The Mindset Mentor - Delayed Gratification: Your Superpower to Success

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor, just give us a rating and review real quick, however you listen to us. The more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which allows it to grow, impact more people's lives, and hopefully we can keep on changing the world. Today, we're going to be talking about the difference between delayed gratification and instant gratification. And if you can master these little teeny tiny decisions in your life,

Starting point is 00:00:41 you'll create the life that you want and you'll stop self-sabotaging yourself. So I want you to understand this. As a human, we all have a conflict between what we should do to create the life that we want and what we want to do. And if you master these decisions, this is really the key to mastering your life. It's not big, huge decisions that change your life. Obviously, there are some big decisions that do change your life, but a lot of times it's little teeny tiny decisions all day long. And so today I'm going to talk about how to overcome this internal struggle. And I'm going to actually talk about your brain and how your brain has multiple different parts that are kind of in battle with each other while you're trying to take action to create the life that you want. Our mind has two parts that are basically in conflict. So there's emotional impulses and there's rational thinking, okay?

Starting point is 00:01:30 Emotional impulses and then rational thinking. And so when you look at the brain, you have something that's called the limbic system. And the limbic system controls your emotions and your drives. It's in charge of pleasure, in charge of pain, in charge of survival. In this part of your brain, the limbic system seeks instant gratification, which is like there's sugar in front of me. I want to eat that sugar. Or I'm watching the NFL games with my friends. I just want a beer, right? So that's like instant gratification. So that's in the limbic system. On the other side, there's another part of your brain that's called the prefrontal cortex. And this is in charge of your rational thinking, your decision making. It's also in charge of your impulse control. And this focuses on long-term goals. And so conflict arises in your

Starting point is 00:02:16 brain when these two systems, the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex clash, which is why you can consciously know what you want to do and what you should do to create the life that you want, but also at the exact same time, not be doing it. And so the key part to really understand today's episode is this idea that I've said many times in the podcast, but your life is either easy now and hard later or hard now and easy later. So easy now and hard later means that you're choosing instant gratification. Hard now and easy later means that you're choosing delayed gratification. And so I want you to understand you never have to be disciplined to do the things that are bad for you. To do the things like deciding not to wake up early, deciding to hit the snooze,

Starting point is 00:03:04 deciding to not work out, deciding to eat a slice of cake, deciding to wake up early, deciding to hit the snooze, deciding to not work out, deciding to eat a slice of cake, deciding to drink a beer, deciding to smoke a cigarette, whatever it might be. You don't have to be disciplined to do those things. Those are easy to do. And that's instant gratification. You immediately get gratification. What you need discipline for is to do the things that are good for you, to be disciplined to wake up early, be disciplined to go to the gym, be disciplined to eat healthy, be disciplined to wake up early, be disciplined to go to the gym, be disciplined to eat healthy, be disciplined to meditate and learn and grow and get better as a human. And so when you look at this, you really start to understand that self-sabotage, which we all do in some sort of way,

Starting point is 00:03:37 occurs when we fail to act on what we don't do that we know that really should do, right? So like self-sabotage, aka is not doing what we know we should do to create the life that we want. And so this could be rooted in many different places growing up as a human, right? And this human experience, this beautiful, tragic, crazy, amazing, shitty, I mean, it's every possible feeling that you could possibly feel as being a human. So we have many things that have happened to us throughout the course of our life. So some of our self-sabotage is rooted in our early childhood conditioning. It's rooted in early experiences, wanting approval from other people.

Starting point is 00:04:16 It's also rooted in the fact that humans are just inherently lazy. So you are going to self-sabotage. Like you will always look for the easy route. That's what humans will do. We will take the path of least resistance if we're not conscious and paying attention to go, oh, I actually should go this way. We will always look for ways to stay in our comfort zone. And I want you to understand this. This is a thing that I'm really trying to get ahead to people and get them to understand is that our conscious brain is 5% of our actual cognitive functioning throughout the

Starting point is 00:04:47 day. Our subconscious brain is 95% of it, which means that your subconscious is always like two or three steps ahead of us. And it will trick you into doing nothing however it can. One of the biggest ways that it'll trick you to doing nothing is it will create this inner critic. So like many people, we develop this internal voice of doubt, of fear, of not good enough, and that voice can paralyze us. So it makes even taking action on small tasks feel overwhelming, right? And so it'll undermine your confidence, make you feel like you're not good enough. And ultimately, it will make you procrastinate and it will make you avoid doing the things that you know that you should do.

Starting point is 00:05:27 It makes you not want to do what you need to do and want to do to create the life that you want. It talks trash to you so you stay in your comfort zone. Ultimately, you're creating this inner critic inside of your own head that doesn't exist in reality, it's only in your brain, to paralyze you, to keep you in the same place, to stay in your comfort zone so that you ultimately don't do the things that you need to do. And that's how it's just a small example of how your brain, your

Starting point is 00:05:54 subconscious brain is so good at keeping you in your comfort zone. It's so good at self-sabotage. It's so good at making you focus on instant gratification versus delay gratification. So it is kind of a chess match between you, your conscious brain, and your subconscious, which wants to keep you in your comfort zone. Because ultimately, it just cares about your safety. And if you're in your comfort zone, it knows that you're safe. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. And so if we look at instant gratification versus delayed gratification, in order to really master this internal struggle between what we want to do and like sit around and go, yeah, like, you know, I just want to sit around and eat candy, right? That's what we want to do. But there's also like

Starting point is 00:06:36 what we should do and going, oh yeah, I should actually get up and go to the gym. I should prepare for my test, whatever it is. You have to understand the difference between this instant gratification versus delayed gratification. So when you look at instant gratification, instant gratification is just the desire to experience pleasure right now. That's it. That's why it's instant. You know, if you see candy and you're like me and you like sugar and you see candy, my brain immediately goes, oh shit, I want some of that right now. And then I'll have it and then immediately think, ah, fuck, I shouldn't have done that, right? Like that's just, ah, damn it. That was like 10 seconds of pleasure. And now I just,

Starting point is 00:07:14 now I'm just like pissed that I did it for the next hour. And so it's this, this urge to satisfy a craving immediately. Maybe you're not a sugar person. Maybe you're like my wife and you're like a savory person. She would prefer a bag of chips over a bag of candy. And so it's this urge to satisfy a craving immediately, even when that outcome might not align with your long term goals. And most of the times it doesn't align with your long term goals. So it could be like, you know, eating a piece of cake, even though you're on a diet. It could be binge watching a show instead of working on a project that's due next week. It could be checking your phone and going on Instagram and social media when you're supposed to be studying, you're supposed to be working.

Starting point is 00:07:53 Because we know that when we scroll or when we get a notification, it offers a real quick hit of dopamine. It makes us feel good for a second. And so while instant gratification feels good in the moment, you're almost never happy about it later. So, you know, if you're hungry and you're driving home and you're like, I've got a 20 minute drive, I can make food when I get there, but it's a 20 minute drive. It's going to take me 20 minutes to make food, which means I'm not going to be eating for about 40 minutes to an hour, most likely. You get that feeling of like, but I'm hungry now. You know the smart decision is to wait and to get to your house and cook yourself some healthy food, but you've had a long day and you're hungry now. And so you just pull over and get fast food instead. That's going to bring you

Starting point is 00:08:34 the temporary pleasure, but it could also lead to guilt when you're not committing to overeating and doing what you wanted to do. And you're not feeling like you're putting the stuff in your body that you want to put in. And so over time, this pursuit of short-term rewards can undermine your ability to delay your gratification. And so it actually, over time, if you choose instant gratification, or if you have been choosing instant gratification too long, it actually weakens your self-control and your discipline. So over time, your self-control and your discipline gets worse. It doesn't stay the same. It gets worse because you have just psychologically inside of your brain, neurologically inside of your brain too, gone the easy route, gone the easy route, gone the easy route. And so delayed gratification is hard. It ain't easy. It's not the path that makes it the easiest to go down. It's not the least

Starting point is 00:09:25 resistance, especially if you've been choosing instant gratification for a long time. You're not really strong at choosing delayed gratification. It's something that you have to work at. If you haven't been in the gym for five years, you're not going to be very strong as well. It's like a muscle. It's something that you got to build. And so delayed gratification is just basically this ability to resist the temptation of this immediate reward. And the reason why is because you're in favor of a larger, more meaningful reward in the future. So it's like, yes, you could pull over and you can get fast food right now. you know, you're 50 years old, you're starting to work on yourself, you've got grandchildren, you want to be around for them a lot longer. And so even though like that McDonald's won't kill you immediately, if you do it over the next 20 years, over and over and over and over and over again, you know, there eventually is going to be a straw that breaks the camel's back. And so the delayed gratification is I will not go and eat fast food right now because I do want to

Starting point is 00:10:24 have a meaningful reward in the future, which is living longer, being healthier, being around for my grandchildren, being able to go to the baseball games and play with them in the yard. But you don't get that gratification for years down the road. And that's what makes it really hard. It requires self control. It requires patience. It requires the capacity to really endure discomfort now, fucking hungry, for greater benefit later on down the road. Oh my gosh, I can be with my children and be around for an extra 10, 20 years because I made smart decisions on my health. And this is like ingrained in us as humans. You have to understand that we're going to go

Starting point is 00:11:03 for an instant gratification if we're not paying attention. And a perfect example of this is like ingrained in us and humans. You have to understand that we're going to go for an instant gratification if we're not paying attention. And a perfect example of this is the marshmallow experiment that they do with children. The marshmallow experiments, they had these children, they put them into a room, one child, and they put one marshmallow in front of them. And they would say, hey, we're going to leave for 15 minutes. We'll be back. You can either have this one marshmallow that's in front of you right now, or if you wait 15 minutes, we'll give you two marshmallows. Well, hate to break it to you. 67% of the children did not wait 15 minutes.

Starting point is 00:11:34 Why? Because we want immediate gratification right now. It's built into our system. And so examples of like delayed gratification would be like sticking to a study schedule instead of going out with your friends, knowing that it's going to give you better grades and a better life long term. Or deciding to save money right now versus going out and shopping for clothes that you don't necessarily need because it gives you a quick hit of dopamine so that you can go

Starting point is 00:12:02 on a vacation with your family later on or so that you can save for a home over the next two years. It could be something like choosing to exercise, even when you just rather stay in bed, knowing that exercising, get up early, is going to improve your health over time. And so the way that this works in your brain, we talked about the limbic system is in charge of instant gratification. Well, delayed gratification,

Starting point is 00:12:26 how it works in your brain is this is your prefrontal cortex. It's a part of your brain that, like I said, is known as your executive brain. It's responsible for rational thinking, decision-making, and it's in charge of your impulse control. It allows you to sit there and weigh out the long-term consequences of your actions and what's going to happen in the future. And so here's what's really interesting though. A lot of us work hard. A lot of us have stress in our lives. And under stress, the prefrontal cortex can become less effective, which means that we are more likely to make impulsive decisions. This is why after a really long, exhausting day at work, you might be like, screw it, I'm just going to go to McDonald's and just get unhealthy food. Or you might procrastinate on your important tasks, even though you know it's the best choice for you.

Starting point is 00:13:09 So when you have these stressful days, long days, you're tired, the prefrontal cortex doesn't work as hard, which means that you're more likely to go towards instant gratification right now. But on the other side of that, there are practices to calm the nervous system from the stress. There's mindfulness and meditation, which help restore the prefrontal cortex's control each day, which makes it easier to prioritize your delayed gratification over immediate gratification.

Starting point is 00:13:37 And so I'm gonna tell you this, it's not easy. It's not, and that's why most people don't do it, because if it was easy, if life was easy and everybody could do it, everybody would have a six pack and everybody would be worth millions of dollars. But neither one of those things are easy, which is why most people don't, you know? And so you have to learn to overcome your impulse control. And so I'm going to give you a few tips to kind of help you out with this, okay? When you feel like you want to do something that you know is not right for you, is the instant gratification.

Starting point is 00:14:07 For instance, you got the sugar in front of you. You see it. I want it right now. Okay, don't give in to the urge right away. There's something called the 10-minute rule, okay? Put it away. So take that sugar, put it away in the pantry so you can't see it. And then just wait 10

Starting point is 00:14:25 minutes before acting. If you're still thinking about it in 10 minutes, okay, go ahead and have a piece of candy. Most of the time you have forgotten about it because you're busy doing something else. Often what happens is this pause, this 10 minute pause gives your prefrontal cortex time to engage. And often if you do that, the urge will subside. If you want to buy something, you know, like I do this a lotide. If you want to buy something, you know, like I do this a lot. If I'm going to buy something that is not cheap, I won't just immediately go and buy it. I'll give myself a couple of days. And so this little bit of a gap allows you to kind of turn off your limbic system, which usually works much quicker and start to engage your prefrontal cortex. So, you know, another example is like the one I was saying

Starting point is 00:15:05 where you're driving home from work, you've had a long day, it's 20 minutes to your home, you know that you're gonna have to cook food when you get home, that's gonna take another 20 minutes and you just wanna pull over and you wanna get steak and shake. And you're like, oh my gosh, it'd be really good to have a big burger and fries

Starting point is 00:15:19 and just a big old milkshake, right? Always, always sounds good. But you sit there and you're like, all right, I'm going to give myself 10 minutes. I'm going to do something else. I'm going to put on a song. I'm going to take my brain off of this. And over time, what happens is it just becomes easier to have more willpower when you do that. Another thing I want you to do is learn to reward yourself in the process of getting to where you want to go. I wrote an entire chapter in my book, Level Up. It's the last chapter, chapter 12, on this thing called the dopamine reward system,

Starting point is 00:15:48 which is, and it's going to go much more in depth than I will right now, but the dopamine reward system is basically rewarding yourself along the way for taking the action that you want to. So instead of saying, okay, well, I'm going to work out for the next 30 days every single day, and then I'm going to reward myself with X, Y, Z. The idea is how can I basically reward myself in the moment as many times as possible? So instead of saying, okay, well, I will, if I work out 30 days in a row, I'll take a trip to the beach and show off my new body, right? And how good I look in 30 days. Well, that means you don't get a reward for 30 days and your brain wants rewards right now,

Starting point is 00:16:25 just so you know. And so I would say when I go to the gym, I'm going to celebrate myself for walking in the gym. And you don't have to like dance around like an idiot in front of people, but you could celebrate yourself in your own head. You're doing amazing. I'm so proud of you. After each and every set, dude, you're doing amazing. I'm so proud of you. You're doing so great. You're going to look so much better from this work. And you just talk to yourself like as if you're your own hype man. And what you're doing is you're actually releasing dopamine in your brain, which makes you more likely to want to show up and continue to keep doing it today, tomorrow, the next day. Another thing that has been shown is that if you have a small piece of chocolate, small piece of candy, whatever it might

Starting point is 00:17:01 be, a couple of gummy bears, after you get done with the workout, not an entire candy bar, small piece of chocolate, I said, that you're more likely to show up the next day. And the reason why is because your brain's getting that quick dopamine reward, which is ultimately what it wants, which makes it more likely to show up the next day. And so I want you to understand your life is either easy now and hard later, which is life will be harder later if you choose the easy route. I promise you that. And that right there is instant gratification. Or if you choose delayed gratification, it is harder now. I promise you that it's not easy. It's harder now, but your life will end up being way easier later. And so if you really want to master your life, master

Starting point is 00:17:42 this little teeny tiny thing. Design your environment to help you out. The people who are the most consistent in taking action that they need to are not the people who have the best willpower. It's the people who remove the distractions. Most consistent people are not the ones who have mastered this willpower thing. It's that they create an environment where their willpower won't be tested so that therefore they can take the action they need to create the life that they want. So if you can master this instant gratification

Starting point is 00:18:11 versus delayed gratification, the way it works inside of your brain, I promise you, it'll help you create the life that you want. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Also, if you love this podcast, you'll definitely love something I have. It's called Mindset Mentor Plus. It is like the podcast on steroids, way more in depth, journal questions,

Starting point is 00:18:34 question and answer sessions, everything that goes into it, worksheets for every single episode. If you want to learn more about it so that you can take every episode and implement them into your life, go to mindsetmentor.com. Once again, mindsetmentor.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - Delayed Gratification: Your Superpower to Success

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.