BURSTS

BURSTS: The Hidden Pattern behind Everything we do

Human behavior is very interesting and complex subject however it is not surprising that the author of this book says “you are far more predictable than you are willing to admit”.

Why do we behave in this way but not another one? We always have choice but mostly we prefer to act irrationally based on our momentary desires or fears. It doesn’t matter if we may have some more patience, at the end we will gain more; we always try to get as much as we can at the moment.

Here I would like to mention an old “marshmallow test” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMkn4J_l9uU&playnext=1&list=PLD2B1B8A07AF995CC&index=34). I found this test interesting as without knowing the results most of us could predict them: it perfectly shows our human nature, though it was performed on infants: children were offered to eat 1 piece of marshmallow, but also they were told that if they would wait for 20 minutes, they would get more marshmallows. So infants had a choice: to eat one piece immediately or wait and get 2 pieces. Most of infants resisted very little.

“How predictable we are...”

Life is all full of choices: we select the job near our home, BUT with less salary or we select the job with big salary AND the risk to be fired every day. The truth is that every one of us has the life we choose. Why kids do not wait for two candies and eat only one, while it is needed to wait very little? I think here is important to understand: to succeed in our life we shall be more patient while doing our choices, we shall see much further than our human needs. Then we will be able to become positive deviants and reach more.

Tatiana