delaying gratification

Welcome to today's issue of The Daily Dose of Motivational Medicine. The e-zine of Motivateme: Breaking the Procrastination Habit. http://www.motivateme.info. Have you signed up for your daily dose yet?
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Carrying on from yesterday's discussion about the importance of not saving stuff for use "later", i'd like to talk to you today about our need for instant gratification. The must have it now syndrome.
 
How many store cards and credit cards do you have? How many things have you bought on the spur of the moment, and then never used/worn? How much "stuff" do you actually need?
 
Because of the ease in which we can get credit cards and store cards, we forget how to save up for the things that matter. Do you save up money for a holiday? or do you stick it on the credit card and hope to pay it off later? And that goes for anything and everything we want or say that we need. Interest free terms, buy now - pay later, 48 months to pay. Is it any wonder the businesses of "me Inc" are in severe financial distress!!
 
For those people who have recently joined this list, you may not know what I mean by the term "Me Inc". Well in short - we are in business for us, everything that we do, say, eat, buy etc impacts on our ability to be "in business" - which is why most people are in the red and not the black....back issues explaining this in more detail will be posted to the web this weekend.
 
Now, please do not think that I am advocating a life of poverty or feeling guilty about buying things, absolutely not. But what I am hoping to do is to ask you to think twice about buying things that you "think" you need. As a matter of interest - go through your house, especially your cupboards and wardrobes, these are great hiding places for "retail therapy" purchases. Not only will you be amazed at how much you have bought - but how much money you have "invested" in these purchases. Have you had your money's worth? Or have you made one or two shopping errors.
 
So before you purchase anything else, you need to find out just what it is you are actually buying. Are you trying to buy happiness? Then I would suggest that if you are, you may like to delay gratification and put the money to one side just for a while to see if you do need the item, or whether you simply "want" the item.
 
And if you can't help yourself, then conveniently forget to take your wallet with you when you go out....or only take enough cash to buy what it is you actually want - that way you can't spend your hard earned money on anything else.
 
Delay instant gratification, save your "rewards" for when you complete one of the items off your goal list. And remember to make the goals comparable to the rewards - don't party for the week if you completed a small task. Apart from the week long hangover, the main reason I say this is because our minds and bodies get used to rewards - so you need bigger and better rewards to achieve the same effect....which is another reason why delaying gratification is important. Get motivated for the task - not the reward at the end of it.
 
I'll speak to you again tomorrow, yes I know it's Saturday, but that's when we actually have time to work on our goals. Until then.
 
Elle
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