I will be first to admit that I have an instant gratification problem...
...why hasn't anyone called me from the most recent sales campaign I sent out?
...why didn't that pill take affect already? (30 seconds after taking my cold pill this morning)
...why aren't the ice cubes frozen?
...why haven't I hit 30 transactions per year yet?
...why don't I have more followers on Instagram?
...why hasn't the California snow reached us yet?
Overall, good things take time, and if I could just take that age-old advice I would stop worrying! The truth is that anything WORTH doing takes time and consistency. I only just recently acquired the temperament to understand this valuable -and obvious- statement.
See, teachers always tell you "you can be anything you want to be!" when you're growing up. That's certainly the best thing to teach, considering you probably wouldn't send your kids to a teacher that says "make sure you know your limitations". There is no get-rich-scheme out there in the world besides winning the lottery or committing a massive jewel heist, and even after a heist you still have to figure out where to fence your loot!
So where does instant gratification stem from in us millennials? Ohhhhhh, I dunnooooo, HOW ABOUT HERE!!!!
Thanks to all of these, none of us have had to wait longer than a minute to get pieces of information. It makes sense why all of us think we can just INPUT something to get a desired OUTPUT as quickly as possible. So when something actually takes hard work and weekly commitments to succeed --- it's no wonder many of us quit before reaching our goals.
When you actually sit and think about it:
"Failure can only happen on the last try; success succeeds failure."
Okay --- so I made that statement up, but it's true! This is the reason we continue to suffer from short attention spans and dwindling interest levels in things that should be considered awe-inspiring. The feeling of 'wonder' in itself has been eliminated in our society except for the stuff that NO BODY knows.
Just think about how often you go Google something. You mainly Google for information, entertainment, or other's opinions on something. So if the information isn't on the web/Google, you usually give up on the search. Rather than go get the necessary information from the library, through scores of books, or going directly to an expert, you'd rather not spend your time trying to figure it out. And whyyyyyyy is that? Well because it was a fleeting thought in your brain that you really didn't care about, and your brain has already moved on to the next thing it wants. So you Google the next thing and find the answer quickly, getting your instant gratification, and forgetting that you couldn't figure out the other thing --- which, what the heck was it anyway?
When instant gratification is NOT an option, what happens? We tend to label it as "too hard" and don't do it. And when we DO endeavor to start something that takes a long time, we do the equivalent of digging down 100 feet and give up when we're 3 feet from striking gold --- this whole blog is now starting to sound like a giant pep talk for myself and my real estate career.
Real estate isn't easy, and for those of you that think we're all doing great just because it is a wonderful market here in Colorado, that's just false. REAL ESTATE in itself is doing great in Colorado, but that doesn't make it any easier to SELL real estate. Kudos to my wife in dealing with the roller coaster that is my career!
---so back to millennials and instant gratification. We've identified that we have a problem, but what do we do now? Well... yoga would be a good start. Hikes, dedicated times without our smartphones, meet people in person instead of on Facebook, play a sport. There's a lot of things we can do to counteract our short attention spans, but we continue to progress technology to make our lives easier. What technology has ever made our lives harder? --- back to our crime example, I guess security systems would be one of them. But seriously, technology is for the betterment of humankind and the goal of it certainly isn't to set us back to the Stone Age (although if you believe in the Grey Goo theory then CURRENTLY that's not technology's goal!).
A huge factor in technological advances are societal values. Do we as a society value the idea of reclaiming our patience? I always thought patience was a virtue according to some old Roman dude. If we do care about patience, someone should already be out inventing a way to reclaim our patience back FASTER! Ha, irony.
Get real, we're never going to go back to the old ways, so we just bottle up our agitation with patience, and use coping mechanisms like yoga and meditation to fight our frustrations. Whether it works or not is a matter of belief, but belief is another subject for another time.
This entire blog is actually born out of what I am doing today: having a weird cold (just severe tiredness and a mucus-y cough) and sitting at home in a 'hurry up and wait' pattern for my clients to make their next move... meanwhile feeling useless, yay. Good things come to those who wait. That HAS to be my mantra or I'll go insane!
So y'know what? I'm just going to take this day and be sick --- because that in itself breaks the cycle. If I've done everything right, am on track for what I want to accomplish, and will keep doing the right things until time takes it's inevitable affect, then all I can do is be patient and let time do it's thing... that's a lot of things!
So millennials, if you've skipped all the above exposition to get to the end of this article, I hope this last sentence satisfies you because YOU are the exact reason for this article. Now go back and read the whole thing :)
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