By Jill Hope
During the last two weeks we talked about the keys to helping your kids achieve what they want in their lives. To recap, the first two keys are:
1) Having a clear vision of their desire and knowing why they want it.
2) Striving for what they want, not just what they (or you) think they can get.
This week we are going to look at the third key to help your kids achieve what they want in their lives:
3) Being in “feeling state” of having the goal and practicing this feeling often.
Once your child knows what she wants, why she wants it, and is truly going for something she desires and not jsut something she just thinks she can achieve, she needs to start moving toward her goal.
One of the important steps to achieving any goal we wish to achieve is by focusing on the feeling we will have once we’ve already obtained it. Everything that ever was and is was first created as a thought or idea. But just having the thought is not enough. The thought needs to be fueled with emotion.
The best way to move toward a goal or desire, is to get into the feeling state of how things would be once the goal has been achieved. How excited would your child be to achieve her goal? What does that feel like? What behaviors would she take on as a result? What things would she say, how would she behave and interact differently with peers? These are all things to have your child consider when working toward the achievement of a goal.
I recommend that you make a daily practice out of this step in the goal achievement process, and there are many tools that can help. Here are just a few ideas to help your child get into the feeling state of his goal:
1) Meditate with your child on his goal. This could include taking deep, slow breaths, a visualization exercise where you talk your child through the scene as it would appear once the goal has been achieved, or just simply sitting in silence and having your child listen to his breath for a few minutes.
2) Have your child write a daily journal entry about how excited he feels to have achieved his goal.In this exercise, your child can visualize the ideal state once her goal has been obtained and then write about what she feels, sees, hears, or experiences as a result.
3) Have your child write or state an affirmation, such as “I am so happy and grateful now that I have achieved the lead role in the school play”. Affirmations are powerful, especially for kids. I recommend placing your child’s affirmation on bright colored paper and then tape it to the mirror where he brushes his teeth, so he sees it at least twice per day.
4) Help your child create a vision board that represents her goal, and then place it in a prominent place where he can look at and reflect on it every day.A vision board is a visual representation of a goal, and can be a fun way for your child to experience and literally create the goal in a visual form before she sees it in her life.
Anything that can help your child to visualize the goal having been achieved and the feelings she will feel once her goal has been achieved is what you want to encourage.
As you decide on the process you want to create to help your child be in the feeling state of achieving his goal, be creative! This can be a wonderful daily ritual between you and your child that you will both come to cherish.
And if you have ideas that you’ve used in the past or plan to use to help your child anchor in positive feelings about their goal, please share them here!
