Postpone the Gratification

In 1960, psychologist Walter Mischel, of Stanford University, conducted a simple experiment. In it, he tested the children's self-control, focusing on delayed gratification and impulse control.

The test presented was simple. He gathered a group of four-year-old children and told them they had to wait in a room before a marshmallow for a few minutes until the researcher returned. If when he returned the child he had not eaten the candy, she would be rewarded with another sweet.

Many of the children have fulfilled the hard task of being exposed to something as tempting as a marshmallow and resist eating to get a second. Others, on the other hand, did not hesitate to devour the sweet. Finally, there was another group of children who decided to wait, but finally succumbed to immediacy.

The experiment did not end there. Some years later, the research team led by psychologist BJ Cassey, of Cornell University, re-examined and evaluated several children - and adults - who had participated in the study.

The participants who, like the children, had managed to overcome the temptation, resisting the immediate reward to get another sweet, were those who currently had better jobs, had better developed the studies and enjoyed social relations better. On the other hand, those who could not resist the temptation had abandoned their studies early. In addition, they exercised lower-rated jobs.

So, what conclusion can we draw from this simple experiment? Walter Mischel was able to intuit the importance of educating the delay in gratification. It is a postponement that today we associate with the capacity of control and self-management, tasks that, in themselves, are complicated for children because their prefrontal cortex has not yet been fully developed.

Delayed Gratification

The car makes us powerful and owners of our impulses. When we work with a clear goal and we know we can achieve it, we persevere, hope and value the results in a positive way.

The delay in gratification can be trained. Thus, since childhood it is good to do it to know that reality is not about getting everything here and now; you must work and be constant, plant little by little and water every day to reap the results in the future. Willpower is not something that is born, but that, like many other skills, requires a personal job.

Being able to wait and not give up the immediate, in many cases, gives us the opportunity to achieve better results, make a plan for our measure, to see what went wrong and how we can solve, to acquire skills and tools that allow us to face situations with an infinity of resources.

Self-control is a skill with a strong genetic component. However, this does not mean that we can not improve it using different tools, such as care management or anxiety control.

"The secret of success is the constancy of the objective".
-Benjamin Disraeli-

How to train our self-control

In Walter Mischel's experiment with children we observed some of the easiest and simplest techniques that without the knowledge of psychology, many of us used to overcome temptation and postpone the reward. Others, however, need more knowledge and training to achieve the goal:

• Distraction techniques: try to think of other things and direct the mind to other outbreaks.

• Present yourself with the future reward: seeing an upcoming prize or what we get when we make an effort is a way to get closer to what we want to achieve and not lose sight of.

• Short-term and long-term objectives: dividing the way to reach the big goals in smaller sizes allow to add small reinforcements.

• Benefits we get with being: to achieve self - control goes hand in hand with pleasurable sensations to resist and persevere, imposing our will so far.

We can overcome temptation, we manage to delay the reward and train our car. It only takes a good dose of motivation, a spoon of willpower, a dash of skills and tools, a glass full of confidence and, above all, desire, the desire to achieve what we seek.