Hi, it’s me again, talking to you about
rewiring into your mind and your body and your very psyche
the habits of success.
Many successful people have been studied
and what the studies have shown is,
oh they have these natural habits that make them successful.
And you may go, well I don't have that,
I wasn't born with that drive or that habit.
It doesn't matter, you can acquire it.
Now you may have heard many, many times
about the marshmallow test.
And the marshmallow test is an interesting test
where they took children, and put them in a room
with one marshmallow, it has also been done
with one cookie and one pretzel.
And they said to the children, “if you wait
and don't eat that marshmallow, then you will have two.”
So they were seeing how good these children were
at delaying gratification because
if you can delay gratification, you are wired for success.
And they found one group, maybe a third of the kids,
just shoved that marshmallow in their mouth straightaway
and said oh, I couldn't wait, I needed it now.
They needed instant gratification.
The second group said no, I'm gonna wait,
and they sat there, knowing that if they waited
they got two marshmallows.
A third group, well they were interesting
'cause they really wanted that marshmallow,
they were very much a combination of group one and two.
They wanted it, they also wanted to wait
as they made funny faces, they turned their chair around,
they tried not to look at the marshmallow
and they forced themselves to wait.
And they also got the second marshmallow.
So group one, instant gratification.
Group two naturally delayed gratification.
Group three were kind of programmed to be group one
but fought with themselves until they became group two.
They resisted their natural instinct to eat the marshmallow.
And what they discovered as they followed those children
was group two and three, the ones who delayed
gratification naturally, or, completely unnaturally,
were way, way more successful than group one.
That “when I need it and I can't wait and I got no self-control,
it looks nice, it tastes nice, bam, I've eaten it
and now I kind of wish I had waited.”
So I'm telling you this because it does not matter
if you are not naturally grouped to it.
It only matters that you can train yourself,
teach yourself, and help yourself to become group two.
Because here's the thing, when we're kids,
we learn naturally to delay gratification.
Our parents say clean your room
and then you can have an ice cream.
Do your homework and then you can go to the park.
Do your chores and then we'll go out and have cookies.
We all do that naturally with children.
And then we learn to stop, and you see if you come in
from work and you are naturally a gratification delayer,
you'll go wow, my favourite programme is on tonight
and I'm gonna have this wonderful dinner,
but first I'm going to go through my emails,
do the stuff that's important
and then my dinner, movie, is my reward.
And what happens is you get through the work,
because you're thinking of the reward,
and you go this is a reward for doing that.
Other people come in and go, no, I'm gonna watch a movie,
I'm gonna have a lovely dinner and later I do my emails,
and of course later never comes
'cause you had your reward first.
And it is a classic mistake to take your reward first.
Now when I do things I don't want to do
I start to say, okay I'm gonna do this
and then I'm gonna make a phone call.
I'm gonna do this and then
I'm gonna have a wonderful coffee.
Even having a coffee or tea, a NutriBullet,
I think oh I need that, but first I'm gonna do something
and then I'm gonna reward myself with that.
And I've wired my brain now to do work first,
take the reward second and very rarely
to have the reward first and then do the work
because I know it doesn't work.
If I take the reward first I don't do the work.
And also, human beings are wired to like a reward.
If you talk to any guys, they say that they like women
that make them work for their attention.
They don't really like women that just give it all away
because they need to earn it, they like to earn love,
earn respect, earn admiration, we don't really like
what we haven't worked for.
I work with so many rock stars
that just give everything away and take drugs
and fall apart because they go yeah but,
I just wrote a song and I never earnt that.
We are actually wired as humans to like to earn
our reward and we feel so go when we earnt it
and we go, I earnt that, I deserve that,
I was worthy of it.
When someone just gives us stuff, it actually has no value.
I know when I work with companies sending me lots of clients
to stop smoking, and the success rate wasn't high enough
'cause they were just giving it away.
When I said look, you need to make your staff pay
and then you reimburse them after a year,
then it will work, and when they did that,
the success rate changed dramatically
'cause they were earning, getting their
stopping smoking fees back from the company
but they had to show some commitment too.
So please remember, you are hard-wired to earn your reward.
To feel really good about enjoying something
you have earnt and when you take the reward
without earning it, it makes you feel terrible
which is why so many of my clients
get into destructive behaviour, drugs, drinking,
procrastination, self-loathing,
because we can't appreciate stuff that we're just given.
We like it much more when we earn it.
Do I naturally take gratification?
Or am I group two, do I earn it,
or am I group three, and I going to learn to earn it.
You can learn to delay gratification.
Wire yourself to delay gratification
because it is another thing that you do
that will allow you to join the success club.
Delay gratification, you are on your way to success
and guess what, success is on its way to you
because what you are moving towards,
is simultaneously moving towards you
faster when you learn to delay gratification, see you soon.