40 Years of #StanfordResearch Found That People with This One Quality Are More Likely to #Succeed. In the 1960s, a Stanford professor named Walter Mischel conducted the #MarshmallowExperiment.
Children (aged 4-9) were left in a room with 1 Marshmallow. The instructions given:

If you wait for 15 minutes, you will receive 2 Marshmallows. The researcher left the children alone in the room for 15 minutes.

Some children waited for 15 minutes to receive the 2 Marshmallows, some did not.

The #interesting part of the study came several years later The researchers conducted follow up studies for over 40 years and tracked each child’s #progress

The #results showed that the children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up with

1. Higher academic scores

2.Lower levels of substance abuse

3.Lesser marriages ending in divorce

4.Better responses to stress

5.More job stability and higher career trajectories

6.Generally better scores in a range of other life measures

Important question to ask:

1.Are we able to resist the first Marshmallow and reap the rewards of delayed gratification?

2.Do we have the patience to stay the course for the grand prize?

3.Are we resilient to the pressures of instant gratification that will often tempt us?

What makes an ace sports player, an expert to give us advice on mutual funds? Or an actor, to tell us which food brand is best? We are so used to seeing #celebrities promote products, we never stop to consider why their #support should make the product better suited to us.

This is the #haloeffect. We subconsciously associate the “success” of people with the “success” of products, even though there may be no correlation.

Edward Lee Thorndike discovered the halo effect, a 100 years ago. His conclusion, a single quality viz beauty, social status, age produces a positive/negative effect that #outshines everything else and the overall effect is disproportionate.

Several studies have shown, we #automatically regard good looking people as more pleasant, honest and intelligent.

Physical characteristics logically, have nothing to do with #inner behaviors. Yet, our mind believes differently.

The halo effect obstructs our view of true #characteristics. We need to go beyond the surface. #Digdeeper and then form an opinion.

I came across an old and brilliant clipping of #BarakObama. This is before he won the Democrat nomination to stand for President. Remember, here, he was a relatively unknown African American Senator from Illinois. This clipping demonstrates a brilliant #storytelling, building a #sharedvision and #passion that touches the audience.

It’s a great lesson for all of us as managers, leaders and influencers. The #principles are common. My take aways:

1.He paints a #detailedpicture of the scene. It’s like you have a ringside view of the scene

2.Extremely #specific. This allows you to feel the emotion he want you to see

3.Clear #calltoaction, without being pushy

For me, this is a must watch for all of us that use storytelling to build a common vision and shared understanding….get teams all #firedup and #readytogo

How do you gauge if you are a #learner or not? Leonardo Da Vinci, a brilliant thinker and artist asked #dumbquestions. If birds can fly why can’t I? If a building has to stand up straight & not collapse, what should its proportions be? If Mona Lisa stood by the window in the morning light, would her face shine as much or lesser than at noon? Seemingly strange questions, but the pursuit of these answers gave unexpected results.

Micheal Gelbstudied the works & mind of Da Vinci. He coined 7 principles to be an #everydaygenius. Curiositica-an insatiable thirst and quest for knowledge and continuous learning is the first.

Culturally, we are discouraged from being #curious. We are reprimanded by teachers for asking too many questions. We are told, “Curiosity killed the cat” a term that is part of our subconscious, warning us of the dangers of being too curious.

Your #curiosity & ability to act on it, will define if you are a learner. Are you someone who constantly wants to know more, be a better version of yourself, find solutions to problems, understand why someone acts the way they do, find new ways of doing things? If you are, you are unlikely to be bogged down by challenging situations. Your mind has been sharpened to think in several dimensions. You will find #creativesolutions.

Having worked for a year on a project/an exam/a relationship for years and then it goes south Just heartbreaking. You think of the countless hours of work, the blood, sweat and tears that has gone to reach the stage and it makes you want to cry with frustration. #Learningfrom rejection is something I understood much later in my life.

#Steve Jobs, in his famous 2005 #StanfordUniversity commencement speech said something similar.

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

Steve Jobs said that this time away from #Apple was actually #beneficial.

Steve Jobs’ famously combative leadership style possibly led to him being fired from Apple, In 1985, he was fired from the company he founded when Apple’s board of directors removed him. In the interim, he launched a software company NeXT, and bought an animation studio called Pixar. In 1997, he returned to Apple and the rest is History.

I have always learnt more from my failures that my successes.