at resisting the temptation were faring better in life by almost every metric – they had better grades, scored higher on the SAT, were in better shape, and had lower levels of substance abuse. Later in life, the same people had better relationships, earned more money, experienced less stress, and were happier by their own account. This study was proof that being better at delaying gratification led to more success in almost every aspect of life. Intuitively, it makes sense:

• If you pick homework over a party, you will earn better grades.
• If you go to bed on time instead of watching just one more episode, you will wake up well-rested.
• If you grab an apple instead of reaching for the pie, you will have better health.

Delayed gratification, then, is simply trading immediate pleasure for greater pleasure in the future. It’s important to note here that delayed gratification is not the one and only component of success. It is one gear in the complex machinery that regulates our behavior. But it is an important one and affects all aspects of self-control. These studies show that exercising discipline and not giving in to temptations are vital ingredients of a successful life.

Why is Delaying Gratification So Difficult?

If achieving success is this easy, how come we haven’t turned the planet into paradise yet? Consumer debt is frighteningly high, hordes of people are getting addicted to drugs, mental health has taken a plunge. So what’s the catch? Well, the truth is that delaying gratification is terribly hard.

This difficulty does not arise simply from a lack of willpower. Many factors affect how we make the choice to delay gratification:

1. Trust: Delaying gratification makes sense only if you believe that the future reward will materialize. If you want to put money in a retirement fund but your country has reached unprecedented levels of inflation, you’ll wonder if the amount you’re saving will even be worth anything down the line. In such a case, you’ll find it hard to beat the temptation of buying the shiny new things Amazon keeps bugging you with.
2. Emotions: When we’re in distress, the desire to alleviate that distress overrides our rational decision-making. The need to feel better eliminates all thoughts about what is best for our future. If your girlfriend just broke up with you, will you continue working on the presentation that’s due tomorrow or blow it off to go have a beer with your buddies? Dealing with your sorrow will have much more urgency than your office work.
3. Unpredictability: The world doesn’t come with a timeline of guaranteed rewards. Suppose you’re invited to a party that’s sure to be legendary, but you also have an important exam tomorrow. The material is difficult, and you’re not sure if studying more will have any significant effect on your grade. The party is a sure thing, but the grade isn’t. The immediacy of the present reward – the party – makes it much more alluring than the potential bump in your grade.

The context of the situation can heavily influence the choice we make, but our ability to delay gratification can still steer us in the right direction.

How We Can Delay Gratification

Discipline and self-control can help us beat even the strongest of temptations. There are certain strategies we can implement to get better at delaying gratification:

1. Clarify your values: Delaying gratification must mean something to you to guide your behaviors – and you must define and frame it into a set of core values and principles that makes sense to you and your life’s missions and goals.
2. Set deadlines for goals: If it’s not on the calendar, it won’t get done. If you don’t put your goals and aspirations on a timeline, it becomes easy to lose motivation in the face of temptations. It’s fine to have cake when you want to lose weight someday. It’s fine to skip work when you want a raise someday. Having concrete deadlines gives you the impetus to look beyond the immediate reward.
3. Work with your emotions: Even the most meticulous timetables will fail if your emotions are not in the right place. To hone your skill of slaying temptations, you also need to get better at handling difficult emotions. Being in a good headspace makes it much easier to prioritize the future reward.
4. Distance yourself from temptations: The best way to avoid temptations is to not be tempted. If you are trying to save money, put it in an account that makes withdrawals difficult. If your aim is to get fit, sweep your house clean of all the junk food. If you can’t stop watching one episode after the other, use software to restrict your access. Employ your creativity to create that distance.
5. Think about the cost of giving in: Instant gratification is so powerful because it traps us in that instant. If we just pause and remind ourselves what this immediate delight really costs us in the long term, our perspective can shift. Imagine how your future self will feel about your decision. If they don’t look happy, hold on to that image and see how quickly the temptation dissipates. This is one of the foundations of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
6. Utilize the community: No battle is won alone, so find yourself a tribe or team. Surround yourself with people who understands the importance of resisting temptations and people who values self-development. If delaying gratifications is the norm, you will grow to respect that expectation. If you struggle with productivity, find someone who will hold you accountable. If you want to lose weight, join a forum and seek help from people who’re on the same journey. It’s often much harder to disappoint others than to disappoint oneself.

Immediate pleasures are always just that — immediate…and fleeting. Instant gratification is part of a feedback loop that can reinforce a very vicious cycle of addictive behaviors. Long-term happiness requires us to look beyond the present and make the “hard” choice. Fortunately, delaying gratification is an ability we can all cultivate. Next time you’re offered a marshmallow, maybe you should wait for two.

About the Author

Albert Nguyen is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice. He specializes in providing an integrative and eclectic approach to mental health care that includes personal self-care, anxiety and depression, and peak performance in children, teens and adults. Reach out for more information on how he can be of service to you here.