FOUR Actions to Strengthen your student’s success this year

 By now, your student(s) have been back in school for a week or several.  As you envision their school year, keep the following in mind:  The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.  Whatever you saw them do or not do last year will probably RECUR this year!  In addition – and this is a hard one for many people to believe – all behavior is successful – at living out ‘the script’ that’s in our heads, whether conscious, sub-conscious or other.  Hopefully these are successful behaviors.  But often, they can be self-defeating actions or self-fulfilling prophesies, etc. The ONLY exception to that explanation MAY be that they may simply don’t KNOW any other response.  But if you want your student to change, you have to change the results they experience.  [ACTION 1] The best way to achieve that is to alter or fine-tune their PROCESS.  [ACTION 2] You may (probably?) have to guide them, in explicit detail, in planning what and when they will do something – prioritize, plan, write it down.  Recent research regarding the teenage brain tells us their ability to balance and weigh priorities and thence to plan is weak, not fully formed and incomplete at this age.  That incomplete brain maturation also leads to easily forgetting what they were doing.L  [ACTION 3] Helping them plan toward big projects – and breaking the project into more do-able chunks, perhaps using a large wall calendar or such can be a great tool and strategy to help them see the bigger picture and then to guide their WEEKLY actions.  [ACTION 4] One secret which helps overcome several different issues is SMALLER & SMALLER.  Take any task and break it into smaller chunks. This diminishes procrastination, fear, avoidance, too little time, poor planning, etc.  It also increases the person’s self-confidence [self-confidence comes from repeated successes], hence increases their MOMENTUM toward the next step.  And the key is to ACT NOW. If you’ve seen a problem or weakness in the past, don’t wait until it mushrooms into major problems – begin the correction now.  And please report back on your results!  Steve Simons, Launch-Your-Life.com