27th December 2019

Sacrificing simple pleasures.

Sacrifice simple pleasures.

We all love things that are easy. Easy to do and easy to feel the reward. I’ll start a list:

Alcohol
Cake
Smoking
Sleeping in
Extra portions
Nights out
Chocolate
Procrastination
SOCIAL MEDIA
Quitting
Saying ‘I don’t have time’

This list is not exhaustive by any stretch but every one of them gives you some kind of short term, instant gratification pleasure. It barely takes anything to achieve but every single one of them brings long term pain if done repeatedly. Too much of anything can be a bad thing but short term pleasures particularly!

Examples of short-term pain, long term pleasure.

Reading
Training 5 times a week
Eating clean
Staying in at the weekend.
Water instead of alcohol.
Personal sacrifice
Getting up early.
Studying
Reading (yes, again, it is that important)

Again, this is not an exhaustive list but these mostly require some short term pain or discomfort. You might want to go out, you might want a cake, you might want to sleep in and it requires a great deal of discipline and sacrifice not to have these things but they illicit the greatest pleasure, long term.

Here’s an exercise for you:

1) Write down a simple pleasure (your worst one or the one that costs you the most)
2) Next to it, write down everything what you stand to lose if you keep doing it. Financial, family, time etc..
3) Next to that write everything you stand to gain by giving up this pleasure.
4) Use that to gain leverage on yourself to move away from short term pleasures!

We are far more likely to move away from pain than we are to move towards pleasure. Make sure you’re doing the right thing!