The focus of Mischel’s original, ingenious study was to comprehend when the control of delayed gratification developed in preschool children (given one marshmallow immediately, or two later). He found that voluntary waiting was significantly increased when the children could not attend to rewards during the waiting period. Moreover, such self-control correlated with later success in adolescence and adulthood. Mischel theorized that self-control was a learned cognitive skill, synonymous with “will power,” and it is the “master aptitude” composing emotional intelligence, necessary for fashioning a satisfying life. Another social-psychological theory, ego-depletion, suggests that self-control uses a limited repository of psychological resources that are available. When the energy for psychological activity is low, self-control is usually reduced, ego depleted. Psychoanalysis has understood self-control in terms of superego functioning, ego weaknesses and the dangers of having too much self-control. While there are metacognitive strategies and behavioral interventions that are available to enhance self-control in children and adults in discrete contexts, it is the cultivation and enactment in behavior of strongly felt, flexibly and creatively applied, transcendent-pointing moral beliefs and values that most facilitate reasonable adult self-control in important matters and exceptional accomplishments.