Your Desires Aren’t A Bowl of Instant Noodles
Have you ever eaten instant noodles?
How about handmade Italian pasta?
Sure, instant noodles are great because they are fast, efficient, and do the trick - but chances are you will be incredibly thirsty and hungry 30 minutes later.
Handmade Italian pasta, on the other hand, while it takes longer to make, is savoury, fulfilling, and a full experience.
We need to go back to thinking of our desires as handmade Italian pasta instead of 99 cent instant noodles.
When was the last time you saved or waited for something you desired?
Not WANTED.
TRULY desired?
Somewhere along the way, we relied on everything to be instant.
Just put it on the credit card.
Take out a line of credit.
Don’t wait.
Get it NOW.
Worry about the consequence later.
And I know, I know, I shouldn’t be telling when or where or how to spend your money and I promise that isn’t the point of this post.
The point of this post is about the importance of delayed gratification and patience to truly seeing what you desire - not just what you want right now.
I bet, if I was to ask you some of your favorite purchases you’ve ever made - chances are they were things that you scraped and saved for all on your own instead of the copious amounts of Amazon packages that blur together at your doorstep. While those things may bring you an instant shot of dopamine, most of the items have probably long since been discarded for something shinier and newer. We find ourselves in this loop of wanting happiness, we feel it for the short time we purchase something immediately, but then it dissipates until we do it all over again - this false sense of happiness leads us fall into binge behavior of MORE NOW MAKES MY BRAIN HAPPY - even if the long term results are not what you desire.
When I was younger, I had my eye on a 3-tower 6-CD changing CD player from RadioShak. I remember putting my Fisher Price plastic piggy bank in all of her pastel pink glory (complete with a yellow baseball cap) in the exact location that I wanted my CD player to sit. At the age of 12, the daughter of a farmer in early 90s, I didn’t have immediate access to the $350 (plus tax!) that I would need to get this beautiful piece of equipment to listen to my CDs from Columbia House. So, I started looking for opportunities to make money:
$5 bi-weekly allowance -> into the pig
$20 winnings from a birthday scratch ticket -> pig
$25 from baby sitting for 6 hours -> pig
As my pink pig starting having bills stuffing through her little hat, my parents tried to convince me that I had enough to get a smaller CD Player with 1 slot, but I declined aiming for the big beauty I had set my eye on. Every time we were in town, I asked to stop by the store just so I could look at her silver box and shiny buttons, imagining to myself how awesome it was going to be to be able to listen to my Hanson CD, AND WITHOUT HAVING TO GET UP AND CHANGE IT, it would switch to my Lion King Soundtrack - OH, THE DREAM!
6 months later, I had saved up enough and asked my Dad to drive me to RadioShak. This was it. This was the moment.
There she was in all of her silver glory, the red price tag no longer an obstacle to my ownership and I strutted up to the counter with my envelope of money and slapped it on the counter with confidence unlike any I had before. She was mine. I didn’t even care about the emptiness of my pink pig when I got home and moved her from her space on the dresser to make room for my new shiny object.
Looking back, I realized this saving behavior started long before the CD player procurement. I used to haul BAGS of my carefully curated coins to school so I could buy treasures that I had carefully selected from the Scholastic Book Fair order form without my parents knowing. Later on in life, I did the same with my first real car, my first home, the first time I paid for a luxury boudoir photoshoot - I never paid for them without having the cash in hand (or at least the deposit!)
You see, the beautiful thing about delayed gratification and saving is that every time I make a daily or weekly deposit I am reminded of the dream I have. Every time I transfer money to a new account, it’s a reminder to stop and think about how it will FEEL when I get the thing/participate in the experience. The more I do this, the more I am savouring the item/experience in my mind which means it will bring me MORE happiness over time.
But somewhere along the way, the world became more instant and I became more entitled:
Spending money on things I wanted, to the point of forgoing the things I needed just so I could have them.
In falling into the trap,
I lost my:
patience
love for the process
confidence
dedication
happiness
I wait for everything to just come to me.
Anything I want, I technically can get
and I know I can just ignore the consequences.
But when this….entitlement…crosses over into intangible things like happiness, contentment, joy, confidence, self esteem, strength, etc.
I find myself:
wanting
wishing
craving
But not remembering how to pursue.
But I don’t think I’m alone in this.
As a result of our ability to purchase tangible things so quickly and easily (forgoing the consequences) we begin to assume that EVERYTHING is easily delivered to us.
So many people say things like “When I get confidence…” “When I am confident…” but we’ve forgotten about saving, about working towards, about the process of striving for - we just expect it all to come to us.
We just expect it to happen.
Can I just put it on my line of credit?
Can I charge it on my card?
I’ll just use Apple Pay.
But what if we took a piggy bank and started doing daily deposits of the things we desire the most:
self esteem
confidence
empowerment
freedom
less stress
love
acceptance
For example, if you want more self esteem - define how you measure that then write down ways you work towards that daily. Write on a slip of paper whenever you do something to build your self esteem: try something new, trust your instincts, public speaking, doing something despite being scared, telling yourself you are strong, confident, and powerful, etc.
If you want freedom - define what that looks like. Every day you ask yourself “What is one thing I can do today that will help me get closer to this goal?” once you do the thing - you write it down and pop it into the piggy bank! You don’t need to be consumed with how the outcome fully manifests, but you have to trust that with every deposit you are one step closer to where you were before that!
