The financial crisis over the past few years, the riots in London UK and the recent roller-coaster ride on the stock market have led me to reflect on how much people and businesses are slaves to the attraction of ‘Instant Sunshine’ or ‘Instant Gratification’.
The lack of patience in getting what we want, or waiting before we earn what we want, leads to all sorts of unresourceful behaviours that have an effect, not only on the business and our colleagues but also on ourselves.
We see it starting in early childhood with kids who resort to tantrums, bad behaviour and desperate parents when the child doesn’t get what they want and immediately. If handled in a constructive way then eventually neurological growth handles the change and the child learns that the behaviour doesn’t work and they start to learn that patience pays off.
The Marshmallow Study
A seminal psychological experiment looked at a series of 4 and 5 year-old pre-school children, boys and girls, who were evaluated for their ability to tolerate frustration by waiting for a reward – a marshmallow. And thus the experiment became known as ‘The Marshmallow Test’. Mischel & Shoda (1988) showed that not only did the experiment highlight the advantages of patience and delay of gratification in terms of stress and frustration but also demonstrated a predictive element to the experiment. Followed up in adolescence 10 years later, the same children who were able to be patient for reward and tolerate frustration also demonstrated a superior academic and social competence and coping as adolescents in the longer term.
In cognitive-behavioural language, these children who had learned to delay gratification, had also learned how to deal with, essentially, disappointment, frustration, delay. They had learned to regulate or control their emotions to deal with the delay and this had made them resourceful in a way that their peers had not become.
Neurological Hi-Jack
Coming back to current day and we see in our own children, our families and our colleagues what happens when people don’t get what they want and fast – and then the tantrums, the bad behaviour and the conflict follows. It’s as if they have been neurologically hi-jacked and their behaviour shows the hallmarks of unconscious and primitive behaviour, all mediated by a very primitive part of the brain, the limbic system. And at the core of the limbic system, the part of us that controls most of our rational and irrational emotional responses, the amygdala.
Now this isn’t to excuse people’s unresourceful behaviour but it does help to explain how some of our behavioural responses are innate and yet how many of our behavioural responses are learned; and no matter our age, providing we’re healthy, poor behaviours can be unlearned and new ones, more resourceful and helpful, learned.
The narrative around ‘instant gratification’ or ‘low frustration tolerance’ often hears the words, ‘I can’t stand it……..’ and when I hear this as a business coach I know that I am dealing with ‘low-frustration tolerance’. And the answer really is about narrative.
Changing Thoughts
It’s about changing the negative dialogue in your head, dealing with the ‘All or Nothing’ or ‘Black & White’ thinking, about dealing with words of ‘demand’ that we all constantly utter – “I should”, “I must”, “I have to” or “I ought to”. It’s about using our cognitions or thoughts to mediate with more primitive aspects of our brains and the behaviour that we have already learned.
It’s also about small ‘step-by-step’ changes to behaviour rather than looking for an instant solution because that’s how new behaviours become more deeply embedded neurologically. It’s also about discovering ways to gradually ‘stretch’ your ability to tolerate frustration and the inevitable ‘pain’ that goes with it. It’s about working on slowing down your world and your expectations.
Unresourceful Behaviour in Business
A cognitive-behavioural approach to unresourceful or bad behaviour such as anger, aggression, anxiety, has a place as much in the business environment as in people’s private life. The dangers of letting this unresourceful behaviour continue especially in business is significant as such people can easily derail themselves, their colleagues and the organisation.
So just imagine how long you could put off eating a marshmallow, or getting the latest iPad, or cutting someone up on the road in a traffic jam, grandstanding over your colleagues in a project or getting the next sale, as quickly as possible, at any cost.
Patience pays off long term and High-Frustration Tolerance is a skill that will place you well in your life, in relationships and in business.
References
Mischel W, Shoda Y, Peake P (1988). The Nature of Adolescent Competencies Predicted by Preschool Delay of Gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 54, No. 4, 687-696.
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