I recently had lunch with a friend just before she was about to take off on an around-the-world journey. I was envious. We had talked previously about goals, something she knew I believed was important. But, more importantly, goals were something her dad believed in. She put it simply, “It may seem cheesy, but this ‘goal’ thing works.” I found it interesting that she had to include the “cheesy” disclaimer to me, a reader and listener of those same books, as if to say, “You know, I’m not some crazy, self-help zealot.”
That encounter made me realize two things:
First, having goals and putting them out there for the world to hear (I’m thinking of Gary Vaynerchuk’s claim that he WILL buy the NY Jets.) are strategies that I believe can work for anyone and that more of us should embrace. (I’m telling myself to be more vocal as I write.) None of us should ever feel the need to defend desires to strive for difficult goals with a line like, “I know it sounds cheesy, but …”
Second, we parents need to model goal setting for our kids to really make it stick. This is important because modeling is how kids learn. They “do what we do, not what we say.” (Unless, of course, we do what we say.) As I’ve noted in this blog many times, goal setting for kids is a path to learning to save.
So put your goals out there for all to see. Have your kids do the same.
See where that takes you.
Around the world, maybe?
John