motivation – Some Where Over The Rainboots

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”
Lawrence J. Peter

There is something about the cooler weather and beauty of the leaves turning colors that bring a refreshing change in perspective. Nature is discarding the old to make way for the new. There is a fresh beginning in the atmosphere as school starts across the country and fresh excitement builds.

Starting a school year is a great time to re-evaluate your goals. Remember those New Year Resolutions? If you haven’t checked in on them yet, now is a great time. Never made a resolution? Now is a great time to set some realistic goals. This is a great time for students and parents alike to set up goals for the year. This is a great time to set up a vision.

Where do you start? How do you set goals that will make a lasting impact? Should they be long term or short term?

Let’s demystify the practice of great goal setting. Here are 9 simple steps to goal setting and achievement.

Why the secret to success is setting the right goals | John Doerr

1. Evaluate/Discover Your Why: Goals, by nature, are to help you become a better person, better at something. They are a progression toward success. Before setting a goal, it is essential you discover your strengths and weakness. What are you good at? What are you not good at? What skills do you have? What skills do you need? What are your fears? Weaknesses? Passions? Values? Knowing where you are starting from is essential to know how to get where you are going.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail Big, To Dream Big – Denzel Washington | Goalcast

2. Dream Big: Life is short. What is the point of goals if we are not dreaming big! Some questions to ask might be if today was your last day, what three things would you like to do? What legacy do you want to leave behind? Why is that important? What does success look like in 3 months? 12 months? 5 years? Make a mission statement. Have a word to ground you this year. Put that mission statement and word in a place you see it daily. I use my planner and have the mission statement and word as my wallpaper on devices.

3. Triplets: Setting goals takes utilizing little action steps. I use the triplet technique. What three things will I do every morning and every evening? What three ways will I connect with my family and friends? What three things will I avoid? What three ways will I reward myself for success?

Everything About Vision Boards – How to Create and Use a Vision Board

4. Vision Board: I love a good vision board! I also, love one that is easily changeable. A good vision board should show the END GOAL. This will serve as motivation on those days you have no energy or desire to put in the work. Those days will come. I use magazines, art, leaders, and celebrities I would want to immolate, and quotes on mine. I have a financial advisor that had a voided check written out to him in the amount of $1,000,000.00 on his board with a glamourous house. I have a friend who wanted to go to Harvard. Her board had a picture of the school and the campus colors. Once you have a board, put it where you will see it all the time. My son has his in his room. I keep mine in my planner (so I can see it no mater where I am).

SMART Goals – Quick Overview

5. Set some realistic goals: Often I am asked if a student for school should focus only on academic goals. I say no. A student is a person; a person should focus on all aspects of their life when goal setting. When setting goals, consider setting personal goals, family/friend goals, and academic/professional goals. Each goal needs to be clear. Have a purpose behind the goal. The reason for doing something is essential to motivation to succeed. Set the action steps up right then. Set target dates to achieve. I like to start with three goals in each category for the year.

Target dates are flexible, but help give a deadline to work toward. These should be specific. The key to goal setting success is specificity and motivation. The more specific the goal, action steps, and target date are, the more likely you are to succeed.

6. Monthly focus/Action Steps: Each month, I choose a new word to focus on that supports my yearly word. I start the month looking at what I need to do more of and what I need to less of. This helps me set my monthly smaller goals in each category (personal, family/friends, and professional/academic. I also use this time to break each goal down into tangible smaller action steps I can reach in a month.

7. Track Progress: It is easy to get discouraged when you do not see progress. Good progress is slow progress. Those who follow me, know I love tracking progress in all aspects of life. I bring this same practice into my goal setting. Each month, I use the Habit Tracker for each goal I have. This lets me know which days of the month, how often I am succeeding, and how often I am not succeeding at my goals. This is a quick look at where I have succeeded and failed. I use this simple document (free download below). Each goal gets its own monthly tracking grid.

habit-tracker Download

8. Reflect and Review: Achieving goals is a process. We learn through reflection and review. Without evaluating where we have been and where we are, there is no way to achieve accomplishing what we set out to do. Weekly, my family reflects on what we are grateful for. Life is hard and failure is a part of the process. But focusing on this can be debilitating in a number of areas. Finding one to five things a week you are grateful for, helps change that process. Each month, we look at the top 5 things we accomplished. Then we look at where we failed to make progress (or flat-out failed). The Habit Tracker helps us evaluate. But, we also discuss how we are feeling about our progress and WHY we failed or succeeded. I know I am pushing knowing the why, but reasons we do things helps us understand our success and failures.

9. Revise: Reviewing and reflecting on goals is not helpful if you do not take action on what you learned. Use this time to re-evaluate and revise your goals. Life moves at a fast pace. What may have seemed doable a month ago, may not be impossible in that time frame. You may need to move your action dates. Or maybe, you realize a goal is not for you. This is the time to see what needs to change in your goals, your life, and action to make success a reality.

10. Reward: I love rewards! I am a firm believer in rewarding yourself for achieving the difficult. Knowing there is a reward at the end of the line, is great motivation to keep moving when things get hard. Sometimes it is a simple matter of making a deal with yourself. When a goal is achieved, or a significant milestone, reward yourself. Lost weight? Get new clothes. Learned a new instrument? Set up a concert or video share? Mastered the sewing machine? Share the product with your family and friends. Rewards can be big or small.

Goal setting is so important to self-growth, growth in business, growth in our relationships and so much more. Teaching our children how to set and achieve goals is a life lesson that will benefit them in more than just academics. Doing this together as a family will strengthen your bond. Goal setting as a family also gives an added benefit of built-in accountability partners.

“You can’t trust kids these days.” “They never do what you ask.” “Kids always talk back.” “Kids today don’t know how to follow through.” “If it doesn’t require a social media post, don’t count on your kid to do it.”

Sound familiar?

I have worked with youth and their parents for more than 20 years. I hear the same things time and time again from parents, youth leaders, coaches, and the like.

But, in my experience, kids act this way because of the models they have. In my experience someone meaningful in their lives is absent (maybe spends 60 hours a week at work or just not there at all). Someone may be in their life but has broken promise after promise. That weekend promised to teach them to ride a bike or go see them in the school play comes and goes with an apology only.

Children are taught how to behave by adults in their lives. Great children are taught to be great adults by adults who invest in them. It is that simple.

I was lucky to be raised by a man who worked long hours during the day and went to school at night. But, every school play, every graduation, every school assembly growing up, if I asked, Daddy would be there.

Daddy taught me three significant lessons that have instilled in me the very foundations of who I am and how I raise my little one. These lessons are at the very core of what it is to be me. These lessons are what I hope to pass on to all those young kids who come into my life.

Honor Those Who Came Before You

There is no one in the entire history of the world who accomplished great things on their own. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Martha Tereasa all built on pioneers like Martin Luther, Thurgood Marshall, and John Weasley.

Women today have the right to vote, to work in respectable jobs, and to be educated in the United States because of people like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

American freedoms, the very foundation, were built on the hard work and determination of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who tirelessly worked together writing not just the Declaration of Independence, but researching every known government in preparation for the Congressional Congress created our Republic.

Great-great-great Granddad John Adams, though admittedly opposed to the rule of law of the day, represented the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre to ensure they received a fair trial successfully negotiated the Treaty of Paris (ending the American Revolutionary War), and went on to be the first American Vice President, Second President and his son became the fourth President.

These men denied everything, fighting for life and liberty, for a world that NEVER existed before. In fact, it took over 20 years, war, and near collapse of a nation under the Articles of Confederation from the Declaration of Independence to the signing of the US Constitution and the birth of American freedoms. Our nation, imperfect as it is, was the first in the world to allow basic human freedoms to the average citizen.

When I look back at my accomplishments (graduate degrees, excellent job, published, author, award-winning public speaker), I know that those accomplishments are a direct result of those who invested in me. My parents, my coaches, the amazing adults who poured into me through Youth Focus, Inc. all impacted not only my success, but the trajectory of my life.

Daddy taught me, not only to be aware of this, but to thank and acknowledge those who invested their time, money, and energy into me. Thank you, Coaches, Mr. & Mrs. S; Mr. and & Mrs. G, Shim, and Brandy, Florence, Carl and Mary Carol, Patty, and most importantly, Mom and Dad. Your efforts have helped create the amazing life I have. I could not have done this without you.

Let Your Yes Be Your Yes and Your No Be Your No

Daddy taught us, no matter what, yes is yes. Sounds easy. But in a world where we glorify a social hierarchy that loves self-image, self-entitlement, and immediacy, this is a hard thing to grasp as a kid.

Simply put, if you make a commitment, follow through. If you said you would help you kid sister learn to ride a bike, but the lead cheerleader invites you to a party, you help your sister. If you said you would watch your little siblings so Mom and Dad can have a date night once a week, you do that instead of going to the weekly football games. It means, if you said you were committing to the school play, track team, debate team (pick a team), you follow through with your best the entire season long – especially when it gets hard.

This allows everyone to trust your word – the very basis of integrity. People will know they can count on you in the big things because you showed up in the small things every day.

Find Something Worth Dying For and Go Live For It

The most important lesson Daddy taught me is to “Find something worth dying for, and to live for it.”

That has been Daddy’s motto for as long as I can remember. And when you think about, it is perfect for finding and understanding your calling.

A key characteristic of leadership is the belief in the cause. The causes that pass the 24-hour news cycle, are those whose leaders are willing to walk the walk, and lay down their life, if need be. IF we want to raise excellent leaders, we need to know what their passions are and help teach them how to cultivate them for good.

As our children grow, we often ask them, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” or “What are you going to study in college?” But these do not get to the root of a person’s passion. Passion is what will keep one motivated through the dark woods of real life. Passion is what will change a weak leader to a strong leader.

Instead, let’s ask our children, “What excites you?” or “What gets you fired up?” “What are some things that you want to change?” When they tell us, regardless of what we believe about those passions, celebrate them. Help them cultivate them. Because they will find a way with or without your help. Use the opportunity to help lead and teach them to be the best at whatever they chose.

These questions will start leading our kids to find their passions so that they may LIVE for them.

This #fathersday week, let us honor those who came before us. Let us stay true to our word. Let us find those things worth dying for, and go live for them. Let us be the beginning of positive change for our children.

Some Where Over The Rainboots

Tag: motivation

10 Goal Setting Steps to Success

Find Something Worth Dying For

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