PARENTS: SET GOALS FOR YOUR KIDS & TEENS |4 Mins Read|

PARENTS: SET GOALS FOR YOUR KIDS & TEENS |4 Mins Read|

PARENTS: SET GOALS FOR YOUR KIDS & TEENS |4 Mins Read|

THIS WEEK: 5 simple steps to setting New Years resolutions with your kids and teens, My new year goals & HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Tortoise and the Hare
We all know the story about the tortoise and the hare. They had a race, the hare was the first off the mark and raced ahead leaving the slow tortoise in his dust. The hare was so confident in his abilities and speed that he took a nap mid way through the race. The tortoise continued to take slow and steady steps towards the finish line and arrived before the hare. The slow tortoise won!

This story is fascinating to me. I think there are good life lessons to learn from both the tortoise and hare. From the hare we learn to be fast off the mark and a quick action taker, this is why I applause parents who say yes to their children’s future by enrolling them on a leadership martial arts course like LIONS. we also learn not to become so complacent or over confident that we fail to achieve our goals like the hare. From the tortoise we learn that taking steps in the right direction with patience and dedication always leads to achieving our goals!

PATIENCE

We live in a world where we don’t need to have the virtue of patience. How many of us as kids had to wait for birthdays and special occasions to get toys or games? Now kids click a button and download a new game directly onto their iPad! We don’t even need to wait week to week to see our favourite tv show, we have it online on demand and can watch an entire series at once.

Goal setting allows us and kids to practice the virtue of patience while learning how to flex the muscles of achievement.

There are 5 steps that we use at LIONS Self Defence & Leadership Martial Arts to set goals, iv outlined them briefly for you here…

Pick a goal

Have your child pick a goal. This way you know it’s something that they want to achieve and will be passionate about it. Help them to decide by giving them options if they struggle. Goals may include learning to tie laces, learning to spell their name, reading a whole book etc.

Write this goal down on a piece of paper – for some reason visually seeing something always help.

Set a date

Always set a date by which the goal should be achieved. This way it is not open ended and has a definite deadline which keeps short term motivation up. It reminds me of the words of Jim Rohn who said “a goal without a date is just a dream”.

Break it down

Break the goal down into small manageable tasks. Sometimes when we see a task ahead it’s like standing at the foothill of a mountain and seeing the magnitude of the epic task ahead. It’s important to break it down into small steps so you have milestones which can be ticked off and you get to feel good about progress.

Take steps

I always say that 1 step in the right direction is worth more than 1000 years of wishing for something. The reason I say this is because, I don’t know about you but, I have never sat wishing for something and had it fall on my head. Setting intentions, visualising, setting goals, making dream and vision boards, sending messages into the universe, praying and wishing are all important BUT then we must take steps like the tortoise in the direction of our goals to achieve them. This sounds simple but it’s often the step where most people fail. We need to learn to be FAST off the mark like the hare, and then take steady tenacious steps like the tortoise.

Applaud effort

Give your child plenty of praise and reward when they take those steps and achieve the milestones. This is encouraging and boosts morale.

MY NEW YEAR GOALS

My goal for 2017 is to write more blog posts (maybe with better spelling) and make self defence videos to serve our LIONS family and extended LIONS pride online. If you have any requests of self defence scenarios that you would like to see then please let me know by email or Facebook.

IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

Setting goals and achieving them give young people a real sense of pride and achievement as well as empowering them with the ability to vision and take action towards their own success. At LIONS we have each of our students set a goal for BLACK BELT success. We then break this long term goal down into smaller goals (coloured belts) and break that down even further into LION skill tags which are small manageable tasks. Kids are able to visualise their progress with our “progress cards” so they can see how close they are to achieving their goals. As far as I have found there is NOTNING which gives the same sense of pride as achieving martial arts grades. We compound this with our leadership awards and leadership star achievements. If you need any help with setting goals or structuring the process or have any questions about LIONS please feel free to email me at chirag@lionsselfdefence.com or call me on 07452924496. I’m happy to help 🙂

HAPPY NEW YEAR I hope that this year brings you an abundance of joy, happiness and success. Let me know how the goal setting goes! If you found this useful then please share it on social media by tapping the button below.

 

6 thoughts on “PARENTS: SET GOALS FOR YOUR KIDS & TEENS |4 Mins Read|

  1. Liam Nealson

    Awesome post! I’m going to try this with my 4 year old. I totally agree with what you are saying in relation to being in an on demand world. Really going to crush it with my own goals this year and I know what you have said will help my kids to achieve theirs. Thanks

    1. Chirag Lukha (LIONS)

      Hello Liam, thank you for your comment and feedback! Glad you found this helpful and please feel free to follow @LIONSSeflDefence on Facebook and let us know how the goals go 🙂 – wishing you well in your endeavours!

  2. Jack Kingston

    Good tips here. I sat down with my daughter and set 3 goals with her. This year we are going to work on her reading, eating more greans and piano practice.

    1. Chirag Lukha

      AWESOME!! Action taking parents! I’m glad this helped you. Best of luck with your goals. At LIONS we use visual charts like attendance cards and score sheets – maybe you could make an achievement tree and each time your daughter eats something new you stick a new leaf on with the name of the new food she eats. As the tree grows big and strong so does she. Just a thought.

        1. Chirag Lukha (LIONS)

          She doesn’t love them YET! But she loves art, associate them. Neurons that fire together wire together. 🙂 ENJOY!

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