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What is Goal Setting:
Can you guess? There’s one thing that could both excite and scare us at the same time? If you guessed setting an ambitious and seemingly impossible goal, you’re right!
Goal setting is a deeply personal act where you realize you’re competing with a yesterday’s version of yourself to become better today. We can help our children realize and sustain their goals by bringing self awareness, education and action into their thoughts.
Goal setting for teens can be a great tool of personal commitment to excellence and growth. It can turn them into contributing citizens thereby helping them lead happy, independent and successful lives.
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Clarity of Role, Thought and Purpose:
Goal setting is a skill that’s invaluable in our modern times. Everyone sets goals, but the ones that set sustainable goals and stay on the road to achieving them are winners. And winners have a specific skill that they use to stay on task for both their personal and professional goals. Here are a few ways we can do adopt those strategies.
First, we’ve to understand the value proposition of what we want. What about the outcome of our situation are we chasing? Next, clarity of thought is important, so we can make that one choice that matters – especially when we’re confused and overwhelmed with options. It’s one of the pillars of our FutureSTRONG Academy for this reason.
We all want to live productive and meaningful lives. Yet, we also want our days to be simplistic and free from regrets and worries. Clarity in prioritization and clarity of purpose can help us analyze our situation and the road we’ve to take – most importantly, understand, “Why we are doing what we’re doing.”
Clarity helps us stay focused on the big picture while setting small achievable goals in its direction. Most importantly, clarity is empowering because it validates what we’re setting our mind to accomplish. In Thought, Purpose and Action, how clear are you??
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Program Your Mind:
It’s surprising how easily our BRAINS can fool us and how easily our MINDSET can stop us. Adaptability, the skill of responding well to uncertainty is another important skill that can be learned through practice and experience. Here’s how you can open up your mind to possibilities.
1. Be spontaneous. Shuffle up your routine once in a while and see how it feels.
2. Question your ideas and beliefs. Are they your thoughts or are they the result of conditioning from society and norms? Think of personal alternatives to standard cultural definitions.
3. Get some perspective. See how others are living their lives and shift your focus from yourself to the outside world. In a bigger context, our most painful problems become trivial.
4. Learn something that takes training and practice. Get back to doing something difficult or new, like learning how to play an instrument or teaching yourself how to cook.
5. Let your mind wander. Go for a walk and allow pockets of boredom to get your mind working without constraints.
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Playing To Their Strengths:
For children, the concept of goal setting can be explained in the form of small bite sized tasks or fun games like “Face the cookie”, where a child will have a place a cookie on their forehead and using only facial muscles have to move it to their mouth and eat it – under one minute.
The idea is to teach them that goals can be long term or short term. They can be simple or complex. But with time management, and by taking massive action, any goal can be accomplished. Setting learning objectives to determine how they’ve progressed can help children stay on path to resolve big, complex problems.
If your child wants to be an astronaut, he will learn to use websites, he will learn to build paper rockets, he will learn to search for videos. He will also try to find letters on the keyboard to type. He will do anything to learn to be an astronaut. Does that mean he will become an astronaut? May be. Maybe not.
But, in his strengths lies his purpose. And in his purpose lies the meaning of his life.
His strengths will give him the freedom to be himself. He will start playing to his strengths and not to others’ expectations of what he must become. Personal accountability for children comes with role clarity and strength finding. Ensure that the child has role clarity in what they’re being asked to do:
- As a student
- As a citizen
- And as a teenager
Teens who are guided to have a vision understand how positive and realistic goals (both short and longterm) can contribute to their success. Such teens who develop a mission become committed to doing their best work and become resilient to setbacks.
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From Vision to Mission:
A Vision is a set of personal values. A Goal is a broad aim at which your efforts are directed. An Objective is a specific and measurable milestone that must be achieved in order to reach the goal.
Having a vision and a road map for where you want to go helps turn your ideas into actionable goals. Having a life coach to guide you through the chaos of life can help you live intentionally each day instead of just sleepwalking through life.
A life coach can help bring clarity to your purpose and show you how to live to your fullest potential. A positive mentor can encourage, challenge, push and support you as you explore your passions and interests and strive to be #BetterThanYesterday.
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Be resolute towards distractions and giving towards your purpose.
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Adapting a Positive Mindset:
How does goal setting and a positive disposition go hand in hand? The ability to see the bright side of situations and people is great gift that can be taught. The ability to appreciate one’s own unique abilities and the abundance around them frees up time and energies to focus on important goals.
A “Can do” attitude is inherently resilient to failures. A positive attitude gives us the power of grit and persistence to transform our dreams in action. What’s more, if we seek momentum to act on our dreams, contemplating on the finiteness of our existence can propel us into unstoppable action!
Commitment to personal excellence is rooted in decision making and realistic goal setting. The resolve to live a life of purpose, growth and learning is commitment. The ability to tame one’s distractions, make constructive choices for the common good and responsible social behavior are stepping stones to success.
Because when we all aspire to do epic things, we collectively inspire our future generations. I’m asking you frankly, are you chasing your dream – obsessively, fiercely & mercilessly?
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Today. Face Your Fears. Take Massive Action.
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About The Article Author:
Our mission with FutureSTRONG Academy – to grow children who respect themselves, their time and their capabilities in a world where distractions are just a click or a swipe away.
I see myself as an advocate for bringing social, emotional and character development to families, schools and communities. I never want to let this idea out of my sight – Our children are not just GPAs. I’m a Writer and a Certified Master Coach in NLP and CBT. Until 2017, I was also a Big Data Scientist. In December of 2044, I hope to win the Nobel. Namasté.
Write to me or call me. Tell me what support from me looks like.
Rachana Nadella-Somayajula,
Program Director & Essential Life Skills Coach for Kids and Busy Parents