Instant grat and Delayed grat activities, how they can change your life.

It's 5:30AM, just woke up to another notification asking to elaborate on this. I consider this dichotomy the foundation to my TRP journey, been focusing on it for a few months and already seeing major results. It is pretty simple so skip if you think you’re already pushing yourself to your hardest on a daily basis.

In a nutshell, you want to reprogram your brain, to reinstill the idea that in order to get a reward, your brain must work first. This provides you with a natural biological force of willpower/discipline and a natural biological happiness of well-regulated dopamine fixes.

Porn is the epitome of this, you're taking something that is extremely complex in nature (getting a girl naked, visual sexual stimulation), something that your ancestry and evolutionary genes consider high risk/work high reward and shoving a burst of that reward to the brain without it having to do a thing. That fucks your brain up literally (in terms of dopamine receptors/connections), your brain gets used to this heightened level of stimulation and so you want more instant grat activities. The worst part, you want need more extreme versions of them to sustain the level of dopamine spikes you keep experiencing. The double whammy: your brain is more deterred to the idea of working at connecting to a girl to eventually get her into bed in the physical world. Sex is now redefined as your lonely tight grip’s feeling on your dick as opposed to a warm body interacting with you touching you everywhere. NoFap take it too far no doubt but that's how I experienced it first hand.

The more you avoid instant grat activities and gradually implement more delayed grat, the more your brain WANTS to do hard shit because it knows the reward is always at the end and it feels like constant applause for hours and days as opposed to fireworks for a few minutes. I WANT to go to the gym to feel so fucking beast at the end, to study so I can ace exams and feel like a genius, to meditate so I can be the rock staring into a girl’s fragile soul…my dopamine receptors get re-programmed every day to "do more tough shit, get more happiness".

Instant grat activities: 1) All social media: instant, brain-dead meaningless validation where you don’t interact with another human. I leave out 30 mins a day to reply to notifications but rarely browse. Anything worth watching/reading will be shown to you when your friends/dates talk about it. 2) Gaming: Cold turkey, don’t give your brain its dopamine fix of accomplishment in a fake yet realistic as fuck environment. 3) Watching TV shows and online videos: Cut any passive non-stimulating material that you can text while watching and not miss a thing. (Example: Friends, BBT, Modern Family) I make exceptions for fast-paced stimulating shows like Sherlock, House of Cards, How to Get Away with Murder every weekend or so. It’s not delayed grat but it’s a reasonable guilty pleasure. 4) Porn: already discussed, I personally still fantasize from time to time but I never touch my dick, I imagine real-life scenarios with real-life girls where interaction and touch is the main factor. 5) Complaining or validation-seeking: you’ll feel the urge to suck energy from people when you’re sad or tired or bored or whatever, to text them and get “support”. None of that, constant positivity and emotional resilience. Have your ego laugh it off and come back for more. 6) Drugs/alcohol obviously: Recreational but controlled. Any kind of binging or loss in control, stop immediately. Always ask yourself: Does this next activity hurt? If yes, does it give me benefit later? If yes, jump into it without another thought. The more you delay something, the more your brain fears it. Walk out the door and approach the first girl you see and it’s cake. Make excuse over excuse and you start thinking approaching is a daunting task because you’ve avoided it so many times. Same deal with procrastination.

Delayed grat activities: 1) Lifting. 2) Working on your career, keeping it a priority, and having at least one side project running. 3) Eating healthy: you’d be surprised how easy this is. Pack greens and superfoods in a daily smoothie for all your vitamins and minerals and be aware of your macros in your meals. Remove anything too sugary, too salty, too un-homey. Fast-food is unthinkable of course. 4) Cold showers: many benefits, mainly metabolism and testosterone boosting. 5) Sleeping on the floor: harder to go to sleep but (anecdotally, no real scientific backup) deeper sleep and better posture. 6) Meditation: Can’t recommend this enough, it was the last part in my equation of gaming girls, you just radiate calmness, your moves get smoother, your brain is clearer, and you’re more focused on the now and less outcome-dependent. 7) Reading, sudoku, and language lessons on the subway or in gaps of free time. Reading is especially delayed-grat as it’s much less stimulating than all the action in videos that we’re so used to right now. Your brain is so used to constant stimulation that having to imagine the words itself can be pretty boring at first but magical as you do it more. 8) Socializing is delayed-grat to me as my introvert self would always rather do passive shit alone. I try to engage strangers in conversation and socialize as much as I can.

You’d be amazed how much delayed grat you can introduce to your life. The more you add them, the more they'll take the time of instant grat and you'll find the day just ended and you've only done productive things all day. This may seem like a very harsh life if you’re too spoiled but you get used to appreciating the finer rewards of life and I see people even more dedicated than I am. The quote “Happiness is a byproduct of achievement” holds true, so fucking true. Every reward is more enjoyable after hard work.