The Power of a Plan
Hit the pause button on your busy daily grind and give yourself and your family one special dinner (home cooked or store bought, don’t stress) and take the moment to connect. Put your cell phone away, take off your apple watch and instead add one special element to your dinner, maybe candles, flowers, or jiving music. The point here is to draw attention to the specialness of coming together for an official family meeting. As you dive in to scrumptious food pose a few questions to your family such as What does it mean to be in our family? What makes our family unique? and Should our family focus on having more fun or doing activities that matter to us?
I promise that these questions and more will spread the most beautiful fire of ideas, especially if you allow your children to drive the conversation. The goal here is simple, connect.
How many times have you said to yourself, I wish I had more time, I wish we could do x,y,z? These are my daily thoughts with my family and perhaps you find commonality. Today, I am reminded of the wise words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Today I invite you to lean in and create a plan with your family and get one step closer to a wish realized.
How to do this? We’ve got a tool to guide you through, the newly minted Family Badge found in Journey Tracker’s brand new Family Studio, ta da!
Think this will be too much work? Here’s a short pro/con list of making a family plan if you are skeptical and here’s 4 easy ways to get started:
1. Have dinner 2. Make dinner special out of your normal routine 3. Ask your family to think of one or two things they wish for your family to do together and one thing they wish for themselves. 4. Write or draw the ideas and you are done (a rough sketch or sticky note works well).
After you hear everyone’s ideas and goals allow the days after to unfold. Will you remember, will you remind, will your family make plans? This is the practice of intentionality. Intentionality is practiced by your learner at Acton every day. If you wish it and still want it after a few days walk one step closer and begin your plan, your Family Plan full of identity and group and individual goals.
This session learners have been practicing setting short and long term goals. For Spark learners they have a boat to symbolize what goal they want to sail towards and Discovery learners have been setting daily Core Skills goals and crafting S.M.A.R.T. goals. The power of having a plan can be a game changer, in fact yesterday one new Discovery learner embraced setting his own routine schedule and magic happened. Without a plan he was lost but with a plan he gained purpose and pride. This week another learner in Discovery proposed a promise for her studio “I promise to plan before I take action.” After she proposed this for the studio to try all heads nodded and hands voted it in.
Meet, plan, work, love, refine, support, celebrate, and love once more. This is the process of a well oiled and intentional family that lives each moment regardless of the dirt or the glitter. To honor my own vulnerability I’ll share my personal family goal here: My goal is to work less at home and play more. This is tough for me, but balance is necessary and my daughter is holding me accountable, her relentless and observant honesty is why I love her even more.