New Year resolutions?  Maybe….

So every year I hear, see and read about people’s New Year resolutions toward self-improvement or toward a goal, for about a week or two, and then I hear, see and read about how they have fallen by the wayside, a victim of great intentions without follow-through, or more accurately, poorly conceived follow-through. I see folks letting themselves down and inadvertently modeling a pattern that too often our kids fall into, as well.

However, before I even begin to discuss goal-attainment and examine what we can do to help better teach our kids how to more successfully work toward a goal, I need to address the most basic, unacknowledged assumption implicit in the idea of New Year resolutions: the assumption that there is something wrong with us, something that needs “fixing” (and annually no less!).

Because our kids are continually on social media, looking at carefully curated messages that present lives and images that seem perfect (images that are often nipped, tucked, or touched up to be perfect), it can appear to them, that their lives need an overhaul! So perhaps the first and hardest step when discussing New Year resolutions with our children is to explain the importance of comparing themselves only with themselves–which is much easier said than done. I am not suggesting that working toward a goal of self-improvement is a bad thing, but we need to intentionally consider and understand the motivation behind the goals we set. Sending children the message that there is something “wrong” that needs to be “fixed” can be dangerous, especially if they tend to compare themselves unfavorably to their peers or idols on social media. It can undermine their self-confidence by suggesting that humans are endlessly flawed and need an annual overhaul that will ultimately fail. If there is something that we or they want to work on, then we can help, but the first thing to always examine is the “why.” Why have we or they decided that any particular resolution should be the goal?

When resolutions fail, they seem to do so not because the goals are unattainable, but because the goals are unrealistically grand and ill-defined and the path to achieve them is also vague and poorly defined. If we model setting such grand and vague goals, we aren’t helping our children learn how to plan to actually attain a goal or to apply the process to any large project, goal, or deadline that they might have in the future. So when setting New Year resolutions, we have a choice: an opportunity either to model a life skill that works or to model a process of failure that is abandoned in a few weeks.

What are the steps to successful goal attainment? As with so many things, there are many answers, but most include the same basic concepts and progression to achieve success. These are often referred to as SMART goals (the acronym SMART will become apparent):

Step 1–Be SPECIFIC. Identify the task. What is your goal and why? Are you setting this goal for yourself or to please someone else? Am I getting fit, or am I doing something physical 20 minutes a day? There is a difference. Do I genuinely want to achieve this goal for myself, or am I working to please someone else? Again, there is a difference, and there may or may not be something wrong with doing it for someone else.

Step 2– Make the goal MEASURABLE in some way. If it is to run a marathon in a year, what does that translate to in terms of how many miles you need to run each week and your planned incremental increases. Once you have a measurement plan, keep a written record of your progress!

Step 3–Make sure your goal is ACHIEVABLE by ensuring you have the resources and support you need. Are you tracking your progress? Have you shared your plan with others who can support you (and not pull you down)? Have you allotted the time you need to actually make it happen?

Step 4–Is your goal RELEVANT and meaningful to you? You have to be invested in this or it will fall by the wayside. If the goal doesn’t connect to your purpose, to your values, if you hate what you are planning, it is not going to succeed.

Step 5–Give your goals the TIME needed to achieve them. Have you set aside the necessary and realistic time to work on them daily or weekly? Have you mapped the intended timing of your progress on a calendar? Sometimes, looking forward to and noting on a calendar the date by which you want to achieve your goal and then working backward on the calendar is a good strategy. Using a calendar may lead to a better, more specific plan.

Setting goals at any point in your or your children’s life is a great lesson as long as everyone is willing to create a solid plan to support success. Setting a goal without a plan or the steps to make it happen is really just wishful thinking and is often the cause of so many of those New Year resolutions lasting only two weeks. Make sure your children know that doing their best and being themselves is enough, and if there is something they want to work on, there are SMART ways to go about it, and you’d be happy to help.

Nationally-recognized visionary in the areas of educational system improvement and innovation, educational consultant Marja Brandon has been a teacher, head of school, and founder of Seattle Girls School. She is currently the head of school at Childpeace Montessori School in Portland, OR. She volunteers to offer advice and writes articles for TeensParentsTeachers.  

Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.