Instant gratification can be extremely dangerous if you overuse it to keep yourself happy. Find out why you should avoid it and what you can do to fix it.
This type of gratification can be very destructive, especially if you get used to getting what you want right away. Without any struggle, you won’t learn to be strong during uncomfortable moments and risk falling into bad habits to get an instant hit.
It is a slippery slope, and while it starts small, the dangers can expand into other things that permanently damage your life.
Before getting used to instant gratification, it is essential to start your road toward sustainable gratification and find ways to improve your life.
Let’s learn more about instant gratification and the problems it includes.
Why instant gratification is dangerous
Instant gratification can be very dangerous, especially if it becomes your primary source of dopamine. You get a dose of dopamine when you accomplish something, but if you are used to getting it instantly, your tolerance for discomfort becomes low.
The danger of getting used to this type of gratification is that it will make it harder for you to do something if you don’t feel gratified immediately. This could affect essential parts of your life, like setting goals, going to school, or anything that involves the big picture.
Since your brain is wired to want things instantly, it cannot deal with higher levels of discomfort, which could harm future development.
The problem with becoming addicted to instant gratification is that it can reach a point when you sacrifice long-term benefits for the short-term good feeling.
There are things you can do to help train the warrior in you and avoid addiction to instant gratification, which has more dire consequences later on.
How to stop addiction to instant gratification
You can do a few things to avoid becoming addicted to instant gratification. First, depending on why you are attracted to this, you can try different techniques to determine which works best.
Become comfortable with boredom
A lot of times, people find boredom painful when in fact, they are just not used to it. Becoming used to being bored is hard when you are used to 24/7 stimulation and instant gratification.
One way you can do this is by staring at the wall, or clock, or reading something for increasing periods. Start with five minutes and up the ante daily until you reach a full hour in five-minute increments.
The boredom can feel painful at first, but once you get used to it, you’ll be more comfortable not seeking instant gratification for extended periods.
Breaking down goals
If you set a long-term goal, it can take time to hit that. This is why you should break your goal into long-term, middle-term, and short-term goals.
Your long-term goal can take years, but when you divide it into months, weeks, then days, you can carry out tasks you need daily without overthinking the long-term goal.
It can be easy to become overwhelmed when a goal is too long-term. Because of this, you need plans to achieve faster and work toward larger increments.
Substitute stimulants
Try substituting certain things that give you instant gratification. Limit them to a certain degree if you cannot replace them entirely.
These include things like shorts. Instead of watching short videos for a full hour, try limiting it to 30 minutes, then watch content for the remaining 30.
Once you get used to longer forms of content, you will be less likely to crave instant gratification. Ideally, you’ll want to train yourself to focus longer on something that isn’t instantaneous.
Conclusion
It’s often hard for the generation today to seek sustainable gratification. However, by modifying certain habits, you can still learn how to avoid addiction to instant gratification.
Most good things take time; once you cut your addiction to instant gratification, you’ll slowly be able to work toward these things.
Cutting your dependency on instant gratification doesn’t happen instantly; give yourself room to grow and slowly reduce your dependence. Since Rome wasn’t built in a day, you should be patient with yourself regarding progress and give yourself room to fail.
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