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Starting out with good intentions and then quitting when the initial fun and excitement has worn off is a perennial human problem. Some people are chronic non-finishers. They can’t finish a conversation, let alone a book or a project. Boredom sets in and hey presto, everything goes out of the window.

Some people litter their lives with unfinished plans only half put into action. Their inability to delay gratification makes real long term success impossible. Sure, sometimes it’s a good idea to quit something - if the reasons for quitting really stand up to scrutiny. But if we quit a project because it’s ‘hard work’, we ‘can’t be bothered’, it’s not as instantly ‘rewarding’ as we had hoped – then something in our psychology needs to improve around the way we approach the fulfillment of goals.

I want my marshmallow now

Back in the 1970s a pioneering research project was undertaken at Stanford University. A group of four year-olds were given a marshmallow and told that, if they waited ten minutes before eating them, they could have a second one. Could they put off the immediate pleasure for the sake of greater long term pleasure?

The results?

People are different (even at four). Some children ate the marshmallows, some children waited, and some children ‘pseudo ate’ their marshmallows by licking them.

Thirty years on, the Stanford researchers followed up this group to evaluate how these children performed in life. Amazingly, the children who could wait the ten minutes had happier long term marriages, better paid jobs, greater levels of professional advancement and generally higher levels of life satisfaction.

This group typically didn’t look for short term gain or gratification but could take a long term view. So they enjoyed the emotional and psychological rewards that accompany continued and ongoing achievements.

Instant times

Today’s technology may be changing the way the brain works. We want and expect things instantly. I wonder if a similar number of four year-olds today could wait for that second marshmallow?

But we can all learn life lessons from those four year-olds. The new hypnotic download created for hypnosisdownloads.com is entitled Finish what you start. It aims to get the long term gain element back into people’s lives, so that projects and long term goals can be achieved.

Hypnosis is used to get us focused on the long term eventual benefit. If we can only go for an instant buzz, we are like a car that needs to stop for fuel every thirty seconds and cannot do longer journeys at all.

It’s hard to resist the media line we are constantly fed that ‘Factor X’ will bring us instant success. But the truth is that hard application applied diligently over time is what gets most of us there.

Mmm… off to do some (eventually) rewarding work now…

Mark