How self-control can help us through this challenging public health crisis
Because what we are being asked to do is remarkably like what those preschool kids did.We are being told by an authority figure: “Stay home. Stop going out. Stop hugging people . It’s going to matter later.”
I’ve got some bad news for you—we’re only at the beginning of the study. In the version of the marshmallow study we are in, the experimenter has just left the room. The last 10-14 days have probably felt like the longest of your life. That’s no surprise—when we have strong urges to change our behavior—to indulge—time passes more slowly.[1,2]
So what now? This is where my mom would say to me,"Hold your horses." What were the things your parents, teachers, and loved ones said to you when you were young? They taught us to delay gratification without us even knowing it and it’s time to put those lessons into place. A sense of urgency is going to try to make us do and think silly things. It does not feel OK now to be still waiting. We’ve been waiting and we want to eat that darn marshmallow and move on. It’s not time yet.
Hold your horses, folks. This is your mind playing tricks on you. Just like the kids in the marshmallow study, we’ve got to do a better job of not focusing on the temptation right in front of us. The kids who did the worst—who just popped that first marshmallow in their mouth—focused only on the temptation itself. They picked it up, they sniffed it, they even licked it. We’ve got to be like the kids who did better in the study, who earned the eventual reward.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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