Restraint Breeds Success (In the Long Run).

In other words, you MUST delay your gratification.

When I graduated college, there were so many instances where I thought that I deserved to see the results of my hard work.

But the harsh reality that I didn’t want to accept is that I did not take the path I should have for the life I wanted.

Even worse, I wasn’t sure what I wanted in the first place, and I fooled myself into thinking that the path society tells you to follow would magically transform itself into the life I thought I wanted.

Throughout these years after graduating, I learned a lot of harsh but important life lessons about creating the life of your dreams.

And now that I’m doing the work to build it, I have learned yet another lesson.

Success comes from RESTRAINING yourself from doing what you want to do NOW.

I used to constantly immediately gratify myself after I felt I had done hard work.

Unbeknownst to me, I was self-sabotaging and hurting the little results I had accomplished.

Most of it (at the time) had to do with money.

I had graduated college with $60k worth of student loans and needed to pay them back one way or the other.

My goal, at the time, was to pay down my loans as fast as possible (in five years).

But because I didn’t fully understand what priorities and commitments were, I easily gave myself excuses to spend money on frivolous things that only made me feel good temporarily.

During those years, I thought that material things like nice clothes, accessories, shoes, etc., were the dream.

I thought that If I had all these physical things, I would finally be happy and content with my life.

But it turns out happiness and contentment (and the results I was looking for) actually come from this:

Genuinely prioritizing the things you say you want.

I didn’t feel content, nor like I was moving forward until I finally committed to what I said were my priorities.

For years, I kept telling myself that my health was a priority. But every weekend, I was out and about with friends, eating and drinking like I had no cares in the world.

For years, I kept saying improving my finances was one of my priorities. But it took getting laid off and starting and failing my first business (and losing thousands of dollars) to finally begin changing my habits.

For years, I said my personal development journey was important, yet I kept the same company around that wanted nothing to do with accountability, commitment, and change.

For years, I told myself I wanted to be my own boss, yet it was only last year that I actually made a plan and started executing it to begin moving toward that goal.

You will only begin moving towards success, towards the results that you say you want, when you genuinely prioritize the things that will get you there.

I fooled myself into thinking that a half-assed effort was enough.

But time kept passing by, and I found myself pretty much where I started.

When I realized I was the orchestrator of my own failure, I finally committed to turning things around.

Restraining or abstaining from the things you want NOW can be the fuel you use to create a way to have those things in the future.

It’s funny looking back.

Now that I’ve prioritized the work that I said I would do, I’ve begun to see some of the results I’ve been so desperately looking for.

I know this sounds so straightforward, like common sense, like something we should already know from the get-go, but if it were like that, wouldn’t we all be living the life of our dreams already?

Many of us aren’t which means, there’s a disconnect somewhere, and we need to address it.

One of the things I see people do time and time again is they work hard and believe they should see the results of their hard work by the arbitrary timeline they have chosen, and when they don’t see those results, they reward themselves either way (hurting what little momentum has been built).

When you restrain yourself, when you’re able to control that urge, that desire that tells you to get whatever it is that you want at this moment — the car, the shoes, the dress, the jewelry, the vacation, etc.

You’re benefiting and prioritizing the future you (as well as building better discipline and resolve).

Which, in the long run, is what will help you acquire that greater success that you dream of.

I understand that feeling of having struggled for so long and feeling like you’re owed. That feeling that life should give you a break from all the rough things you’ve been through.

But unfortunately, that’s not how life works.

As frustrating as that is, the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can focus our energy on restraining ourselves and truly prioritizing the things we say we want.

Which, in the long run, will give us the success we’ve always wanted.