Patience

What explains the difference between Success and Failure? The difference between Ordinary and Extraordinary?  You’ll actually find it in a Stanford University study involving of all things, marshmallows.

In a study, preschool children were left in a room, each with a marshmallow, and we’re given two choices:  Eat it now, or eat it in fifteen minutes and get a reward of another marshmallow.  In other words, double the quantity of marshmallows by one-hundred percent.  Some children ate it right away, other children waited hard, as it must have been.

A decade later, researchers visited those same children, and found something incredibly illuminating.  The ones who waited to eat the marshmallow, did better in school, got along better with others, and managed stress better, than the children who couldn't wait to eat the marshmallow.  Researchers found that the ability to delay gratification turns out to be a strong predictor of accomplishment.

We need to use this as a lesson every day, on how to live our lives, how to get along with people.  It's not about resisting marshmallows, it's about resisting temptation.  We live in a society that focuses on instant gratification.  I want it, and I want it now.  Instant rewards, instant profits, instant access to information.  But we also must appreciate the long-term benefit of Patience, of Scholarship, of Discipline.

We all have to remember each choice we make will determine who we are, what we do, what we process, and what we become.  It's what we do with our talent, and education, and personality, and resources, that matters.  And resisting marshmallows, that apparently matters too.  Have a great week.