You Need To Stop Seeking Instant Gratification

what steps should someone take to start developing delayed gratification when they're constantly given to instant gratification well okay imagine I I do I know the answer to this to some real degree because I had graduate students in particular who I picked because they were very smart and often very creative but sometimes they weren't very conscientious so they had a hard time delaying gratification and so well I would say if you would like to discipline yourself which is a very good idea you need to pick a Direction pick a direction you want to go first pick a goal you would like to attain and a long medium to long term goal you might imagine something you need and want some attainment that you could that would motivate whose Pursuit would motivate you and you can ask yourself that it's a good question to ask yourself in general you know there's a very good question to ask yourself is if you could have what you needed and wanted what would that be and that's a meditative question you don't want to force an answer out of yourself you want to ask yourself that like you would ask someone else if I could have what I wanted what would it what would that look like and you can you can ask yourself that in a more differentiated way if I could have the relationship that I needed and wanted if I could have the friendships if I could have the job or career if I could have the educational pathway if I could adopt civic responsibility in a optimized manner if I could engage in some creative Enterprise um if I took care of myself properly if I regulated my susceptibility to Temptations what would that look like if it was optimized and then that sets you up a goal that has some motivational Force this is worth doing and then you might find well you don't do it anyways and then I would say well that's because you're you're biting off more than you can chew the next goal is to take your goal and to fragment it into micro goals until you find a micro goal that's small enough that it still presents some challenge that you will do and so I've become one of the things I'm known for I suppose is my advice to people to clean up their rooms and my the people who think I'm their enemy laugh about that rule because of its Simplicity let's say but the only reason they think it's simple is because they've never tried it it's actually extremely difficult and it was very frequently the case that well it's very difficult to put your your room your office your bedroom in order I mean you think about your bedroom hypothetically let's say you're married you share that room with someone else is your bedroom in order really and I don't just mean you know is it neat maybe it's too neat maybe it's too orderly maybe it's too sterile maybe it's too bare maybe that characterizes your whole bloody relationship maybe really and maybe that is genuinely reflected in the state of your room because it's very probable that that room is a microcosm of your marriage it's highly probable and so what that would mean is to organize that room would be would require the organization of your of your marital life not least because if you want to put that room in order you're going to have to negotiate with your wife about how that's going to be done and while you're making that negotiation even in relationship to the micro details you're going to encounter almost everything that's wrong with your relationship and so and so you know you might ask yourself when you walk into your bedroom if you do you I hate this bedroom it's like you should really think that through and then you need to think through what you would need to do so that you love that room or even more complexly so that you both loved it because that's a tough thing to attain boy because you're going to have differences in taste you're going to have differences in orderliness there's all sorts of things that you're going to have to negotiate in order to make that room you both inhabit jointly desirable anyways you set yourself a goal ask yourself what goal you want to set and then break the goal down into steps that are small enough so that even someone as pathetic as you could manage them and that that requires a tremendous humility you know it was frequently the case for example with my clients that I would do an analysis of their situation in life and let's say just for the sake of argument that we someone had was 30 living at home and in the bedroom they grew up in in high school in a complete bloody state of disorder both moral and practical and one of the relatively simple steps that we might agree upon with regards to moving forward is the person might think well you know I'm 30 I'm really immature I haven't taken any responsibility for my life my mother still makes my bed and cleans up after me it's like well why don't you just start with that you know because you're not going to just fix your life why don't you just try to clean up your room like you're a mature 14 year old instead of a dreadfully dismal 30 year old and and so first of all it's really hard for someone even if they're desperate to admit that that's necessary right because it's so bloody humiliating I mean really I'm so damn useless that my basic goal is going to be to clean up my bedroom it's like well looks like it and actually it's worse than that because then you ask the person you negotiate with the person they say well I'll try to clean up my room then they come back the next week and they say all right one client this was so funny he he's going to vacuum his rug that was his goal for the week he just had a child out of wedlock and he was afraid that he was going to be a very bad father which was a very realistic fear and so he he wanted to put himself together you know and so that's why he came to see me and he lived in this squalor and one thing we decided to do was that he could vacuum the rug which he hadn't done for like 12 years because his mother would do it and so it was so funny it's so unbelievably comical he went and got the vacuum his stand-up vacuum and upright vacuum and he brought it into his room but he didn't bring it all the way in he put it in the doorway leaning like this across the doorway and then instead of vacuuming his room he stepped over that Bloody vacuum cleaner for a whole week and then came and told me that he couldn't do it it's like it's not surprising to me at all because you think well that's such a trivial thing it's like if it was such a trivial thing he'd have a clean room it's not trivial at all that chaos in his immediate environment was deeply emblematic of the chaos of his life they were the same thing and so for him to even begin the process of bringing order to chaos which is a Divine process by the way and the highest moral requirement he had to face he had to be willing to face the catastrophe the chaotic catastrophe of his life and he hadn't done that for like 30 years why was he going to start that week just because he said he was going to he's like good luck so what you do as a therapist in that situation is you you just make the task smaller until you find a task so small but still moving forward that the person will do so I might have said I don't remember the particulars of the situation I might have said well do you think you can get that vacuum cleaner do you think you could move it out of the doorway into your room that's all you have to do this week do you think you can do that and I I'd say that and offer that without being contemptuous like you have to be very careful about such things and I know that this is more complicated than it looks and I also know that the first step taken towards the domination of chaos and its transformation into order is a cardinal and difficult step and so you can make it small and that's fine it'll still work so I might say well just just move the vacuum cleaner inside your room and then I would also say to someone in that situation don't do more than that if the agreement that you've made with me and with yourself is that that's enough abide by the contract that you've written with yourself and allow yourself to be grateful for the fact that you had the courage to take even a single step forward and don't push your bloody luck because maybe you'll have a brief fit and vacuum the whole rug and then you'll be so annoyed at how you've destabilized your entire life that you'll redouble your attempts to make a mess and the place will be more like hell than ever for two months it's very probable that that sort of thing will occur if you break the contract you've set with yourself the upside of this is because you think oh my God that's so dismal I have to start that low it's like yeah probably especially if it's a real difficult thing you're trying to sort out you have to start as low as you are useless and that's low so but the upside is that progress accelerates it's not linear and so if you take a once you take the first step the probability that you'll take a slightly larger Second Step increases and that increases non-linearly and so once you get the ball rolling so to speak once you start pushing the rock uphill you can do it faster and faster and so even if you have to start in a very humiliating manner that doesn't mean that's where you'll end one of the things that Tammy I learned to do and this was part a consequence of me being trained as a behavior therapist is you know we'll just take an example that um maybe I was trying to learn how to compliment her when she dressed nicely and maybe the fact that I wasn't good at that was manifest in the fact that she'd put some effort into her dress and then I wouldn't respond in the appropriate Manner and that would dishearten her and I don't particularly remember that exactly happening but it'll be a it'll be a perfectly reasonable example um and so then she would be displeased and then the question would be well is she displeased because I'm too stupid to offer a proper compliment or is she just pleased because she's so needy and and lacking confidence that she needs a compliment that would go beyond the ordinary and the answer is what the hell do we know could be one or the other or both and so what's a possible solution to that and one possible solution would be okay if you do put some effort into your appearance or or I do we could reverse the situation but if you put some effort into your appearance and you would like to hear from me exactly the words that would give you that would reward you for doing that and provide you with the confidence to attempt it again in the future what would those words be you look good without a beard dear [Laughter] thank you you're welcome very funny very funny and so and then you can say well if you tell me those words I will repeat them back to you and then the person who's who needs the words might object well that's false it's superficial it's artificial it's not spontaneous um and if you really loved me I wouldn't have to tell you what to say it's like well all of that's wrong it's like just because I love you doesn't mean I'm not stupid and so in fact in fact I love you might even be evidence that I am in fact stupid so and so like help me out here I I don't know what you want and maybe you could just tell me and then I'll tell you what you want and I'll do it stupidly and badly but I'll be slightly better at it the next time and maybe if you let me practice 50 times stupidly and badly I'll get reasonably good at it and then that's something that we'll be both good at for the rest of our lives and and that's a that's something worth knowing you know if you imagine you're upset with your partner because they haven't delivered something to you whatever it is that you want and then there's two questions that arise this right are you just like immature and greedy and self-centered or are they useless and incapable of delivering and neither of you know and you you have to sort that out and then you also as the injured party let's say might regard it as a moral necessity on your part to indicate to your partner exactly what you want is to tell them like it looks to me like if you did this or said this then that would satisfy me and then you might say well is that reasonable do you feel that it would be reasonable for you to offer that would you be willing to offer that am I pushing you too far um those are all things that have to be sorted out and then you can practice that and you can practice that with really with the resolution of every dispute that emerges if you're willing to take to yourself the responsibility of communicating to your partner your conditions for satisfaction means you have to admit them to yourself too which is also very difficult and then you can help your partner take stupid incremental steps forward you know in the direction that you'd like to see expand and and then you can get better at that and that's unbelievably useful you can get better at how you have dinner together or breakfast or lunch those things repeat every day so they're very important you can get better at how you greet each other when you come home you can get better at your the routine that you um that you fall into let's say when you go to bed at night or when you wake up in the morning all these things that repeat you know because that's your life the things that repeat you can conceptualize how you might like them to be ordered if they were undertaken in an optimal Manner and you can start incrementally moving forward to that and you can do that by communicating what you need and want and by carefully rewarding your partner for taking the appropriate incremental steps forward and so if you're trying to discipline yourself you make a goal you break it down into micro goals and you implement the micro goals and reward yourself for doing so and if you do that reliably and you make that a practice that you'll become more disciplined first time and you'll move towards the Fulfillment of your goals and that that's that's practically how that that's the Practical guide for Success on that front

Channel: Jordan B Peterson Clips

Views: 556,748

Keywords: psychology, philosophy, Jordan B. Peterson, Jordan Peterson, JB Peterson, jordanpeterson, personality, understandmyself, jp clips, instant gratification, delayed gratification, how to stop seeking instant gratification, simon sinek instant gratification, instant gratification is killing us, instant gratification explained, instant gratification simon sinek, stop seeking instant gratification, instant gratification is harming society, how instant gratification is harming society

Id: ZUpS1kJGmXE

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 23 2023