Is a ‘Microwave Mindset’ Holding You Back?

We frequently talk about the FIVE Fatal Mistakes that so many small business owners & operators make in their business journey.

The truth is, they’re not usually fatal UNLESS someone lets things slide to the point where a situation is unsalvageable (#5 in the list, which we refer to as having ‘No Spare Toilet Roll’ would be the most obvious one).

#2 in this list is the ‘Microwave Mindset’, expecting (or wanting) things to happen at the press of a button, unable to delay the moment or the wait for that payoff.
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Enter…The Marshmallow Test
(a thoroughly enlightening read, btw).
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The author, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel, began his impulse control studies in the 1960s with children aged between 4 and 6. The test was simple: to determine whether the children could delay their ‘gratification’ – control the need to grab what was on offer for a bigger ‘reward’ by being patient.
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The test was constructed really simply: they could have one marshmallow immediately or wait alone in a room, for a given number of minutes, ring a bell once the time was up, and the researcher would come back in the room and give them not one, but two marshmallows.
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But the study went well beyond this, with researchers following up with the very same children much later in life.
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The results were astonishing.
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The children who were able to resist the impulse and wait for their reward (delayed gratification) did overall much better for themselves in their adult lives as opposed to the kids that chose not to wait (instant gratification).
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If you think that some of us are naturally born with the inner ability to control impulsive decision making, you’re partly right…but mostly wrong 😉
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According to research from Princeton University, we ALL have two areas of the brain in charge of making a decision: one associated with our emotions, the other with abstract (logic) reasoning.
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When we’re presented with a reward, the emotional part of our brain takes over.
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In the case of each child that held off for the 2 marshmallows, they had strategies that enabled them to take their minds off the one juicy, gooey marshmallow left in the room to tempt them. They found ways to engage something in their heads that we interpret as a capacity for delayed gratification.
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But, in fact, in every case, it was a strategy, a range of techniques and approaches used to avoid being overrun with the temptation to reach out and nosh on the one marshmallow.
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The other kids simply didn’t have the strategies or ‘capacity’, and we see that manifest as ‘instant gratification’.
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What does this teach us?
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Simples.
We can control our willpower and train ourselves to reign back on impulsive decisions and elevated need.
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It might come easier to some BUT, essentially, you can learn delayed gratification.
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And Mischel’s test provides us with a significant link between this and the ability to be successful.
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If this is something you recognise in yourself, the chances are, it’s affecting, and more than likely hurting, your business.
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Often, we find, this trait links heavily to the #1 killer of all entrepreneurial progress.
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Contrary to a lot of popular lore, that killer isn’t procrastination.
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It’s DISTRACTION.
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What would you choose: marshmallow now or double the fun in 20 minutes?
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At 4 or 6 years of age, could YOU hold on for that long?
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Ciao for now,
Dino
#actionablethinking