The 21st-century students are cut from a different mold altogether. Unlike the ones that prefer to be followers, each one of these is determined to be a leader. What’s more is that they have a keen interest in knowledge upgrades and learning because they see information and insights as a stepping stone to a meaningful and well-lived life.
At Delhi Public School Kangra, one of the leading CBSE schools in Kangra district, we firmly believe that “goal-setting” and “self-discipline” are the two pillars that make all the above and more possible. Today, we will go into the details of this while exploring ways in which the same can be taught to children. So, let’s read on.
What does goal-setting entail?
Living each day would be meaningless if we did not have a purpose and goals in life. The same logic applies to children as well.
Today, they may be studying in school, but tomorrow, they have to go ahead and make tough academic and career choices. Choices that will one day define whether they get to lead a satisfactory life.
Hence, children need to be introduced to the importance of “goals” while throwing light on the steps that need to be followed to achieve this end.
Helping children with goal-setting:
At Delhi Public School Kangra, we strongly believe that children should be first given the time to introspect on what exactly they wish to become and achieve on growing up. Whatever answers are found in the course of this exercise shall help them decide on their larger goals.
As a next step, they should be taught the difference between short and long-term goals. As the name suggests, the former are the goals that need to be achieved in the near future, while long-term goals can be visualized for a span of, say, five to ten years later.
Example:
Let’s say Akshita is studying in Class X. She is given the time to introspect and comes back saying that she wishes to become an entrepreneur on growing up. In her case:
The short-term goals can be:
- Passing Grades X and XII with flying colors.
- Selecting the right course post Grade XII, say something like “business management.”
- Improving her language and conversational skills.
- Working under someone or completing an internship.
Her long-term goals can be:
- Saving a certain sum to bootstrap her start-up
- Finding a co-founder with tech expertise
- Convincing her parents to allow her to choose entrepreneurship > doing a job
The problem is that most children are made to focus on the process of goal-setting while fully skipping the ultimate objective, which is to decide on and achieve goals.
Here’s how we would like to put it:
Introspect ➡ Decide on Short and Long-Term Goals ➡ Define the POA ➡ Execute
Coming to Self-Discipline:
In the above few paragraphs, we attempted to make you understand the process of goal-setting from beginning to end. Now, we would like to underline a pre-requisite, which will help children move from the planning to the execution stage with respect to their goals. The pre-requisite we are referring to here is “self-discipline”.
The thing about discipline is that it can never be forced. An adult, parent, or teacher might try to discipline children, but eventually, it all comes down to children accepting and seeing the need to observe discipline.
For instance, children may take the time to introspect and lay out goals, both short and long-term. But, if they fail to act on these goals, they will never be able to reach their destination. This is where self-discipline can persuade them to commit to their goals and achieve everything they desire.
Here are some ways of getting children into the self-discipline mode:
- Passing on the realization that they are in this for their futuristic well-being
- Encouragement to block time to work on their goals
- Boost to polish skills that will make achieving these goals easier
- Practice of being invested in self-motivation
Let’s just say, self-discipline will make children come back to their goals every day. Analyze the same and make necessary tweaks where necessary. Note down patterns so that limitations will no longer last. And most importantly, give them the direction that will make waking up and working hard even more meaningful.
Goal-setting and self-discipline walk side-by-side:
All this while, if you have focussed on getting your children to do well in academics, completely surpassing the need to prepare them for the future, you need to think again. At Delhi Public School Kangra, recognized among the best CBSE schools in Kangra district, we believe academics are just a small part of children’s being— something that doesn’t fully define them.
Instead, what truly defines them is what they make out of their lives. For them to be able to make the most of this, there is no looking away from goal-setting and self-discipline, which is one of the reasons why we chose this to be the topic of our blog post today. Here’s hoping this was a helpful read.