You’re More Likely To Succeed By Having This Trait

Delayed gratification is the resistance to an immediate reward, for the purpose of a better reward later. 

The ability to successfully practise this trait has been shown to massively affect the chances of success in people's lives.

Don’t worry, if you’ve already heard of the famous marshmallow experiment, I won’t bore you.

But for the ones who haven’t, this is it in a nutshell.

In 1970, a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel conducted an experiment, he put kids in a room on a chair in front of a table, and on the table, he put a marshmallow.

He then gave the kids a simple choice. After he walks out of the room, they can either eat the marshmallow now or wait until he comes back and they’ll receive double, two marshmallows.

As you can imagine, the kids didn’t do so well, some jumped at the chance of eating the marshmallow, some struggled but eventually gave in, but some did manage to wait the entire torturous 15 minutes. 

So What?

The real interest in this study comes from what researchers found after tracking the individuals who were a part of the trial throughout their lives.

The children who could wait for the better reward had better health, higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, better social skills and generally higher scores in a range of other life measures.

The researchers followed the individuals for more than 40 years, the results stayed the same….

This shows the significance of this trait, but what if you’re not a 5-year-old child drooling over a marshmallow?

Practically, it looks like this:

• Saying no to cake now, for a slimmer, healthier body later.
• Saying yes to working out now, for a bigger/fitter body later.
• Studying now, for better results, thus a better job later. 
• Reading a book now, to be smarter later. 
• Choosing to have the difficult conversation with your partner now, to have a healthier relationship later. 

Essentially, you’re refusing the easy and comfortable option at the moment, in the hopes it will lead to something of greater value at some point in the future. 

Hard now = easy later 

Easy now = hard later

Great, So What Do I Do Now?

This would be a pretty useless piece of written text if you weren't able to take some sort of actionable steps to acquire such a trait. 

So you might be wondering if it’s something you’re simply born with… or if it’s something you can learn and grow. 

Well, researchers did a follow-up study but with a subtle difference.

Before testing the kid's ability for delayed gratification, they split them up into two groups.

Group 1) 

In this group, the researchers gave the children a small box of crayons and promised to come back with a bigger one, but never did. They then gave the children a sticker and promised to come back with a selection of stickers, but never did. 

Group 2) 

In this group, as you’ve probably guessed, the researchers made the same promises. But this time, they delivered.

After this, the results of the marshmallow test were incredible, the children from group 2 waited an average of 4 times longer than group 1. 

So, by increasing the likelihood of the later result happening, delaying gratification becomes a lot easier.

Actionable Steps 

Considering you’re not a child, you won’t have to rely on other people. 

If you want a fluffy treat, you can go get that fluffy treat.

This also means you’re the only one capable of increasing the likelihood of things happening.

You need to teach yourself that the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term rewards.

This can get tricky, because the better the result, the longer the delay. This just means that like everything else, you'll need to start small and work your way up.

The more evidence you gather from the small things, the easier the bigger things become. 

If you’re like most of the population, you're probably terrible at this. In a world that has constant, instantaneous gratification, being a practitioner of this trait is increasing in rarity.

But as the studies show, by having it, you’re more likely to be successful. 

So the next time you're about to choose what you want in the moment, broaden your time horizon and think of the bigger picture.