Last year my son turned 10 and it hit me like a pound of bricks that he is growing up fast, and my time with him as a kid is slipping away. Life gets so busy and chaotic that it’s easy to fall into the rut of “One day we’ll take that trip” or “Someday I’ll teach my son that” or whatever it is. We all have the ‘One day’ or ‘Some day’ scenarios in our lives. You have to be deliberate in life and set clear goals to make progress and get out of the rut of “one day”.
A father son goal is a desired result that a father and son envision, plan and commit to achieve within a period of time by setting deadlines. An example of a father son goal could be to run a marathon together in 3 months. By setting the goal with your son it not only teaches your son to follow through, but it will deepen the relationship between you and your son.
A lot of people set goals based off of other peoples goals, or they set goals that don’t have a clear path forward for success. There is actually quite a bit that goes into creating a goal that you can achieve. Below is some great information on the importance of setting goals with your son and advice on how to set a goal and crush it.
Why Set Father Son Goals?
Goals in general are an important part of being human. The path towards a goal may not always run smoothly, and we may not always follow through with them. If I would have followed through with all of my goals in my life I would have a six pack right now and would be on a sugar free diet.
However, it’s important to set goals whether big or small and work towards achieving them. It is part of what makes life good. I have four amazing kids and last year our house had an unfinished basement. My wife and I set the goal to have the basement finished before Christmas.Part of the kids Christmas would be unveiling their new rooms to them Christmas morning.
We did almost all of the work in the basement ourselves. There were many late nights and early mornings, but we made it in time for Christmas morning. It felt so good seeing the look on my kid’s faces as they saw their new rooms.
It seemed daunting at first, thinking about everything that needed done, when there were just cement walls. But I focused on one area at a time. By doing that I could have little celebrations when each task was completed. It was a lot easier to tackle the goal in little slices versus taking on the huge goal.
Take the example I gave earlier about running a marathon with your son. If you’re like me and you don’t run, then running a marathon would be a huge goal. You need to set smaller goals that work towards the bigger end goal.
This could be exercising daily with your son and increasing the time or the intensity of the exercise each week. By accomplishing the goal each week and moving forward you should celebrate those little wins as you move toward the bigger end goal.
By the time you reach your bigger goal of running a marathon, you will have spent countless hours bonding with your son, even when your were tired from work, worn down, and the last thing on earth you wanted to do was exercise, but you did it anyway. By going through this together your father son bond will have grown immensely.
Looking back on the memories I have with my father the times that I went through something hard are the first ones that come to my mind. In life the harder the task we accomplish the more memorable the experience will be.
When you set a goal with your son and accomplish it your son will definitely remember that experience. It will also give your son the confidence to know that it’s possible to achieve hard goals. Setting father and son goals will not only improve your father son relationship but it will also teach your son to crush goals and help him grow into a successful man.
How to Set a Father Son Goal?
You shouldn’t let anyone tell you what goals you should set with your son. Every person and every father son relationship is vastly different. It’s important that you and your son come up with your own goals.
If you copy another persons goal, or someone tells you a goal you should do then your heart won’t truly be in it and you may not even think the goal is possible deep down. You will be doomed for failure right from the beginning.
You need to sit down with your son and discuss the things that you would like to accomplish, and discuss with him the things that he would like to accomplish. It’s important that you take into account his goals and help him to make them a reality.
This way you both have ownership in the goals. The goal that you set should be measurable and have a deadline. If you just set a goal with no deadline then you will get stuck into the ‘One day’ rut.
1. Brainstorm Your Father Son Goal
To start you need to decide something you want to work towards. It doesn’t really matter what it is as long as it is something you and your son really want to do. My advice for the first goal you set would be to start with a small goal that is simple to achieve. By completing a simple goal you will be building a goal muscle and the bigger goals will come more easily.
The goal could be to run a mile, or to help your son earn enough money to buy a toy he wants. Whatever the goal is just try to start out with a simpler goal at first and build up from there.
2. Put It On Paper
After you have picked out your goal with your son then write down your goal. Write them down carefully in a way that you will know when you have reached your goal, and when you want to achieve your goal by. Ask each other what will it look ‘like’ and how will it ‘feel’ when you’ve reached your goal. Make the goal specific such as, “we want to run the Grand Teton Relay in August,” rather than “we want to run a marathon”.
3. Tell Someone
Once you have your goal written down you should tell someone about your father son goal. You could tell your wife or coworkers what you plan to do, and your son could tell some of his friends at school. Knowing that someone else knows about your father son goal will help you and your son achieve your goal.
4. Start Your Father Son Goal
Now that you have your goal written down and you’ve told someone about your goal its time to get started. This is a critical part of every goal. Sometimes it’s easy especially with big goals to look at the Mt. Everest you have before you and not know where to start.
Even if you don’t know how to do the goal that you’ve set for yourself and your son that’s no excuse. You have a wealth of information at your finger tips that will tell you everything you need to know about your goal. The internet is full of information and people that will help you reach your goal.
Last summer my son asked me to buy him a hover board. We went on a trip to his cousin’s house and they had a couple that he really liked riding. I told him that I wouldn’t buy him a hover board, but I would help him earn some money so he could buy one for himself. We then came up with a battle plan of how we were going to earn the money.
We set a goal to earn 350 dollars for the hover board by picking worms and selling them to a local fishing bait shop. Our goal was to earn the money in one month. We could get 4 dollars for every pound of worms we picked. That month we picked over 80 pounds of worms and my son was able to purchase his balance board.
He cared a lot more about the hover board because he put in the work to get the board, and we got to spend a lot of late nights together with flashlights picking worms. There were a lot of days where I didn’t want to go pick worms because I had work the next day, but my son’s drive kept me going.
There were other nights where he would want to quit for whatever reason and I kept him motivated to keep going. We fed off of each other while we were accomplishing the goal. This made it easier to achieve our goal.
5. Keep Pushing
Don’t give up once you’ve started the goal! It’s a piece of cake to get going with a goal, but it’s a lot harder to keep going. I don’t know how many times I’ve set a goal to work out and after a couple days I’ll think to myself, “well I don’t have to work out every day.” After a couple weeks go by I’ve completely stopped working out.
If you’re caught in a step or struggling to keep going ask someone for help. Think of something you could do different to make it better, but still achieve your goal. Bottom line is don’t give up keep pushing! Great accomplishments take hard work to achieve. You can do it! In the end when you and your son have crushed a goal together it will be totally worth it!
6. Celebrate Your Achievement
When you reach your goal take the time to celebrate your success and especially acknowledge your son’s success. Tell them how much you love them, and how awesome they are for pushing hard and accomplishing their goal. The next step is to start working on your next goal with your son.