Simple Tool for Students to Set Goals for 2024

➡️ DOWNLOAD THE GOAL SETTING ACTIVATION PLAN

Goal setting is a skill. It's a process that has to be practiced. So in this video, we're going to practice, together, setting goals for four major areas of your life: your body, your brain, your heart, and your soul.

Overcoming Skepticism About Goal-Setting

"Um, No. I don't believe in setting goals. I have tried and they don't work. So no thank you."

If that's you, let me gently and lovingly encourage you to give this a chance. Watch this video, do the exercise with us, set some goals, and then you can decide if you want to stick with them.

Preparing for the Goal-Setting Exercise

If you want to start 2024 strong and you want to maximize the second half of this school year, then download this PDF, print it out at home, and use it to follow along in the video. We're going to use this to set some goals for 2024. Let's do thissss!!!

The Purpose of Setting Goals

Beginning at the top of the sheet, we want to remember why we set goals. The purpose for setting goals is to grow. Personal growth is the point of setting goals. So you want to ask yourself, "How do I want to grow in all four areas of my life?" And those four areas of life are represented with this car, particularly the 4 tires of the car that all need to be filled in order to get you to where you want to go:

• your physical self (your body)
• your mental or intellectual self (your brain)
• your relational self--your relationships (your heart)
• your spiritual self and faith (your soul)

These are the four areas that we are going to set goals for, and I'm going to walk you through one at a time. 

YOUR Role in Goal-Setting

There's something I don't want you to overlook or to take for granted on this sheet, and that is the red star that is YOU. You are the driver of your "car of life." You have the honor, privilege, and blessing to get to make choices in every area of your life according to where you want to go in your life.

That might scare some of you. Some of you might be thinking, "I don't know where I'm going in my life. I'm just trying to get through my classes and pass them and get through the day."

That's ok. These exercises are how you START to decide where you want to go in your life. But if you never do this exercise, you never stop to pause and ask yourself, 

"What do I want for my physical health? What do I want for my intellectual health? What do I want for my relationships? And what do I want for my faith in God?"

...then you're always going to only wonder what you actually want. My prayer for you is to gain clarity through this goal-setting exercise. You're going to get a clearer idea of what you want for your body, your brain, your heart and your soul. 

Setting Goals for Your Physical Health

So let's start with your physical self, your physical health, your body. As you can see on the sheet, it specifies what I mean by body: your diet, what you're eating, your rest, your sleep, how much sleep are you getting, your level of exercise or physical activity, your personal hygiene, and everything in the area of your physical being.

Now ask yourself: what do you want for your physical health? What does growth look like in this area of your life? Don't think too hard. You should know pretty quickly how you want to improve your physical health--

Is it your diet? Is it your amount of sleep? Is it the amount of screen time that you've been allowing yourself to indulge in? A lot of my students that I work with in my Leadership Mastermind say, "yes, I'm on YouTube too much and it's creeping in on my homework time, and then I sleep too late."

Be specific: "I want to decrease my screen time to one hour. I want to be in bed by 10 p.m. I want to wake up by 6 a.m." The more specific or concrete you can be with your desired growth, the easier it is to know whether you've succeeded and know whether or not you're making progress.

Some of my students have said, "I want to get outside more. I don't have enough physical activity. I want to spend more time hitting golf balls with my dad or throwing the football in the backyard or shooting hoops in the backyard." What is it for you? How do you want to improve your physical health?

Maybe you need to cut out soda. Maybe you need to limit chips to just the small individual bags instead of opening, you know, a big bag of Doritos. You know what it is that you need to work on. So take a moment and ask yourself: "How do I want to grow my physical health this year?"

Important Tip: Atomic Actions

Now, one thing I want to mention before we get any farther is to remember to make your goals easy, make them manageable, make them small, instead of too big. It's really important that you experience success right away because if you don't experience success, you're going to give up. We call these "atomic" actions --  small, 1% actions that you can take on a consistent basis that will compound over time and multiply into the growth that you want in this area.

So instead of aiming for, "I'm going to wake up at 5 a.m. five days a week, change it to 'I'm going to wake up at 5:30 twice a week' or 'I'm going to wake up at 6 a.m. once a week.'" The key is to continue to tweak and revise these goals after you get started.

As you make progress, the goals that you are setting right now are not going to remain the same for all of 2024. You're going to experience progress and then you'll need to make changes. That's normal and to be expected. So right now, you are deciding on a starting point for each of these areas--not an end point. 

Setting Goals for Your Intellectual Growth

We are going to move on now to the second major area of your life and that is your intellectual or your academic life, your brain. This encompasses all the learning, all the creative acts in your life.

So it could be all the classes that you're taking, your sports, your music, your clubs; it could be all the skills that you're trying to gain right now. So what do you want to grow in your intellectual & academic life? What do you want to learn? What is something that would boost your self-confidence because you've become better at it?

It might be, "I really need to get a better grade in math. So my goal this semester is to go to office hours once a week to get extra help from my math teacher." Or it might be, "I would feel so much better about myself if I actually got involved on the drama team, if I actually auditioned for a part in the next school play. Even if I don't get the part, my goal is to go through the audition and to believe in myself enough to take this healthy risk." It might be, "I really need to manage my money. I have no money skills. I have no financial stewardship skills and I really want to grow in that area because I'm already a senior and pretty soon I'm going to have to start making money and investing money, saving money, giving money and I have no idea how to do all that. I really want to get started on that now, before I graduate from high school."

So think about what growth looks like in your area of skill acquisition or trying something new that you've always wanted to try and just haven't done yet. It could be learning the guitar or learning how to cook. It could be taking an extra class at the community college. It could be starting a business, developing a website. All these are creative acts that require you to gain new skills. Pick something small, something manageable, something you can knock out in the next couple of weeks. And then tweak it after you've done those small actions. Add the next small action and do that incrementally over the next several months. That's how you get there 1% at a time.

Setting Goals for Your Relationships

So far, we've covered your body and your brain. Now we are at the heart level of your life. This is my favorite level. It's the relationships in your life. So think about all the people in your life or all the people you want to be in your life.

This is exciting because this is where you get to decide: "Who do I want to get to know? Who do I want to invest in? Which relationships do I want to still be there, thriving and healthy in the next 5 or 10 years? Which relationships need to grow?"

It could be either your mom or your dad, or your guardian, or a grandma, or an auntie. It could be a cousin; it could be a sibling. Maybe your relationship with your siblings has drifted over the last semester and it's time to bring it back together and spend some bonding time very intentionally to reconnect with your brother or your sister. Maybe it's a friend--maybe one of your relationships is breaking down right now. Maybe you're drifting and you know that if you don't do something about it, you're eventually just going to drift apart and not have each other as friends anymore.

And this is the time you get to decide, "Enough is enough. I need to take action. I need to set a goal to text her or text him today." That's how you drive your life. That's how you take charge. That's how you steward the time on this earth that God has given to you. That's how you take care of the people that God has put in your life.

So which relationships do you need to pay attention to? Now?

One very important relationship that you cannot overlook right now as you evaluate all the relationships in your life is your relationship with yourself. Did you know that you are the one that talks to yourself the most throughout the day? So take a moment now and ask yourself, "How have I been talking to myself? What are the words that I've been saying to myself? Are they positive? Are they encouraging? Are they supportive? Are they compassionate? Are they loving words that build me up? Or are the words that I say to myself put-downs? Are they mean words? Are they negative words that have a negative tone? Are they words of discouragement? Do I beat myself up in my head? How have I been treating myself? Am I a good friend to myself or have I been my own enemy?"

If you haven't been treating yourself well, maybe your goal is to stop the negative thoughts. You have the power and the control to stop the thought. If it's not positive, if it's not edifying, if it's not glorifying to God, and it's not reflective of the image of God that He put in you, your goal can simply be to stop the thought - to take every thought captive.

Tell yourself, "When I hear a negative thought creeping in, I'm going to replace it with the truth of who I am in Christ. I am loved, accepted, forgiven. I am holy. I am blameless in Christ and in Christ, I am enough."

Setting Goals for Your Spiritual Life

We have covered your body, your brain, your heart. And now we are at the last area of your life, which is your soul, your spiritual life, which I personally think is super important that too many teens overlook.

You are here to ask yourself, "How do I want to grow in my faith? What kind of relationship with God do I actually want? What can I do to grow toward that kind of relationship with God?" So think about your prayer life: Are you content with your prayer life--the amount you pray, the kinds of prayers that you pray. Do you want to improve your prayer life?

Think about your devotional life: Do you read the Bible? Do you have thinking time -- quiet time when you can just be, when your devices are off and you can be still and remember how big God is and how loved you are?

Do you have theological questions that you want answered? Maybe there's a burning question that you just really need to pursue the answer to: "Is the Bible true? Does God actually hear me when I talk to him? Is Jesus actually the Son of God, like he said he was? Are people chosen by God? Are they elected by God or do they choose God?" Ask yourself, "What question is holding me back from getting more serious about my faith? What question is holding me back from trusting God more? What's holding me back from surrendering more of myself to God? What area of my life am I having a hard time surrendering to God?"

This is the portion of this exercise where you get to decide: What kind of Christian do you want to be? And what can you do about it, proactively?

So you might say, "I want to pray every night before I go to bed. But let's start with Mondays and Tuesdays." "I want to write in my journal once a week to just list all the blessings that God gave me that week, to share with God all the desires of my heart, all the things on my mind. I want to take a few minutes to just write them in a bullet point list in my journal." Maybe, "I want to go to youth group twice a month," or maybe, "I need to change my attitude toward church. I'm going to replace a negative attitude with a positive attitude. It's not, I have to go to church. It's I get to go to church."

These are small actions that will compound over time and multiply into growth. So ask yourself, "What do I want for my spiritual life? What kind of Christian do I want to be? What is something manageable that I can do about it?"

One Last Question

Congratulations! You've made it through all four major areas of your life. Now, we're going to wrap this up at the bottom of the worksheet. Last question: If you can't act on all four areas of your life right now and you had to choose just ONE, which one area is the most important? Which one area - body, brain, heart, or soul - do you feel most motivated to work on right now? 

What is that one area? Then ask yourself, "how do I want to grow in this area?" You should have begun to answer that question in this section. But here's your opportunity to make sure that how you want to grow is SMART: specific, measurable, actionable, relevant for this season of your life right now, and time-bound.

So you're going to work on it for, let's say the next month. OK. So make sure that how you want to grow in this one area is smart specific measurable, actionable, relevant and time-sensitive. And then we're going to do one last one last thing and then you will be done. You will have what you need to start the new year strong.

To wrap this up, you want to turn that one area that you picked out of the four that is the most important for you to work on right now and turn it into a "transformation statement." Just fill in the blanks at the bottom of the sheet: This school year, "I intend to grow from [what is the current condition of the chosen area] to [desired condition], so that [benefits of the desired transformation]."

So let's say you chose the area of your academics. Let's say you're currently not happy with yourself because you're being lazy or you're not being self-disciplined. Maybe you know you're not trying your hardest with your homework or in studying for a certain class. So you could write, "I intend to grow from a undisciplined student in math to... and then describe your desired condition of your desired area of growth."

So "I want to grow from an undisciplined student in math to a responsible a student in math." The big goal is to get an A in a class that you currently don't have an A in. Why? What are the benefits of getting an A in math? Now write the results that are beneficial to you or to others.

If you were to accomplish that goal, what is the benefit of working toward that goal? So in this case, if you get an A in math, that would boost your GPA to, say, make youi more eligible for the college that you want to go to. You want to boost your GPA and it's math that's lowering your GPA.

It could be that you want to apply for a scholarship and you need to get a better grade in not Math, but English.

It could be that you want to apply to an internship program this summer and you need a recommendation letter from the teacher in your Science class.

You know why you want this goal, what is at stake and why it matters to you. This is your opportunity to bring all those benefits to mind.

Goals are simply the means for you to get those greater benefits on the other side of the accomplishment -- on the other side of these goals, and that's why we set goals. Goals are the means to your purpose, to your calling, to accomplishing fulfilling your life's mission. And that's what you all want is to ultimately do what God has put you here to do, right? And the way that you do that is by living intentionally in every area of your life. 

Pray and Seek Motivation

Congratulations for going through this exercise! If you're one of those people who just went through the exercise because you took up the challenge and you don't know if you're going to actually execute on any one of these goals you set, let me encourage you to pray. Ask God to give you the motivation, the strength, the ability, the capacity to take action on 1, 2, 3, or all 4 of these areas of your life that you have thought through and set some goals for. You just want to do what God wants you to do, but you won't know what God is calling you to do unless you pray and ask Him. So be open-minded, be teachable. Goals are only going to benefit you. They're not going to hurt you.

The reason we have shifty relationships with goals is because simply we haven't practiced them enough; we give up too quickly, too easily. And so I'm going to be the one telling you again and again not to give up, set new goals, try again, set better goals, make them smaller, make them more actionable and manageable, and they will benefit you by one at a time getting you where God wants you to go.

GET THE PRINT-AT-HOME WORKSHEET & WATCH THE VIDEO

So if you want to start 2024 strong and you want to maximize the second half of this school year, then go to the description of this video and download this PDF, print it out at home and use it to follow along in the video.

Brenda Jung, Christian Leadership Mentor for Students