When to Eat the Marshmallow: Finding the Golden Mean of Self-Discipline

Is your self-discipline too extreme? There can be too much of a good thing. In this episode, I talk about how to find the Golden Mean of self-discipline, the sweet spot between self-denial and impulsiveness. Finding this mean lets you grow while still enjoying life.

Welcome to Live Well and Flourish, where I help you understand what it means to live a flourishing life. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke. If you're ready to think beyond material and external success, if you're ready to take control of who you are and the kind of life you live, if you're ready to flourish, this is the podcast for you.

Self-discipline is critical to flourishing. In order to live an excellent life, you need to have the discipline to live according to the values and virtues that are important to you. Living an excellent life is, in many ways, an exercise in restraint … in discipline. To live well, you need to have the discipline to act according to virtue. Self-discipline is also an important aspect of delayed gratification and of applying practical wisdom. Sometimes … maybe even often … acting with wisdom requires doing hard things, which requires self-discipline.

Craig 01:25  

A famous study provides some empirical evidence of the effects of self-discipline. Walter Mischel, a Stanford professor, ran an experiment in the early 1970s. It was kind of genius. Basically, he offered young children a choice between one small but immediate reward - a marshmallow - or two small rewards if they waited for the reward, in other words, if they delayed gratification. He put each child in a room with a marshmallow and then left the room for 15 minutes. Before leaving, he told the child that if they didn’t eat the marshmallow before Mischel came back, he would reward them with a second marshmallow.

The same sort of study had been done before, but Dr. Mischel took it a step further. He followed the participants’ as they went through their lives and found that there were correlations between the length of time the child waited and better life outcomes, including educational attainment, better health, and more positive relationships. Mischel concluded that self-discipline is key to life success. Later studies showed that the reality isn’t quite this simple, but I think most people would agree that self-discipline is important for living a good life.

Craig 02:36 

Tracy, my wife, sometimes refers to me as the king of self-discipline. It’s a joking exaggeration, but with a kernel of truth. Usually when I decide I’m going to do or not do something, I’m usually pretty good about sticking to that decision. I’m also pretty good at practicing delayed gratification. But, and this is an important but, I often take self-discipline too far. I unnecessarily deny myself and sometimes others, the enjoyment of momentary pleasure. Recently, I was thinking about this and decided that I need to find a middle ground, the Golden mean. Too little self-discipline is a bad thing, but so is too much. To live a flourishing life, you need to find the sweet spot between self-denial and impulsiveness.

Craig 03:27 

I doubt that I’m alone in going overboard with self-discipline. If you’re listening, you probably lean more towards self-denial than impulsiveness, but that’s just a guess. This isn’t a bad thing. As I said, living a good life requires self-discipline … a lot of it. But an excellent life is also a balanced life; it’s not all about self-discipline and denial.

Aristotle claimed that to live a flourishing life, for each virtue you needed to find the mean between a vice of deficiency and a vice of excess … the middle ground between too little and too much. This is true of every virtue, including self-discipline. Before getting into how to find this mean, I need to make a couple of important points. First, the mean is different for everyone. Your appropriate mean is different from mine. So, nobody can give you a hard-and-fast set of rules about what’s too little or too much. You have to find it for yourself. Second, the appropriate mean may vary from one time to another. If you’re trying to lose weight, maybe a little more self-denial is in order than when you’re on vacation.

Craig 04:41 

I think this is a critical point. There’s a range, a lower and upper bound for each Golden mean, but the circumstances determine where the mean is between those boundaries. You need to use reason and wisdom to decide on the appropriate mean for any given situation. Letting the mean move a little is an exercise in judgment. One that you won’t always get right, but that will improve with practice and reflection.

Let’s get back to my main point, you can take self-discipline too far. I’ll give you a silly little example. Tracy makes fantastic chocolate chip cookies. I don’t mean good, I mean amazing. Occasionally, I’ll ask Tracy to make some for my colleagues or as a little thank you gift to somebody. Before she bakes the batch, she always puts aside a little container of the raw dough for me. I’m an absolute freak for chocolate chip cookie dough. Yeah, I know, eating raw dough can cause problems, but I’m willing to take that risk.

Craig 05:48 

Here’s the thing. It’s not just OK for me to eat the cookie dough, it’s the right thing to do. Normally, I’m really good about not giving into tasty temptations, and I could avoid the cookie dough if I wanted to. But that would be a mistake. It would deny me a small harmless pleasure. Life is hard enough. Why make it worse by always skipping small pleasures? Do you know what would be even worse if I skipped the cookie dough? It would rob Tracy of pleasure. She really likes to see me dig into that dough. Denying her that pleasure would be downright terrible and selfish of me. It really would. I'd be putting my own twisted need for extreme self-discipline ahead of Tracy’s pleasure. If I eat the dough, we both experience a little pleasure. If I skip the dough, we both miss out and feel maybe a little pain. Of course, eating too much dough has its downsides as well. Don’t ask me how I know.

Craig 06:53 

The key here is in the discernment. When faced with a temptation you need to use your practical wisdom to know when to indulge and when to deny. You need to apply reason to weigh the costs and benefits of various choices so that you can pick the one that best fits with flourishing. That means finding the choice that is the best fit with your values and virtues. When I go out to lunch with friends, I’m usually very disciplined in my meal choices. When Tracy and I go out for drinks, I have a very strict limit. In these cases the benefits of being overly impulsive just aren’t worth the costs. My friends don’t care what I eat so there’s not much benefit to the caloric and digestive costs of that triple cheese burger. The costs of having too many drinks can range from a mild hangover to life-ending tragedy, this vastly outweighs any momentary pleasure.

Craig 07:47 

At a higher level, the issue of too much self-discipline illustrates a broader principle - the need to think holistically about your life. You need to strike a balance so that you can live in the moment while also keeping long term consequences in mind. The need to think holistically applies to virtually every aspect of your life, your physical, mental and financial health, your relationships, your professional pursuits … you always need to seek this balance.

How can you do that? Well, I have some ideas, which I’ll get to in a couple of minutes. First, though I want to talk about what might seem to be a bit of an inconsistency between what I’m saying here, and what I said in an earlier episode. In that earlier episode, I said that every violation of a virtue makes it easier to violate that virtue in the future. If you missed it, you can check it out at livewellandflourish.com/71 . If you listened to that episode, you might be wondering how to reconcile the ideas in that episode and the current discussion. The two might seem contradictory, but they’re not.

Craig 08:54 

In the earlier episode, I was talking specifically about acting in ways that are contrary to the virtues you strive to uphold. Today, I’m talking about how to best embody the virtue of self-discipline. Over-exercising self-discipline to the point of denying yourself all pleasure isn’t virtuous, it’s a vice of excess. The true virtue is the appropriate exercise of self-discipline. True virtue is a mean, not an extreme.

OK, let’s move on to three things you can put into practice this week to find the Golden mean of self-discipline.

Act intentionally. That’s the overarching theme of the three practices for this week. Instead of indulging accidentally, strive to indulge intentionally. When you eat the marshmallow intentionally and rationally, you're more likely to find the Golden mean and less likely to slip into habitual indulgence. Here are three practices that can help you use your self-awareness and reasoning ability to indulge appropriately.

Craig 10:00  

Practice the pause: When you have a strong impulse, instead of acting on it immediately, pause … and consider the action and its consequences. Is the indulgence worth the cost? Sometimes it will be and sometimes it won’t. Practicing the pause can help you make more conscious decisions about when to delay gratification and when to indulge.

Shape your environment: Balancing self-discipline and immediate gratification can get pretty tough if you’re constantly surrounded by temptations. Basically, the constant pressure of temptations stacks the deck against self-discipline and that makes it much easier to unconsciously yield to the temptation of immediate gratification. When indulging requires effort, you have more opportunity to practice the pause and act intentionally. If you want some help on shaping your environment, check out episode 47, Positive and Negative Cues.

Craig 11:00 

Plan your indulgences: Planning your indulgences can be a very useful technique for finding the right level of self-discipline. Tracy and I will be celebrating our wedding anniversary soon and we’ll probably go to our favorite restaurant, Warehouse #1. I already know I’m going to enjoy an excellent single malt scotch (most likely McCallan 12), I'll also enjoy their delicious fried green tomatoes, and we’ll split a slice of their amazing strawberry cheesecake. It may sound kind of odd, but thinking about this in advance helps me see the indulgences as an exercise in enjoying my life with Tracy rather than a violation of self-discipline. I’m not giving into temptation, I’m practicing purposeful enjoyment.

One reminder: Remember, flourishing is a journey, so don’t be afraid to make adjustments along the way. The Golden Mean isn’t set in stone.

Craig 11:58 

Before wrapping up, I want to remind you that a life well-lived isn’t kept to yourself, it’s shared. If you found today’s discussion useful, why not share the wisdom? Go ahead and send this episode to a friend or family member who might benefit from it. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send them to livewellandflourish.com/76 . Thanks!

Our closing quote comes from Thomas Merton, “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.” Find your balance. When the time is right, eat the marshmallow … or the cookie dough.

Until next time, be well my friends.

I produce Live Well and Flourish because of my dedication to helping others live excellent lives. I don't accept sponsorships and I don't want your money. The only thing I want is to help you and others flourish. If you've received some value from this episode, please share it with someone that might also benefit from listening. The best way to do that is to direct them to livewellandflourish.com

 Until next time.