In 1972, psychologist Walter Mischel conducted an experiment with children and marshmallows. He gathered the children in the experiment room one by one and gave each one of them a single marshmallow saying that he had to go for a short period after handing out the sweets. He gave the children an assurance before leaving the room that if they waited for him to return before eating the marshmallow, he would give them another one.
The findings showed that one-third of the children consumed the marshmallow as soon as Mischel left. A further third paused for a short while before continuing to eat the marshmallow. After waiting for fifteen minutes for Mischel to return, the final third received another marshmallow as reward.
Mischel wanted to see if a child’s age has anything to do with how well they could delay satisfaction. He came to the conclusion that older children could hold off on eating the marshmallow longer based on the results of his experiment.
Twenty years after this experiment, Mischel found the now-adult children to see whether the ones who ate the marshmallow right away (not delaying gratification) or the ones who did so (waiting for Mischel to return) were less successful.
Mischel found an important connection between a child’s performance in the future and their capacity to postpone gratification. Almost all other measures, such as gender, test scores, wealth, religion, personality type, and intelligence, showed a lower association than this one. Psychologists continued to look back at and repeating this study and discovered that people who could postpone gratification for longer periods of time had better quality of life, were physically healthier, and were more successful in education.
Our society appears to be at an all-time low when it comes to the capacity to hold stronger willpower and postpone satisfaction, despite the fact that these conclusions have been repeatedly established.
So, fellow adventurers in the journey of life, remember this: sometimes, the best things come to those who wait. So hold onto that marshmallow, resist the temptation, and get ready to conquer the world like the marshmallow champs you are!
I genuinely do understand when clients say they’re looking for a change, but don’t know what it is yet or how to achieve it. Because I have been there, done that and thankfully was lucky enough to walk away to now be doing a job where I never have to think “Thank God it’s Friday (TGIF).”
