Visualing a goal, evoking the emotional response within and taking the necessary action (whether it be aquiring the knowledge and skills or doing something physical) are all of the necessary ingredients to achieve a particular goal.
In fact all leading sports men and women do this. I remember reading about one of Australia’s very best runners, Cathy Freeman, who won Gold in the 1994 Canadian Commonwealth Games in both the 200m and 400m races. Cathy began her preparation for the 200m race two years earlier.
Every day she trained and visualized the race in her mind. Her visualization included every detail of the race from what she was wearing, the lane she was in and how she would run the race from start to finish. She even pictured the time she would get and how much it was to beat the second place getter. She was so mentally prepared that she had no doubts at all that she had the gold in the bag.
Cathy Freeman winning the 200 Olympics
Cathy Freeman winning gold.
She had already won in her mind. As it turned out she ran the race perfectly with every detail of the race being as it was in her mind. She is a living legend!
Imagine if our kids were able to muster up that sort of determination and self belief! It would make anything possible for them. So our kids needed to see a real purpose in the kids enterprise project that they were embarking on. Without a real purpose that they could believe in, they would not have the steam to see it through.
Before we even considered kids enterprise ideas, I asked them to think of something that they would like to buy with the profits they were going to make from their enterprise businesses. It had to be something that they really wanted and something that they realistically believed they would be able to achieve.
Coming up with ways to spend the money was easy, even though at this stage they still had no idea what enterprise project they would be doing. But that didn’t matter. The Laws of the Universe would ensure that it all worked out. All they needed to do was establish a realistic goal that they could believe in with certainty. If the kids wanted their goal bad enough, and focused on what they needed to do to get that money, then the enterprise would be fruitful.
Once the kids had a visual on what they wanted, the next stage was to convert it into a dollar amount. I made a stipulation that their first enterprise idea may not completely reach the whole monetry target they had set for themselves, but it had to at least be able to pay my $100 back + $1. This we called ROI (or Return On Investment). Future enterprise ideas could contribute to the children realising the rest of their financial goal.
Finally, they needed to set an end date for the completion of their enterprise.
Amber's Vision Board. Click to view her explaining
Flynn's Vision Board. Click his photo to view him telling about his goals.
Chayse wants Nerf Guns! Click this photo to hear Chayse and Kit tell about their vision boards.
The kids jumped onto the computer to find images of the things they wanted to buy when they had made the money. These were printed and each of the kids constructed vision boards which I laminated (to make them special and long lasting). The vision boards are now stuck on their walls in their bedrooms where our little “enterprising team” can look, dream, think and evoke the visual pictures into their subconscious.
In the next blog we’ll take you through the process of how the kids came up with each of their “kids’ enterprise ideas.” See you then!
