Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Best of 2023 #4 - #673 Family Goal Setting

Transcript

Best of 2023 #4 - #673 Family Goal Setting · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: The time poor parent who just once answers now All.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: This week on the Happy Families Podcast, as we count
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: down to Christmas, we're counting down our top five podcasts
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: of the year, the five podcasts that have been downloaded
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the most, listen to the most, and hopefully have had
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the most impact in your lives as we get ready
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: for Christmas. This one might be a bit of a
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: funny one to play because it's kind of a New
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Year's podcast, but the fourth most downloaded podcast on the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Happy Families podcast this year was all about family goal setting.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Kylie and I talked about a bunch of goals that
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: we were setting with the kids. Do you know what
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: we actually did reasonably well with a bunch of these.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: There was a couple that did not work out at all.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: But it's going to be a great refresher as we
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: move through Christmas and into January for how we can
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: set up effective goals with our kids. Please enjoy this
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: podcast about how to set goals with your family to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: kick off twenty twenty four in a powerful way. Kylie,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you're aware that our kids have set a fitness goal.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I actually set it at the end of last year.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: That's right. They've set the goal so that we can
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: fire up the year. Yeah, you get it going really well,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: but are you aware of what the goal is? Two
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of our kids have set a goal and it's specific.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: They know exactly what they're trying to achieve.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: They trying to run five k's.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: They're trying to run five k's. Yeah, so we've got
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: a couple of daughters who have acknowledged that their fitness
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: and health are not quite where they need to be.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: And I've sort of dropped the bombshell on myself. I've
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: eased right back on my fitness, my cycling, my big kilometers,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: and fancy writing.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It's not a surprise when you sign up to write
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: four books.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: But that's not why I've stopped the writing. I've really
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: stopped the writing because I want to support the girls
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: in their fitness habits and their improvements to their health.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: They want to run five k's and they want to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: get it under thirty minutes. So they want to run
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: six minutes per k or less, and they want to
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: do it by the end of the school holidays. So
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: for the last couple of weeks between three and four
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: times every single week we've been getting up, we've been
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: going for a run, and they're doing it.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I've been really proud of them because it's hard for them.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And in fact, at the dinner table the other night,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: one of the girls said to me, Dad, we were
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: doing grateful things. What are you grateful for? And she said, Dad,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I know that I winged and wined and cried and
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: complained and said I can't, but I'm really grateful that
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: you pushed me, because today I ran faster and further
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: than I had before. It was really cool. They're doing
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: hard things. So today in our Happy Families podcast, we
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: just want to take maybe three or four minutes, we
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: want to do this fairly briefly and talk about family
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: goal setting. What can you do as a family to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: set better goals? Handful of things that we want to
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: talk about, Kylie, I might get started depending on the
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: age of your children. My sense and certainly looking at
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: what research tells us is that any goal for a group,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: any goal for an organization, any goal for a team,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: and we can bring that into the family. Although I've
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: not seen research specifically on family contexts.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Do you know you have gray whiskers?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Stop it. We're doing a podcast. I can't believe you're
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: saying that I'll shave tomorrow. We can't let anybody know
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: family goals are going to be best, and stop looking
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: at me like that. This is I'm not trying to
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I'm having a serious conversation here. You don't usually have whiskers,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and I'm on holidays. Okay, I haven't.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Shaved whiskers, and I've just noticed.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I'm setting a goal to shave every day for the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: rest of them a lot. I believe you're doing this whiskers. Well,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: my hair is not great. My hair is not great,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So let's just focus on the hair and stop looking
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: at the whiskers, which I'll be shaving. I'm now trying
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: to do a podcast with my hand over my mouth.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: We've got to get buy in in fact bottom by.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: The way, I didn't say there was anything wrong with.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Their bottom up. You're trying to recover.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, I just noticed. Can we just rim
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: any great hair?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Can we just record the podcast? I know it's summer,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: but we still got to get a message across here.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Family goals are going to be best if they're developed
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: from the bottom up, not the top down. That is
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: when the kids have a really big voice in what
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: the found the goals are.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: It has to be buying. And the only way there's
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: buy in is they actually create it.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Right, unless we come up with an absolute cracker of
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: a goal that they are totally hooked on, like let's
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: save up and go to Disneyland or something like that.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Let's eat in a taler for Browns, that's not a goal.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: That's that's a habit we've got to get out of.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So Number One, family goals start best bottom up, And
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I think the best way to get a bottom up
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: conversation going about goals is to sit down with the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: kids and have one of those family meetings. We've talked
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: about it so many times on the podcast. We ask
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: three questions, what's going great, what's not going so well?
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: What should we focus on? And just by asking those
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: three questions, you're basically saying to the kids, all right,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: we're doing a whole lot of stuff really well, handful
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: of things that we can improve on. If we were
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: to improve on one or two of those things, what
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: would they be. And that's essentially where we've come to
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: with our kids' fitness goals. They've decided that health and
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: fitness needs to be a higher priority. I asked them
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: what they wanted in terms of their goals. They want
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: to be able to run five k's in less than
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: thirty minutes, and so now we're creating a system around
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: that to get to that goal. And that's pretty much it. Kylie,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: what else would you add to a conversation about how
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: to set family goals other than saying, hey, kids, what
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: do you think? And then how do we set up
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: a system around that?
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: I think one of the most important things when it
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: comes to goal setting is there needs to be accountability.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: There needs to be check in points or else where,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: just having a conversation about something that we'd like to
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: see happen. But there isn't any intention set on how
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: we can record progress, how we can actually acknowledge progress.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: And without the recognition of progress, it's really hard for
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: motivation to stay high and for our desires to continue
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: to improve.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and one of the challenges that you have is
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: when the kids set a goal, or when you create
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a family goal, the parents actually become the police. They
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: end up rousing on the kids if they're not doing
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: what they said that we're going to do because this
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: was the goal that we were committed and now you're
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: not doing it, and we feel like we have to
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: push the kids and make it happen. The sense of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: autonomy and the encouragement of I guess creating the structure
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: which gives the kids the scaffolding the support that they
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: need to be the instigators, the ones that are making
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: it happen themselves, really really essential.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: And when it comes to some big goals, like for
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: our girls, running is not has not actually been in
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: their vocabulary alone.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: They don't run, they just but they do now.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: But if we had have just said, okay, that's a
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: great goal, you need to get up and go and
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: do it on your own, chances are it wouldn't have happened.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I've had to give up my goal of being a
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: professional athlete. I've had to give up my cycling to
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: be involved. And this is I think the critical thing.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Your kids have got aspirations, and as a family, you've
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: got aspirations. Maybe it's saving up for a holiday or
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: going and doing a big hike, but the best way
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: to keep things moving, the best way for motivation to
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: be high is for number one, kids to feel like
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: they can reach it, Like they've got the capability, the
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: competence that can capacity to do it even if they
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: need a leg up, even if they need support. And
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: number two for them to be freely choosing it. But
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: there's a third thing that's even more important. This is
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: the one that you cannot do it without, and that
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: is involvement. I think the only reason that our girls
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: are now running around about three k's three and a
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: half k's without stopping and at a reasonable pace is
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: because for the last four weeks, whatever it's been, I've
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: been getting up with them and going for the run
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: with them and dragging them out of bed, and because
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: they've told me to do it, but I'm doing that.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: There's that level of involvement. It's the involvement that seems
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: to create the level of support that's necessary for them
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to get there. And then what happens is they start
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: to make progress, they start to see that it's happening,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and those little pieces of progress give them more inspiration
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: to get up again tomorrow and run again.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Well, each day you've done it, you've been able to
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: sit down with them and they've been able to look
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: at the stats.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: On Stria on their Strava up.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: And stuff and recognize and see that there's ebbs and flows.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Some days they actually are doing really well, and then
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: there are other days where they're just really flat, thethargic,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: lacking and energy, and it's hard work, but they can
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: see when they improve and that gives them such a
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: boost to want to keep trying.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: If you've got younger kids, setting goals is probably as
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: a family, not a huge deal other than to say, hey, kids,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: here's what we'd like to do. What do you think
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And it might be having a goal to go on
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: a holiday, or it could be to do something every
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Monday or every Saturday or whatever it is. You just
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: get the kids to say yes, and then you make
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: it happen and they'll go along with you because they're little.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: As they get older, though, once they're sort of north
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: of about eight nine ten years of age, that's when
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: these principles become really important. Obviously a lot more that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: we could talk about, but this is meant to be
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: a kickstarter. Hopefully your goal's going well for the new year.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Hopefully a family is feeling inspired to achieve something great
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: this year. We might have a podcast down the track
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and talk to you about what our family goals in
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: a few days time, but for now we hope that
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: this has been a little bit of inspo for your
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: parenting better for twenty twenty three. The Happy Family's podcast
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Tomorrow, we're going to have a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: conversation about the power of habit on The Happy Family's
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Podcast