As humans we have desires for many things. Personally I desire to live in a big and properly furnished house, cars, jewelries, clothings, designer collections of bags, shoes, body spray, relationship, financial freedom… The list is long. I'll summarily put it that I want to live a "soft life".
I want to be very comfortable and comfort is expensive. These gratifications I desire are quite natural and normal to me. Yours might differ from mine and that's very much okay.
However, to achieve these things come with a price tag. By saying price tag, this doesn't involve the monetary cost alone. We pay different prices for the things we desire to have. It could be our self-respect, reputation, integrity, career or even our life! Yes, our life!
Using Sandra as a case study
Sandra is a 100 level student in the university who desires to graduate with an excellent result. She's currently not working and her only means of making money is through Hive which gives her just a lil of money to take care of some basic needs.
As a human, Sandra equally desires to be in a relationship too. Men flock around her as she's a pretty girl as well but Sandra thinks about it, relationships need time, attention, money, and sacrifices as well. It's never always rosy. There'll be misunderstandings, a breakup could possibly happen and that will definitely take a toll on her emotionally.
She figures she can't afford to be distracted and can't deal with the demands of a relationship and so she doesn't give in. This is what we call delaying gratification!
Looking at the society at large, we have young children involved in scamming people to get money online because they are eager to get rich quickly. What do they really need this money for? To satisfy their gratification, ones which they obviously cannot afford but are not willing to pay the price of hardwork and patience.
Some young girls get pregnant and get kicked out of school because they couldn't delay gratification.
People compromise on their standards, do things they aren't supposed to do to get something they want immediately because they don't want to go through the long process of getting it the right way and end up tarnishing their reputation and sometimes it even goes as far and bad as brining shame to their friends and family as well.
Bolaji Abdullahi writes: "most of the things we so desire, the price we have to pay for it is the time we have to wait, denying ourselves of these things until we are able to afford them financially and emotionally.
Gratifying ourselves with these things before we are ready and able to afford them may end up derailing us."
Take out time today to think of the costs of all the desires you have. Are you ready for them? Can you afford them? What are the consequences? If at the end of the evaluation you figure out you cannot deal, please delay it. There'll certainly be a perfect time for that.
Learn to delay gratification lest you'll be derailed by it.
Have a wonderful week y'all and stay motivated.
