Gratification is the intimate and ultimate driving force of first and last resort: We want and NEED to be happy!
If love is what makes the world go around,
happiness is the overarching sentiment involved.
But how we go about being happy, when, and how much? Answers to these questions comprise much of the substance of life and living, but the answers don’t come easy.
Motivational speakers and writers talk about “Balance” in life – including things that bring a requisite amount of happiness/joy/gratification. Some mistake the notion of “Balance” to mean that we have to give equal time and energy to everything and find equal amounts of positive reinforcement. Unfortunately this is an impossible goal, which serves only to make us feel guilty for not being able to make it happen.
The “Perfectly Unbalanced Life” is a more pragmatic goal, but an art form that must be mastered over time.
“You can’t have everything … at least not all at once!”
Real Life Maxim
[Attribution Uncertain]
Gratification is an even more tenuously rigged unbalancing act when considering NOW versus LATER. You can have small gratifications now or you can have something bigger and better later.
The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control
“Psychologist Walter Mischel, designer of the Marshmallow Test, explains what self-control is and how to master it.
A child is presented with a marshmallow and given a choice: Eat this one now, or wait and enjoy two later. What will she do? And what are the implications for her behavior later in life?
The world’s leading expert on self-control, Walter Mischel has proven that the ability to delay gratification is critical for a successful life, predicting higher SAT scores, better social and cognitive functioning, a healthier lifestyle and a greater sense of self-worth. But is willpower prewired, or can it be taught?
A child is presented with a marshmallow and given a choice: Eat this one now, or wait and enjoy two later. What will she do? And what are the implications for her behavior later in life?
The world’s leading expert on self-control, Walter Mischel has proven that the ability to delay gratification is critical for a successful life, predicting higher SAT scores, better social and cognitive functioning, a healthier lifestyle and a greater sense of self-worth. But is willpower prewired, or can it be taught?
In The Marshmallow Test, Mischel explains how self-control can be mastered and applied to challenges in everyday life—from weight control to quitting smoking, overcoming heartbreak, making major decisions, and planning for retirement.
With profound implications for the choices we make in parenting, education, public policy and self-care, The Marshmallow Test will change the way you think about who we are and what we can be.”
But the real “unhinging” of balance in gratification happens at the point of leaving gratuitous gratifications from the 7 vices behind and becoming immersed in acquiring higher level gratifications: Like a job well done; like the altruistic gratification of helping someone else; like surprising customers and supervisors by exceeding expectations; like experiencing pride and joy in someone else’s accomplishments; like learning a new language; like the pure thrill of discovery and creative accomplishment; like solving problems and decoding puzzles; like mastering a musical instrument or singing a song …
In large numbers of professions, people will say they receive more gratification from their jobs than they do from their paychecks.
Some on the fringes are patently unhappy/ungratified unless perpetually engaged in “Beating the System”. And some seem only content when complaining. Toward what end, one has to ask … and with what justification???
What “turns you on”? Better yet, what turns you UP? And how enduring are those things?
The trade-offs for enjoying trivial gratifications NOW and paying the consequences later are actually a lot larger than counting marshmallows … for example, sacrificing one’s sustainable health and wellbeing by indulging in tobacco, alcohol, donuts and Ding-Dongs.
And, I have to confess, the amount of gratification I get from watching “Access Hollywood” – which I did quite by accident once for five minutes – is miniscule compared to what I get from reading a good book.
How much happiness can you stand … do you deserve?
It’s probably proportional to the amount you’ve invested to justify it.
Early in life our happiness is provided on the shoulders of significant others who have heavily invested in us – be that parents, society, government or otherwise. If we try to sustain that level of happiness without kicking in our own investment, we borrow from both others and the future to an extent that will ultimately bring us to ruin. THERE IS A PAYBACK OR A PAY-FORWARD FOR HAPPINESS. Paying it forward is much less expensive, much more certain and much more fulfilling.
Early morning in Africa, a boy awakes wistfully thinking: “If only I had shoes, I would run like the wind!” Much later that morning, a young person in the Bronx wakes up thinking: “If only I had NIKE shoes, I would run like the wind.” Throughout much of that day, a child in Iraq, caught in the cross-fire of a gruesome uncivil war, says wistfully: “If only I had FEET, I would run like the wind.” What’s it going to take for you to run like the wind? How happy or unhappy would you be with a set of shoes? … a pair of NIKE shoes? … two healthy feet?
Perspective is important. Learn to be happy with simple … even distant … things that have LARGE, positive and enduring consequences. Quartermaster
