Goal setting for younger people is often overlooked. It often takes quite a few years for people to grow up and then start setting goals for themselves. However, setting goals for youth could have many benefits.
We managed to talk to Dr. Mark Goulston who is a renowned psychiatrist with a specialization in youth mental health and suicide prevention. With years of experience working with young people, Dr. Goulston has developed a deep understanding of the unique challenges they face and the importance of goal setting in overcoming these obstacles. As the co-author of the international best-selling book “Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior,” Dr. Goulston offers invaluable insights and practical advice on helping youth cultivate a proactive mindset and develop essential life skills through goal setting.
Developing Resilience Through Goal Setting
“The moment something feels hard or bad, too many youth will quit.” – Dr Goulston
It often takes people a long time to learn the importance of resilience. Dr. Goulston believes that goal setting can have a profound impact on the development of resilience in youth.
When youth are exposed to setting goals frequently, it allows them to be exposed to challenges and learn to persist even in the face of difficult circumstances. There are many ways resilience could help you throughout your life:
- When you develop resilience, you also tend to develop a more positive outlook when it comes to life.
- Because of your ability to stick things out, resilient people are often more successful in relationships due to the fact that they don’t give up with the slightest negative experience.
- The more you go through hard things and still achieve your goals, you develop a confidence no one could take from you.
Overcoming Reverse Cognitive Bias
“More often they have ‘reverse cognitive bias’ where they wait for things to happen and then react.”
Reverse cognitive bias is when people have the habit of things happening to them and reacting to it. Goal setting allows you to develop forward cognitive bias by putting the responsibility onto yourself and having a proactive mindset.
Here are the ways goal setting could shift a youth’s mindset from reactive to proactive:
- Builds Self Efficacy: Self efficacy is ones belief that their actions could influence their life. When you set goals from a young age and achieve them, it allows you to develop that belief.
- Adaptability: When you set goals it gives the ability to adapt along the way. This creates a more proactive mindset and appreciation for setbacks, rather than just throwing in the towel.
- Acountability: Lastly, setting goals makes you more accountable for your actions. The sooner younger people learn about accountability, the better prepared they’ll be for life’s challenges.
Aligning Goal-Setting with Youth’s Way of Thinking
In this section, we will delve deeper into the approach suggested by Dr. Goulston, who emphasized the need to align with young people’s way of thinking when setting goals.
Future Vision Exercise
Due to the way kids think, it is important to start by helping them develop their ‘future vision’. To assist with this, Dr. Goulston suggested we create a simple exercise:
Have them imagine it’s a year from now which gives them something to look forward to. A future vision exercise is important for many reasons including:
Increased Motivation: The youth often have a hard time grasping time and the concept of patience. By giving them something to look forward a year from now, it provides them with sense of motivation knowing that hard times will be replaced by something better in the future.
Forward Thinking Mindset: As we mentioned above, setting goals at a young age creates a forward thinking mindset. Practicing this exercise does this as well by getting the youth used to planning ahead and developing goals.
Builds Self-Awareness: This exercise helps them gain a good understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and values. The earlier they grasp this concept, the better off they will be later in life.
They Learn Commitment: When kids just do something to do it, they really don’t understand the concept of commitment. This exercise helps them understand that it takes time, effort and determination to achieve something. This is good for when they get older and have a career they want to pursue.
Reverse Engineering Goals
Once they understand the concept of visualizing the future, Dr. Goulston suggested that we reverse engineer goals to break them down into manageable steps.
For example, Landon has a Goal of making the travel baseball team when he turns 10. Here’s how Landon will have to reverse engineer this goal.
Start with the end in mind: Making the travel baseball team 1 year from now.
How To get The Necessary experience to get there: Landon will have to play a lot of baseball in different ways like:
- Joining a local rec league to gain more experience
- Attend a summer baseball camp
- Go to the batting cages in the winter leading up to the season
- Try out for the baseball team
By doing all of this, Landon will realize one or two things. One, that he’s not going to get to his goal overnight. Two, it’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication.
By doing this exercise with your youth, it will give them a realistic perspective of the amount of work needed to achieve something and how long it will take.
Conclusion
As you could see setting goals for youth has many benefits including teaching accountability, building more self awareness, and increasing motivation. The earlier they learn the process, the more they will be better off as they get up in age.
Not only is it important to set goals for youth, but you could also set goals as a family which will help double down on the benefits.