Instant Gratification = Minimum Results and 5 Examples of it.

"Man I'm starving right now!" You thought to yourself and was in the mood for a home cook meal, maybe broil some steak, fix up your mom's favorite casserole recipe and bake some butter milk biscuits to satisfy your hunger.

Then you realized how much time and preparation it would take to conjure up a feast like that and said to yourself "Man I'm really hungry, but I don't feel like cooking and getting my hands dirty - ehh screw it I'll just heat up some instant ramen noodles."

Your mind was on board with the idea of fixing up a home cooked meal that satisfied your taste buds but your eagerness and impatience is what lead you to open up that packet of ramen noodles, throw it in the microwave and boom! - you got your instant gratification.

You say you want it now but the fact is, you haven't earned it.

You haven't earned that home cooked meal because you simply lacked the patience and the work ethic to fully put together that meal you craved so much.

When you put in the time, energy, and effort you will produce quality results.

Home cooked meal= Maximum Results!

When you get lazy and too comfortable and get hungry, you cook up the ramen noodles in spite of the attitude of "I want it now."

Instant Noodles + Microwave= Minimum Results

That microwave may be warming up your precious ramen noodles but the produced results are rather lukewarming.

To clarify, what is Instant Gratification?

I'll give you the sugar-coated version:

-Instant Gratification is a habit where you forgo short-term pain, and instead, indulge in fleeting pleasures that ultimately result in long-term pain.

Now here's my version of describing this dangerous creature:

A term that describes a person or generation that is soft or weak-minded in their pursuit of success or idea of it and is only interested in the concept of short-term happiness; people that do less work and expect maximum results and are simply contempt with mediocrity.

This is what Instant Gratification teaches us:

Rome wasn't built in a day. Rome 1st became an idea and then it was mapped out by construction and then the process began with years of putting together acres and molding land.

Much like the Instant Noodles analogy, everything is wanted now like the chiseled and masculine body but you keep delaying gym visits until the next day or next week.

It teaches us that greatness and dreams should happen now and that we are too lazy to produce and achieve what we want.

Cause maybe if we think it long enough it will happen - not true!

This isn't law of attraction, no - this is called get your ass out of bed and make something happen!

This is called accomplishing or completing something today that gets you a lot closer to your goal.

This type of thinking is ruining the mindset of the youth and is only creating procrastinators and "talk the talk" type of people.

The need for instant gratification distracts us from long-term success and guarantees us long-term regret.

Now is Instant Gratification really a bad thing?

Not all of it is bad. There's nothing wrong with wanting or needing things, experience, or products in a timely manner. It's important to balance our desires with a realistic sense of timing and patience. It depends on what your desire is and the required amount of time it takes to gain it. Some dreams and goals take longer than others to achieve and shorter for some.

But nothing will ever happen if you don't take action.

Instant Gratification is simply not soon enough - said by Meryl Streep.

Here are just 5 examples of which we crave instant gratification:

1. Social Media - Many people today are lacking a real human connection, and friendships are often not meaningful anymore. Social media has given us the option to put filters over our lives to make them seem something that they aren’t. We have this need to feel gratifying in our pursuit of validation from strangers

2. Text Messaging - Our dopamine receptors instantly get us excited when we receive a text message from a friend or our crush. Not realizing that it's taking up too much of your time just sending endless strings of emojis and messages that can easily be translated to face-to-face interaction. Texting has proven to be a easy way to communicate, however, very lazy too.

3. Alcohol - When life get's too heated we tend to wanna lay up on the couch and drink a couple of pints to forget about the awful day we had. I've been around people who have an alcohol addiction and it messes up their thought process and their ability to connect with family and friends. Drinking is a toxic way to cope with everyday stress and although it may help you relax but the constant need of it is stemmed from the instant dopamine rush it gives you. You'll constantly be in a loop.

4. Drugs - Drugs can be a connection killer, it can have a negative impact on your family, loved one and friends that support you. Any type of drug from crack, cocaine, meth, weed or perks can leave you off wanting more of it due to what's in the drug that makes it so addicting. It's one of those 'easy way out' types of coping with overall hardships; to escape the reality of your situation. Once you're hooked, its an uphill battle to quit taking drugs.

5. Food - Food is perhaps the biggest example of instant gratification, when we crave that pepperoni pizza, what do we do? Nowadays we 'door-dash' it and the delivery man comes knocking at the door. Home cooked food does not factor in this cause its DIY, prepped and fixed from the ground up. Whilst fast food is something that is prepared for you and doesn't require much effort. When we know that those tasty meals we crave are the most unhealthy for us to eat and we know that proper nutrition is important to long-term health than simply satisfying our taste buds of a chocolate bar for short-term gratification.

Conclusion:

Our minds are so fixated on this fast-paced, easy accessible world that we live in. It's hard to deny things in life that come easy to us because we were always conditioned to never truly grind of what we desire and instead we adopted this short-sighted view of what hard work is.

The bottom line is you should never want to attain instant gratification because it honestly says something about your character and your principals. It tells me that whatever long-term goals you have set for yourself are just there to make it sound cool and appealing when in fact, your only putting in the minimal effort to succeed and that's not the right attitude to have.

You have to embrace and fall in love with the journey and the progression you have made thus far. Sometimes you'll hit a slump & rock bottom but that comes with the fight of your dreams and aspirations. As long as you expect things to come easy to you, the longer the drive to success will be for you.

It may take years for you to strut off the body you have always envisioned to have but the days that you show up to working out and grounding yourself in sweat and tears are the days that will accelerate you to better long-lasting health.

Remember it's the minimal results produced that is a reflection of the work you put in and the instant gratification mindset + little effort = minimum results!