Using New Years to Teach Your Child Goal Setting

Christmas time is full of shopping, parties, gift giving, and festivities. But once the hustle and bustle settle down we look ahead to the beginning of the New Year with hope and anticipation. Often we consider making a few New Years resolutions but dismiss them because keeping them seems too difficult. Whether you make personal resolutions or not, this is the perfect time to teach your children about setting and attaining goals for themselves!

A Great Teaching Opportunity

Christmas is the one time of the year that we collectively focus on being peaceful, charitable, and nice to everyone around us. Just like Christmas, New Years is a time when we all reflect on the past year and dream about the coming one. We determine to journal, eat right, exercise, quit smoking, and lose that extra 20 pounds we have carried since college. These are all admirable goals, but why is it that precious few of us ever actually reach those goals? The answer is simple. There was never a time in our lives when someone sat us down and taught us exactly how to plan for, and attain, the things we want to get out of life. New Years is the perfect opportunity to learn that lesson while at the same time empowering your children with the knowledge of how to make anything they want in life happen! After all, the most successful people know how to make things happen!

Anchor Your Goals

The problem with most New Years resolutions is that we approach setting them in the wrong way. We make a long list of things we "should" do and set out to attain them by sheer force of will. Yet our determination wanes around January 3^rd, and by January 5^th we have broken and forgotten our resolutions! Oh well, there is always next year!

Most people get the first half right, but they never anchor their resolution with something that will assure their success. The key to setting goals that you can keep is very simple; you need to anchor your participating in working out that goal to something you really want to do! For example, let's say you want to lose 20 pounds by exercising and eating right. You know what to do! You sign up for weight watchers and join a gym. However, you can't seem to find the time to go to the gym after the first week and you quit going to weight watchers after the third meeting.

Shift Your Focus

To ensure you keep going to the gym or attending those meetings you need to anchor your goals. Shift your focus off what you "should" do for a second and focus on what you "want" to do and make a list with as many items as your resolutions list has. This is the important step that most people leave out.

For instance, when I set my resolutions for next year I came up with seven resolutions. Then I sat down and wrote out seven things that I wanted to indulge in next year. I decided that I wanted to get a massage once a week, start up a hobby I had given up for lack of time and money, treat myself to several new cook books and the time to experiment with the new recipes they provided, and so on.

"Join" And Concour

To ensure my continued participation in my plan I need to reward myself for sticking with it so once I had my two lists I paired the items together. So, for instance, every time I go to the gym for one straight week I allow myself the luxury of getting a massage. When I make it through one whole week of weight watchers meetings I go to the craft store and pick up a few new packs of beads or a new craft book.

Your rewards need not cost money if one of your goals is to stop spending and get out of debt! In that situation, focus on things like eating lunch in the park or inviting a friend over for coffee and home made coffee cake. Your list will look very different but the same principle applies; you will be accomplishing your goals not by how strong your will is but by how strong your desire for the anchor is! They key is to find anchors that really motivate you!

It is important to note that you do not have to come up with as many anchors as you have resolutions if you are strongly motivated by only one or two things. For instance, I had a friend who loved to shop for bargains but never knew when they would appear. So she made her anchor to every one of her goals exactly the same; cash for her shopping account!

She opened up a separate checking account and applied for the debit card. When the card came she tucked it in her wallet and waited! Whenever she needed to reward herself for sticking with one of her goals she transferred $5 from her joint account to her personal account. She maintained the excitement of working towards her goals with the knowledge that at any moment a shopping opportunity struck she was flush with cash to pounce on it! So if going to the movies, knitting, or restoring your Camaro is your one true passion use it to motivate yourself to attain your goals!

Setting The Ball In Motion

Determine to use this coming year as an opportunity to learn about goal setting while teaching your children the same lesson. I have found that my children are more interested in participating in something I am involved in than in working on a project by themselves. Follow these simple steps to ensure success and a good time is had by all:

1) Call a family meeting to discuss the subject of goal setting/resolutions.

2) Explain the concept of anchoring a reward to each goal/resolution.

3) Hand out line paper and ask everyone to write down a few things they would like to accomplish in the coming year. If goal setting and resolutions are new to them, make sure they focus on a few key goals rather than make a huge list. You can make gentle suggestions but don't criticize. These should be goals they want to accomplish!

4) Hand out another piece of line paper and ask them to dream about things they want to do or have. Help them stay within reason. If you aren't prepared to buy them a pony steer them away from writing it on their list!

5) Tell them to pick the top 3 (or 2 or 5, whatever is age appropriate) items from both lists and pair them together.

6) Help them write out their combined goal/resolution and anchor/reward as a single statement like, "when I remember to make my bed in the morning for a whole week I will reward myself with a game of basketball down in the park with my Dad."

7) Type their resolutions/goals on the computer and print them out. Hang them up where they can be seen. You can even make a chart for them to check off as they make their bed or feed the dog if you feel that would motivate them further.

Work together and call a family meeting once a week to discuss progress and help keep everyone focused and on track. We have found that our "family meetings" have evolved into fun nights where we discuss a wide variety of topics, play games, watch movies, eat pizza and enjoy each others company in a way we never thought was possible! Also, when you use this coming New Year as an opportunity to teach your children valuable life skills you just may find that you learn something yourself!