Learning to align actions with goals is a hallmark of maturity.
But it’s not as easy as we adults sometimes make it out to be. Lots of parents and educators might shout, “Make better choices,” but if a young person hasn’t taken all the necessary steps, it’s just not very easy.
- Codify and understand your goals. How can you align actions with goals if you don’t know what your goals are?
- Learn through experience how choices affect outcomes. If you don’t know what consequences choices have, how can you know what choices to make? Unfortunately, consequences are often oblique and more unfortunately, many of us learn only when we’ve experiences consequences ourselves.
- Take actions that will guide us toward your goals. Now that you know what you want to do, and how you can get there, you have to choose in the moment to go in that direction. It takes a lifetime to master that skill; there are so many personal, societal, and technological pressures to take other actions.
Take these steps, and you can start to take actions that consistently align with your goals. And even then, there won’t be a time in your life when this will be smooth and seamless. It always takes work.