If you have studied psychology at any point in the last fifty years you are probably familiar the marshmallow test.

The scene: A child sits alone at a table. In front of them is a single marshmallow. A researcher explains the deal: you can eat the marshmallow right now, or you can wait until I come back. And if you wait, you get two. Then the researcher leaves the room and the marshmallow test begins.

What happened next became one of the most referenced studies in developmental psychology. Some children ate the marshmallow immediately. Some waited, squirming, covering their eyes, singing to themselves, doing everything in their power to hold out. The ones who waited got the second marshmallow. And when researchers followed up with those children years later, the ones who had waited showed measurably better outcomes across multiple areas of life like academic achievement, health, relationships, financial stability.

I first encountered this study in a college psychology class in the 1980s. It holds space in my thoughts ever since. Not because the research is perfect. It has been critiqued and nuanced considerably over the decades, but because the core insight has proven itself true in my own life and in the lives of nearly every person I have worked with. 

The second marshmallow is real. Delayed gratification has its benefits.
Yet, we are increasingly a society that is eating the first marshmallow.

What COVID Did To The Marshmallow Test

Something shifted after 2020. Understandably, painfully, and in ways we are still sorting through.

When the world stopped and when tomorrow became genuinely uncertain, when people lost jobs and loved ones and the basic assumption that next year would come,  the cultural calculus around delayed gratification changed. Life is short stopped being a bumper sticker and started feeling like a diagnosis. Live for now went from philosophy to survival strategy.

And the consumer culture that surrounds us was more than happy to oblige. Every algorithm, every advertisement, every one-click purchase option is engineered to reduce the distance between wanting and having. Friction, the thing that used to make us pause and consider, has been systematically removed from almost every area of modern life.

The result is a cultural muscle that has not been exercised in a while. And like any muscle left unused, it has gotten weaker.

I am not here to shame anyone for eating the first marshmallow. There are moments in life when the right answer absolutely is to take what is in front of you. When waiting serves no purpose, when the cost of delay outweighs the benefit, when discernment says this is the moment, not later. Knowing when to act now is as important as knowing when to wait.

But discernment requires a muscle that has to be built before you need it. And that is where most people are underprepared.

Hard Does Not Mean Don’t

One of the most persistent myths I encounter, in clients, in students, in culture generally, is that difficulty is a signal to stop.

If it is hard, something must be wrong. If it requires sacrifice, it must not be worth it. If waiting is uncomfortable, that discomfort must mean the waiting is a mistake.

It doesn’t. Hard is not a stop sign. Hard is frequently the entrance to something worth having.

Liken it to physical therapy.
Someone recovering from an injury does not get stronger by avoiding movement. They get stronger by doing the very thing that is difficult. Doing it carefully, progressively, with intention. They start with lighter resistance and work toward heavier loads. The discomfort is not evidence that the process is failing. It is evidence that the process is working.

Delayed gratification is the same kind of muscle. It is built through practice and through small, consistent choices to wait when waiting is hard, to hold out when holding out costs something, to keep the second marshmallow in view when the first one is sitting right there.

And like physical therapy, it is most effective when you start before you desperately need it. The time to build the muscle is not in the middle of the crisis. It is in the ordinary moments that precede it.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

In relationships, the first marshmallow looks like saying the thing that will win the argument rather than the thing that will move the relationship forward. It looks like walking away when things get hard instead of doing the work that leads somewhere better. It looks like repeatedly choosing the easy conversation over the necessary one, until the relationship has been quietly starved of the honesty it needed to grow.

The second marshmallow is the hard conversation you have now so you do not have a harder situation later. It is the repair you make when you would rather be right. It is the investment in your relationship during the ordinary seasons so the account has something in it when the hard ones arrive.

In parenting, the first marshmallow is the path of least resistance. The yes, when no would serve better and the rescue when struggle would teach more. The second marshmallow is raising a child who can tolerate frustration, delay, and difficulty because you allowed them to experience those things in safe, age-appropriate doses when the stakes were low.

In personal growth, the first marshmallow is the dramatic swing. It is the extreme diet, the total overhaul, the all-or-nothing approach that feels decisive but rarely lasts. The second marshmallow is the gradual, sustainable, unglamorous work of becoming someone different over time. It does not make a good before-and-after photo. It makes a life.

In finances, the first marshmallow is obvious. The second one requires almost no explanation …  and yet.

The Discernment Question

Here is where I want to push back gently against the idea that delayed gratification is always the answer. It is not. A life of perpetual waiting, of always sacrificing the present for a future that may not arrive as planned is not wisdom. It is its own kind of avoidance.

The real skill is discernment. Knowing which marshmallow situation you are actually in.

Some questions worth asking yourself:

• Am I avoiding this because it is genuinely not the right time or because I am afraid?
• Am I acting now because this is genuinely the moment, or because I am unwilling to wait?
• Is the discomfort I feel a signal that something is wrong or a signal that something important is happening?

The child in the marshmallow test study who waits is not suppressing their desire for the marshmallow. They feel it fully.

And if you have ever watched the footage, you know exactly what that looks like. They turn away from it. They look up at the ceiling. They sing to themselves, cover their eyes, get up from the table entirely, putting physical distance between themselves and the thing they want. Some touch it. Some lick it. The desire is completely present. They are not pretending it isn’t there.

What they are doing is managing the space between the wanting and the acting. They are buying themselves enough room to hold the longer view alongside the immediate one. That is not deprivation. That is capacity. And it is a skill, not a personality trait.

Building The Muscle Now

You do not wait until you need strength to start building it. You build it in the ordinary moments. It’s the small choices, the low-stakes delays, the daily practice of holding out for the better thing.

Start light. Choose one area of your life where you consistently reach for the first marshmallow and practice waiting. Not forever. Not as punishment. Just long enough to feel the discomfort, stay with it, and discover that it does not actually destroy you.

Then notice what shows up on the other side.

The second marshmallow is not always sweeter.

But the capacity to wait for it, to hold the longer view, to tolerate discomfort without treating it as an emergency, to choose the harder path because you can see where it leads. That capacity changes everything. In your relationships, in your work, in the life you are building one choice at a time.

It is better to have a tough conversation than a tough situation. And sometimes the toughest conversation is the one you have with yourself about which marshmallow you are actually reaching for, and why.

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