A Study:
Delayed Gratification
Imagine for a moment being four years old, and having an adult give you this proposal: Sit down by a table with a big soft marshmallow on a plate in front of you, while she steps out to run an errand. If you like, you can eat the marshmallow right away. However, if you wait for 15 minutes, without touching it until she returns, you can have two marshmallows!
This was a proposal given to a group of four-year-olds at Stanford University in the sixties, at the beginning of a study that would not be complete until their high-school graduation. Each child was placed in a room with the marshmallow and a hidden camera, and left alone for fifteen minutes. Every child responded differently; those who were able to leave the marshmallow alone, handled themselves in a variety of ways including dropping their head down on their arms, playing games with their fingers, covering their eyes, singing and talking to themselves and trying to fall asleep. Those who were unable to control themselves ate the marshmallow within minutes, or in some instances seconds, after the researcher left the room.
Fourteen years later, when these same children were followed up prior to graduation, the children who had resisted the temptation of the marshmallow, were personally empowered, socially adept and able to cope with stress. They pursued challenges rather than giving up when something became difficult; they were independent, confident, trustworthy and prone to taking initiative. They were all still able to delay gratification for the sake of achieving their goal. Those who had succumbed to the temptation and had eaten the marshmallow, appeared to be somewhat troubled, believing themselves to be ‘unworthy’, resentful about ‘not getting enough’, and were easily upset by stress, with a tendency towards distrust and provoking arguments. They were still unable to delay gratification, or control their impulses.
What does this study show us? Well, in the words of the researcher in charge, Walter Mischel; “Goal-directed, self-imposed delay of gratification is the essence of emotional self-regulation”. His findings emphasize the significance of the ability for impulse control (needed to sustain a resolution) and emotional management (now often referred to as emotional intelligence or EQ). The study shows – as many other more recent studies have also demonstrated - that this is the most important factor in determining how well or how poorly someone is going to use their other capacities, and to what degree they will find success, happiness and fulfillment.
The study further reveals that some people are born with the innate capacity for impulse control and emotional management, and that others are not so fortunate. (In my experience, most people actually find themselves somewhere in between). The good news is that, contrary to IQ, EQ – emotional intelligence and management – can be learned. According to researchers, EQ is much less genetically laden than IQ, allowing for us to actually pick up where nature left off and, -with the necessary tools-, develop the personal mastery we need in order to live the life we want!
The search for such tools became a mission for me before I even knew about this study, about fourteen years ago. Although both my conventional and more ‘alternative’ training as a counselor and stress management consultant fell somewhat short in terms of what I was looking for, I was fortunate enough to eventually discover some remarkably effective tools for the level of emotional management and personal mastery I sought. I began by integrating them into my own life and further developing them as I explored various levels of effectiveness, and I have been helping others integrate these skills into their lives for over a decade. I can now safely say that, according to my own experience and the observations of hundreds of clients, emotional management and the mastery of personal emotional regulation, hugely increases a person’s ratio of success in whatever they are trying to achieve, by leaps and bounds!
