Social Skills and Goal Setting: Ten Tips to Help Teens Set Goals They Won't Fizzle Out On
By Ellen Mossman- Glazer M.Ed. Life Skills Coach, Behavior Specialist.

Teenagers have a lot on the go and sometimes, despite their good intentions, their goals slip away as other events steal the limelight. Following are ten tips for parents to share with their teens, to keep goals in the forefront and stay with them while life is happening in other places.

1. Put it in writing. Seeing the words gives a lot more power to your commitment.

2. State your goals with positive wording, so that you can see and visualize what it is you do want to happen. Rather than: “I won’t watch so much TV” try ,“I will spend 30 more minutes a day studying.”

3. Make sure your goal is easy enough to guarantee you will achieve it. A goal should not be so big that you start to feel burdened at the thought of it. As you begin to meet your goals, the good feeling will give you momentum to challenge yourself with goals that are a little tougher.

4. Parents and teens: Work together to set goals everyone can feel good about. Parents: let your kids choose their goals. Your job is to guide them in the right direction. Teens: Pick goals you believe in. Believing in your goals will help you stay committed to them.

5. Prioritize goals in different ways. Easiest to hardest. Most important to least important. Make sure you have some goals that are fairly easy to meet. Weave the more satisfying or fun goals in and around the more essential and important ones. Don’t make your goal ‘Clean my whole room tomorrow’ if your room is carpeted with months of clothing and that’s you parent’s goal. You will feel great once you start to accomplish your goals. And that great feeling will help you to keep following through on your promises to yourself or your parents. You will probably be ready to master those goals that don’t inspire you, but are important or that your parents have for you.

6. Remember the ‘3 week habit’. If you can hang in doing something 21 days, you own the habit. It becomes automatic. You might be trying to start a new good habit, or get rid of an old one. You don’t have to practice your new habit every day for 21 days, just in a pattern such as Monday, Wednesday and Friday, for three weeks.

7. Have ways to measure your successes. This does not mean compare to what others can do. You will know if you are successful by how you feel. If you enjoy looking at your accomplishments as they accumulate, chart them or hang a checklist. Every time you follow through on a promise to yourself, give your self a check mark.

8. Plan big and little rewards for yourself. Plan for little rewards along the way. Collecting your rewards will keep you going. A big reward is something you might want to plan for at the end of the semester.

9. Don’t have too many goals at once. You will want to run from too much structure or pressure!

10. Notice if you feel overwhelmed, discouraged or drained from working on goal. Revise goals so you don’t fizzle out on them.

Copyright Ellen Mossman-Glazer 2005. All rights reserved. You are welcome to share or reprint this article, providing it remains as written with all contact and copyright information included along with a link to http://artofbehaviorchange.com This content is coaching and education and not intended to take the place of psychological services, where advised and appropriate.