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043 - The #1 Quality that Brings Success

Hello there. Kevin here, with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast.

Today, we’re going to be using a Ted Talk because it is Ted Tuesdays, and we’re going to be talking a little bit about success.

According to some studies that have been done, there is one factor that leads to success more than anything else. And a very famous study used marshmallows to show how this one factor is so important to the future success of children.

So, how do marshmallows and success relate? And what is the most important factor to become a successful, according to researchers?

That’s what I’m going to talk about in this short Ted Tuesday lesson. I’ll talk about the talk, talk a little bit about what the main ideas are behind the talk, and also, help you figure out some of the vocabulary and expressions that are used in the Ted Talk so after this podcast episode, you can go over at TED.com and watch the short video, which is quite fun and entertaining, and educational. So after the episode, go over there and watch that, come back, and The #1 Quality that

Brings Success – Ted

Tuesdays

LISTEN HERE

listen to this, and learn deeply that helps you succeed.

If you want transcripts to the Feel Good English podcast, go to feelgoodenglish.com, and you can learn how you can become a member, members get access to transcripts to all of the episodes I make them for. Now let’s get into the lesson.

So the name of this Ted Talk is called “Don’t Eat the Marshmallow.” A guy named Joachim de Posada, who was a motivational speaker and coach, not sure where he is from or actually where he was from. Unfortunately, he passed away last year. I found through research, but he was a very inspiring and motivating speaker, especially to the Spanish–speaking community. He was known as one of the Top Ten Most Motivational Speakers in the U.S. and the Spanish–speaking community. And in the talk, he’s using some studies that were done in past, some psychological studies that tested children’s self–discipline.

So, imagine they put a marshmallow in front of a child and said, “Don’t eat this marshmallow for fifteen minutes. If you don’t eat it, you will get another marshmallow. So you will have two. However, if you can’t resist and you do eat the marshmallow, you don’t get another one.” The speaker made a funny joke:

“This is equivalent to

telling an adult they can have coffee in two hours.” Equivalent to, meaning, is the same as. It’s equivalent to. It’s a perfect equivalent to telling an adult, “I’ll get you some coffee, but in two hours.” I can relate to that. When I wake up in the morning, I have coffee every day, and if you said “You’re going to have coffee in two hours,” I’d be a little disappointed, for sure. Give me that coffee now.

So in the study, what he found was two out of three children ate the marshmallow. Two out of three children could not resist. They would play with it and move it around, but eventually they said, “You know what? I don’t care. I’m going to eat this marshmallow.” Now, two out of three. Two out of three children ate it. Sixty – six percent (66%). The other thirty – three percent (33%) would put it back, play with it, but they would put it back. Phrasal verb, “to put back” means to return. Return to the place that it was. So they would put it in their hand, and then they would put it back. Put it back on the table. The ability to delay self – gratification is the most important factor to success. Self – discipline.

Being able to do the work to get the hard things done to get through the tough moments without getting distracted, without focusing on what will give you instant gratification, without watching TV, without looking at Facebook, without eating a chocolate chip cookie. That leads to success. And why do they say this? Because they followed the children in the Marshmallow Experiment, and ten, fifteen, twenty years later, they were performing better in school, and then their careers, then the children that ate the marshmallow. Pretty surprising stuff, huh? He said some of the children had dropped out of high school. “To drop out of school” is to quit. To drop out, that phrasal verb specifically means to quit. Usually, the school could be a sport or something like that, but usually, we drop out of school.

So, following the kids that ate the marshmallow, they couldn’t resist. They were more interested in self – gratification. Didn’t do as well in the future.

The speaker then goes into talking about how this applies to all walks of life. All walks of life, like the verb “walking.” “I’m walking down the street.” Johnnie Walker. “All walks of life” means all types of life. All different types of people or different types of areas.

Where this expression came from? I’m not so sure, “walks of life,” but all walks of life means all different types of people. He said, “It applies to salesmen.” If you are a salesman, and the customer instantly wants something:

“Oh! I want that right now.” The

salesperson, that is able to delay the buyer’s gratification and ask them more questions and talk about more products, is able to sell them more in the end, as supposed to just giving them what they want right now.

At the end of the talk, Joachim proposes that we need to follow the example of South Koreans. In South Korea, they are teaching their children to be more self–disciplined and to delay gratification. In the U.S., we have a debt. We eat more marshmallows, then we produce the word debt. D-E-B-T is when you owe, O-W-E when you owe something or have to give something, but you have to give more than you have. So let’s say you need to give somebody ten dollars ($10), you only have five dollars ($5), and you have a debt of five dollars ($5).

Here, we eat more marshmallows than we produce, and I totally can see that and understand that. It’s a society, and not just the U.S., but the generation I think of children and teens, who want to be satisfied instantly, who don’t want to put in the hard work, who want instant gratification. Teaching our kids self–discipline is extremely important.

Teaching myself self–discipline is extremely important and not easy. However, I’m trying hard to do the work first to get the rewards second. And some examples of how delaying gratification can bring you better results. If you don’t watch TV, and instead you do the homework you need for class or for school, or you get that extra work done, you learn more, and you become better at the job because you’re putting the TV to the side. If you don’t buy the dessert at the store, if you don’t buy the cookies, if you don’t buy them when you’re at the supermarket when you get home, you won’t have that unhealthy food, and you will eat better. So you will look and feel better. If you go to the gym, and you stop ten minutes early because it feels good, you won’t see the same results. You would, if you finished your workout.

Putting in that little extra effort, which doesn’t feel good, for putting that extra effort in, will bring you those better results.

Instead of coming home after work and watching some stupid television program, watching the news, watching a soap opera, putting in that two minutes, even just two minutes into English studying, listening to something, reading something for two minutes will bring you bigger and better results in the future.

One side–note here: A great way to get past this challenge of instant gratification of not doing the right thing is to do something very small. Studying English for two minutes a day before watching TV or doing what you love to do can bring you big results, but you have to do it, and it’s only two minutes. It should be easy. One great technique to become more self – disciplined: Start small. Do something small, and it will grow.

So, that’s it for this lesson. A very fun video. Now, like I said, go over to Ted.com and search the video “Don’t Eat the Marshmallow,” and you will see what I’m talking about. A very fun talk. To learn this vocab deeply too, repeat this lesson as many times as possible. It’s not a very long one, so it should be pretty easy.

And again go over to feelgoodenglish.com to become a member, and get your transcript to this episode, so you can become an excellent self-disciplined English speaker.

And, how about a little food joke for you today:

“What did the baby

corn say to its mom?” “Where’s my popcorn?”

See you in the next lesson.