One Trait that is Needed to be Successful

Improvement pill

And how to develop it to be successful in whatever you do

If you could take the place of one successful person, be it a businessman, a dancer, an artist, a writer, would you take it? Most people would say yes to that. Who wouldn’t want to be successful in an instant? But think about it. Taking their place would mean doing what they do, at their level. Would you be able to do it?

This is what this article is about. Persistence and patience. Most importantly. It is patience that enables a person to be successful in their life. But what is this patience? And how can it help you be a successful person? Let me explain the importance of patience using some marshmallows and some kids.

The Marshmallow Test was a series of experiments done in the Stanford Bing Nursery School in the 1960s by Walter Mischel to determine the pattern of self-restraint in children when facing a situation. The situation put temptation against patience and see whether the choice affected the children’s later life.

The test was simple, the kid was given two choices. One was to eat one marshmallow or any sweet, delicious thing (marshmallow was rarely used, but the name caught on and hence). The other choice was to wait for 20 minutes and then get two candies or marshmallows. The choices children took presented a unique result.

After decades of analysis of these Marshmallow kids in their late teens, 30s and even 40s showed that the ones who chose patience (wait and get two instead of one) performed better in life. They scored more in SAT scores (a lot more in some cases), they were more confident, better at coping situations, better will power, etc. So does it mean that a choice of a marshmallow could show a kid is going to be successful? Not exactly.

We cannot say there were flaws in the experiment as Mischel never wanted this experiment to be interventional into the educational polices or such. It was just a “sweet” experiment that revealed something big in small kids. The flaws here mean that if the experiment was conducted with a larger sample group (the original one has about 600 kids), results would differ.

By taking into account the family background, economic status, and a few other factors with a larger number of subjects, the results will differ. While the experiment results can differ, one thing we can take from it is the trait that is essential for one to be successful; Patience.

Patience here does not mean trying to do something important while someone around you incessantly keeps making noise and bothering you. Patience here implies only to the internal chatter. The chatter of seeking pleasure from instant gratification. And instant gratification is the modern day’s drug.

Remember the Marshmallow experiment wasn’t about kids struggling from an external disturbance. It was internal. It was fighting the desire to be happy now or be happier after some time. It was waiting to see a better result. And this kind of patience is necessary to be successful.

In the running example I gave, the problem with many people (even me) is that we seek to get the first place by running as fast as we can. Two things happen in this case:

A — You give your best, run as fast as you can and surpass all other runners. But you don’t win. Winning is when everyone other runner gives up. You get disappointed and give in.

B — You keep running but give up because you are not winning. Someone else wins.

The temptation is a potent possessor. It will conquer your mind and make you destroy everything you once dreamt of. You need strong will power to fight temptations. The Greeks knew of this and they called the weakness of will power akrasia. But how does temptation work?

There are two states of mind when you have a desire. The “hot” state and the “cool” state. The temptations (eating something sweet when you are dieting, taking a 2-hour long break after working for 30 minutes, etc) make our brain hot. This is when your brain becomes impulsive, driven by temptations. To control the temptation, you must make your brain cool.

The majority of temptation comes from instant gratification. The comfort that you can get now seems worth more than the overall achievement. The kids in the marshmallow experiment had one marshmallow as the instant gratification. The two marshmallows were the long-term goal. The 20-minute wait was their hard-work.

Compare this to an adult’s problem. Getting a healthier body is a long-term goal. Eating two large chunks of butterscotch pastry with whipped cream on top is the instant gratification. Not eating those delicious pastries is hard work. We know what will help us get to the goal. But temptation gets the better of us. So is there a way to develop will power and get better at self-control. There is.

Self-control is a skill. This means that most of us will be bad at it but with ample practice and effort, anyone can master it. There are some ways to practice self-control including physical and psychological methods. Let’s have a look at these methods.

A psychological method of being better at self-control is thinking about the person you’ll be short. Skip one important task today for some other frivolous task and you’ll be looking at your future self, regretting and worrying. So do that before wasting your time and giving in to temptation.

An experiment was done to see how people who made different choices differ in thinking. The fMRI scan (functional MRI scan which scans the brain while it thinks in real time) was done on some subjects. First they were asked to think about themselves which revealed a pattern in their brain activity. Then they were asked to think about a stranger. A different pattern of thinking emerged.

An interesting thing was obscured when the participants were asked to think about their future selves. The patterns which emerged resembled the stranger pattern more than the self pattern. This showed how disconnected we are with the concept of us in the future. We don’t even know who we will be!. But this was different for people who practiced self-control. Their future self pattern resembled the self pattern more.

Imagine what you want to be in about 2 or 3 months or even a year. Then look at the steps you need to execute to be that person. Do you want to be a successful person who has completed all the tasks, knows more than you, is better than you in your field of career? Then take each step with determination and be that person. Don’t ignore your future so much that you turn into a stranger to yourself.

Progressing in your work is more like height growth; you never notice it and you cannot track the progress on a basis. But after some time, others see it. Trying to see how much you progressed with putting little time and effort is wrong and will always demote you.

You should never worry about what you’ll achieve in the month’s end of the year’s end. Our minds are very poor with the concept of time. The present is all that matters and that is how you should work. Work today and see how much you achieved on this day. But you must be thinking, what does all this have to do with self-control or being successful? It has a lot of things to do with it. Focusing on your work without thinking what it can bring you removes instant gratification, the slayer of success.

You work on something and it holds a lot of importance to you. You release that to the public. It could be an article, a product, a piece of art, anything. When people don’t like it as much as you did, you get demotivated. Instead of thinking about improving your work or trying again with two times the enthusiasm and dedication, you give up. This is the withdrawal symptom of instant gratification.

Everyone’s connected. Whatever you write, do or make can be showcased to hundreds, even thousands of people. We are used to getting instant gratification and not looking at the bigger picture. Almost everyone is used to eating one marshmallow instead of waiting for two. And when we don’t get what we want, we stop doing it altogether.

Do the things that improve the quality of your work, not the quality of the reward. Your reward must be improving yourself, your work. Be patient. Know that no one in this world has ever achieved real, sustainable success instantly. Don’t just be desiring, be deserving. Remember the cascade effect. One day’s hard work when done everyday will have a huge impact. And since it is gradual, you won’t be able to see the progress. This goes for self-control as well.

Another simple yet great way of developing self-control is the stimulus rejection method. Think about a situation which you think will cause you to lose your control. Now imagine the situation is happening. How will you avoid it? Think of the regret and disappointment you get after you lose your self-control. Think about you far you have come already and you cannot just give in.

Thoughts are very powerful, more than you think. Take the experiment done by Carol Dweck and her team. People who thought that after a tough mental exertion their ability to do more of it increased did not show signs of metal fatigue. Your ability to practice self-control depends a lot on how you think.

Next time you do something mentally demanding, think that it just made you stronger. Like making your brain better at doing things. Thoughts have immense power, but we rarely tap into it.

This was all about the marshmallow test and how patience can change your future. All you have to do is work in silence, remember that hard work will pay off, try being better at what you do and you will achieve the place you wish to walk to.

Related posts:

The sun was about to rise on Farmer Tim’s farm. Chester Chicken woke up the cows with his important news. “But what about us?” the other cows said to Daisy. “We gave Farmer Tim 100 pails of milk this…

More and more companies (Tesla, MicroStrategy, PayPal…) and funds (Fidelity, Tobam or Wisdom Tree for instance) purchase or use cryptocurrencies as a new way to diversify their cash flow (1) or…

One of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself is to finally (and unapologetically) figure out who you are. Sure, maybe it takes six years of being in a relationship, and then four more years of…