The Science of Self-Discipline

Choosing long-term benefits over short-term pleasure is at the heart of a self-disciplined lifestyle. You’re limiting your immediate pleasure in exchange for an even greater future pleasure.

In fact, delayed gratification is another way you can define self-discipline.

You suffer now for a specific outcome later, and it requires mental fortitude, pushing your boundaries, and doing more than you thought you could. Whenever you seek to delay gratification, you use self-discipline.

A study conducted at Stanford University under psychologist Dr. Mishel in the 1960s explains a lot about why it’s beneficial to delay gratification. In the study, children were placed in a room with one marshmallow on a plate. The lead researcher gave the children an easy instruction: You can eat the marshmallow now, or wait 15 minutes and receive two marshmallows. The researchers found that the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow without eating the first one scored higher in SATS exams, had better health, and were less likely to have behaviour problems.

The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment and the data collected following it prove that being able to delay gratification is a crucial life skill in order to be successful.

How to achieve it?

• Think for a Long Term.
• To-do list (on daily basis)
• Go for a Social Media Detox or Dopamine Detox.