If you resonate with this website,

it’s a good bet that you’ve read or heard about the marshmallow experiment and what it says about the relationship between the ability to delay gratification (read: willpower) and success. For those who aren’t familiar with the test or would like a refresher. here’s a pick-me-up that includes some fresh updates from replications of the experiment.

While the study may be common knowledge to many, the late and great Walter Mischel, who conducted the study, did not stop there. With Albert Bandura, he also conducted experiments to determine if willpower is something static or something that could improve with effort. According to their findings, willpower turns out to be largely a function of skill rather than pure motivation and can, therefore, be trained.  

If you’d imagine that a study like that wouldn’t stay under wraps for long, you’d be right: This insight is one of the key themes behind a series of books written by an award-winning team of authors, Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzer, whose works I consulted when preparing for the post on emotional intelligence (the books in question are Crucial Conversations, Influencer and Change Anything).

They’re co-founders of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance. I had originally stumbled on them via their VitalSmarts YouTube channel and was impressed by their presentations concerning how the findings of behavioral science could strengthen organizational performance.   

In their books and presentations,

they make an impassioned case for acquiring the ability to change one’s (and others’) behavior for the better and sustain that change. They argue rather persuasively that the ability to change our behavior is one of the most significant things we can do to improve our lives and the lives of the people around us. Consider the fact that    

Marriage counseling works for fewer than one in five couples who use it.

A whopping 85 percent of us have had bosses who have tried—but failed—to get us to change in order to improve our performance.

Ninety-eight percent of us fail at keeping resolutions to change our bad habits.

Seventy percent of Americans who take out a home equity loan or another type of loan to pay off credit cards end up with the same (if not a higher) debt load within two years.

Only one in twenty dieters with a history of obesity is able to lose weight and keep it off for one or more years.

Citing data like this, they argue that the most persistent problems that plague humanity cannot be solved with more technology, theory, philosophy, or data. We’re already swimming in an abundance of them, and they’re growing exponentially. All the world’s knowledge, the knowledge that can significantly raise the quality of individual and sentient life, are available to anyone who’d avail themselves to them. That the same problems continue to plague us indicate that such knowledge is (necessary but) insufficient. As Harvard myrmecologist Edward O. Wilson opines, ‘we are drowning in information while starving for wisdom.’ What we really need is an effective way to change our behavior (and mindset). When it comes to this skill, demand far exceeds supply.

Taking their cue from the research concerning the ability to delay gratification, they argue that ‘the primary problem isn’t that we’re weak; it’s that we’re blind—and when it comes to long-standing habits, what you can’t see is usually what’s controlling you.’    

Willpower is only one factor among many forces that we must contend with. We may be hit with a strong and regular sense of lethargy whenever we attempt to engage in physical exercise. We may have friends, family members, and colleagues who (deliberately or not) routinely dissuade us from sticking to our diets. We may not have truly internalized (or understood) the incentives for doing the thing that we’ve set our minds to. We may inhabit an environment that is unconducive to whatever changes we wish to make.

Accordingly, they argue that there are at least six sources of influence, which, when invoked at the right moments, will allow their users to be ten times more likely to succeed at changing their behavior.

1. Personal Motivation: Set easy-to-remember goals and connect with them at crucial moments. When tempted to eat something sweet, remember your commitment to cut down on sugar. Visit your most likely future, visit someone or someplace that is the result of our current actions. Build motivation from the visit. Use value words to strengthen motivation. By itself, this source of influence is quite effective. However, most of us stop here.

2. Personal Ability: don’t only set goals in the abstract, learn new skills and procedures that will help you keep them. Write a personal motivation statement that you can use to sustain motivation during tough times. Set challenging goals with the appropriate measures (see their book for examples on how to do this). Make progress a game. There is a reason why video games are the bane of parents the world over. Harness the competitive drive by including others in the game. If you’re a student preparing for exams, don’t only set grade targets, set times and places for all your study segments. Adopt all the study tips from the science of learning; cultivate effective learning skills.

3. Social Motivation: Bad habits are often a social disease. If you’re surrounded by people who spend like there’s no tomorrow, chances are you’re doing the same. If your friends are mostly frugal, well, you get the picture. Peer pressure is powerful. Leverage that by removing those who encourage your undesired behaviors and growing closer to those who bring out your best. In the process, you’ll have to redefine what you accept as ‘normal.’ You may have to hold crucial conversations with friends who are affecting you in a negative way.

4. Social Ability: Don’t only surround yourself with the right people, enlist their support and help, i.e., by creating informal accountability groups. Make promises that your friends will help you keep. Get a professional coach to monitor progress and provide information and support at crucial moments.  

5. Structural Motivation: Say you wish to keep to a stricter diet. Remove high-calorie foods from easy reach in your home so that even if you can’t stop yourself from opening the larder, there’s nothing there for you to snack on. The additional effort needed to order online, walk or drive out to get food supplies will give you enough time for your other sources of influence to kick in and stop you. Bribe yourself with commensurate rewards in spheres unrelated to your goal. Reward small wins.

6. Structural Ability: Think if yourself like a lab rat. Experiment to see what environments enable you to succeed. Make a conducive environment to keep with your goals. Install large mirrors in the dining room and use only small plates to discourage overeating. If you need to study without distractions from the internet, go to a Wi-Fi-less café and spend good money on food and drink. The cost will incentivize you to stay and not get distracted by the web.

The authors offer plenty of illustrations to show how these six sources of influence apply to a wide range of subjects. Leverage all these six sources of influence to succeed. Do not be discouraged by failure. To err is human. Accept that you have failed in your goals and will continue to fail (albeit less frequently). Don’t beat yourself up about it. Turn bad days into good data and try again. Identify the crucial moments when you typically fail, create a vital behavior to combat it, and then re-engage in all six sources of influence, tweaking them iteratively.