Overcoming Obstacles to Your Goals

Laura Rolands of My Attention Coach

In order to achieve your goals, you often need to overcome obstacles.  In fact, those obstacles can very often derail your goals.  Identifying obstacles ahead of time is key to your success.

Think about a family goal you have.  Don’t have family goals?  Set them up using this advice from Polly:  http://www.familieswithpurpose.com/family-goals.html

Once you have identified a goal and what you need to do to achieve it, brainstorm what might get in your way.  For example, if your goal is a financial one, other spending priorities might become obstacles.  In order to overcome this obstacle, start by brainstorming solutions as a family.

Examples include:

• Take that vacation next year instead of this year to have more time to save money.
• Eat out less – pack lunches, plan menus ahead of time.
• If saving for something longer term, set up small automatic deposits into a dedicated savings account and increase the amount over time.

After you have brainstormed your solutions, make a decision as to what will work for your family.  Making these decisions ahead of time and together will help you stick to your goal and ultimately to achieve it.

To help you get started in your brainstorming, here are a few potential obstacles and ways to overcome them:

• Worried about forgetting your goals?  Make a picture and post it in a prominent place where everyone will see it every day.
• Wondering if everyone will buy into the goal?  Setting the goals as a family can help to overcome this obstacle.
• Not committed to the goal?  Change the goal.  State it positively and make sure you are motivated to achieve it.

These are just thought starters.  Plan a brainstorming session with your family.  Grab sticky notes or a flip chart and start identifying obstacles and solutions!

What obstacles do you have?  Let’s brainstorm together – share your ideas here!

Laura Rolands is the founder of LSR Coaching and Consulting, LLC. She is a coach whose passion is to support, lead and inspire independence and success for people who have either been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD or who are facing other attention-related challenges. Her clients include individuals with attention-related challenges and/or their parents. If you have any questions or more suggestions to add, please visit her website at www.MyAttentionCoach.com.

High Expectations = Responsible Adults

By Susan Heid of The Confident Mom

“As adults, we must ask more of our children than they know how to ask of themselves.”   -Dawna Markova PhD., researcher, author

It has become clear to me as I am raising 3 – well…. now hopefully 4 adults, that high but realistic expectations are essential to raising successful adults. With one child about to graduate and move forward with life outside the home, I am so grateful that I listened to my gut and mothering intuition instead of those around me who perhaps were asking me if I was expecting too much.

Parents who set high expectations usually see their children rise to their level of expectation. So setting the standards at high but achievable levels will cause children to step up even further.  I have always taken this approach and have encouraged my children to reach higher because I felt I knew what they were actually capable of accomplishing.

I saw this over and over again – by setting the bar higher it gave my children something to shoot for instead of just being “average.”  (Although there is nothing wrong with average if your child is giving their best).

I am in complete agreement with the philosophy that when a parent’s expectations are low for a child, the child senses it and then behaves accordingly.

High expectations move children forward, even if they don’t always succeed

When we have high expectations of our children, we are essentially saying, ‘I trust you, I think you are a responsible person, I can count on you.’ When a child gets this message over and over again, chances are good they will live up to our expectations.  Children tend to strive to reach those expectations.

This approach actually encourages future goal setting as your child gets older and needs to learn to self-manage. The process of setting goals (or expectations) and failing to meet them as well as succeeding is something I certainly want my children to experience in the loving environment of our home first, before they are cast into the outside world and bombarded with negativity.

Recognize successes

When those small steps happen – celebrate them.  When kids make progress toward those high expectations, let them know you are pleased.  Give praise specifically – don’t just give a “good job”, let them know exactly what you saw in them that resulted in their success.  “You truly put forth extra effort on study for that test, that must have taken some perseverance.” When you can specifically identify a character or choice your child made the praise is received and you are making a deposit into your child that will hopefully increase with interest!

Learn from setbacks

Have you ever had a failure?  Were you able to learn something from that failure?  We can teach our children the same lesson as we help them address the setbacks and the failures. Handling them in a positive light by seeing how we can learn from the mistake and not make it again will give them a critical skill to get through life.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Encourage your child to examine the situation and look for other actions or choices they could have made in order to make that particular situation a successes.  Do not just tell them what they could have done; ask questions to encourage them in developing problem solving skills.

Children, especially our own, rarely learn from lectures.  Notice how when you start talking to your child their eyes glaze over?  You have great wisdom as a parent, but your child cannot see this. Instead of spewing out a lot of information about how you would have handled a situation, throw out a question to your child.

“What could have you done differently?” or “What are you going to do about that?”

The first time you ask this you may get an “I don’t know.”  But the more you ask using a kind and concerned approach, the more willing your child will be to take a look at situations and examine them.

Start early

Even when your children are very small you can give high expectations.  Do you expect good manners at the dinner table from your 3 year old?  If not, when do you think you will start?  By starting at an earlier age and giving high but realistic expectations for their age and development you will allow them to strive to reach those earlier.

If you do not have high expectations of them, thinking they cannot sit at the table on their bottom to eat their dinner or not throw their food, they certainly will pick up on that and fulfill your prophesy.  Come at it from the other angle and work toward a higher goal.

I came across a wonderful resource to help parents determine areas where they could set higher expectations and encourage their child to learn to be more independent.   It is called, “The Plan – Training Children to Be Independent” by Merrilee Boyack.

When you encourage independence in your child you ultimately create responsible adults.  Feel free to download your copy and take some time to examine some areas you could help your child focus on and set some expectations.

Susan Heid loves inspiring Christian moms to make small changes managing their home and family life giving them more time, order and less stress! As a Certified Parent Coach and Family Manager Coach she enjoys sharing her expertise with moms through workshops, teleseminars, public speaking, and individual and group coaching.  She is a proud mom, step-mom and foster mom to 3, married to her very own prince charming, loves coffee, cloudy days, and does think the “bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle.”  Make sure you get a copy of her FREE ebook, “Getting Kids to Cooperate and Become Team Players.”

Don’t Neglect Your Basement

By Jennifer Ascher of Organizing without Limits

The basement is probably one of the most neglected spaces in a home. It often ends up being a catch all for items that are not being used nor have a home in the main living area, but did you know that the basement if organized properly and efficiently can actually become a functional part of your home. Here are some helpful tips to get you started.

Sort it:

Just like with any organizing project the first step is to sort thru what you have and decide what you are keeping, what is trash and what can be donated.  This is often the most difficult and longest part of the whole organizing process. As you sort here are some things to think about.

• How often do I use this item or better yet when was the last time I used it.
• Am I keeping too many of one thing? Do you really need to 10 pieces of luggage when you only use 2 or how about boxes upon boxes of Christmas decorations?

Take Inventory:

After you have sorted and purged all your items. Now is the time to take inventory of what you have and start thinking about the type of storage you will need to house the items that are left. I strongly recommend investing in clear heavy plastic totes.  Make sure to group like items together and clearly label each bin so you know what’s in them. Always place the label on the side of the bin and not on the lid. Since basements are prone to flooding never ever use cardboards boxes to store items.

Zones and Shelving:

Shelving is critical when it comes to organizing your basement, but before you run out and go hog wild buying them, make sure to do a walk through your basement and decide where you want to install them, remember  not everything needs to be stored on shelves some items can be hung up from rafters.  Also when determining where to put items, think about how often they are used and store them in such a way that you can get to them easily. To avoid a safety hazard make sure your shelving and items are not too close to the water heater, furnace and so forth. Metal shelving is the best for basements. Not only is it affordable and easy to assemble but they withstand heat and humidity better than wood. They are also less likely to get ruined if your basement floods.

Once you get it organized, in order to keep it that way don’t put items in the basement unless you know that they will be used. Avoid putting things in there to “deal” with later. Later never comes.

Jennifer Ascher is a Professional Organizer and owner of Organizing Without Limits. It is her belief that organizing goes beyond pantries, closets or even time management.  It’s about taking control of your WHOLE LIFE.

Organizing Without Limits provides organizing solutions to transform your life and offers both hands-on and virtual organizing services. You can reach Jennifer at http://www.organizingwithoutlimits.com

Free Family Easter Planner

This free family Easter planner has checklists, do lists, and resources to help you get ready for the Easter holiday.  It is in pdf format, so will require that you have Adobe Reader installed.  Enjoy!

St. Patrick’s Day Family Fun Ideas

By Beth Engelman and Jenna Riggs of Mommy on a Shoestring

St Patrick’s Day is around the corner and that can mean only one thing, it’s time for some family fun! Read more