Instant gratification is hindering our success - Afea Care Services - Secrets to Success
July 23rd 2020

Esha Oberoi, founder and CEO of Afea Care Services shares her secrets to success

Esha Oberoi shares her secrets to success
Esha Oberoi shares her secrets of success

One of the questions I’m most often asked is: ‘what are the secrets of success’? Did I have a lucky break? Do I come from a family of business owners? Was I given a helping hand by someone in the industry?

The answer to these is no.

Whilst it would be great to think otherwise, the reality is that it all came down to a few simple things. I nurture relationships and I work on keeping myself mentally and emotionally strong. For me, success hasn’t been quick or easy. It has been thanks to persistence and repetition.

This may not sound very trendy, but I didn’t have ‘quick wins’ in anything. In this modern world, we are used to instant gratification to get what we want. Success is the price we pay for instant gratification.

What is instant gratification?

Instant gratification is the desire to experience exactly what we want right now. It’s become all pervasive in our lives. Rather than planning and cooking a meal from scratch, we can simply order in or heat up frozen food in the microwave. Instead of waiting each week for our favourite program to come out on television, we can binge watch the whole series. We are living in a world of convenience and abundance.

Sometimes it’s great. Afterall, who doesn’t like being able to order something online and get it express shipped to your house the next day? However, all this luxury comes at a cost. We are now used to the many conveniences in life and we are losing patience, which is needed for long-term, sustainable success and happiness.  

Instead of instant gratification, success is all about delayed gratification. It’s about being persistent and working hard to eventually enjoy the rewards.

Secret to success: persistence

There have been many moments when I’ve wanted to give up. Especially when growth isn’t achieved, despite the amount of effort put it. Or the market substantially shifts, and we have to pivot our whole strategy. We are all human and these events can easily destabilise us if we don’t continue to persist and repeat the basics.

A huge part of success is failure. Sometimes you need to have failures in order to learn the right path. As acclaimed American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou said:

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.

In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”

This is why I believe persistence is so important in growing success. After a failure, I really question what I did wrong. I dive deeply into why I experienced failure and how I can adjust my strategy for next time. Then, dust myself off and keep going. We may have to do this many times, but eventually, we will get there. At which point, the goalposts change again so we continue to learn and grow.  

Secret to success: repetition

The second thing I believe to be the secret to success is repetition. Malcolm Gladwell famously wrote in his book Outliers:

“The Story of Success that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill is to practice in the correct way for a total of 10,000 hours.”

Although there has been much debate about this, the basic idea is true – in order to enjoy success, we need to have experienced repetition. We need to be dedicated enough to put in the practise hours. Whether that’s learning a skill like playing the piano, chess or running a business.

What about you? What do you believe are the keys to success?

Esha
Esha Oberoi

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