I recently was listening to a book by the famous sports broadcaster, Al Michaels, on Audible called You Can’t Make This Up. It’s a fascinating exploration of his career and the rollercoaster ride of broadcasting (including his famous ‘Do you believe in miracles’ caption in 1980 Olympics).

One interesting discussion Al had was on the frustration he has with the vetting, or lack thereof, of accuracy in what’s being reported. Generally, as a society, we have become so focused on who will be the first to report and how many clicks the headlines will get. The quality and accuracy of what’s being reported, in turn, has slid down the priority list. This is one of endless examples where it seems our world has become infatuated with instant gratification.

I see it in sports of all ages from the pressure in youth sports prioritizing winning over development all the way to the pros when a coach is fired after only 1 season of mediocrity. Most likely the easiest way to see this obsession with instant gratification is in social media. Everything has become focused on how many likes, followers, or subscribers someone has. The difficult part of this mentality we are normalizing is when it comes to our growth journey, instant gratification will be a rarity.

If you are starting a workout plan and are a week into it, unfortunately you aren’t going to see big results. If you took a month to really dedicate yourself to work, it most likely won’t be followed by a promotion. So much of what is worth doing in life will take time. It will be challenging and to think we can speed up time to miss all the struggles, learning moments, and small victories along our journey is unrealistic. 

The most important part of our growth journey is just that, the journey itself. Even though we may not get that instant gratification from the first week at the gym, we do start to build a mind more focused around growth. This first week we may be frustrated that the outward benefits aren’t necessarily there, but the inward benefits are certainly building. During this we are learning more about who we’re striving to become and the consistent daily behaviors we need.

The problem many of us face is we get in our minds the normalcy of an immediately gratifying world. And when this immediate gratification doesn’t come, we look for excuses and outs. We let the lack of any immediate gratification steer us completely off the path we know we need to be on striving for our better future. 

A challenge for us all is to unnormalize this idea of immediate gratification and focus on the journey that helps make lasting positive change for ourselves. Anything worth doing will be hard. It will take time. And this is why this road will seem empty with little to no one on the path. But if we make the choice to unnormalize immediate gratification and channel our time and energy to our growth journey, we can help subside our thoughts of giving in or finding excuses that lead to us stopping or quitting. 

The long road of growth is hard and can often be lonely but it’s the path that can offer lasting fulfillment and positive impact.

Take your step: take time to reflect how you view the idea of instant gratification. How does this idea dictate your action? Are you heavily dependent on it and if you don’t see the immediate gratification, you move on to something else? Or do you have perspective that instant gratification rarely happens, and the focus is staying on the journey to who you’re striving to become? Keep a pulse on how much you’re relying on immediate gratification and work to gain perspective that what we really want in life takes time.