Would you like your child to be more self-motivated?
Would you like to set your child up for success in life by learning to set goals- and achieve them?
If your answers are yes, here are some steps that motivational experts from all kinds of different areas (corporate business, physical fitness, personal effectiveness etc) have found crucial. Use language and activities (for example, drawing instead of writing) that are suitable for your child’s level.
1. Help you child to Be Clear. What do you want to get? What do you have to do?
Don’t say “I want to get more organised.” Say “I will spend 10 minutes every night to sort out my study table.”
2. Help your child discover why the goal is important to him, or to her.
Ask “Why is this important for me?”
My students know I always say “Doing it once is not practice.” (Practise again until you can do it quickly, easily, and confidently.”)
The first answer we think of is often not about ourselves: “Because my parents /my partner /my teacher / etc say so.” Ask again, “And why is that important to you?” until you discover a more personal and meaningful answer.
3. Use success to breed success.
A common mistake for people making goals is not to plan for the pitfalls, that is, plan to deal with what might get in the way of achieving the goal.
While it is good to make sure you take into account possible pitfalls, latest research suggest that it would be even better to leverage on your strength and use success to breed success. This way you build not just planning skills, but also self-esteem. Wouldn’t you rather have a child who is a good planner who also believes in himself?
Help your child to see that skills he already has can be utilised to succeed in achieving success in other areas. For example, rather than making doing homework just a matter of will-power, you may encourage him to think about how his level of focus in drawing, or multi-task planning in playing computer games are skills he can use in other areas.