Life Is What you Make it



The Importance of Delayed Gratification

My hope for this post today is that God will utilize it to educate parents and children, about the importance of delaying gratification, and to give parents and kids some tips on how to implement these changes into their lives, without causing discomforts or major fluctuations.

Wikipedia defined Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, as the ability to resist the temptation for an immediate reward and wait for a later reward. Generally, delayed gratification is associated with resisting a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger or more enduring reward later.

In the United States and in some European countries (also known as the Western World) everything seems to come quicker and is closer to reach mainly because of advanced technology and excessive usage of credits, instantaneous gratification has become more and more prevalent in all levels of society. In these countries, motto is we want it all, we want it now, and we want to have it our way.

When I first came to the United States I received the first real culture shock of my life; it was during the Holidays, I noticed people lining up outside of some major chain stores, enthusiastically camping out for hours in front of major stores just so they could get their hands on the latest gadgets. I had never seen, heard, nor witnessed such behavior. I quickly realized that this culture is very dissimilar to where I come from.  When new technology or a movie came out, people would camp out the night or nights before just so they could be the first ones to have it or have seen it; they don’t mind paying the highest price as long as they are the first one to have it. In my opinion, this is marketing at its best. The young American consumers are marketed towards instant gratification and as an adult the world does not operate that way.   Romans 12 verse 2 says let us not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

The benefits of delayed gratification are enormous but it is a difficult process because it does not come logically. Having the wisdom and the knowledge of self-discipline and delayed gratification impacts an adolescent’s ability to stay sexually pure until matrimony, learning how to save money for the future, teaches a student to study now to acquire the compensation later, and to plan ahead rather than live for the moment. In our society today, parents have to be purposeful and look for ways to implement teaching their kids the importance of delayed gratification in order for them to learn discipline.

 

 

Citation:

Holy Bible, New King James Version, Dallas: Thomas Nelson, 1982. Print

This article is about the psychology concept. For the UK magazine, see Delayed Gratification (magazine). Retrieve From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification