Слова и люди: наука, политика, культура, IT, вечная жизнь, освоение космоса, лечение рака, лечение старения и генная инженерия, обеспечение неограниченного долголетия человека, ликвидация всех заболеваний, освоение планет.
Сборник ведет Ивайкин Тимофей (Ivaykin Timofey)
Известный американский врач: рак появляется у людей, которые ''сложили крылья''
Американский врач Лоуренс Ле Шан в книге "Рак – поворотный момент в жизни" (Cancer As a Turning Point: A Handbook for People with Cancer, Their Families, and Health Professionals) делает удивительные выводы о причинах этого заболевания и его лечении.
Онкология – болезнь не смертельная
В своей ещё не переведённой у нас книге ЛеШан высказывает мысль, которая может показаться на первый взгляд парадоксальной и даже в некотором роде насмешкой, хотя она – итог его тридцатилетней врачебной практики: ОНКОЛОГИЯ – болезнь не смертельная. Более того, это заболевание есть судьбоносный момент в жизни человека, в том смысле, что у него появляется возможность осуществить то, о чём он всегда только мечтал. Вслед за этим наступает выздоровление.
Ле Шан уверен, что рак напрямую связан с тем внутренним состоянием, в котором пребывает человек. И если человек по каким-то причинам перестаёт видеть в своей жизни смысл, то реакцией его организма на это отрицание жизни может стать рак.
Особенно часто, заметил Ле Шан, рак бывает у тех людей, которые сначала вели очень активный образ жизни, а затем под давлением обстоятельств "сложили крылья". Именно эти факты убедили врача, что рак – это поворотный момент в жизни человека, когда нужно сделать выбор: умереть или измениться, чтобы пойти другим путём. Если же у людей возобновляется интерес к жизни, рак, как правило, перестаёт их беспокоить.
Точно такими же размышлениями делится в своих книгах Берни Сигель. В большинстве случаев, подчёркивает он, стоит лишь напомнить о возможной близости смерти, чтобы человек открыл в себе невероятные способности и буквально бросился их применять – просто потому, что "времени больше не будет".
Люди часто говорят: "Я ненавижу свою работу", "Я никогда не хотел быть инженером", "Профессия юриста не для меня, я всегда мечтал стать музыкантом", "Моя семейная жизнь убивает меня", "Когда-нибудь придёт и мой звёздный час". Когда они узнают, что неизлечимо больны, то многие говорят: "Не пройдёт и года, как я умру. Так лучше я займусь тем, что меня радует. Я исправлю свою семейную жизнь. Я наконец съезжу в Египет и прикоснусь к пирамидам, ведь я об этом мечтал всю жизнь. Я буду играть на скрипке. Я напишу свою книгу".
Спустя год они говорят: "Знаете, а я ведь не умер. Врач говорит, что моя опухоль исчезла. Странно, что же произошло?" На самом деле они догадываются, что произошло: они не умерли, потому что начали жить.
Следовательно, если вы чувствуете, что жизнь не приносит счастья, то немедленно измените её, хотя бы только для того, чтобы не заболеть. Сигель считает, что такое поведение – это непременное условие долгой здоровой жизни. При этом он понимает, что кардинально изменить жизнь не всегда возможно. Например, у человека может не быть денег, чтобы из северного городка уехать жить к морю. Но Сигель предлагает каждому человеку найти собственный способ максимальной реализации самого себя, а для этого прежде всего нужно научиться любить мир. Можно остаться на прежней работе, но при этом научиться быть счастливым. Всё дело во внутренней установке.
Любовь важна сама по себе, любовь как образ жизни, безусловная любовь: любить значит отдавать, ничего не ожидая в ответ. И через некоторое время человек чувствует, что счастливее его нет. И когда мне говорят, замечает Берни Сигель: "Я любила, но мой любимый отказал мне во взаимности", – я смеюсь и отвечаю: "Я имею в виду другое. Вы считаете часы, отданные любимому, и ждёте, чтобы вам их вернули. Но это абсурд. Превращая отношения в тяжкую обязанность, мы накапливаем обиды, которые нас же и убивают".
Человек, у которого не всё получается в жизни, которого преследуют болезни, должен воспринимать превратности судьбы как указующий перст. И с этой точки зрения, может, следует говорить о "правильных ошибках", "счастливом разладе"? Неудачи способны обучать, так что человеку, приведшему вас в ярость, можно сказать: "Спасибо за то, что вы меня выгнали с работы… не согласились стать моей женой… отказали мне в должности… Моя жизнь изменила направление, и я нашёл её смысл и счастье".
Чем лучше мы понимаем себя, тем меньше судим мир. Берни замечает, что дети никого не судят и живут только чувствами. Если вы попросите ребёнка нарисовать то, о чём он мечтает или кем хочет стать, когда вырастет, он тотчас это сделает. Но если предложить то же самое взрослому, он скорее всего ответит: "Лучше отложить тест на неделю, чтобы я ещё раз хорошенько обдумал, чего я хочу от жизни". На своих семинарах Сигель часто задаёт вопрос слушателям: "Если я сейчас сделаю каждого из вас счастливым, что вы будете делать дальше?" Большинство взрослых не знают, что ответить. Мы не привыкли быть счастливыми, а ведь именно для этого мы и рождаемся. Счастливый человек всегда здоров.
У любого из нас есть своё предназначение и свои, кажущиеся несбыточными, мечты. Порой мы всю жизнь подавляем своё стремление к счастью. Изменяя жизнь, мы выздоравливаем.
Случай с больным Ле Шана, которого звали Роберт, – отличная тому иллюстрация.
Он был хорошим специалистом, не жаловался на здоровье, но в 65 лет решил уйти на пенсию. Роберт был уверен, что свободное время он будет уделять внукам. Но его сын разошёлся с женой, и внуков увезли в другой город. Жизнь для Роберта потеряла смысл. Он ничем не занимался, бесцельно бродил по дому, чувствуя безразличие, усталость и апатию. Здоровье его резко ухудшилось, и вскоре он узнал неутешительный диагноз – рак. Неизвестно, как повернулась бы жизнь Роберта, но он встретился с доктором Ле Шаном. С первых же бесед Роберт понял, что он утратил основной стимул в жизни. Сеансы психотерапии выявили ещё один почти забытый его интерес к политике. Ле Шан посоветовал Роберту вступить в организацию, занимающуюся социальными проблемами. Общение с новыми людьми, новые обязанности возвратили ему прежнюю активность, а с ней и свежие силы. Чтобы поддерживать себя в форме, Роберту пришлось заняться спортом. На беседы с врачом у него теперь просто не оставалось времени. Опухоль остановилась в росте, а затем исчезла.
Другой пример из практики Ле Шана. Натали родилась и выросла в Бразилии и очень любила свою страну. Но после замужества решила переехать в Лондон. Её муж – поэт, чьи стихи никто не публиковал, и две дочери, мечтающие стать актрисами, имели бы в Лондоне больше возможностей для творческого роста и карьеры. Чтобы дать дочерям образование и позволить мужу всё время посвящать поэзии, Натали устроилась на работу не по специальности. Ей пришлось заниматься делом, которое она не любила. Каждое утро она с неохотой вставала и, преодолевая себя, отправлялась на работу. Вся её жизнь была занята заботами о семье, и она делала всё механически, забыв о себе.
В 49 лет у Натали был обнаружен рак груди с обширными метастазами. Прогнозы были печальные. Как к последней надежде, она обратилась к Ле Шану. После долгого разговора Ле Шан сказал: "Зачем вашему организму бороться за жизнь, если жизнь приносит вам тоску и серые будни, если вы давно забыли о себе? И если вы скоро умрёте, то ваши родные решат свои проблемы самостоятельно, без вас. Так что не лучше ли воспользоваться последним шансом, который предлагает вам жизнь: на какое-то время забыть о проблемах других и сосредоточиться на себе? Десять лет назад вы совершили ошибку, так исправьте её сейчас".
И Натали уехала в родную Бразилию. Она ходила босиком по пляжам, купалась в море. Она устроилась на работу и снова стала учить маленьких детей, которых очень любила. И если раньше лекарства и диета не помогали, то теперь они дали отличные результаты. Натали стала выздоравливать. К удивлению Натали, оказалось, что как только её мужу и дочерям пришлось самостоятельно решать свои проблемы, они успешно с ними справились.
У каждого человека, считает Ле Шан, есть на Земле своё дело. Когда он выполняет его, то его способности используются максимально, и человек получает огромное удовлетворение от жизни. Если же он находится не на своём месте, жизнь не приносит ему радости. В этом случае, даже если жизнь внешне благополучна, реакцией на неё может стать рак.
Рак – это последнее предупреждение
Многочисленные примеры, которые приводил Ле Шан в своей книге, доказывают справедливость старой истины: никогда не поздно начинать всё сначала. Но в некоторых ситуациях заставить вспомнить об этом может только рак. Рак – это последнее предупреждение, которое побуждает человека вспомнить о своём предназначении, раскрепостить свои желания, и тогда организм сам находит силы для борьбы, мобилизует все свои защитные механизмы. Радость и свобода в собственной реализации – самое сильное лекарство.
У каждого из нас есть своя мелодия жизни, мотив, который звучит в нас с рождения. К. Юнг говорил, что будущее бессознательно готовится задолго до того, как оно наступает. Но порой мы сознательно заглушаем этот мотив, стесняясь его простоты или, напротив, необычности звучания, и подстраиваемся под всех, подавляя свои желания и возможности. Но любой инструмент ломается, если долго выжимать из него не свойственные ему звуки.
Когда обнаружена злокачественная опухоль, больному становится не важно, чем вызвано его заболевание: неправильным образом жизни или тем, что он долгие годы забывал себя ради семьи или общества. Единственно значимым в этот момент становится возможность выжить.
Но рак, по мнению Ле Шана, ставит условие: жить дальше можно только счастливо.
Ещё один пример из его практики. У Марии была хорошая работа, много друзей, и все окружающие считали, что она добилась в жизни многого. И вдруг у неё обнаружили рак. В первой же беседе с Ле Шаном Мария выяснила, что всю жизнь её угнетали два обстоятельства: то, что она никогда не была замужем и не имела детей, которых очень любила, и реакция коллег на этот факт. Она знала, что они считают её старой девой, и очень переживала по этому поводу.
Ле Шан попросил Марию вспомнить самое счастливое время её жизни. Это были годы юности, когда она работала преподавателем в школе для детей инвалидов. Тогда Ле Шан предложил Марии поступить в педагогический колледж. В сорок с лишним лет стать студенткой, да ещё с таким серьёзным заболеванием? Ле Шан настаивал, и Мария согласилась. Учёба давалась ей легко, а время, которое она проводила среди молодёжи, доставляло ей радость. Экстерном она закончила обучение и начала преподавать, а ещё через год открыла свою школу для детей инвалидов. Мария была счастлива, и помощь врача ей стала не нужна: она забыла, что у неё когда-то был рак.
Очень часто люди, заболевшие раком, не знают, в чём заключается их предназначение и что может принести им счастье. В таких случаях Ле Шан предлагает вспомнить русскую сказку о золотой рыбке, которая готова исполнить любое желание. Но надо спешить – сейчас она вильнёт хвостом и больше не появится никогда. Подумайте, о чём бы больше всего вам хотелось попросить её?
Можно представить себе, что мы только что родились и вся жизнь впереди. Чем бы мы хотели заниматься? Где и как жить? Попытайтесь вспомнить самый счастливый миг своей жизни. Кто-то, оглядываясь назад, скажет, что он никогда не был счастлив. Но ведь были же минуты, часы, месяцы, когда вы испытывали искреннюю радость. Вспомните, что именно принесло вам эту радость, и постарайтесь воссоздать подобное в своей жизни. Так Ле Шану удалось вернуть к жизни многих безнадёжных с точки зрения медицины раковых больных. Случалось, что опухоль не уменьшалась в размерах, но зато останавливалась в росте и больше в течение долгих лет жизни не беспокоила больного.
Кстати, Сигель поначалу не был счастлив и удовлетворён своей карьерой хирурга. Он любил рисовать и однажды нарисовал свой автопортрет, изобразив себя в колпаке, маске и длинном халате. И тогда он понял, что интуитивно спрятался от людей и от жизни, которая его не удовлетворяла. И ещё он постоянно замыкался в себе, так как думал о людях, которых был не в силах спасти, применяя только нож и скальпель.
Но както, попав случайно на сеанс по психотерапии, он встретил своего пациента, больного раком. В ответ на удивление Сигеля, что тот занимается таким видом лечения, пациент ответил: "Свободное от посещений вашей клиники время мне посоветовали проводить на таких сеансах. И знаете – помогает!" Сигеля осенило: "Так вот что необходимо людям!"
Он стал организовывать группы людей, чтобы помочь им создавать положительный настрой в эмоциях и пробудить защитные силы организма для борьбы с раком. Шесть часов в неделю он ведёт три группы раковых больных – по два часа занятий с каждой, и так десять лет. И видит, что, как только его слушатели приводили в порядок свою жизнь в соответствии со своими мечтами, они выздоравливали, а те, кто, казалось, был обречён, продолжали жить и чувствовали себя всё лучше.
Среди этих людей были и те, кого Сигель оперировал сам по поводу рака. Вот уже десять лет они живут без малейших признаков этого заболевания – просто потому, что они ценят каждый свой день и радуются жизни. Каждый из этих пациентов в своё время сказал себе: "Предположим, что через полгода я умру. Что ж, значит, прямо сейчас я должен начать жить".
И когда однажды Сигель звонит им по телефону, они говорят: "Да, я жив. Я просто начал жить и потому не умер".
Сегодняшняя переводная статья, вероятно, заденет многих читателей из России.
Статью публикую в переводе и адаптации.
О чем плачут в двадцать пять
Знакомьтесь. Это Люси.
Люси — представитель поколения Y: людей, рожденных в конце 70-х — начале 90-х годов. Сейчас им по 20-30 лет, они закончили вузы и теперь работают. Если они работают в большом городе и занимаются интеллектуальным трудом, их называют «Юппи» — young urban professionals, молодые трудоустроенные горожане. Люси как раз такая.
В целом у Люси всё хорошо. Почему же она такая несчастная?
Разберемся сначала, откуда берется счастье. На удивление, формула простая:
Ничего мудреного. Если ожидаешь больше, чем получаешь — ты несчастлив. Если наоборот — счастлив.
Интересно, что объективная реальность играет второстепенную роль. Она сама по себе не делает человека счастливым или несчастным — только в сочетании с ожиданиями. Если ребенок ожидал на день рождения игровую приставку «Иксбокс», а получил велосипед «Мерида», он, скорее всего, расстроится. Если же он ожидал хоть какой велосипед, а получил целую настоящую «Мериду», он будет прыгать до потолка.
Со счастьем разобрались: чтобы быть счастливым, нужно, чтобы реальность превосходила ожидания. Откуда у Люси завышенные ожидания?
Чтобы лучше это понять, познакомимся с ее родителями.
Родители
Дедушка и бабушка Люси — представители «великого поколения». Они выросли во времена «Великой депрессии» — экономического кризиса в США в 1930-е гг. В ранней юности они видели нищету и безработицу. Во время Второй мировой войны они либо служили, либо работали на заводе, где и познакомились.
После кризисных тридцатых и военных сороковых в Америке наступают зажиточные пятидесятые: реальный сектор растет, у всех полно работы, денег хватает. Ветеранам войны (тогда еще двадцатилетним парням) выдают льготные ипотеки, американские архитекторы начинают типовую коттеджную застройку пригородов, у молодых семей появляется доступное жилье, автомобили, телевизоры и другие элементы американской мечты.
Дедушка с бабушкой женятся (массово, в масштабах целого поколения), и у них рождаются дети. Происходит демографический взрыв — «бэби бум». Америка наполняется счастливыми детьми пятидесятых, которые увидят нищету только в документальных фильмах.
Дедушка с бабушкой учат своих детей, что главное в жизни — стабильная работа и устойчивый доход. Они хотят, чтобы в их жизни еда была вкусной, а трава — зеленой. И вот их дети, родители Люси, вырастают с мыслью о стабильной и долговечной карьере. Вот такой:
Родители Люси знают, что они обязательно доберутся до этой зеленой лужайки. Нужно лишь много работать:
Родители успешно переболели культурой хиппи в 70-х годах и радостно взялись за свои карьеры. И тут в 80-х и 90-х американский мир переживает небывалый экономический рост. Растет всё и во всех отраслях, деньги прут из всех щелей, успевай только зарабатывать.
Наши герои — смелые и уверенные в себе люди. Они честно трудились и заработали даже больше, чем планировали. И дом купили лучше, и жизнь обустроили удобнее. От этого к зрелости у них сложилось общее ощущение удовлетворенности жизнью:
У родителей Люси не было перед глазами войны и затяжного экономического кризиса. Они уверены, что все всегда будет хорошо — нужно лишь трудиться. И они воспитали свою Люси в этой же традиции, но в еще более утрированной манере: будто ее возможности безграничны, и Люси (и все ее сверстники) может стать кем захочет.
Начинались девяностые. По телевизору показывали молодых «Бэкстрит бойз» и живого Кобейна, а маленькие мальчики и девочки впитывали идею, что они уникальные, их возможности безграничны, а по жизни им во всем зеленый свет. Более того, им не подходит унылая судьба родителей, которые просто добились финансовой стабильности. Стабильность — это скучно. В жизни поколения Y должны происходить удивительные вещи. На их лужайке обязательно зацветут цветы:
Отсюда первый факт о Люси, который важно понять:
Люси запредельно амбициозна
Люси и ее ровесники хотят не просто комфортную жизнь и достаток. Это для них слишком мелко. Если родители Люси воплощали «Американскую мечту», то сама она будет воплощать свою собственную, уникальную, мечту.
Писатель и исследователь Кэл Ньюпорт проследил рост популярности фразы «следуй за своей мечтой» (follow your passion), который пришелся на последние 20 лет. Для анализа использовался гугловский инструмент Ngram Viewer: он показывает, как часто в англоязычной прессе встречаются определенные словосочетания. Сравните, как падает популярность «стабильной работы» (a secure career) и растет популярность «работы для души» (a fulfilling career):
Должен оговориться: Люси и ее сверстники хотят материального достатка не меньше, чем их родители. Но, вместе с тем, они хотят, чтобы работа приносила удовлетворение. Об этом «бэби-бумеры» и не мечтали.
Однако Люси не только запредельно амбициозна. С раннего детства в ней укореняется еще одна мысль, почерпнутая у родителей:
И тут настало время поговорить о второй особенности Люси и ее друзей:
Они живут в мире фантазий
«Ну да, конечно, все мы добьемся в жизни счастья и успеха. И все мы найдем работу по душе и заработаем на ней. Но я-то особенная. А значит, мой жизненный путь тоже будет особенным, я оставлю след в истории и вознесусь над толпой», — думает Люси на занятиях в колледже.
И вот у нас целое поколение Люсь, которые не только убеждены, что на их лужайке зацветут цветы. Каждая отдельная Люси убеждена, что как только она закончит вуз, ее лужайка станет особенно прекрасной, —
над ней воспарит волшебный пони-единорог:
Это заблуждение сыграет с Люси злую шутку, когда она получит диплом.
Если родители Люси готовились к многолетнему упорному труду, то Люси пребывает в уверенности, что ей-то, такой особенной и замечательной, работа будет даваться легко. Нужно лишь выбрать направление по душе и подождать, пока ее талант обнаружат. Вот как Люси видит свою карьеру на старших курсах вуза:
Но, увы, настоящая работа — это кровь, пот и слезы, даже если вы не метите на цветастую лужайку с единорогами. Чтобы выстроить невыдающуюся, но хотя бы устойчивую карьеру, потребуется много лет выдающегося труда. К такому Люси жизнь не готовила. Она ожидала, что сейчас год-другой, и она станет новым Джобсом-Цукербергом.
Но она не станет, силенок не хватит. И она не готова это принять.
Профессор Пол Харви, признанный люсивед и психолог, исследовал мировоззрения людей поколения Y. Он отмечает, что его представители «имеют нереалистичные ожидания от жизни и необоснованно высокое мнение о себе», а также «болезненно сопротивляются критике». «Не прикладывая достаточно усилий, такие люди, тем не менее, продолжают ожидать от жизни серьезного вознаграждения, — пишет Харви, — и продолжают разочаровываться».
Несмотря на то, что Люси о себе самого высокого мнения, у реальности свой взгляд. Вот где наша Люси оказывается спустя два года после вуза:
Наша героиня выстроила нереальные ожидания от работы, и, естественно, разочаровалась. Из-за несоответствия ожиданий и реальности она несчастна.
Но это не всё. Есть еще одна проблема, которая усугубляет положение Люси.
Над ней все как будто издеваются
Понятно, что среди поколения родителей Люси кто-то богаче и кто-то счастливее. Но так как большую часть жизни эти люди прожили без Фейсбука, они не особо в курсе, как складывалась карьера сверстников. Они жили себе и занимались своим делом, оглядываясь в лучшем случае на лужайку соседа.
А вот Люси преследует новомодный общественный феномен: брехня в Фейсбуке.
Из-за соцсетей Люси живет в мире, в котором а) люди постоянно публикуют информацию о себе; б) то, что они публикуют, часто не соответствует действительности; в) в основном, окружающие делятся своими успехами и помалкивают о неудачах.
Если посмотреть на страницу в Фейсбуке типичной одноклассницы Люси, то там будут сплошные вечеринки, знакомства с известными людьми, заграничные поездки, подарки от поклонников и дорогие рестораны. И нигде не будет написано, что она на самом деле подрабатывает текильщицей в клубе, занимает деньги у родителей, а эти розы купила себе сама. Это называется «конструирование имиджа».
Из-за этого у Люси складывается чувство, будто у всех кругом все прекрасно, и она одна такая дура, ничего в жизни не добилась.
Вот почему Люси чувствует себя не на месте. И хотя она, скорее всего, начала свою карьеру очень даже успешно, она мучается от ощущения собственной несостоятельности.
Что бы я посоветовал таким, как Люси:
Оставаться такими же амбициозными. В мире хватает возможностей реализоваться, нужно лишь брать и делать. Может быть, все получится не так, как вы планировали, но что-то точно получится. Главное — делать.
Перестать считать себя особенными. Правда жизни в том, что вы неопытный молодой человек, которому пока что нечего предложить миру. Чтобы это появилось, нужно трудится, долго и изо всех сил.
Не смотрите по сторонам. Сейчас ничего не стоит создать себе образ состоятельного и успешного человека. Если ваши друзья и знакомые кажутся успешными, не спешите делать выводы. Возможно, они просто держат Айфон под правильным углом. Вам же нужно заниматься своим делом честно и от души — тогда не будет причин завидовать другим.
Согласно результатам их исследования, у людей с активной половой жизнью оклад выше, чем у их коллег, которые уделяют любовным утехам меньше времени. Впрочем, эксперты не исключили и обратной зависимости — сексом чаще занимаются те, у кого больше денег.
Исследование проводилось среди респондентов в возрасте 26-50 лет. Выяснилось, что работники, занимающиеся сексом четыре раза в неделю и чаще, зарабатывают почти на 5% больше коллег, которые не так активны в постели. А те, у кого интимная жизнь полностью отсутствует, получают на 3% меньше денег, чем сотрудники, которые предаются любовным утехам хотя бы раз в год. В России еще сильнее заметна взаимосвязь между активной половой жизнью и успехами на работе, уверен учредитель компании Good Wood Александр Дубовенко.
"Мне кажется, что все в организме связано: если активно работает один орган, то и верхнее полушарие тоже работает очень хорошо. Мои исследования, конечно, неформальные, но, судя по наблюдениям, я полностью согласен с тем, что активная половая жизнь человека влияет на его креативность и рабочие способности и, безусловно, приводит к карьерному росту. Единственное, что, мне кажется, что цифра в 5% занижена, я бы дал даже 15% в российских условиях для возраста 20-35 лет", — пояснил Дубовенко.
Как напоминают немецкие ученые, согласно принятой иерархии потребностей человека, также известной под названием пирамида Маслоу, прежде чем добиться личностного роста человеку следует удовлетворить свои базовые нужды. В их числе и секс. Если этого не сделать, то в дальнейшем человеку будет сложно действовать в полную силу. Но как считают сексологи, не только регулярный секс влияет на карьерный рост, но и, наоборот, успехи на работе способствуют налаживанию половой жизни.
"Если человек получает больше, у него появляется больше возможностей, больше причин хорошо выглядеть, нравиться противоположному полу, завязывать разнообразные контакты. В результате как жизненная активность, так и сексуальная этого человека выше, и поэтому контактов у него значительно больше. Поэтому зарабатывайте деньги — а секс наладится".
При этом, по мнению экспертов, нередко именно воздержание помогает лучше реализоваться на профессиональном поприще. Это происходит за счет того, что сексуальная энергия направляется в творческое русло. Вряд ли эту теорию можно применить по отношению к россиянам, считает бизнес-тренер:
"Я думаю, что если бы у нас люди умели эту энергию сублимировать, то, возможно, этот вариант и был бы. Может быть, в Индии это возможно, в нашей жизни, я думаю, человек неудовлетворенный большую часть своего рабочего времени только сидит и об этом думает, поэтому вряд ли он будет очень плодотворным и производительным. Потому что сублимация — это некий процесс, которому надо человека долго учить, нужно, чтобы он умел это делать, а не просто так ему сказали — ты должен эту энергию сублимировать; он спросит: а как это? Точно так же, как человеку, который расстроен, говорят: ты не расстраивайся, пожалуйста", — рассказал бизнес-тренер.
Ученые также выяснили, что люди, которые чаще занимаются сексом, более здоровые. Они меньше страдают от артрита, диабета и заболеваний сердца.
Previously, you addressed where you are and where you are going. Now, you will focus on how you will get there. Use your SWOT to stay grounded and realistic as you build a roadmap from where you are today to where you want to be. As you develop your strategy and set your goals, make strategic choices about what to do and not to do. Remember that being strategic is about making those hard choices. A mark of a good strategic plan is one that is clear and focused (not too many goals and objectives), as well as balanced – telling a strategy story about how your whole organization is linked and aligned to drive key performance indicators. Spend some time uncovering your competitive advantages based on an understanding of your strategic position. Your competitive advantages are the essence of your strategic plan because strategy is about being different. It is deliberately choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than competitors to deliver value to your customers. Eliminate any confusion around semantics by using these definitions:
Strategies: The route you intend to take and the general methods you intend to use to reach the top of that specific mountain.
Long-Term Strategic Objectives/Priorities: Intermediate objectives to the top of the mountain. If you have a 5-year vision, these would be 3- to 4-year intermediate objectives on the way up the mountain.
Short-Term Goals and Actions: Specific moves for climbing the sections of rock and ice that confront you right now. These would be analogous to detailed annual plans for getting things done this year on the way to the 3-year objective.
Phase Duration
2 weeks
Question to Ask
What is our base for competing and delivering value?
What are we best at? What makes us unique?
What are the "big rocks" – strategic objectives – we need to reach our vision?
What must we accomplish over the next 1 to 3 years to achieve these?
What are we not going to do?
What strategic questions must we still address?
How will we measure our success?
Data Needed
SWOT, competitive advantages list, customer data
Carry over goals from last planning period
End of year scorecards/KPI data
Outcomes / Deliverables
Drafted competitive advantages
Organization-wide strategies
Long-term strategic objectives
Short- and mid-term organization-wide goals
Financial projections
Action Grid
Action
Who is Involved
Tools & Techniques
Estimated Duration
Solidify your competitive advantages based on your key strengths
Executive Team Planning Team
Strategy Comparison Chart Strategy Map
Leadership Offsite: 1 – 2 days
Formulate organization-wide strategies that explain your base for competing
Develop your strategic framework and define long-term strategic objectives/priorities
Set short-term SMART organizational goals and measures
Select which measures will be your key performance indicators
Increase our billable hours by 10% over the next 12 months. (Measure: # billable hours / Target: 1.2%)
Achieve sales growth of 10% per year. (Measure: Monthly sales / Target: 1.2%)
Customer 1-Year Goals:
Realize 10% of the company's annual sales from the small business market by end of the next year. (Measure: # of small business clients / Target: 100)
Reach a 15% annual increase in new customers by end of year 2012. (Measure: % increase in new customers / Target: 15%)
Internal Processes 1-Year Goals:
Reduce the time lapse between order data and delivery from 6 days to 4 days by this June. (Measure: # of days to process each order / Target: 4 days)
Reduce the number of returns due to shipping errors from 3% to 2%. (Measure: # of returns due to shipping errors / Target: 2%)
People & Learning 1-Year Goals:
Reduce turnover among sales managers by 10% by the end of the year. (Measure: Employee turnover / Target: 10%)
Hire and train a human relations director by the end of the year. (Measure: Director hired / Target: 100%)
Select KPIs
To help monitor your strategic plan, one of the best tools around is the Balanced Scorecard, developed by Kaplan and Norton from Harvard. The scorecard is to be used as both a measurement and management tool to assist in fulfilling your organization's vision. With it, you can actively track progress toward your goals. Begin by asking "What are the key performance measures we need to track in order to monitor if we are achieving our goals?" These KPIs include the key goals that you want to measure that will have the most impact in moving your organization forward. The scorecard has four categories of measures:
Financial/Mission— How do we look to our stakeholders? These measures indicate whether your organization's strategy, implementation, and execution are contributing to bottom line and top line improvement.
Customer/Constituent— How do we provide value? These measures are customized to each of the targeted groups you serve.
Internal/Operational— Which processes must we excel at? These measures focus on internal programs and activities that have an impact on customer/constituent satisfaction. They focus on internal processes needed to sustain your competitive advantage.
People/Learning — To excel at our processes, how must we learn and improve? These measures identify the infrastructure that your organization must build to create long-term growth and improvement. It includes your ability to attract essential staff, innovate, improve and learn.
An Example Strategy Scorecard:
Steps to Build Your Strategy Scorecard:
Identify the right measures. Most of your goals should have measures associated with each one. If not, pick a measure to track the goal.
Establish increments that mesh with the targets. Make sure to get the right time frame and size of measures. For example, if you're target is a 10% increase in sales over the year, break the target down to a monthly number. Try to use the same increments for all your measures. If you are reporting monthly, then use monthly measures.
Identify the data source. Clearly identify where the monthly number is coming from and who is responsible for reporting on it. Be sure that the measures are easily accessible.
Input numbers monthly. Enter numbers every month for each measure.
See the big picture. The primary purpose of key indicators is to give you a big-picture look at the organization with a relatively small amount of information. If you are not seeing the big picture, change the measures. A great way to get a visual is to produce a chart or graph for each measure.
Take action. Taking action means doing it in a timely manner. The whole point of using a scorecard is to make adjustments, now, on time, before it's too late. Your strategy meetings should easily facilitate this process.
A List of Common Measures:
Cascade Your Strategies to Operations
By the time organizations get to cascading their strategy, many are tired and worn out from all of the work leading up to this point. But don't stop yet! Cascading action items and to-dos for each short-term goal is where the rubber meets the road – literally. Moving from big ideas to action happens when strategy is translated from the organizational level to the individual. Here we widen the circle of the people who are involved in the planning as functional area managers and individual contributors develop their short-term goals and actions to support the organizational direction. But before you take that action, determine if you are going to develop a set of plans that cascade directly from the strategic plan, or instead if you have existing operational, business or account plans that should be synced up with organizational goals. A pitfall is to develop multiple sets of goals and actions for directors and staff to manage. Fundamentally, at this point you have moved from planning the strategy to planning the operations; from strategic planning to annual planning. That said, the only way strategy gets executed is to align resources and actions from the bottom to the top to drive your vision.
PHASE DURATION
4-6 weeks
Questions to Ask
How are we going to get there at a functional level?
Who must do what by when to accomplish and drive the organizational goals?
What strategic questions still remain and need to be solved?
Data Needed
Coming year organizational goals, measures and targets
Sales projections
Product projections
Outcomes / Deliverables
Department/functional goals, actions, measures and targets for the next 12-24 months
Individual team member action plans
Action Grid
Action
Who is Involved
Tools & Resources
Estimated Duration
Develop a 3-year financial projection or forecast
Finance Leader
Financial model or existing financial software
2 weeks
Set short-term department goals that align with organizational goals
Executive Team, Planning Team and Department Managers
Department Managers meet with their own teams
Dept. Goal Setting: ½ – 1 day meeting of each department
Cascade department goals to individual goals, creating action plans
Department Managers and Individual Team Members
Department Managers meet with individual staff members
Now in your Departments / Teams, you need to create goals to support the organization-wide goals. These goals should still be SMART and are generally (short-term) something to be done in the next 12-18 months.
Pull together your action plan for each short-term goal.
Finally, you should develop an action plan for each goal. Keep the acronym SMART in mind again when setting action items, and make sure they include start and end dates and have someone assigned their responsibility. Since these action items support your previously established goals, it may be helpful to consider action items your immediate plans on the way to achieving your (short-term) goals. In other words, identify all the actions that need to occur in the next 90 days and continue this same process every 90 days until the goal is achieved. In the OnStrategy system, all the strategic objectives cascade down to the team member action items. For example in the image below (3-tier plan), strategic objective 1 cascades down to organization-wide goal 1.1, then department goal 1.1.1, then team member goal 1.1.1.1, which is supported finally by the team member action item 1.1.1.1.1. In a 2-tier plan, the department goal would be the team member goal and the team member goal an action.
Examples of Cascading Goals:
1 Increase new customer base.
1.1 Reach a 15% annual increase in new customers. (Due annually for 2 years)
1.1.1 Implement marketing campaign to draw in new markets. (Marketing, due in 12 months)
1.1.1.1 Research the opportunities in new markets that we could expand into. (Doug) (Marketing, due in 6 months)
1.1.1.1.1 Complete a competitive analysis study of our current and prospective markets. (Doug) (Marketing, due in 60 days)
1.1.1.2 Develop campaign material for new markets. (Mary) (Marketing, due in 10 months)
1.1.1.2.1 Research marketing methods best for reaching the new markets. (Mary) (Marketing,due in 8 months)
Many people feel as if they're adrift in the world. They work hard, but they don't seem to get anywhere worthwhile.
A key reason that they feel this way is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they want from life, and haven't set themselves formal goals. After all, would you set out on a major journey with no real idea of your destination? Probably not!
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality.
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that can, so easily, lead you astray.
Why Set Goals?
Top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields all set goals. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
You set your goals on a number of levels:
First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life (or over, say, the next 10 years), and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.
This is why we start the process of setting goals by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that you can do in, say, the next five years, then next year, next month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.
Step 1: Setting Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.
To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you):
Career – What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
Financial – How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
Education – Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
Family – Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
Artistic – Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
Attitude – Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
Physical – Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
Pleasure – How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)
Public Service – Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on.
As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. (If you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants – however, make sure that you also remain true to yourself!)
Tip:
You may also want to read our article on Personal Mission Statements. Crafting a personal mission statement can help bring your most important goals into sharp focus.
Step 2: Setting Smaller Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan.
Then create a one-year plan, six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
Then create a daily To-Do List of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.
At an early stage, your smaller goals might be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your higher level goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Staying on Course
Once you've decided on your first set of goals, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your To-Do List on a daily basis.
Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience. (A good way of doing this is to schedule regular, repeating reviews using a computer-based diary.)
SMART Goals
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants (some of which we've included in parenthesis), SMART usually stands for:
S – Specific (or Significant).
M – Measurable (or Meaningful).
A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
R – Relevant (or Rewarding).
T – Time-bound (or Trackable).
For example, instead of having "to sail around the world" as a goal, it's more powerful to use the SMART goal "To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015." Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!
Further Tips for Setting Your Goals
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective, achievable goals:
State each goal as a positive statement – Express your goals positively – "Execute this technique well" is a much better goal than "Don't make this stupid mistake."
Be precise: Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you'll know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
Set priorities – When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down – This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
Keep operational goals small – Keep the low-level goals that you're working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals – You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control!
In business, these reasons could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, they could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck.
If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals, and draw satisfaction from them.
Set realistic goals – It's important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.
It's also possible to set goals that are too difficult because you might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.
Achieving Goals
When you've achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress that you've made towards other goals.
If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve.
With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goal harder.
If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goal a little easier.
If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Tip 1:
Our article, Golden Rules of Goal Setting, will show you how to set yourself up for success when it comes to your goals. If you're still having trouble, you might also want to try Backward Goal Setting.
Tip 2:
It's important to remember that failing to meet goals does not matter much, just as long as you learn from the experience.
Feed lessons you have learned back into the process of setting your next goals. Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, consider letting them go.
Example Personal Goals
For her New Year's Resolution, Susan has decided to think about what she really wants to do with her life.
Her lifetime goals are as follows:
Career – "To be managing editor of the magazine that I work for."
Artistic – "To keep working on my illustration skills. Ultimately I want to have my own show in our downtown gallery."
Physical – "To run a marathon."
Now that Susan has listed her lifetime goals, she then breaks down each one into smaller, more manageable goals.
Let's take a closer look at how she might break down her lifetime career goal – becoming managing editor of her magazine:
Five-year goal: "Become deputy editor."
One-year goal: "Volunteer for projects that the current Managing Editor is heading up."
Six-month goal: "Go back to school and finish my journalism degree."
One-month goal: "Talk to the current managing editor to determine what skills are needed to do the job."
One-week goal: "Book the meeting with the Managing Editor."
As you can see from this example, breaking big goals down into smaller, more manageable goals makes it far easier to see how the goal will get accomplished.
Tip:
A good way of getting going with this is to use the Mind Tools Life Plan Workbook. Supported by worksheets and advice, this guides you through a simple 5-step process for setting SMART goals, and for organizing yourself for success.
Children who are able to pass the marshmallow test enjoy greater success as adults. Credit BARRY BLITT
In the late nineteen-sixties, Carolyn Weisz, a four-year-old with long brown hair, was invited into a "game room" at the Bing Nursery School, on the campus of Stanford University. The room was little more than a large closet, containing a desk and a chair. Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow. Although she's now forty-four, Carolyn still has a weakness for those air-puffed balls of corn syrup and gelatine. "I know I shouldn't like them," she says. "But they're just so delicious!" A researcher then made Carolyn an offer: she could either eat one marshmallow right away or, if she was willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, she could have two marshmallows when he returned. He said that if she rang a bell on the desk while he was away he would come running back, and she could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the second. Then he left the room.
Although Carolyn has no direct memory of the experiment, and the scientists would not release any information about the subjects, she strongly suspects that she was able to delay gratification. "I've always been really good at waiting," Carolyn told me. "If you give me a challenge or a task, then I'm going to find a way to do it, even if it means not eating my favorite food." Her mother, Karen Sortino, is still more certain: "Even as a young kid, Carolyn was very patient. I'm sure she would have waited." But her brother Craig, who also took part in the experiment, displayed less fortitude. Craig, a year older than Carolyn, still remembers the torment of trying to wait. "At a certain point, it must have occurred to me that I was all by myself," he recalls. "And so I just started taking all the candy." According to Craig, he was also tested with little plastic toys—he could have a second one if he held out—and he broke into the desk, where he figured there would be additional toys. "I took everything I could," he says. "I cleaned them out. After that, I noticed the teachers encouraged me to not go into the experiment room anymore."
Footage of these experiments, which were conducted over several years, is poignant, as the kids struggle to delay gratification for just a little bit longer. Some cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so that they can't see the tray. Others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal. One child, a boy with neatly parted hair, looks carefully around the room to make sure that nobody can see him. Then he picks up an Oreo, delicately twists it apart, and licks off the white cream filling before returning the cookie to the tray, a satisfied look on his face.
Most of the children were like Craig. They struggled to resist the treat and held out for an average of less than three minutes. "A few kids ate the marshmallow right away," Walter Mischel, the Stanford professor of psychology in charge of the experiment, remembers. "They didn't even bother ringing the bell. Other kids would stare directly at the marshmallow and then ring the bell thirty seconds later." About thirty per cent of the children, however, were like Carolyn. They successfully delayed gratification until the researcher returned, some fifteen minutes later. These kids wrestled with temptation but found a way to resist.
The initial goal of the experiment was to identify the mental processes that allowed some people to delay gratification while others simply surrendered. After publishing a few papers on the Bing studies in the early seventies, Mischel moved on to other areas of personality research. "There are only so many things you can do with kids trying not to eat marshmallows."
But occasionally Mischel would ask his three daughters, all of whom attended the Bing, about their friends from nursery school. "It was really just idle dinnertime conversation," he says. "I'd ask them, 'How's Jane? How's Eric? How are they doing in school?' " Mischel began to notice a link between the children's academic performance as teen-agers and their ability to wait for the second marshmallow. He asked his daughters to assess their friends academically on a scale of zero to five. Comparing these ratings with the original data set, he saw a correlation. "That's when I realized I had to do this seriously," he says. Starting in 1981, Mischel sent out a questionnaire to all the reachable parents, teachers, and academic advisers of the six hundred and fifty-three subjects who had participated in the marshmallow task, who were by then in high school. He asked about every trait he could think of, from their capacity to plan and think ahead to their ability to "cope well with problems" and get along with their peers. He also requested their S.A.T. scores.
Once Mischel began analyzing the results, he noticed that low delayers, the children who rang the bell quickly, seemed more likely to have behavioral problems, both in school and at home. They got lower S.A.T. scores. They struggled in stressful situations, often had trouble paying attention, and found it difficult to maintain friendships. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.
Carolyn Weisz is a textbook example of a high delayer. She attended Stanford as an undergraduate, and got her Ph.D. in social psychology at Princeton. She's now an associate psychology professor at the University of Puget Sound. Craig, meanwhile, moved to Los Angeles and has spent his career doing "all kinds of things" in the entertainment industry, mostly in production. He's currently helping to write and produce a film. "Sure, I wish I had been a more patient person," Craig says. "Looking back, there are definitely moments when it would have helped me make better career choices and stuff."
Mischel and his colleagues continued to track the subjects into their late thirties—Ozlem Ayduk, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, found that low-delaying adults have a significantly higher body-mass index and are more likely to have had problems with drugs—but it was frustrating to have to rely on self-reports. "There's often a gap between what people are willing to tell you and how they behave in the real world," he explains. And so, last year, Mischel, who is now a professor at Columbia, and a team of collaborators began asking the original Bing subjects to travel to Stanford for a few days of experiments in an fMRI machine. Carolyn says she will be participating in the scanning experiments later this summer; Craig completed a survey several years ago, but has yet to be invited to Palo Alto. The scientists are hoping to identify the particular brain regions that allow some people to delay gratification and control their temper. They're also conducting a variety of genetic tests, as they search for the hereditary characteristics that influence the ability to wait for a second marshmallow.
If Mischel and his team succeed, they will have outlined the neural circuitry of self-control. For decades, psychologists have focussed on raw intelligence as the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life. Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework. "What we're really measuring with the marshmallows isn't will power or self-control," Mischel says. "It's much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can't control the world, but we can control how we think about it."
Walter Mischel is a slight, elegant man with a shaved head and a face of deep creases. He talks with a Brooklyn bluster and he tends to act out his sentences, so that when he describes the marshmallow task he takes on the body language of an impatient four-year-old. "If you want to know why some kids can wait and others can't, then you've got to think like they think," Mischel says.
Mischel was born in Vienna, in 1930. His father was a modestly successful businessman with a fondness for café society and Esperanto, while his mother spent many of her days lying on the couch with an ice pack on her forehead, trying to soothe her frail nerves. The family considered itself fully assimilated, but after the Nazi annexation of Austria, in 1938, Mischel remembers being taunted in school by the Hitler Youth and watching as his father, hobbled by childhood polio, was forced to limp through the streets in his pajamas. A few weeks after the takeover, while the family was burning evidence of their Jewish ancestry in the fireplace, Walter found a long-forgotten certificate of U.S. citizenship issued to his maternal grandfather decades earlier, thus saving his family.
The family settled in Brooklyn, where Mischel's parents opened up a five-and-dime. Mischel attended New York University, studying poetry under Delmore Schwartz and Allen Tate, and taking studio-art classes with Philip Guston. He also became fascinated by psychoanalysis and new measures of personality, such as the Rorschach test. "At the time, it seemed like a mental X-ray machine," he says. "You could solve a person by showing them a picture." Although he was pressured to join his uncle's umbrella business, he ended up pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Ohio State.
But Mischel noticed that academic theories had limited application, and he was struck by the futility of most personality science. He still flinches at the naïveté of graduate students who based their diagnoses on a battery of meaningless tests. In 1955, Mischel was offered an opportunity to study the "spirit possession" ceremonies of the Orisha faith in Trinidad, and he leapt at the chance. Although his research was supposed to involve the use of Rorschach tests to explore the connections between the unconscious and the behavior of people when possessed, Mischel soon grew interested in a different project. He lived in a part of the island that was evenly split between people of East Indian and of African descent; he noticed that each group defined the other in broad stereotypes. "The East Indians would describe the Africans as impulsive hedonists, who were always living for the moment and never thought about the future," he says. "The Africans, meanwhile, would say that the East Indians didn't know how to live and would stuff money in their mattress and never enjoy themselves."
Mischel took young children from both ethnic groups and offered them a simple choice: they could have a miniature chocolate bar right away or, if they waited a few days, they could get a much bigger chocolate bar. Mischel's results failed to justify the stereotypes—other variables, such as whether or not the children lived with their father, turned out to be much more important—but they did get him interested in the question of delayed gratification. Why did some children wait and not others? What made waiting possible? Unlike the broad traits supposedly assessed by personality tests, self-control struck Mischel as potentially measurable.
In 1958, Mischel became an assistant professor in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard. One of his first tasks was to develop a survey course on "personality assessment," but Mischel quickly concluded that, while prevailing theories held personality traits to be broadly consistent, the available data didn't back up this assumption. Personality, at least as it was then conceived, couldn't be reliably assessed at all. A few years later, he was hired as a consultant on a personality assessment initiated by the Peace Corps. Early Peace Corps volunteers had sparked several embarrassing international incidents—one mailed a postcard on which she expressed disgust at the sanitary habits of her host country—so the Kennedy Administration wanted a screening process to eliminate people unsuited for foreign assignments. Volunteers were tested for standard personality traits, and Mischel compared the results with ratings of how well the volunteers performed in the field. He found no correlation; the time-consuming tests predicted nothing. At this point, Mischel realized that the problem wasn't the tests—it was their premise. Psychologists had spent decades searching for traits that exist independently of circumstance, but what if personality can't be separated from context? "It went against the way we'd been thinking about personality since the four humors and the ancient Greeks," he says.
While Mischel was beginning to dismantle the methods of his field, the Harvard psychology department was in tumult. In 1960, the personality psychologist Timothy Leary helped start the Harvard Psilocybin Project, which consisted mostly of self-experimentation. Mischel remembers graduate students' desks giving way to mattresses, and large packages from Ciba chemicals, in Switzerland, arriving in the mail. Mischel had nothing against hippies, but he wanted modern psychology to be rigorous and empirical. And so, in 1962, Walter Mischel moved to Palo Alto and went to work at Stanford.
There is something deeply contradictory about Walter Mischel—a psychologist who spent decades critiquing the validity of personality tests—inventing the marshmallow task, a simple test with impressive predictive power. Mischel, however, insists there is no contradiction. "I've always believed there are consistencies in a person that can be looked at," he says. "We just have to look in the right way." One of Mischel's classic studies documented the aggressive behavior of children in a variety of situations at a summer camp in New Hampshire. Most psychologists assumed that aggression was a stable trait, but Mischel found that children's responses depended on the details of the interaction. The same child might consistently lash out when teased by a peer, but readily submit to adult punishment. Another might react badly to a warning from a counsellor, but play well with his bunkmates. Aggression was best assessed in terms of what Mischel called "if-then patterns." If a certain child was teased by a peer, then he would be aggressive.
One of Mischel's favorite metaphors for this model of personality, known as interactionism, concerns a car making a screeching noise. How does a mechanic solve the problem? He begins by trying to identify the specific conditions that trigger the noise. Is there a screech when the car is accelerating, or when it's shifting gears, or turning at slow speeds? Unless the mechanic can give the screech a context, he'll never find the broken part. Mischel wanted psychologists to think like mechanics, and look at people's responses under particular conditions. The challenge was devising a test that accurately simulated something relevant to the behavior being predicted. The search for a meaningful test of personality led Mischel to revisit, in 1968, the protocol he'd used on young children in Trinidad nearly a decade earlier. The experiment seemed especially relevant now that he had three young daughters of his own. "Young kids are pure id," Mischel says. "They start off unable to wait for anything—whatever they want they need. But then, as I watched my own kids, I marvelled at how they gradually learned how to delay and how that made so many other things possible."
A few years earlier, in 1966, the Stanford psychology department had established the Bing Nursery School. The classrooms were designed as working laboratories, with large one-way mirrors that allowed researchers to observe the children. In February, Jennifer Winters, the assistant director of the school, showed me around the building. While the Bing is still an active center of research—the children quickly learn to ignore the students scribbling in notebooks—Winters isn't sure that Mischel's marshmallow task could be replicated today. "We recently tried to do a version of it, and the kids were very excited about having food in the game room," she says. "There are so many allergies and peculiar diets today that we don't do many things with food."
Mischel perfected his protocol by testing his daughters at the kitchen table. "When you're investigating will power in a four-year-old, little things make a big difference," he says. "How big should the marshmallows be? What kind of cookies work best?" After several months of patient tinkering, Mischel came up with an experimental design that closely simulated the difficulty of delayed gratification. In the spring of 1968, he conducted the first trials of his experiment at the Bing. "I knew we'd designed it well when a few kids wanted to quit as soon as we explained the conditions to them," he says. "They knew this was going to be very difficult."
At the time, psychologists assumed that children's ability to wait depended on how badly they wanted the marshmallow. But it soon became obvious that every child craved the extra treat. What, then, determined self-control? Mischel's conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the "strategic allocation of attention." 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. "If you're thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you're going to eat it," Mischel says. "The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place."
In adults, this skill is often referred to as metacognition, or thinking about thinking, and it's what allows people to outsmart their shortcomings. (When Odysseus had himself tied to the ship's mast, he was using some of the skills of metacognition: knowing he wouldn't be able to resist the Sirens' song, he made it impossible to give in.) Mischel's large data set from various studies allowed him to see that children with a more accurate understanding of the workings of self-control were better able to delay gratification. "What's interesting about four-year-olds is that they're just figuring out the rules of thinking," Mischel says. "The kids who couldn't delay would often have the rules backwards. They would think that the best way to resist the marshmallow is to stare right at it, to keep a close eye on the goal. But that's a terrible idea. If you do that, you're going to ring the bell before I leave the room."
According to Mischel, this view of will power also helps explain why the marshmallow task is such a powerfully predictive test. "If you can deal with hot emotions, then you can study for the S.A.T. instead of watching television," Mischel says. "And you can save more money for retirement. It's not just about marshmallows."
Subsequent work by Mischel and his colleagues found that these differences were observable in subjects as young as nineteen months. Looking at how toddlers responded when briefly separated from their mothers, they found that some immediately burst into tears, or clung to the door, but others were able to overcome their anxiety by distracting themselves, often by playing with toys. When the scientists set the same children the marshmallow task at the age of five, they found that the kids who had cried also struggled to resist the tempting treat.
The early appearance of the ability to delay suggests that it has a genetic origin, an example of personality at its most predetermined. Mischel resists such an easy conclusion. "In general, trying to separate nature and nurture makes about as much sense as trying to separate personality and situation," he says. "The two influences are completely interrelated." For instance, when Mischel gave delay-of-gratification tasks to children from low-income families in the Bronx, he noticed that their ability to delay was below average, at least compared with that of children in Palo Alto. "When you grow up poor, you might not practice delay as much," he says. "And if you don't practice then you'll never figure out how to distract yourself. You won't develop the best delay strategies, and those strategies won't become second nature." In other words, people learn how to use their mind just as they learn how to use a computer: through trial and error.
But Mischel has found a shortcut. When he and his colleagues taught children a simple set of mental tricks—such as pretending that the candy is only a picture, surrounded by an imaginary frame—he dramatically improved their self-control. The kids who hadn't been able to wait sixty seconds could now wait fifteen minutes. "All I've done is given them some tips from their mental user manual," Mischel says. "Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it."
Marc Berman, a lanky graduate student with an easy grin, speaks about his research with the infectious enthusiasm of a freshman taking his first philosophy class. Berman works in the lab of John Jonides, a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Michigan, who is in charge of the brain-scanning experiments on the original Bing subjects. He knows that testing forty-year-olds for self-control isn't a straightforward proposition. "We can't give these people marshmallows," Berman says. "They know they're part of a long-term study that looks at delay of gratification, so if you give them an obvious delay task they'll do their best to resist. You'll get a bunch of people who refuse to touch their marshmallow."
This meant that Jonides and his team had to find a way to measure will power indirectly. Operating on the premise that the ability to delay eating the marshmallow had depended on a child's ability to banish thoughts of it, they decided on a series of tasks that measure the ability of subjects to control the contents of working memory—the relatively limited amount of information we're able to consciously consider at any given moment. According to Jonides, this is how self-control "cashes out" in the real world: as an ability to direct the spotlight of attention so that our decisions aren't determined by the wrong thoughts.
Last summer, the scientists chose fifty-five subjects, equally split between high delayers and low delayers, and sent each one a laptop computer loaded with working-memory experiments. Two of the experiments were of particular interest. The first is a straightforward exercise known as the "suppression task." Subjects are given four random words, two printed in blue and two in red. After reading the words, they're told to forget the blue words and remember the red words. Then the scientists provide a stream of "probe words" and ask the subjects whether the probes are the words they were asked to remember. Though the task doesn't seem to involve delayed gratification, it tests the same basic mechanism. Interestingly, the scientists found that high delayers were significantly better at the suppression task: they were less likely to think that a word they'd been asked to forget was something they should remember.
In the second, known as the Go/No Go task, subjects are flashed a set of faces with various expressions. At first, they are told to press the space bar whenever they see a smile. This takes little effort, since smiling faces automatically trigger what's known as "approach behavior." After a few minutes, however, subjects are told to press the space bar when they see frowning faces. They are now being forced to act against an impulse. Results show that high delayers are more successful at not pressing the button in response to a smiling face.
When I first started talking to the scientists about these tasks last summer, they were clearly worried that they wouldn't find any behavioral differences between high and low delayers. It wasn't until early January that they had enough data to begin their analysis (not surprisingly, it took much longer to get the laptops back from the low delayers), but it soon became obvious that there were provocative differences between the two groups. A graph of the data shows that as the delay time of the four-year-olds decreases, the number of mistakes made by the adults sharply rises.
The big remaining question for the scientists is whether these behavioral differences are detectable in an fMRI machine. Although the scanning has just begun—Jonides and his team are still working out the kinks—the scientists sound confident. "These tasks have been studied so many times that we pretty much know where to look and what we're going to find," Jonides says. He rattles off a short list of relevant brain regions, which his lab has already identified as being responsible for working-memory exercises. For the most part, the regions are in the frontal cortex—the overhang of brain behind the eyes—and include the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the anterior prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the right and left inferior frontal gyri. While these cortical folds have long been associated with self-control, they're also essential for working memory and directed attention. According to the scientists, that's not an accident. "These are powerful instincts telling us to reach for the marshmallow or press the space bar," Jonides says. "The only way to defeat them is to avoid them, and that means paying attention to something else. We call that will power, but it's got nothing to do with the will."
The behavioral and genetic aspects of the project are overseen by Yuichi Shoda, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, who was one of Mischel's graduate students. He's been following these "marshmallow subjects" for more than thirty years: he knows everything about them from their academic records and their social graces to their ability to deal with frustration and stress. The prognosis for the genetic research remains uncertain. Although many studies have searched for the underpinnings of personality since the completion of the Human Genome Project, in 2003, many of the relevant genes remain in question. "We're incredibly complicated creatures," Shoda says. "Even the simplest aspects of personality are driven by dozens and dozens of different genes." The scientists have decided to focus on genes in the dopamine pathways, since those neurotransmitters are believed to regulate both motivation and attention. However, even if minor coding differences influence delay ability—and that's a likely possibility—Shoda doesn't expect to discover these differences: the sample size is simply too small.
In recent years, researchers have begun making house visits to many of the original subjects, including Carolyn Weisz, as they try to better understand the familial contexts that shape self-control. "They turned my kitchen into a lab," Carolyn told me. "They set up a little tent where they tested my oldest daughter on the delay task with some cookies. I remember thinking, I really hope she can wait."
While Mischel closely follows the steady accumulation of data from the laptops and the brain scans, he's most excited by what comes next. "I'm not interested in looking at the brain just so we can use a fancy machine," he says. "The real question is what can we do with this fMRI data that we couldn't do before?" Mischel is applying for an N.I.H. grant to investigate various mental illnesses, like obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention-deficit disorder, in terms of the ability to control and direct attention. Mischel and his team hope to identify crucial neural circuits that cut across a wide variety of ailments. If there is such a circuit, then the same cognitive tricks that increase delay time in a four-year-old might help adults deal with their symptoms. Mischel is particularly excited by the example of the substantial subset of people who failed the marshmallow task as four-year-olds but ended up becoming high-delaying adults. "This is the group I'm most interested in," he says. "They have substantially improved their lives."
Mischel is also preparing a large-scale study involving hundreds of schoolchildren in Philadelphia, Seattle, and New York City to see if self-control skills can be taught. Although he previously showed that children did much better on the marshmallow task after being taught a few simple "mental transformations," such as pretending the marshmallow was a cloud, it remains unclear if these new skills persist over the long term. In other words, do the tricks work only during the experiment or do the children learn to apply them at home, when deciding between homework and television?
Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, is leading the program. She first grew interested in the subject after working as a high-school math teacher. "For the most part, it was an incredibly frustrating experience," she says. "I gradually became convinced that trying to teach a teen-ager algebra when they don't have self-control is a pretty futile exercise." And so, at the age of thirty-two, Duckworth decided to become a psychologist. One of her main research projects looked at the relationship between self-control and grade-point average. She found that the ability to delay gratification—eighth graders were given a choice between a dollar right away or two dollars the following week—was a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q. She said that her study shows that "intelligence is really important, but it's still not as important as self-control."
Last year, Duckworth and Mischel were approached by David Levin, the co-founder of KIPP, an organization of sixty-six public charter schools across the country. KIPP schools are known for their long workday—students are in class from 7:25 A.M. to 5 P.M.—and for dramatic improvement of inner-city students' test scores. (More than eighty per cent of eighth graders at the KIPP academy in the South Bronx scored at or above grade level in reading and math, which was nearly twice the New York City average.) "The core feature of the KIPP approach is that character matters for success," Levin says. "Educators like to talk about character skills when kids are in kindergarten—we send young kids home with a report card about 'working well with others' or 'not talking out of turn.' But then, just when these skills start to matter, we stop trying to improve them. We just throw up our hands and complain."
Self-control is one of the fundamental "character strengths" emphasized by KIPP—the KIPP academy in Philadelphia, for instance, gives its students a shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Don't Eat the Marshmallow." Levin, however, remained unsure about how well the program was working—"We know how to teach math skills, but it's harder to measure character strengths," he says—so he contacted Duckworth and Mischel, promising them unfettered access to KIPP students. Levin also helped bring together additional schools willing to take part in the experiment, including Riverdale Country School, a private school in the Bronx; the Evergreen School for gifted children, in Shoreline, Washington; and the Mastery Charter Schools, in Philadelphia.
For the past few months, the researchers have been conducting pilot studies in the classroom as they try to figure out the most effective way to introduce complex psychological concepts to young children. Because the study will focus on students between the ages of four and eight, the classroom lessons will rely heavily on peer modelling, such as showing kindergartners a video of a child successfully distracting herself during the marshmallow task. The scientists have some encouraging preliminary results—after just a few sessions, students show significant improvements in the ability to deal with hot emotional states—but they are cautious about predicting the outcome of the long-term study. "When you do these large-scale educational studies, there are ninety-nine uninteresting reasons the study could fail," Duckworth says. "Maybe a teacher doesn't show the video, or maybe there's a field trip on the day of the testing. This is what keeps me up at night."
Mischel's main worry is that, even if his lesson plan proves to be effective, it might still be overwhelmed by variables the scientists can't control, such as the home environment. He knows that it's not enough just to teach kids mental tricks—the real challenge is turning those tricks into habits, and that requires years of diligent practice. "This is where your parents are important," Mischel says. "Have they established rituals that force you to delay on a daily basis? Do they encourage you to wait? And do they make waiting worthwhile?" According to Mischel, even the most mundane routines of childhood—such as not snacking before dinner, or saving up your allowance, or holding out until Christmas morning—are really sly exercises in cognitive training: we're teaching ourselves how to think so that we can outsmart our desires. But Mischel isn't satisfied with such an informal approach. "We should give marshmallows to every kindergartner," he says. "We should say, 'You see this marshmallow? You don't have to eat it. You can wait. Here's how.' " ♦
