What is the marshmallow test/ experiment?
It’s a test on the delayed gratification capabilities of children. It was done in the 1960s. They left a kid in the same room with a marshmallow after telling him if he waits, he’ll get another one. If he doesn’t wait.. well that’s it.
What does it mean? delayed gratification?
It basically means if the child has developed enough self-control or willpower to wait. A quality that later on in their adult life was found to be heavily correlated to success, both in career and health.
In Simpler terms..
Qualities associated with:
Eating the marshmallow: short-tempered, poor, reward seeking, instant gratification, Alcoholism, Smoking, Lack of willpower and self-control…
Waiting: Healthy, Patient, strong willpower and self-control, Good habits, Rich, future oriented…
My experience!
I failed the test, I ate the chocolate right away and ran to my brother, who was waiting, grabbed his chocolate and ate that too.
Fail and Fail!
My life 10 years after:
I didn’t know what to do with my life, I was always chasing the new thing and I failed time after time to be productive and not be distracted by…life.
A few problems I faced:
- Excessive Drinking – I used to party all the time and always drank too much.
- Money Management – I always ended up spending all of my paycheck/money right after I got it.
- Girls – I was so distracted by women I could hardly (no pun intended) get any work done.
- Drugs – ..no good excuse here, drugs are just the epiphany of Instant gratification.
- Routine and Habit – ..or the lack there of, Nothing was planned or scheduled. I hated organizing and structure in general.
The change:
Enough is enough, sometimes you just have to stop and say “hey is this smart?” or “what am I doing with my life?”
I realized that willpower sure is like muscle and it needs to be trained. SO I did just that. I started a brain workout routine.
Here are a few things I did:
- Re-imagined my life – I’m in the beginning, I can be anything, what do I want to do, who do I want to become. Think big!
- Studied successful people – I read and watched everything I could find about successful people.
- Made a Plan – I copied all the habits from the successful and wrote them down so that I could see them every day .
- Habit and routine stacking – Started doing all the habits one by one, implementing them into my schedule and making sure I was consistent.
- More Strategies – Making sure everything is made into an actionable strategy. Dressing up, Breakfast, Events, Relationships, Working out, Folding laundry… “if I don’t write it down, I will mess it up”
- Automation – I automated all of my biggest problems so I would never have to deal with them again. I have a saying “If I have to do it more than once and it’s not my favorite activity, AUTOMATE IT”
Life now:
AWESOME! I’m still not quite where I want to be in life and success but I feel like every day is fucking great! The more I experience, produce and live the happier I become.
Some of the things I do everyday now:
- Wake up early – 6am at the latest, You get so much more done with those few extra hours
- Morning routine – The most important part of the day, if you get this right it’s going to be a great day. I’ve written a step by step list of things I do in the morning.
- Physical – I do at least one physical exercise each day. Gym, Run, bike, climb. it could be anything.
- Adventurous – I do something new that makes me excited or scared.. of a bit of both. Could be an event, sport, conversation, advertisement, change, dream, luxury thing…
- Social – I try to spend at least an hour a day doing something social. going to an event, dinner, cruise, bar, meetup, BBQ… I’m still working on getting this perfected every single day.
- Intellectual – Gathering Information every day. I read, listen, watch and learn from the top performers and the most successful people in the world.
- Creative – I try to make something creative everyday, it could be a blog post, article, painting, photo, video, song, voice, product.. anything creative.
- Charitable – I’m really starting to like this one. It’s become more and more important in my life. Helping other people. I want to solve at least one persons problem each day. and just to make someones day better by doing little helpful considerate things.
I still have a TON to learn. I’m still young and I know there is much more I don’t know yet or will ever know. But I’m positive and I look forward to the days, weeks and years to come.
Hope you find at least some of this helpful. If you have any questions or just need some help with something. Let me know.
– Jesse
