Understanding the difference between short term and long term gratification can be the doorway to truly understanding our own happiness and how to achieve it.
When we are young we thrive on short term gratifications and don’t really understand long term gratification. We want everything NOW. When we are babies we want to be fed now, we want to be held now, we want to be changed now. Most of us have had that experience of our needs being met.
As we grew our parents did less and less for us and the happiness feeling may have been harder for us to achieve.
Life is full of short-term and long-term gratification. The trick to happiness is feeling whole within your self. Whole body, whole mind, whole spirit, all connected and working as a unit.
Life Tool
Understand what short-term gratifications you have in your life. If there are a lot then scale it down to what truly makes you happy inside your self. If you don’t have many then add more. Learn something new even.
List of possible short-term gratifications (everyone is different)
- walking
- reading
- cooking
- talking with a good friend
- knitting
- woodworking
- arts
- exercise
- hobbies that you can accomplish something in 1-3 hours at a time
- meditation
- yoga
- playing with your child(children)
- playing with your dog or cat
Understanding long-term gratification. This is something that may take months to years to feel you have accomplished something. It is something that you are working on or towards daily, weekly or monthly to achieve it.
List of possible long-term gratifications (everyone is different)
- Going to school
- working on a certification in your career
- long-term relationship (marriage)
- deep friendships
- travel trips