If you ask many people what separates the successful from the unsuccessful, you’ll get a variety of different answers. Some will say ‘luck’, some will say ‘who you know’, some will say ‘intelligence’, and the list goes on and on. The actual answer is surprising.
Researchers, have found it all boils down to one trait[1]:
Potential for delayed gratification.
It sounds like a reasonable answer. Not only is this one trait is enough to fairly accurately predict success or failure in a task, but it seems high and lofty.
But delayed self-gratification, on the surface, sounds like a “you’ve got it or you don’t” situations. So the obvious follow-up question is what can develop a sense for delayed gratification?
Saying a person needs to develop a sense of delayed gratification is easier said than done. A sense for delayed gratification is a combination of a sense of patience and the ability to plan ahead. These are such difficult to train aspects that many people view them as more part of personality than a trainable skill.
However, there is a solution. Another research paper has found another interesting trait. It’s that a person’s capacity for delayed gratification is dependent on self-control, which in turn, is dependent on whether or not they externalize their problems. [2]
In other words: Guilt.
To put this simply, if you feel responsible or guilty about it, you’ll instinctively plan better for the future and be patient to prevent future guilt, bringing in that much-needed sense of delayed gratification.
Your ability to succeed is dependent on whether you’re willing to struggle now for benefit later, that depends on your level of self-control, and that is determined by if you internalize and take responsibility for things that happen around you.
However, this guilt, for those in a position of leadership especially, shouldn’t be confused with people making others feel guilty. There is a huge difference between motivation from external sources and internal sources. [3] Causing someone to feel guilty can harm, increase resistance and resentment, as well as reducing satisfaction. The papers that back this up are numerous and not worth mentioning here. Ironically, you can’t guilt someone into feeling guilty, just into feeling bad for being targeted for guilt.
In short: While making other people feel guilty isn’t good, self-guilt is a great tool for pushing yourself to be better, to think of solutions, and to encourage planning ahead.
It’s often pointed out that people will go through great lengths to avoid a feeling of guilt. This in turn means it’s a great motivator. By harnessing your own guilt, you can work harder to avoid future problems. Now common sense says a crippling sense of guilt won’t help you act, and if that guilt is externally-produced, that’s true, as it leads to a feeling of helplessness which is the exact opposite of what’s intended. But internally-arising guilt gives a sense of responsibility, and imparts a sense of control over the environment a person is in. And the more you take responsibility for, the more you will watch for ways to mitigate those problems ahead of time.
So, when it comes down to it, don’t just take responsibility for your actions, take responsibility for everything. That big plague on the news where people died? If you had gone into medicine and joined Doctors without Borders, you could have done something about it. That weather disaster? Maybe it wouldn’t have happened if you had studied climatology and engineering to find a way to clean up power. That dictator that rose to power in that third world country? Maybe if you paid more attention to politics, you could have helped fund his opposition and protected the freedom of millions of people.
However, the strength of self-guilt lies in its ability to fuel planning and delayed gratification. This means that to make full use of it, a long attention span is vital, and common sense dictates that feeling guilty for everything may burn you out. So, it’s important to keep on a low boil. Be realistic about what you can and can’t do. Sure, you may have been able to prevent one random disaster on the news, but be aware that you probably would have had to devote your life to it, meaning you couldn’t have affected the others.
So to succeed, the solution is fairly simple: Decide your goals, and then take full responsibility (and guilt) for them in order to achieve them, and everything that happens along the way.
Sources:
1: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:EDPR.0000012344.34008.5c
2: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1996.tb00816.x
3: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0021-9010.93.1.48
