The Marshmallow Study
Imagine for a moment being four years old and having an adult propose this: You sit down at a table with a big soft marshmallow on a plate in front of you, while the adult steps out to run an errand. If you like, you can eat the marshmallow right away. However, if you wait for 15 minutes and don’t touch 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 ‘60s, 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 they were 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.
Self-mastery is key
According to the researcher in charge, Walter Mischel; the study shows that “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 all their other capacities, and to what degree they will find success, happiness and fulfillment.
The study also 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, unlike 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 certain tools, develop the self-mastery we need in order to live the life we want.
Keeping your resolutions
A resolution, New Year’s or otherwise, usually expresses a sincere intent to improve, to take a step towards living an ideal, something we believe is right. However, temptations, urges, desires, loss of motivation, self-pity, disappointments, depression, and other emotions can undermine our efforts, and we find ourselves unable to resist the impulse to revert to the old action we had resolved to change. A cigarette is lit, a pastry gobbled, a voice raised, a door slammed, an appointment missed, a jog cancelled, or a chocolate devoured. Whatever it is we relapse into, we end up feeling like a failure, and failure is invariably the final straw as far as motivation is concerned. We have become victims of our own emotions. A depressing scenario! So how can we change that?
The search for tools to increase my EQ became a mission for me about 14 years ago, before I even knew about Mischel’s study. Both my conventional and “alternative” training as a counselor and stress management consultant fell somewhat short in terms of what I was looking for, but I was fortunate enough to eventually discover some remarkably effective tools for the level of emotional management and self-mastery I sought. I began by integrating them into my own life, and have been helping others integrate them into their lives for over a decade. I can now confidently say that emotional management and the development of self-mastery hugely increases a person’s ratio of success in whatever they are trying to achieve, by leaps and bounds!
Here is my favorite tool for self-mastery that can help you keep your New Year’s and other resolutions. Practice it first a few times with any emotion you have that is even slightly stressful or is undermining you. Then, if your resolution becomes difficult to keep, you’ll have your tool at hand and ready to go.
STOP & DROP
1. Stop. Acknowledge that you are having a stressful emotion. If you can, write down how you are feeling in a few sentences. If not, state your emotions to yourself (i.e., “I’m feeling extremely frustrated right now and I have a right to”!).
2. Push the Pause button on your thoughts, as you would push the pause button on your VCR.
3. Drop your attention down to your heart, physically. It may help to place your hand lightly on your heart.
4. Recall something that you appreciate, something simple like a beautiful sunset you recently enjoyed, a beautiful bouquet of flowers, a concert, a cuddle with a pet, a walk on the beach, etc. Re-experience that feeling for a moment. Feel what the feeling feels like in your heart and in the area around your heart. (If this is difficult, try to breathe slowly and evenly.)
5. Enjoy this feeling for a moment. Then, holding that feeling, release the Pause button in your mind and re-visit the issue surrounding your stressful feeling. How does it look to your now?
6. Whatever comes to you, write it down if you can. If appropriate, act on your new insight.
This process only takes a couple of minutes, and the more you practice it, the easier and quicker it becomes. The key is in changing the way you feel, physically, in your heart. This addresses the undermining emotions by acknowledging them and then changing them (NOT stuffing them) – and when we change the emotion, the brain follows suit and we find ourselves thinking thoughts that allow us to conduct our lives according to our values rather than to out-of-control emotions.
Jennifer Day is an Emotional Intelligence coach, parent coach, facilitator and educator.