DEFENSE: SHUTTING DOWN THE OPPONENT
PLAY #1 DISCIPLINE-Doing the Right Thing
When it comes time to play defense, you need to learn a few basics. The first one to master is self-control, because everything else builds on it.
A good place to start developing self control is learning delayed gratification.
There was a great article in The New Yorker, about the positive, long term impact of delayed gratification, called “Don’t! The secret of self-control” The article is about a Stanford University research project that was started in the 1960’s. 653 children were put in a room with marshmallow and were told they could eat the marshmallow immediately or wait 15 minutes and get a second marshmallow as a reward.
The kids were observed and then placed into one of two categories. The one who ate the marshmallow immediately were labeled “low delayers” and kids who waited the full 15 minutes were labeled “high delayers”
What’s interesting is the research team has tracked these 653 kids over last 40 years and made some surprising discoveries. The high delayers:
- Had higher SAT scores
- Experienced lower rates of drug abuse
- Had better body-mass indices
- Experienced great career success,
- Were better at managing stress
- Have developed greater abilities to maintain friendships
than the low delayers. A quote from the article “A 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.”
The psychologists doing the study assumed the children’s ability to wait had to do with how badly they wanted the marshmallow, but that turned out to not be the case. Instead, the researchers discovered the high delayers had the skill of “strategic allocation of attention”. The high-delayers didn’t focus on the marshmallow; instead these kids distracted themselves. In other words, they wanted the marshmallow just as much as the low delayers, they just forgot about it.
The doctor in charge wrote, “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it. The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.” Later on he said, “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.”
Self-control seems like a restriction but it’s actually a protection. If you don’t have self-control you have no defenses and with no defenses, anything is possible.
- Self-control is how you keep your marriage vows.
- Self-control is how you stay ethical in your business dealings.
- Self-control keeps you out of the ditches.
SCRIMMAGE
Two tips to practice and develop self-control
- Pay Cash. This will help you develop delayed gratification in finances.
- Dance Your Eyes- Don’t allow your eyes to linger on a woman that’s not your wife. Move on to other input.
HUDDLE DISCUSSION STARTER
I struggle the most with self-control when I ______________________________
The most extreme thing I’ve ever done in the name of self-control is __________________________
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