Let’s face it, you’re human. If you’re not – we need to have a completely different discuss here.

As a human, you like to be satisfied. You like to feel satisfaction. You like to eat good food, get good sleep, be with good people, have good sex, have good things in your life, have a good job, have a good wife, drive a good car, have good kids – all these items are satisfying. That is just human nature.

Satisfaction vs. Results

But are you mistaking results for satisfaction? Or is your satisfaction level set too low that you are getting results that don’t mean anything?

Satisfaction is a feeling – and a good one at that. But sometimes, people want to get some sort of satisfaction, even if it is small, just to feel something rather than getting a specific result – and a good result at that.

Let me give you a real world example to prove my point.

I know more than one person (too many actually) that get very crazy into coupons. I am not knocking that – saving money is saving money. A penny saved is a penny earned, right? But some people coupon to feel satisfaction rather than to get a result. The act of saving $.10 on 32 boxes toothpaste is excellent – that gives you satisfaction. But is saving 10 cents the true result that you wanted? Or do you want more?

The point of couponing is to save money, right? What result are you after? What is your goal? Do you even have one? Or is the point to get the satisfaction that you are using coupons and saving money? Are you more after the satisfaction of posting on FB that you are in the act of trying to save money, versus actually setting goals and getting results?

Don’t get me wrong – saving money is saving money as I said before.  But if you had a plan –  a goal – a result to go after, you would have more satisfaction.

I am going to save $100 a week with my coupons. I am then going to use that $100 to post an extra payment to pay off credit cards. Once credit cards are paid off, I am going to take the credit card payment + the $100 saved and open a stock account and set a goal to have my money grow 10% a year.

That is a plan that will get you a result. BUT – you won’t get satisfaction with that result until your money grows 10% a year. You get a much faster sense of satisfaction handing over a coupon and getting your $.10 cents off than creating a plan, executing that plan, and getting the satisfaction of the result.

And if you try to tell me that your goal – the result you are after – spending all those hours clipping coupons to save a total of $.10 on that toothpaste – I challenge you to think a bit bigger. Push yourself farther.

Let’s try another example.

As a tech fanatic, I have my eye on wearable tech. If someone creates an implantable device that tracks every health metric in my body, and then pushes that to a web/mobile app that shows trends over time and predicts success of goals, best diet for me, how many calories I am burning at any given time, etc – I’d be first in line. We aren’t there yet (Or at least I haven’t seen it!). But we are at some really cool activity trackers.

Many people are rocking fitbits, jawbones, nike+ and whatever else they can wear nowadays. I myself own 3 different devices that track activity. They never are synced on the number of steps – and in fact all three are grossly off from each other.

Which one is the most popular in the world today? The one that grossly over estimates steps and calories burned. Why? Because if I walk 2000 steps, and my device shows 3500 steps AND I burned 2000 calories in that 10 minutes, I get great satisfaction. Being a human – I like satisfaction.

But if I wear the one that actually shows only 2000 steps and I burned 6 calories, I don’t get that satisfaction. If my result is to lose weight, I get more satisfaction on the first. I get a better result on the second.

We all want satisfaction. The faster the better. But we can’t replace quick satisfaction for results. Results take you someplace. Satisfaction is the feeling of successful results. Sets your goals bigger. The bigger the goal, the bigger the result, the bigger the satisfaction. You are the only one who can decide the level of satisfaction that you want in life. If you are OK with a $.10 saving on toothpaste – that’s fine. If you are happy with short term, keep doing what you are doing. But if you want results, get better satisfaction standards.

Expect something bigger. 

To Your Success,

Zach