If you have a goal for another person, you’ve made yourself a victim.
Salespeople, missionaries, church leaders, and parents are often found in frustrating positions because they have set goals, made plans, and formulated expectations for other people without the proper permission being granted.
When you set a goal for someone else, you violate his or her trust and expose yourself to disappointment. It is often a result of perceiving that you know what is best for the other person. In such cases, the achievement of said goal is more important to you than to the person.
Consider our Father in Heaven. How much does He want us to attain exaltation? Only He knows what it’s like to have perfect joy, yet He never sets our goals for us. He allows us to determine what we want, then after we covenant with Him, He holds us responsible for what we want. In that order.
It’s disappointing when our children, our youth, our customers, and our investigators don’t meet our expectations.
It’s rewarding when our children, our youth, our customers and our investigators set goals and expectations in harmony with God’s will and then give us permission to hold them accountable (help, assist, exhort, pray for, teach) for what they want.
When you allow your child, for example, to set his own goal, you parent from a position of neutrality because the child is motivated from within. The failure is less likely to occur because the original goal was an internal drive, not an external mandate, regardless of righteousness or eternal intent.
There is no need for persuasion, coercion, threat, leverage, manipulation, or anger when parenting from a neutral position because correct principles have been taught and the child is able to govern himself.
A truth told is a belief. A truth discovered is a truth.
Well, Rick my boy, this is one of the best articles I have read. Maybe it’s because it hit home more than the others. Keep up the good work. I sure do love you.
Thanks. I love you too, mom!
I would like to dialog more about this principle.
I’ve got a couple more posts that hopefully develop the principle a little more. This will give us a broader platform on which to dialogue.
This is a topic I have been pondering lately so the timing was perfect. It is a parent’s greatest desire to see her child set meaningful goals and push herself to develop in many areas. But what if a child has no desire to challenge herself and only wants to take the easy road? Would it then be the parent’s responsibility to provide and require some opportunities for development? Doesn’t Heavenly Father give us trials in order to help us grow?
Excellent question. Part of the parenting process is the skill of ‘Being Present.’ Sadly, dads, as a general rule, and some moms are ‘lost in space’ versus ‘Being Present.’
Being Present means you understand the essence of what makes your child tick. What fears does she have? What strengths does she possess? What keeps her up at night? What does she want to become when she grows up? What does she want to look like one year from today? Knowing the answers to these questions coupled with certain communication skills gives you the ability to create the proper space for learning, challenging, and growth with your child. In other words, you position yourself with a high probability of success versus a command control space.
If you don’t know these answers, then your child will not respond to challenges because the goals and challenges are your ideas and not hers. As a result, parents who are not present are frustrated with what appears to be apathy in their children. Perhaps it’s not apathy, but passive aggressive behavior as a way to avoid being controlled by a parent.
I still can’t see how knowing the answer to those questions, or “being present” changes a childs desire, or lack thereof, to set goals for herself. I wonder if sometimes there just needs to be some level of expectation and requirement…I’m not raising lazy kids if I can help it.
Because the child’s desire, as expressed to you the parent, is often a function of the space you create between you and the child. If the space is always about what the parent wants, the parent is constantly seeking agreement and the child will learn conditioned helplessness. By the same token, if the parent enables and rescues the child, a similar consequence should be expected.
Without a few in-depth discussions, it’s very difficult to accurately come to any conclusion about the root cause of your frustration.