Goal Setting, just like Life, is like a puzzle. How do children learn? Watch them learn to put a puzzle together. It is similar to how people organize their life. Life is just a bunch of puzzle pieces until it meets some form of structure. Life is blurry until we begin to develop a clear picture / vision of what our life could / should become.
My granddaughter’s paternal grandmother related a story of how my granddaughter learned to put puzzles together. It was an interesting process. As we talked we began to realize how similar puzzle pieces, a puzzle board and a puzzle picture related to how children put their lives together.
Here’s the summary: The individual puzzle pieces have no meaning. The Empty puzzle board really has no meaning because it is empty. Once the pieces are placed in the puzzle board they have meaning when placed on top of an image.
My granddaughter was attracted to the puzzle pieces; she picked up a piece with a lady bug on it. Her grandma placed the picture in the puzzle frame, and asked, “do you see a lady bug”? She looked at the picture and pointed to the lady bug. Together they placed the puzzle piece on the board. She then found another puzzle piece that attracted her, looked for the same image on the puzzle and placed it on the puzzle. The Process Became: attracted to color, shape or image and then place the piece on the puzzle.
Life is very similar: The puzzle pieces represent the necessities, activities, interests, and attractions in life. The puzzle image (picture) is how life could / should be in the future. The empty puzzle board represents life with no vision -- which is where we all start out.
Kids choose activities which interest / attract them; they try them out to see how they fit. Sooo, these puzzle pieces represent the necessities, activities, interests and attractions in their life at every age. Children fill their puzzle board of life with pieces that can look like this while they are figuring out life.
Some pieces are connecting, others not quite finding their proper place and of course there are empty spaces to be filled until one day (days, weeks, months, years)
from somewhere as we learn about a concept called Goal Setting.
A goal can be like a Big Blurry Picture or vision of something specific you want to be, accomplish, own, or invent.
The more specific, refined, defined and clear the vision of what could be or should be, the more focused decision making becomes. The clearer the vision, the fewer the options, which makes decision making easier.
I want to be __________________. It looks like _________________________. It requires hours of study; I will have to be punctual, be alert in class, courteous and professional in my manner and dress. All those have to’sssssss eliminate attractive options. If the goal is serious, I won’t have time to hang with people whose vision is non-existent or very, very blurry.
And they all lived happily ever after.
