Out with the Old, and In with the New! Happy Leyendecker New Year
As we venture into the New Year, there is a good chance that we will face many challenging choices, and if you are like me, you want the choices you select to have effective results – you want them to lead to success. Each Monday morning, I receive the Monday Morning Memo from Roy Williams. As he often does, Roy share bits of advice that makes us stop and think, even if the information is not new. This morning was no exception, which he titled The Secret of Success. He relates a study conducted by Walter Mischel, a scientist at Stanford University 40 years ago, where 4-year old children were led into a room with a see-through mirror, one at a time. Each child was given a marshmallow and told, “You can eat the marshmallow right now if you want. But if you wait until I come back to eat your marshmallow, I’ll give you a second marshmallow to go with it.” The child was then left alone in the room.
The study results showed that:
One-third of the children ate the marshmallow immediately.
One third held out for a short time, then ate the marshmallow.
One third waited for 15 to 20 minutes until the giver of marshmallows returned with the promised second marshmallow.
Fourteen years later, at the age of eighteen, each of the original 216 children was located. Those who didn’t eat the marshmallow scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT (610 verbal and 652 math versus 524 verbal and 528 math.)
At age 40, the group that didn’t eat their marshmallows had more successful marriages, higher incomes, greater career satisfaction, and better health than the marshmallow eaters.
The 4-year-old who eats the marshmallow is oriented toward the present.
The 4-year-old who waits is oriented toward the future.
Roy’s message is that “…we can learn big things from small indicators,” ending my reminding us that six years ago, he sent a Monday Morning Memo that linked our ability to accumulate wealth to our orientation toward the future. Click here to read the memo.
2009 is going to be a year of upheaval.
Will you be oriented toward the future?
Or are you trapped in the present? — Roy Williams
— kenne
