4B Inquiry Questions

This whole week we have been discussing how self-control, willpower and delayed gratification work. For me, all of these topics relate to one another. It is all about how you control your mindset and your patience. If you have patience you have delayed gratification. If you have control over your choices then you have self-control. If you have the motivation and mindset to get something done then you have willpower to do anything; you just have to figure out how to find that will power and put it to work. The real question is how do these help you with your futures?

How do these help us with our futures? Self-control, willpower, and delayed gratification are very important keys to our future. Without self-control you cannot really do anything. If you do not have the ability to control yourself how can you function on a regular bases? To me self-control is the most important factor out of the three. When you have self-control it leads to you having and finding that willpower to do something. Finding the motivation to do something can be hard at times, but never impossible. That willpower is somewhere you just have to learn where to find it. With delayed gratification, this will help you be patient with things that sometimes are hard to wait for. Sometimes we may get impatient and get up and leave, but if you have delayed gratification then it will make it a lot easier to get through your day as difficult as it may be. 

In the marshmallow test we discussed this week, all of this were a major key to the children being tested. They had to find the self-control and will power to not eat the marshmallow even though how delicious it may have looked. And that delayed gratification to be patient and wait for that next marshmallow. In the article, "Don't", says, 

"Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten"(3).

This states that the children tried to have that self-control and will power not to eat the marshmallow just by distracting themselves from it and it did work. They just forget about it until the adult came into the room in order to obtain that second prize. Just by this it states how I believe that self-control can be obtained, you just have to figure out how to make it happen. Overall, I believe that all of these three key factors are affected everyday in our daily lives and we learn day by day on how to control them to make them benefit us.