As humans, we all love getting rewarded for our good deeds. And one of the most important aspects of self-discipline that you shouldn’t neglect is rewarding yourself. Self-rewards help reinforce the habits and routines we’ve established so we can reach our goals faster.
If you don’t practice rewarding yourself, you’ll soon find yourself losing motivation and you may start giving a lackluster performance. You’ll start feeling sluggish. Doing your tasks would be a chore, a heavy burden, whereas when you started you could do the same tasks in less than half the time.
Rewarding yourself with something you really want is very important because it’s what you associate doing your tasks with. You can promise yourself that if you do a good job and finish your tasks before lunch, then you can treat yourself to that fancy new restaurant later tonight. There are many possibilities of things you can reward yourself with and it’s important to know a few guidelines to make sure your rewards don’t actually cause you to lose sight of your main goal.
A Fitting Reward
Rewards can come in many different shapes and sizes and you know best the kind of rewards that you’d like to give yourself. For best results, you should come up with a reward system that will motivate you immediately, in the medium term, and in the long term.
For immediate rewards, it can be something small like a quick trip to the grocery store, or maybe an hour’s worth of surfing on Facebook. Maybe even a bite of that chocolate cake that’s been sitting in your fridge for two weeks now (just don’t do this too often).
For medium-term rewards, it can be something you do when you accomplish a monthly goal such as buying a new shirt or a new dress. In the long-term, you may wish to reward yourself with a weekend staycation at your favorite hotel in your favorite city or maybe even take an entire week off and travel to take your mind off your daily grind.
Another excellent reward you can give yourself is you can do charitable activities by volunteering at a shelter or by donating to charity. You don’t have to give away money, instead, you can just give a bit of your time to lend a helping hand to people in need. Helping other people can give you a huge sense of self-accomplishment and is good for your self-esteem and personal growth.
Not all rewards are created equally though. Don’t choose a reward that’s going to be counterproductive to your goals. Remember the reason why you’re rewarding yourself – it’s for a job well done. You don’t want to undo anything you’ve done just so you can say you’ve given yourself a nice reward.
Let me give you a scenario here. For instance, your long-term goal is to save $100,000 by year-end. In order to meet your goal, you would need to save up at least $8,400 every single month for the next 12 months.
You can choose to reward yourself every month every time you deposit $8,400 into your bank account. It can be something like buying yourself a new pair of shoes (nothing too expensive) or maybe having dinner with your family at a nice restaurant.
What you shouldn’t do is splurge and spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on something you’re going to end up regretting anyway. If you can afford to spend that kind of money on a ‘reward’, maybe you should try investing it so you can at least see some ROI (return on investment). With this kind of mindset, you’ll have your $100K by end of the year plus you’ll have some money coming in from the investments you’ve rewarded yourself with!
An alternative situation would be if your long-term goal is to lose 25% of your body weight within 10 months, then you shouldn’t be rewarding yourself by going to buffets and all-you-can-eat restaurants because you’ll essentially be undoing all the hard work you’ve done on your body.
When you think about it, you’re not really rewarding yourself as you’re punishing your body with food when you’ve worked really hard to lose all that extra weight. A good reward, for example, might be buying some new exercise equipment that’s easier on your joints and takes up little space in your house. Eventually, you’ll end up with a mini-gym in your house or your office and you’ll no longer need to pay for a gym membership (unless of course, you crave company, then going to the gym would be better for you to help motivate you).
The key takeaway here is that you have to choose a reward that’s aligned with your goals. Never reward yourself with something that will undo your hard work, instead try to reward yourself with something that will help you reach your goals.
Delaying Gratification
Not many people will have the discipline to delay gratification. In fact, with the leaps and bounds in modern technology, we can have almost everything we want at practically the push of a button. And this is where you, with your self-discipline, will stand out from the crowd. If you’re disciplined, it will be easier for you to say “no” to instant gratification and wait for some time before rewarding yourself.
In place of seeking immediate rewards, you can instead give yourself a pat on the back and praise yourself. Then you can encourage yourself to wait just a little bit more and do some more work before you finally reward yourself with a nice treat. This practice is actually self-discipline at its finest.
Acknowledging your self-discipline provides a great mental boost and allows you to build your self-confidence, too. Encouraging yourself to continue doing what you’re doing does great wonders for yourself. And don’t think only the crazies talk to themselves because we ALL talk to ourselves. You just need to block out all the nonsense and negative thoughts in your head and focus only on positive mental chatter.
Another important benefit of delaying gratification is you’re strengthening your self-control, too. If you’ve set your mind to only rewarding yourself after you’ve done a particular task, then you will do your best to make sure you finish the task early and to a good standard (nope, haphazard quality work doesn’t count). Otherwise, if you fail to complete it, then you will not be rewarding yourself.
For instance, if you’re planning to reward yourself with a movie ticket to the newest Hollywood blockbuster, then you’ll stop procrastinating and Googling details about the movie and its leading stars, where it was filmed, and maybe even some funny bloopers.
Instead, you’ll close out unnecessary tabs on your browser and laser-focus on your tasks. You’ll also tell yourself that if you don’t finish within the day, then you can kiss that movie ticket goodbye because you won’t be watching it on the big screen. With any luck, it might be on Netflix in a few months but you know just how awesome it feels when you’re watching a movie in a darkened theatre with a hundred other people screaming and laughing with you!
Delaying gratification is a great exercise for improving your focus and concentration. It keeps procrastination at bay and motivates you to do more so you can reward yourself. In some ways, it is like stressing yourself in tiny doses but this is not the bad kind of stress, mind you. It’s eustress or good stress, just like what you learned in this article. Managing good stress is quite easy if you have self-discipline and when coupled with a good rewards system, then you can reach your goals with small steps in the right direction.
