The Wait, The Choice, And The Value (1/2) || Patience Is A Muscle
Why waiting feels harder than it is - and why it leads to better choices.
Patience is a muscle.
And like any muscle, you can learn how to build it and strengthen it.
Here’s the strange thing about waiting: the wait feels the longest when you’re inside it.
But once you finally have what you were waiting for, you almost forget what it felt like to not have it.
The memory of having something quickly overwrites the memory of not having it.
This tells us something interesting:
If you can manage the wait (and you can), the pain of not having something today will be replaced by the joy of having it later.
And since we all live life forwards, what matters is how you end up feeling in the long term, not how you feel in this moment.
The Marshmallow Experiment 🍡- What Waiting Really Means
There’s a famous behavioural study from Stanford - the marshmallow experiment - where kids were told they could either have one marshmallow right now or two if they waited. Most kids took the immediate one. A small group chose to wait.
What’s interesting isn’t the marshmallows - it’s what waiting actually means.
In the moment, waiting feels like torture.
But once the second marshmallow comes, the pain of waiting evaporates.
The reward overwrites the discomfort.
That’s exactly how patience works in adult life too.
The emotional difficulty exists only while you’re inside the wait - and then it disappears the moment the reward arrives.
We often think patience is about sacrifice.
But that study revealed something else: patience is a form of strategy - a willingness to wait because the future reward is measurably better.
And that’s the whole point here - if you can manage the wait, the future version of you will thank you in ways the present version cannot yet imagine.
The Real Choice in Front of You ⚖️
Almost every financial decision comes down to two options.
Option 1: Have it today
You take a loan, swipe the card, or get onto an EMI (equated monthly installment).
You experience the joy immediately.
But the long-term price of that short-term hit feels like this:
overpaying because of FOMO
committing to interest payments that limit your future
sacrificing optionality and slowing down wealth creation
Option 2: Wait, build, and earn it
You find a way to make peace with not having it today.
You build your affordability.
You give yourself time.
Later, you buy the thing:
at the right price
without debt
and without any emotional or financial hangover
This second path doesn’t just get you the product - it preserves your future freedom.
Patience Isn’t About Denial
Patience doesn’t mean you never buy anything.
It means you don’t overpay your future for the sake of the present.
Whether it’s a home, a car, a gadget, or anything else - the framing is the same:
Do you just want to own the thing?
Or do you want to own it the right way?
Continue to Part 2
And that brings us to the second part of this series — the part that explains the second muscle I rely on, the one that shapes almost every financial choice I make.
Disclaimer
This is educational content, not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice.
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Thanks Kamal for sharing this.
Other way I think - we all are on a hedonic treadmill anyway. what's the point of taking risks associated with immediate gratification. Practicing to delay all these decisions makes a lot of sense logically.