We live in an instant gratification world where people expect things to happen for them immediately. If they put out any amount of effort to do something, they immediately expect to be rewarded for it. This is the mindset we have been conditioned to accept. Most people work a certain number of hours and then collect a check at the end of the week for those hours. Instant gratification is so predominant in our culture, there are literally apps that allow you to withdraw your “paycheck” early and pay interest on money before you even have it just so you can get access to it! In a world that is driven so much by this premise, the art of delayed gratification can be lost. Gratification works like a snowball rolling down a hill. The more you let the snowball roll, the bigger it gets. The more you can delay gratification, the bigger the payoff you’ll have when you finally reach your goals!
Reframe your paycheck mindset
When working in your own business or investing into something, your reward will come far beyond your upfront investment in time, energy, and/or money. Think about investing in the stock market and the power of compound interest. Let’s say you invest $100,000 in the stock market and the market yields an 8% gain annually. After the first year, you’ll have $108,000. However, during the second year. instead of making 8% on $100,000, because of compound interest you’ll gain 8% on $108,000! The longer you wait to realize your gains the bigger the payoff! Entrepreneurs work tireless hours every day for months, years, even sometimes decades with very little recognition or monetary reward to speak of. When they finally reach the point where all of their work comes to fruition it will appear as if they’re an “overnight success”.. What isn’t talked about is all of the time that entrepreneur spent in the trenches continuing to see the light at the end of the tunnel through all of the darkness and uncertainty. The successful entrepreneur and/or investor delays gratification, sometimes to extreme levels.
Instant gratification is a recipe for mediocrity and a life controlled solely by impulse. When you delay gratification you take back that control over your life. You are in complete control of your destiny. You aren’t relying on someone to dangle a paycheck over your head to keep you motivated to keep running on the hamster wheel. This is scary and uncharted territory for most. Too much freedom is pretty overwhelming, so much so most would rather opt for the “safety and security” of the dangling instant gratification. In reality, freedom allows you to do great things in your life, but you have to be willing to take that leap most people are unwilling to, into the unknown.
Momentum behind the curtains
When I first started as a real estate investor, it took me 8 months to get my first deal closed. It took me 18 months to make any real money. All of that time I was working countless hours learning, failing, and refining my skills while forming relationships with people who have similar goals and aspirations. During those 18 months of work I spent my nights DoorDashing for spare cash after I spent the entire day working. This momentum I was building snowballed for a long time. Eventually, it picked up enough momentum that I was able to acquire 50 or so rental units over the course of a short period. It appears outwardly that this happened quickly, but it was really over a year and half in the making. All of the work I had put in up until that point had resulted in what I was able to do in a seemingly short period. After over a year of building relationships with like minded people who shared similar goals, I formed a partnership that is now an operating and successful real estate wholesaling business. The relationships I made took 14 months to turn into something I could snowball into success. It took a lot of trial and error. Hell, it still takes a lot of trial and error. Right now as I write this, we are nowhere near where we want to be. We are working countless hours on our business all for a future payoff. This is truly how greatness is created. When you spend months, even years in the trenches building your empire, the longer you work on it, the better it will look when it’s finally revealed.
This simple rewiring will go a long way to help you realize your full potential. Of course along the way you’ll have to do things that you don’t want to do to “keep the lights on”. I DoorDashed for over a year regularly to have just a little bit of money so that I could live. Between that, credit cards, and some money I had left over from when I was a realtor, I had to try to make ends meet. I knew the payoff would be worth it. I’m still building the momentum snowball and delaying gratification with the expectation that my time put in doing the things I need to to build my business and portfolio will work like compound interest does as described earlier. The longer I wait, the more exponential the success will be! The same is true for you! The longer you can delay gratification, the bigger the rewards you’ll reap!