Why is Goal Setting So Important?

Parents and campers alike often ask us why we put so much importance on goal setting.  The research on goal setting is clear: From Olympic athletes to top level businesspersons, those who set goals and develop realistic plans to achieve their goals are many times more likely to see their dreams come true.

Setting goals also gives us purpose in life, and achieving small goals each day to reach larger ones gives us motivation which can effect our mood and how we socialize and interact.  The more success we see, the more we want to keep working out our dreams.

The problem is that in modern society, adolescents and teens get caught up in daily distractions.  It’s a different world than what our parents grew up in.  In just a small handheld device like a phone you can access a world of information, and distraction, in the form of gaming, social media, pornography, and everything and anything a person can imagine.

At Summerland Camps we get our campers out of an isolative routine by engaging them in team challenges and behavioral groups where goal setting is discussed, along with other issues that are frequently co-occurring with excessive technology use.

We work with our camper on how to set goals, and how to break these goals down into daily digestible tasks.  This feeds into our systematic self-monitoring framework for behavioral change, which is also discussed in group.  Parents are informed about all of the interventions and their camper’s progress in implementing them during the family workshop in order to ensure the skills are transferred back to the home environment.