Goals, achievements, success; all these sounds too exciting yet we all know how difficult it can be sometimes to reach our goals. We all have more or less many different tactics to follow so we can reach our goals. But sometimes, especially when it comes to long-term goals; it's really hard to stick to it. In those cases, researchers suggest us to follow 'delaying gratification' tactics.
'Delaying gratification' simply means holding our emotions, temptation, desire for some certain thing, or resisting smaller rewards and controlling behaviors so we can reach our long-term goals. One simple example can be avoiding the temptation of junk foods to achieve our weight loss goal.
It's nothing hard to understand how small rewards create mental and physical pleasure and it gives our brain the message that we achieved 'something'. Not always but sometimes it works as a barrier to go for our long term goals.
Let me give you a real-life example!
Suppose, a student sets his goal to achieve a certain CGPA and he sets some rewards for it like traveling abroad. Now after achieving it in the upcoming semester, if he reward himself to go for a short trip; then there is a high chance that it will reduce his desire to achieve his long-term goal.
It's really important to keep the focus if we talk about achieving tong-term goals. I'm not saying delaying gratification is a perfect technique to reach our goals rather sometimes we need to reward ourselves. It's our duty to decide what we need to do depends on what will work for us.
You can practice this as a trial basis to see how it works. I hope it will help you to figure out what type of delayed gratification can help you!