Goal setting for teens is essential for achieving success in life. Remember, it’s a process – it simply doesn’t happen all at once. But by setting meaningful goals in your teenage years, you can start the process of building what you want to achieve, creating the life you want to live, and watching your ambitions come to fruition.
Here, we’ll explore how the goal-setting process can help
Project Eden has outpatient counseling for teens and their families. Learn more about Project Eden at Horizon Services.
The Importance of Goal-Setting for Teens
Goal-setting for teens isn’t just about reaching the endpoint. Learning to set goals and work diligently toward them can teach you essential life skills that help you in nearly every aspect of your life.
Setting goals and working toward them can teach you skills and values such as:
- Problem-solving
- Resilience
- Patience
- Determination
- Self-confidence
When you create goals for yourself, you acknowledge that some things are currently out of your reach, but also that you can achieve them when you put in the effort. But in order to see your goals and ambitions become reality, you need to learn the strategies for effective goal setting.
Setting SMART Goals
Setting a SMART goal is a formula for success. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound, which make up the core components of making goals that will truly have an impact on your life and won’t leave you feeling let down or demotivated.
Each of these aspects is critical in goal-setting for teens:
S: Specific
First, the goal you set must be as specific as possible. If you’re a track and field athlete, for instance, making a goal such as “I want to get faster at running” is too vague to get you good results.
A specific goal would be that “I want to improve my mile time by 30 seconds in the next two months.” This provides you with a clear indication of when you’ve met your performance goals and can help you maintain your motivation throughout the process.
M: Measurable
Measurable goals make the process of tracking your progress much simpler. When setting personal goals, think about how you’ll determine whether you’re making progress, what the endpoint of the goal means in terms of your measurements, and how you’ll track progress over time.
In the example of the track athlete, seconds are the measurement that determines improvement. Once they’ve met the goal of improving by 30 seconds, their goal is complete.
A: Achievable
While it’s great to be ambitious, realistic goals are attainable goals. When you’re creating a goal for yourself, think about what realistic progress would look like within the time frame that you’ve set for yourself.
Challenging goals can be great, but if you set the bar too high you may find yourself demotivated if you don’t succeed.
R: Relevant
Keeping your goals relevant means considering how your goal fits into your life. It might not make sense to set a goal of learning to ski if you live in the desert or to learn to surf if you don’t live near the beach.
But if you want to become a scientist, then setting goals to improve your grades in mathematics may be appropriate and relevant.
T: Time-Bound
Try to set a time limit for when you hope to accomplish goals. SMART goals work best when you create a plan to complete goals within months, rather than years.
Long-term ambitions, such as career goals, are important to keep in mind too – but the time frame for these goals makes it easy to push off the work of achieving them until tomorrow, next week, or even years down the road.
If you want to set more long-term goals, make sure to break them into actionable steps that you can make real progress towards within shorter periods.
Creating a Growth Mindset
The goal-setting process isn’t just to help you achieve goals – it’s to show you what’s possible when you put in the effort. Psychologists refer to this as a growth mindset or the belief that hard work can result in meaningful progress, rather than believing that your abilities are fixed in place.
When you’re achieving goals, making plans for the future, and striving toward your ambitions, you come to understand what you’re truly capable of. You may even find that setting achievable goals will help you learn to enjoy the process, which is the most critical component of fulfillment and long-term success.
Project Eden helps teens find a better way forward. Learn more about Project Eden at Horizon Services.
