How To Discipline Yourself And Delay Gratification!
"I believe the sign of maturity is accepting deffered gratification." - Peggy Cahn
The Problem Of The Puer Aeternus
Many young people nowadays are struggling academically, socially, spiritually, financially, and sexually.
The Puer Aeternus is the primary neurosis of the modern age.
Mothers have always interacted with their children more than fathers. This created an extremely intimate relationship with the mother-figure, which left in the child a lasting emotional mark, or a highly resistant psychological bond which is called a “mother complex”.
“A man who has a mother complex will always have to contend with his tendencies toward becoming a puer aeternus.” - Marie-Louis von Franz
In most cultures, with the rites of passage, the youth would be taken away from their mothers into a complete state of loneliness and darkness, in which they would have to strive to survive and become independent. This was believed to break the bond with their mothers, and they would be welcomed back in the tribe as adults. Representing the symbolical death of childhood.
Nowadays, we don’t have those rites of passage. That’s why many men and women who were well into their adult years remain psychologically stagnated in their maturation. They live at home into their late 20’s, choosing to remain in their comfort zone rather than testing the unknown territories of independence. Instead of striving to be something, many stay stuck in the virtual world of addictions: internet, pornography, and video games. They choose, consciously or uncousciously, to be passive wanderers in life with no purpose, holding on to instant gratification as a means to ease their suffering.
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” - Andre Gide
This Is Our World Now
The world we live in now is ruled by instant gratification! Which is crippling us of living fully and providing our true gift to the world!
I believe instant gratification to be the venom behind the Puer Aeternus.
Well, how do we counter it? By practicing delaying gratification. It’s a sacrificial process, but being sacrificial is part of being responsible and mature and shouldering the bourden of being properly.
If you want to make things better in the future, then you make sacrifices in the present. And discipline means you are capable of making sacrifices. Discipline means postponing your impulsive pleasure today, so you can have a more secure and productive tomorrow.
The knowledge we have of the possibility of tragedy and suffering in the future motivates us to sacrifice the present in order to reduce the unnecessary anxiety and pain that awaits us. We also do it so we can have some joy and make our lives better. But the fundamental issue here is to avoid suffering. That’s our primary obligation.
The successful among us bargain with the future! They delay gratification!
But how can you push yourself to do it? By envisioning the future you want to have, and develop a plan for it, and after you plan it you might think - “Well, my plan sucks.” but YES! Even if it’s a bad plan, aim for something! It’s still way better than what you have now. Start with that and make the necessary changes along the way until you have formed a solid plan.
Another powerful motivator is fear, so envision what kind of hell your life would turn into if you didn’t make the necessary sacrifices in the present.
The Marshmallow Experiment
Hundreds of children were tested by a simple deal: they were brought in a room with a marshmallow on the table and the researcher would tell them he needed to leave for about 10 minutes. If the child wouldn’t have eaten the marshmallow, he’d receive a second one, but it wouldn’t happen unless he didn’t eat the first one. Most of the children ate the first marshmallow, as expected.
Then the researchers tracked the children throughout their growth and found that those who applied delayed gratification experienced many benefits, such as:
Lower level of substance abuse
Better response to stress
Better social skills
Lower risk of obesity
Better academic performance
The same kids were evaluated 30 years later for health. Those who delayed gratification were found to have better health at the time.
Another experiment divided the children into two groups, exposing them to different contexts. They gave them stickers and colors and told them they would come back with more, but for one group they brought more, while for the other they didn’t. The children from the first group learned the worth of delaying gratification, while the second group became more inclined towards instant gratification.
This shows how delayed gratification is trainable since it’s dependant on experiences, and so open to positive repetitions.
A more recent study also shows that kids perform better when there is a need to cooperate with others. This indicates that people develop delayed gratification by collaborating with others instead of focusing on an individual goal.
A Permanent State Of Hedonic Adaptation
We have two distinct areas in our brain: one associated with emotion, the other with reason. The emotional part fights for instant gratification since it lacks a complex vision of the future, while the rational part can form a vision of what that future could be, favoring delayed gratification instead.
Nowadays, for most people, the emotional part has taken over, and we seek instant gratification from everything. The ability to aim and reach for a goal has lost its power. Everything is more accessible, so we choose high bumps of happiness instead of going after its persistence. We live in consistent periods of little happiness, so we can procrastinate every day.
We live in a permanent state of hedonic adaptation. We are one click away from anything, so falling into temptations is really easy. This availability didn’t increase our productivity, it enhanced our laziness.
When you practiced delayed gratification, you wait for what you truly want. Instant gratification is the opposite - you settle for something that brings you pleasure right away. Delaying gratification is often difficult because we are wired not to just seek pleasure but to avoid pain.
The Seinfeld Strategy…
is a technique you can use to delay gratification for longer periods of time. Every day that you successfully delay gratification, you cross it off your calendar. This ends up creating a chain. And it’s a strategy that works for people who enjoy gamification. If you are satisfied with keeping the chain going, you are less likely to give up. If you still struggle to delay gratification after that, find ways to eliminate the temptation where you can. Then you are making it difficult for yourself to engage in this temptations.
Discipline Yourself
The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term for long term gain is the prerequisite for success. It relates to other similar skills such as: patience, willpower, self-control and emotional intelligence. These abilities belong to a bigger part of discipline: self-regulation.
Discipline can be achieved in two ways:
Pleasure withholding
Unpleasant habits
The first step into improving your instant gratification resistance involves keeping yourself from pleasure, using the rational part of your brain to renounce instant gratification now, so you can have greater satisfaction later. But beware, if you break your word, the emotional part of your brain will draw you back to instant rewards, and you will have to start over.
Start small, and then move on to the more difficult practices.
Success is a marathon, not a sprint. Learn to work with a future gain in mind.
Many benefits come from delaying gratification:
The more you delay pleasure, the more you enhance it.
The impression of missing something tricks your mind into giving it more value. Scarcity breeds desire.
The more effort you put into something, the bigger the emotional burst will be.
You learn to enjoy the little things in life.
It increases your willpower and your resistance to addictions.
Delayed gratification works like a…
Dam Of Pleasure
If you keep it open, the river of minor pleasures will pass in any instant under your gates, and you will get used to it. But if you close it, the water level will rise over time, until the dam is full. If you then open your gates, the pressure of the water will shock you, and so will the pleasure you get from it.
This is how delayed gratification could save your life!