The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment and What It Can Teach You About Patience

“Patience is the key to success”, and “Have Patience! Everything will be alright”. These are the two most uttered phrases that we always heard, whenever we are anxious about something. Having patience means being able to wait calmly in the face of frustration or adversity inside you.

But, now let’s do a simple task, search for five people nearby you who are not anxious or in any serious trouble but living a balanced life. Seems hard?

You will barely find a person in your surroundings who can say that he/she is fully satisfied with what they have. Because finding someone like that is getting blood out of stone. Everyone has their own setbacks and needs more in life which is obvious, I mean, who doesn’t? But I find that the most troubled ones are teenagers who have lost their happiness in this advanced technology world.

The pressure of study, assignments, examinations, love life and the thrust of always looking better in the field have ruined their patience.

They don’t seem to settle and trust their capabilities. The envy of what others have and why don’t I are putting them into a loop of chasing where there is no such thing as ‘Patience’.

Even adults are now the most anxious ones in our surroundings. Their struggle to get a decent job, the stress of less salary, the pressure of getting married, family, inflation, and other societal pressures and materialistic things are completely testing their patience.

However, one age group that seems to be calmer and humble over tough situations is our senior citizens. The reason for their calmness is their experience to tackle situations throughout their life.

Another example of having patience is whenever we are in the exam hall invigilator always uttered looking at our nervous faces that “take your time”. They used to utter these words repeatedly so that we could focus on the present and might not get distracted. But often we assume it is wrong and wasted our time in the examination hall.

Having Patience Vs Wasting Time

According to Cambridge, Patience is defined as the ability to wait or to continue doing something despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining about becoming annoyed, where any person would have experienced these emotions.

Patience helps us in direct control of ourselves. Patient people have a great sense of gratitude and improve their ability to accept disappointments and regain the motivation to become successful people. It helps in building confidence, perseverance, and a positive viewpoint on life.

Patience and wasting time are two different concepts, most people assume having patience means leaving things over destiny and seating quietly. Everyone faces failures in their life whether it is Elon Musk who failed multiple times in his life before becoming the richest person in the world and Zack Ma who was rejected in 25 interviews before incorporating Ali Baba.

One thing you will see common in successful people is that they always work hard in their life and they never lose their patience. They never sit quietly instead they work on their failure and continue their work by keeping serenity.

Often patience is misunderstood as wasting time as in both you are taking a moment of pause. However, if you try to understand, you’ll find that there’s a huge difference between the two. Patience means sharing some tender moments and not feeling rushed or pressured. On the other hand, wasting time is just about taking the pressure later on.

Being patient means you are waiting for your turn to come and wasting time means you are letting your turn go in vain.

A patient person is dynamic and knows exactly what he is doing and what it can lead to. But the people who think wasting time is the same as being patient are often stuck in the loop of finding, getting rejected, and thus hopeless.

It’s a human tendency that we want everything to be done in an instant. We have become more dependent on gadgets and instruments, which have made our life easy and reliable. But it’s also ruining our patience, for instance- when we order some food and it’s getting late in delivery at our door, we often become seem to be abusive towards the delivery man. We even do not bother ourselves to ask him why he got late to find a reason.

The Internet has made our life easy, we can send any message to our loved ones in a second. Also, we can watch whatever happening in the world just by sitting in our place. But what if the WI-FI doesn’t work for like an hour? I know you don’t want to imagine because it will still make you anxious. But, it’s hard to hear the truth. Our dependency has become so enormous that we just couldn’t live without it even for a while.

Stanford Marshmallow Experiment: The Art of Self-Control

Stanford Marshmallow Experiment was conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel professor at Stanford University. He tested this on children around 4-5 years old by offering them marshmallows on the table but under one condition.

His condition was that they can not eat the marshmallows while they were away. If they succeed to do so then they will be awarded a second marshmallow. The condition was like “one treat right now or two treats later“.

Some of them ate the first marshmallow as soon as the researcher left the room but some managed to wait for the entire time. It was published in 1972 and is known as – The Marshmallow Experiment.

Later researchers follow the studies and track each child’s progress which was known as the power of delayed gratification. They found that the children who have delayed enjoyment and waited for an award ended up having high social status and better responses to stress and better life measures. The research found that ability to control and have patience in life is essential for becoming a successful person. Must read:- Standford Marshmallow Experiment.

Where to Cultivate Patience?

As I said in the first para that having patience means being able to wait calmly in the face of frustration, so anywhere there is frustration or adversity, we have the opportunity to practice it. 

• In Daily Life – We take birth and die, but in between this we learn a lot of things in our life. Patience is one of the things which most people forgot to practice in their daily life activities. We are always in hurry to make something happen real soon without knowing the fact that everything takes time. Don’t expect the Eiffel tower to be built in a day, if it is, then it’s a scam. Have patience and trust the journey. Great things take time.
• Whenever We Start Something New – In 2019, 90% of the startup failed during the year. And every year many new ideas came into the market and very few of them successfully manage to become a unicorn. The only reason behind their downfall is a lack of patience. Whenever we grow a seed it never becomes a big tree overnight, it takes several years when it gives us fruit. So, if you want to become successful you must not lose your calm and should stick with your goal.
• Facing Failures – As I said, No one becomes successful over a night. They did a lot of hard work and never loses their cool during downfalls. Great things take time and come to those only, who can wait. There is no more powerful aid to success than self-possession. No one is perfect in this life, everyone does mistakes so no matter what difficulty you face, keep yourself calm and believe what you are doing.
• To Control Anger – A typical impatient person tends to be imagined as face red, head streaming. They’re always filled with negative emotions. And it is so easy to point them out in daily hassles—traffic jams, long lines at the grocery store. This much anger and frustration are not good for them and their mental health. On the other hand, patient people tend to experience less depression and negative emotions, perhaps because they can cope better with upsetting or stressful situations.

Life-changing Benefits of Being Patient

Patience helps you in building smart decision-making. It improves your thought process and keeps you out of negative aspects which might fall you down. It helps us to remain calm and positive most of the time so that we could focus more on ourselves. Forbearance helps in remaining in the present moment without thinking about our past.

Patience helps you in increasing your strength and makes you an optimist. It helps us in fighting the situation courageously instead of worrying. It makes you strong not from the outside but on the inside. You can better at being patient

It helps us to remain happy in our life. Patience helps us focus on the things which are in the present rather than crying about the things which are out of our control. Baylor University psychologist found that “People who are more patient also tend to be more hopeful and satisfied with their lives. They are less likely to be stressed or depressed or experience health issues”.

I’m practicing patience for over several years now, and I must say that it gives me a whole other perspective and courage to deal with the situation. Now I reframe my thinking about given circumstances. I try to put myself in others’ shoes or situations before judging and concluding my decision.

Patience is a skill that teaches you how to be calm in the face of a frustrating situation. It makes you stronger whenever you learn to sustain your emotions. Patience is a virtue for success, those who learn to control it reward them as success in return.

So, what do you think about being patient? Let me know down here.

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