Goal Setting
"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there"
—Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898
Teenage Youth Program - Goal Setting
Goal setting can be one of the most important things we ever do in life. Without an "end destination" in mind we will hardly get to where we would really like to go. Just like you would prepare for a road trip, you must prepare for your life journey too.
Unfortunately, many people feel that goal setting is out of their league. Numerous individuals are unsure of what they would like to accomplish. This is because very rarely did our parents or our educational curriculum address goal setting and achieving. For the most part, no one ever taught us how to set goals and how to achieve them! Most of what we know about setting goals comes from our observations of our parents, friends, and personal experiencesÑwhich are not necessarily the best examples.
Based on personal lack of knowledge of achieving goals it is difficult to teach our children how to set targets for themselves. If we do not know how to teach teens to set objectives for themselves it is almost impossible to teach them how to actually achieve their aspirations.
Because we were never properly taught to set goals and achieve them, we have experienced many disappointments and may have even become jaded in our attitude towards goal setting. Over time you have stopped believing in the power of setting goals! Unfortunately, this attitude rubs off onto kids, and we, unintentionally, teach them that it is impossible to reach goals, therefore why bother! Not true! We can only achieve our dreams by setting goals and working towards them!
Benefits of Goal Setting
"People with goals succeed because they know where they're going"
—Earl Nightingale
Goal setting can be one of the most important things we ever do in life. Without an "end destination" in mind we will hardly get to where we would really like to go. Just like you would prepare for a road trip, you must prepare for your life journey too.
Whether we want to succeed in school, work, or in our extracurricular activities, setting goals is the most important part of success. It's difficult to succeed when we are not focused on or working towards anything in particular. When we do not set objectives for ourselves, we simply have no place to go, do not know how to proceed in life and we tend to count on "luck" for our situation to improve. On the other hand, explicit goals direct us to which steps we need to take and guide us to a place we want to go.
Research has uncovered that people who set goals are more likely to achieve their desires and overall feel better about themselves. Setting goals comes with many other benefits:
- Greater sense of purpose
- Improved concentration
- Increased pride, self-esteem, and self-confidence
- Improved performance
- Relief boredom
- Improved time management and strategy planning
- Increased sense of responsibility
- Increased sense of accomplishment
- Increased motivation
- Become success oriented/focused
- Reduced stress
- Increased probability of success
- Increased self-respect
Unfortunately, many people have a difficult time setting goals because they simply do not know how to go about choosing their objectives. Since this is not a skill that we are born with, it means we have to learn it. While it is never too late to learn how to set goals, goal setting is a skill that is valuable to gain earlier in life as opposed to later on.
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