If I miss feeding that 'urge' to eat...my satisfaction opportunity is not exactly lost, however. I am not usually the kind of diabetic that runs dangerously high or carelessly low on my sugar counts. My fluctuations vary at small degrees above or below where my sugar levels need to remain. As a result, when the 'urge' to eat arrives I can often delay my food fuel intake for a little while and not be in danger. In some way I have been able to arrest my diabetes and balance that effort to respect how gratification works in my food desires. I find good fuel when my 'urges' come knocking. I regulate consuming foods my body cannot use.
Gratification can be managed. Furthermore, gratification should be managed. As a diabetic, my daughter sent me a Kindle book titled "Know Your Numbers." She works in the medical field. Wow, what a great read. It was a well-written book that has helped me to improve how I manage my diabetes much better. The management of my diabetes surrounds many issues that relate to the balance of gratification. To win at the management game of any endeavor means to learn how to balance the urges that fly about our lives. We all want to be gratified. That urge is perpetual. We must learn how to manage it.
Why I have diabetes to deal with is not my concern. My main concern is to learn how to manage a challenge well when it arrives. In this case, the challenge happens to be diabetes. Diabetes arrives and begins to dominate the regular 'urge' to hack down a bag of M & M's. A lot of good management comes from knowing how to arrest the gratification process. Success usually surrounds those who manage gratification much better than most of those who are faced with the similar urges and circumstances yet fail to arrest those fleeting 'urges'. The war to success often times becomes the one fought between the urges of immediate gratification versus those of delayed gratification.
Immediate gratification can take control of many success opportunities and diverts their paths away from where we ultimately want them to arrive. Delayed gratification seems too slow for most of us to wait. The human being wants a much faster set of good results. Most of us are impatient souls. We thrive for immediate results. We want it now...not later.
Business success works in exactly the same way. Those who learn the art of managing gratification will likely be the same ones who will win in business more often. If there ever was a serious category where delayed gratification works wonders, it is in business. Business comes completely packaged with thousands of connections to delayed gratification procedures. Everything seems to move in slow motion. This is not weird. It is normal.
If you lead a small business and you have been at it for awhile you will come to recognize how true delayed gratification can become. It completely surrounds the game of business, does it not? Every good business leader eventually comes to the realization that delayed gratification is a permanent fixture in the life of business management. Rewards seem very slow to arrive.
How do we learn the art of managing immediate versus delayed gratification? How can hacking down a full bag of M & M's destroy how my business bottom line produces an improved set of results? How are the two linked? One one hand is the slamming of M & M's, on the other hand is my business process. How do those two events clash?
Page two.
Let's see how they fit over your clothes. Try these seven hated words on for size. Discipline, integrity, honesty, respect, courage, sacrifice and God. Amazing enough, most readers would immediately excuse themselves from failing with constantly practicing at least four of these words. That is why I underlined one of them. We hate these words. They reveal too much for us to handle properly.
Honestly speaking...I struggle with all of them, from time to time. I had a great experience yesterday. I rode on a trip with a past business associate. We had a well overdue "need to get caught up" with one another trip. He has had a lot of things happen to him in his business life. I was intrigued by some of the things he has had to endure. It was good to hear about them.
One particular story he told was of great interest to me. I listened closely as he shared his heart about the effects he witnessed for standing up against a wrong that cost him his precious job. He described a long set of circumstances that lead him down a path to where his work choices would be faced with some high degrees of difficulty. It was an amazing story. It also becomes the same story all of us have faced at one time or another and we will likely come eye to eye with it again in our futures.
His story comes packaged with similar stuff all of us have faced in our working careers. He had a dominate boss for five years. His boss was the owner of the business he managed. In those five years, his work was performed well above average. He was a good contributor to the success of that business model.
As time has it, the more a business leader does to improve the success of a business model the more is asked. That is normal stuff. We have all seen this effect. I have passed this effect on to my good employees, too. It is normal to ask more from those who do more. As more was asked of this employee, my associate, some new work duties became requested by the owner/boss that crossed over to a "licensed only" area of tasks. Some work had been requested of this business leader that required an electrician's license to perform. He described how he knew what needed to be done. He also described how he could physically and properly perform the tasks that were being requested by his owner/boss. The rub comes from the integrity he practiced to refrain from performing those requests at the dissatisfaction of his owner/boss.
I have been in those shoes before. How about you? I think we all have come face to face with situations of this nature. O boy, does the idea of gratification come to play in this circumstance! How gratifying is it when the boss gets his way and the dangerous and illegal work is performed to satisfy the owner? Does our future depend upon this kind of compliance?
My associate described how he discussed this request with his wife and minister in some private discussions prior to giving his boss an answer. He said both his wife and minister suggested that he go along with the request and quietly perform the small task as if it had not happen. As we rode together on that trip yesterday, this part of the discussion became very quiet. There was a long pause of silence. I eventually turned to look at him to see if he was O.K. in his silence. He described how he rubbed them all wrong. He refused to do the unlicensed work. He felt is was not only against the law, it was potentially dangerous and could carry the potential of being very damaging to others if something unforeseen were to go wrong.
The next two months were miserable. His boss worked overtime finding fault in almost everything he performed. The pressure to please his boss became almost impossible to do. Strategic efforts by his boss to diminish his worth became everyday fodder. The once good job he was proud to perform became an ugly place to visit with little rewards exhibited that became no fun to deliver. The stress and pressure mounted. Then one day, the ax fell. His boss brought him into his office and described how he planned to make some changes. The first of those changes was to remove his leader. His job was at an end.
We hate integrity. We hate honesty. We hate courage. We hate sacrifice. We hate respect. And we ultimately hate discipline. Having good discipline can lead us down a troubling path. We know that. All of us have faced these truths. My associate described how his wife reacted when he was fired. It was not a good day. His spirit was damaged and his heart was broken. His discipline seemed destined to let him down. This is why we do not like delayed gratification. There is nothing good about no immediate positive return.
All I could do was to share what I felt. I believed he did the right thing. I also believe something better is waiting for him to do. I described to him how delayed gratification works. His integrity was spot on. His courage was off the charts. His honesty was impeccable. His sacrifice was real and immediate. His respect was thorough and complete. His discipline was delivered as a bulls-eye. The only thing missing in this process is his rewards. They are being delayed. He will need to practice how to manage the art of delayed gratification. It will help him to become an even better business leader.
We all cringe at such a story. But this one is real. We all know how we would have reacted. However, I tip my hat to this kind of sole who is welcome at my dinner table any night of the week. With a world gone crazy in selfishness, mayhem, illicit dealings, lies, cover-ups and self-feeding embezzlement's...here is one guy standing against the wind to be counted correctly. His day of gratification is truly coming. I may not see it well right now, but trust me, the God of our souls does. That is all that matters at this point.
Learn how to manage your desire for gratification. It has all to do with who you will eventually become.
I am proud to introduce this one person as my business associate. He fits those hated words like a perfect glove. By the way...how would you react to this request he faced? How do these seven hated words fit you?
Gratification. Immediate or delayed?
Until next time...
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