Setting Goals - Not Just For Adults

Are you teaching your children how to set and achieve goals? This is an important skill for people of all ages. Do your children a favor; teach them to use it!

I have asked many people whether they were taught how to set and achieve goals in school. I have yet to have anyone answer "yes." That's a shame, isn't it? I think kids are told that they should set goals or that it's good to have goals, but that really doesn't do the trick.

To the best of my knowledge, human beings are the only beings on earth that have been given the ability to visualize what they want their future to look like and take planned actions to achieve that future.

Think about it for a bit. Birds and animals have instincts that drive them to build their nests in which they raise their young. But, every robin that builds a nest in a tree builds a nest that looks like every other robin's nest. Now think about the houses on the street that you live on. I'll bet they all look different!

Why is that? It's because we all have our own vision of what we want our house to look like. Once we have that vision, we take actions to make our house look the way it looks in our mind. Birds don't do that…they just build their nest the way their instinct tells them to.

So, what does this have to do with teaching children how to set and achieve goals? The point I want to make is that we have a natural goal achievement ability in us. But, we need to learn to use that ability so that we get the most benefit from it.

A baby wakes up hungry. It has an instinct when it is born about how to get fed…it cries! Little children are great at dreaming. They dream about doing all sorts of things. You can help your children accomplish their dreams. Teach them to plan their actions so that their actions take them toward their dreams. Help them talk about their dream as you're helping them with their actions. The excitement of their dreams will take the drudgery out of the actions. Then, when they have achieved the dream they had visualized, they will have a great satisfaction in the accomplishment.

Teach them to put those steps together, and they will have that skill for the rest of their lives!