Too often, we convince ourselves that success was just luck. We tell ourselves, the government employee that left millions behind was just lucky. No. She wasn’t. She was just playing a different game than you were. She was playing the long game.

The long game isn’t particularly notable and sometimes it’s not even noticeable. It’s boring. But when someone chooses to play the long game from an early age, the results can be extraordinary. The long game changes how you conduct your personal and business affairs.

There is an old saying that I think of often, but I’m not sure where it comes from: If you do what everyone else is doing, you will get the results they all get.

Ignoring the effect of luck on outcomes — the proverbial lottery ticket —doing what everyone else is doing pretty much ensures that you’re going to be average. 

Not average in the world, but average to people in similar circumstances. There are a lot of ways not to be average, but one of them is the tradeoff between the long game and the short game.

As for lottery tickets, the general rule of thumb is that those who never learnt to manage money, often end up significantly poorer after winning the lottery in a few years after they have run through the money. 

What starts small compounds into something more. The longer you play the long game, the easier it is to play and the greater the rewards. 

The longer you play the short game the harder it becomes to change and the bigger the bill facing you when you do want to change.

The short game is what leads you to obesity, diabetes and heart disease because of the easier choices you made about what you ate, drank and the exercise you did not do. 

In the Stanford marshmallow experiment famous study on young children, they could predict in advance which group of 4 year olds were more likely to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures. 

The short game is putting off anything that seems hard for doing something that seems easy or fun. The short game offers visible and immediate benefits. The short game is seductive.

·       Why learn something boring that doesn’t change when you can learn something sexy that impresses people? And finally you reach your level of incompetence and you can pull wool over the eyes of your customers and your corporate career is over. 

·       Why bust your butt at work to do the work before the meeting when you can read the executive summary and pretend like everyone else? Until one day, your boss actually asks you to head the meeting and the truth comes out. 

·       Why invest in your relationship with your partner today when you can work a little bit extra in the office? And then you wonder why your partner walked out on you. 

·       Why do your homework when you can go out and play? This leads to poor grades and all the anger and rage at a school system that does not allow you to be authentic. 

·       Why wait to pay for a phone in cash, when you can put it on your credit card? This is the shortcut to credit card debt and impending bankruptcy.

·       Why go to the gym when you can go drinking with your friends? Then twenty years later comes the heart attack.

The effects of the short game multiply the longer you play. On any given day the impact is small but as days turn into months and years the result is enormous. People who play the short game don’t realize the costs until they become too large to ignore.

The problem with the short game is that the costs are small and never seem to matter much on any given day. Doing your homework today won’t give you straight A’s. Saving $5 today won’t make you a millionaire. 

Going to the gym and eating healthy today won’t make you fit. Reading a book won’t make you smart. Going to sleep on time tonight won’t make you healthier tomorrow. 

Sure we might try these things when we’re motivated but since the results are not immediate we revert back to the short game.

As the weeks turn into months and the months into years, the short game compounds into disastrous results. It’s not the one day trade off that matters but it’s accumulation.

In theStanford marshmallow studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards if they waited for a short period, approximately 15 minutes, during which the tester left the room and then returned. (The reward was sometimes a marshmallow, but often a cookie or a pretzel.) .) In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes.

While the original idea was that the test was a measure of pure will power, later studies suggested it was a measure of economic background and intact family background. So children from such an environment learnt from very early to play the long game rather than go for immediate gratification.    

Playing the long game means suffering a little today. And why would we want to suffer today when we can suffer tomorrow. But if our intention is to always change tomorrow, then tomorrow never comes. All we have is today.

Looking at how the millennials are brought up I am somewhat concerned. They were encouraged to go for what they wanted immediately. Very often they grew up in a school environment where winning and getting good grades were down played. 

Everyone was a winner from day one. There was no need to play the long game because there was instant gratification. 

They often did not learn about the messy things about making friends and relationships because of social media. When I grew up, I hung out with three other guys and I had four others I could call friends. Currently I have about a few thousand “friends” on my social media sites. I am not a millennial. I know the difference between “social media friends” and real time friends.

So the millennials are likely to struggle when they go to work in corporations because they will expect instant recognition and rewards for their abilities. They will not know how to play the long game. 

They are likely to champion for shorter working hours and work that is more meaningful and impactful. They will struggle with real time relationships because all they had was social media type connections.       

The long game is the opposite of the short game, it means paying a small price today to make tomorrow’s tomorrow easier. If we can do this long enough to see the results, it feeds on itself. 

From the outside, the long game looks pretty boring:

·       Saving money and investing it for tomorrow

·       Leaving the party early to go get some sleep

·       Investing time in your relationship today so you have a foundation when something happens

·       Doing your homework before you go out to play

·       Going to the gym rather than watching Netflix

… and countless other examples.

In its simplest form, the long game isn’t really debatable. Everyone agrees, for example, we should spend less than we make and invest the difference. Playing the long game is a slight change, one that seems insignificant at the moment, but one that becomes the difference between financial freedom and struggling to make next month’s rent.

The first step to the long game is the hardest. The first step is visibly negative. You have to be willing to suffer today in order to not suffer tomorrow. This is why the long game is hard to play. 

People rarely see the small steps when they’re looking for enormous outcomes, but deserving enormous outcomes is mostly the result of a series of small steps that culminate into something visible.

In everything you do, you’re either playing a short term or long term game. You can’t opt out and you can’t play a long-term game in everything, you need to pick what matters to you. 

But in everything you do time amplifies the difference between long and short-term games. The question you need to think about is when and where to play a long-term game. A good place to start is with things that compound: knowledge, relationships, and finances.

One lucky listener that posts a review on iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover your unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45 minute consultation with me that is worth thousands.

On this podcast I’m going to help you design a life that works. So you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The more clear you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you’ll step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? 

Feel free to reach out to me to ask your questions at AskDrSun.com.   Your life is a gift. Design it. Do what matters and join me each week as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. I am Dr Sun. Join me next week on Your Life by Design.