You are four years old and are seated by yourself at the kitchen table. Your mom places one piece of your favorite candy in front of you. She explains that you can eat it right now, but if you wait while she leaves the room to do a quick chore, you can have two pieces of candy when she returns. She leaves the room. What do you do? Do you grab the gooey goody the minute she’s out the door? Or do you patiently sit there resisting temptation hoping to double your treat upon her return? Do you know that your our reaction to this situation may very well determine the degree of your success in life? A similar study with children was actually conducted by a psychologist using marshmallows. The study showed that children who had the ability to restrain themselves and reap the reward of a second treat generally grew up to be better adjusted, more popular, adventurous, confident and dependable teenagers. The children who gave in to temptation early on were more likely to be lonely, easily frustrated, stubborn, and less likely to properly handle stress. While most people tend to think a high IQ, or intelligence quotient, determines the course of one’s life, new brain research suggests that one’s emotional quotient, or EQ, may be the true measure of human intelligence. Unlike IQ, which is gauged by the famous Stanford-Binet tests, EQ is not measurable in the same way. A person’s IQ reveals the cold, factual side of the brain, whereas the EQ refers to one’s “people skills.” Emotional intelligence is a complex quality consisting of such things as self-awareness, empathy, persistence and social skills. Some aspects of emotional intelligence, however, can be determined. Optimism, for example, is a good indicator of a person’s self-worth. According to Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, how people respond to setbacks--optimistically or pessimistically--is a fairly ...
