How to Launch a Teen: Goals Are Not Rules

Fourteen years before Doran outlined SMART rules, Aaron T. Beck, in his treatise on cognitive therapy for depression, advocated defining goals in terms of specific behaviors rather than in global terms: what I want to do rather than what I want to be. He described vague or and unrealistic goals as a potential source of punitively self-critical thinking. Beck prescribed the accomplishment of a series of relevant yet modest goals as a means to reduce self-doubt. Recent research at the Beck Institute included goal setting as a primary ingredient of self-care methods for medical students.

It's important to remember, in the face of all this emphasis I'm putting on goal setting, that goals are not rules.  It is not necessary that they be things you should or must do.  You make them, and you unmake them.  There are many reasons to modify or put aside a goal.  Life is full of changes, and what we want will change as we meet new people, new opportunities and experiences shift our perspective, and economic trends or governmental policies or technological advances alter the future.

How to Launch a Teen: More on Goal-Setting

Today finds you continuing to add to your Action PotentiaList for one of your goals.

Any goal can be refined to be more specific.  This can be helpful in compiling a more complete Action List as well as providing clear indicators that you have reached your goal. 

One of the most widely used methods for establishing goals came out of industrial/ organizational psychology research in the early 1980s.  George Doran established five criteria to help more precisely define a goal.  He used the term SMART goal and suggested that goals should be specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time related.  Variations of these five criteria for evaluating and refining goals have been adopted by management experts, health care professionals, and those working in the mental health field. 

A goal is specific if it contains answers to the W questions: 

• What do I want to accomplish?
• Why do I want to do this (reasons, benefits, values)?
• Who will I need to involve (for support, financing, advice) besides me?
• Where?
• Which aspects of the goal are essential and which are not essential but desirable?
• When will the goal be met?

If I look back at the goals I selected from my own Five Year Plan, I find that none of them are very specific.  Do I want to be nicotine-free or will I use a nicotine-replacement technology like electronic cigarettes?  Will I use support from Quitline?  Do I want to involve family or will I do this alone?  What is my stop date?  In order to answer these questions, I need to do additional thinking and research about the goal I have set.  This early planning helps make my goal more clear and attainable.

A goal is measurable when you have clear guidelines about how you will know it has been accomplished.  Since I frequently quit smoking for 2-4 weeks at a time, how long will I need to have not smoked a cigarette to say that I have accomplished this goal?  Three months?  A year?  Five years?

The assignable aspects of the goal identify the extent to which you must or wish to involve other people in this goal.  Those you will rely on for support must understand what you need from them and agree to provide it.  There are goals that can be accomplished without the input and support of others.  It is, however, the rare goal that cannot be more efficiently achieved through the use of networks of information and support.

Goals should be realistic.  For example, it would be unlikely that I could perform with the Mariinsky Ballet Company.

Finally, a goal has a clear timetable.  If a goal has not been or cannot be reached by a specific date, it should be revised.

The process of identifying these criteria will help you distinguish goals from aspirations.  We strive toward our aspirations and dreams by setting and achieving our goals.

How to Launch a Teen: Learning the Cha-Cha-Cha, Learning the Waltz

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.  (Virginia Satir)

Today you are continuing to add to the Action PotentiaList for the first goal you selected for your Five Year Plan.

I'm thinking about my grandmother today, my Nana.  She had no adolescence.  She was married shortly after she had her first period.  My mother was born when Nana was 13, three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  By age 16, she had given birth to twins and watched them die of pneumonia.  She went from Alabama to California with her husband, her two younger brothers, and my mother.  They worked as crop pickers...cotton, fruit trees...until both Nana and my grandfather got manufacturing jobs with defence contractors.  She divorced and remarried.  (Divorce was rare in the early 1950s, divorced women were outcasts.)  She went on business trips to New York.

Then something happened in her life between 1962 and 1964.  I can remember her living in a big house with a pool before we went to the Phillippines.  After we got back, she and Jim were in Alabama living in a trailer.  After my dad died in 1965, they moved to Louisiana to be closer to us.  When I would sleep over, she would let me dress up in one of her 1950s cocktail dresses, we would play music, and we would dance on the front porch in the moonlight.  Nana taught me the cha-cha-cha.  Jim taught me how to waltz.  They were my favorite people in the world.  Jim died in 1966. 

I stayed with Nana every chance I got.  I was her favorite grandchild.  I had some sense that it was unfair that my brothers didn't get to stay with her as much as I did, but I didn't care.  She read Of Mice and Men to me when I was 10.  We discussed world religions and the supernatural and where she was when JFK was shot.  She made me homemade hot chocolate.  We gardened together and baked cobblers and made lists of what we wanted to get done every day.

I wish I could have shared Trippy Roads Ranch with her.  She would have loved it here.  Although her first priority would have been to build a chicken coop.  And she would never have pulled up all those impatiens.

How to Launch a Teen: Backward Planning

A goal without a plan is just a wish. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

I was in my mid-20s when, having left university without a degree, I got a job with a psychology group practice and had the opportunity to become a certified stress management trainer. As part of the process, I created my first Five Year Plan. Through the implementation of that plan, I was able to complete my Bachelor's degree and enter a Masters program in counseling psychology.

I like to develop a Five Year Plan using backward planning. I start with the goal and work backward. Here are a series of questions that I find helpful:

• What has to happen in order for the goal to be reached?  At this point, you aren't thinking about how long a particular action will take or when it needs to happen or the sequence in which you will do things.  This is a brainstorming session.  You should spend about 30 minutes coming up with as many actions that need to be performed for you to reach the selected goal.  Now keep the list available over the next few days and add any other ideas that come to you.
• Do any of these things have to be done so that other things can happen?  It is helpful to transfer all your ideas to individual index cards and sort them in chronological order along the various chains of events that will surface from your action list.  You will probably find gaps and need to add to the list.
• Of the things on your list, what needs to be done in the 5th year?  The 4th?  Continue working backward until you get to an action list for the upcoming year.

How to Launch a Teen: PotentiaLists

I was going to have you jump in and start composing your Five Year Plan.  But I thought I would describe how life's developmental stages influence a person's goals.  The best way to do this is to do the last few PotentiaLists myself.  (Yes, PotentiaLists:  the lists we generate during How to Launch a Teen.) 

With total disregard for what anyone else hopes for me or wants me to do, create a description of what I would like my life to look like in 20 years.  Begin by defining the personal philosophy and core values that influence the person I hope to be and what I hope to achieve.

I am fortunate to be generally happy with who I am and confident that I can accomplish things I really want to do.  I am usually content with my life and experience frequent joy.  I hope to keep these aspects of myself as I enter late adulthood and old age.  Erik Erikson described developmental phases in life and what could be expected in terms of self growth.  I am coming to the end of what he described as middle adulthood, a time of meaningful work and transmitting values to the next generation and entering late adulthood (old age), a time to consolidate wisdom and look back over my life and the contributions I've made.  I have learned not to regret my choices very much, I think largely because I love my life and wouldn't want to change it.  But I will be tempted to focus on what I see as failures.  I also know this is a time when I can expect decreased health and energy, increased pain, and fewer work choices.  But it important to me that I remain active.

Brainstorm and come up with as many goals in each category I have identified as important.

Fitness:  I would like to be alive, active, and reasonably healthy, both physically and mentally. 
Personal Identity:  I want to be liked by people who know me and to continue being flexible in my outlook and comfortable with myself.
Family:  I would like to have houses for all of my children and their families right here on Trippy Roads Ranch, and all of you living here and working locally, or online, in careers you love.  I think it would be nice if you and I had a tradition of annual mother-daughter vacations, even if only for a few days.
Financial:  I would like to have the mortgage paid off on the property and all of our debts paid.  I'd like to be able to help my children build houses of their own.  I don't want to be a financial burden to my children, so I will need more savings.
Community:  I want to be known in the local community, for what I'm not sure.  I want to have a few good friends. 
Career:  If I'm working, I'd like to be writing.
Creativity, Hobbies, and Free Time:  The house and garden should be finished by now, so that all I have to do is putter about, planting in the springtime, weeding in the summer, and harvesting in the fall.  I will still be reading 75 books a year, writing reviews, and communicating with an online book club.

Clearly, many of these would not be the goals of a teenager.

Select three things I can accomplish in the next five years that will make a positive contribution to that picture of my future self.

1. Stop smoking.
2. Finish the general layout of beds and paths in the garden.
3. Provide Sarah with whatever assistance I can to help her reach her career goals.

How to Launch a Teen: Pick Three Things

"Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice.
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get," said the Cat.
"I really don't care where," replied Alice.
"Then it doesn't much matter which way you go," said the Cat.
(Lewis Carroll, 1865, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

Now that you spent some time thinking about where you want to be in 20 years, select three things you can accomplish in the next five years that will make a positive contribution to that picture of your future self.  You might choose (1) learn to tango, (2) enter the workforce, and (3) dye your hair a different color of the rainbow each year.  Or, as you approach your 22nd birthday, do you want to have (1) completed a Bachelor's degree, (2) entered a film competition, and (3) saved enough money to spend a month in Europe?  Pick any three things, but try to make sure they don't conflict with one another.  It will help if you select from different areas of your life:  artistic, attitude, career, education, experience, family, financial, health, hobbies, material wealth, pleasure, professional, public service / community, recognition, relationships, travel, other outrageous and fabulous stuff.

How to Launch a Teen: Goal Identification

Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals. (Aristotle) 

Setting goals starts with visualizing what you would like your life to be.  Life goals should be as broad as possible, covering the spectrum of your interests and desires:  family and relationships, community, personal identity, education, career, creativity, physical fitness, hobbies and free time.  With total disregard for what anyone else hopes for you or wants you to do, create a description of what you would like your life to look like in 20 years. Begin by defining the personal philosophy and core values that influence the person you hope to be and what you hope to achieve.  Then brainstorm and come up with as many goals in each category you have identified as important.  Be as detailed as possible without having to commit to who you will marry or when, or what particular career you might have, or how old you would like your children to be.