#10: The Easiest Method for Parents to Teach Their Young Adults How to Set Goals and Plan for the Future

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Goal setting and future planning are some of the most valuable life skills you can teach your young adult. In this episode of Launch, we explore why these skills are so impactful and how they can shape a young adult’s path toward independence, confidence, and resilience. Setting goals gives your young adult direction, motivation, and purpose—key qualities for navigating life’s uncertainties. When they learn how to focus their energy, manage their priorities, and make intentional choices, they’ll feel empowered to take control of their future, even when the path ahead seems unclear. Future planning builds on this foundation, helping them think beyond today and prepare for the responsibilities that come with adulthood.

But here’s the truth: planning ahead isn’t always easy for young adults. It’s far more tempting to live day by day on autopilot. That’s why in this episode, I’ll share a simple, actionable goal-setting method that you can teach, even if you’ve never practiced it yourself. This practical approach will not only help your young adult establish clear, achievable goals but also foster personal growth, self-confidence, and habits that will serve them for life. I’ll also discuss the importance of future planning—how it gives young adults a reason to get up each morning and a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. By learning to anticipate what they want in the future, they’ll create a roadmap to success that guides them forward, even through uncertain times.

Whether your adult child is feeling stuck, unmotivated, or unsure of their next steps, this episode will equip you an easy method to help them take charge of their future with confidence. Tune in to learn how you can teach your young adult to set goals, plan for the future, and move forward with intention and purpose!

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Transcript

In this episode I’ll be talking about one of the most important life skills that not only young adults, will benefit from, but everyone should be practicing. What makes this life skill so critical is that it gives us a reason to get up in the morning, it gives our lives direction, and it forces us to grow.  I’m talking about goal setting and future planning. 

Now, I know that not everyone practices this, and yet, here I am ready to talk about how YOU can teach this life skill to your young adult.  But I honestly don’t think it matters whether or not you’re the goal setting type because first, your young adult really needs to learn how to practice these skills, and second, the method that I’ll be sharing with you to is easy enough for you to teach, even if you’ve never done it. 

I’ll give you an example of why I don’t think you have to be good at something in order to teach it and it’s because the person who introduced this concept to me was my late father. We didn’t live in the same city, so he would send me audio tapes and books about this goal setting stuff when I was really young. He wanted me to understand how important it was for me to think about my life, specifically what I wanted to achieve, who I wanted to become, how I envisioned myself and then how to execute that. But he wasn’t very good at it. At the time, I didn’t know that. I learned later in life that my father was more of a talker, than a doer, and honestly, it requires the latter. 

Who knows, maybe you’ll start practicing it yourself. Perhaps you even have your own methods. There are certainly other ways to set goals and make future plans but suffice to say that this is not something that can be overlooked when we are raising teens and young adults, especially if they are struggling to move forward. It is precisely how they are going to get themselves out of this rut of inactively or uncertainty, by thinking about and planning out what they want to do. 

As always, I’ll be giving you actionable steps that you can take to guide your adult child through this process but before I do, let’s dive into why this life skill is such an important part of not just adulting, but of being a productive, motivated and responsible human. 

If you’ve listened to any of my other episodes, you’ll know that my style is fairly consistent. I like to explain the why, before I get into the how. And why we should teach our children this life skill, is so important, regardless of whether or not they’re struggling. 

Goal setting is incredibly powerful for young adults. It provides direction, motivation, and a clear sense of purpose; qualities that are crucial when navigating life’s uncertainties. This life skill can help young adults focus their energy, manage priorities, and make intentional choices, especially when they are feeling stuck about the future.

And finally, goal setting can lead to the development of new skills and habits, insights and self-awareness, and personal growth such as self confidence, and resilience. Goals act as markers on a roadmap, guiding young adults, moving them forward, even in uncertain times.

And what about future planning? Well, that’s where they learn to look beyond today, and think about what they want in the future. Future planning also means creating more responsibilities for themselves, which is something they don’t always like doing. It’s much easier to live one day at a time, on automatic pilot, than planning ahead. 

But it’s the planning of those goals that gives them a reason to get up each day and provides them with a feeling of accomplishment at the end of it. 

So let’s get into the how part. 

There are several well researched goal setting methods but for this episode, I’ll be talking about one in particular, which I find is a really good introduction. 

It is called the WOOP Method W-O-O-P, which stands for: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, and Plan. It was developed by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology with extensive research in motivation and goal setting. 

WOOP is a simple, science-based approach that was developed over 20 years ago to help people of all ages reach their goals. It combines positive thinking with realistic planning by helping us address the inner obstacles that often hold us back. When we can identify what those barriers are, we can make realistic and practical plans to move past them.

In other words, the obstacles that we think impede us from fulfilling our wishes can actually help us to realize them. WOOPs approach suggests that not only must we dream about our future, but we have to consider what obstacles are preventing us from achieving those dreams.

So let me give a very brief description of this acronym WOOP: WISH, OUTCOME, OBSTACLE and PLAN

The Wish is where you define your challenging but meaningful goal 

The Outcome is when you visualize the best possible result once that goal is achieved

The Obstacle is when you identify the barriers that are getting in the way of your success, which is important because this is when they realize that challenges are normal and that will help your young adult to mentally prepare for them. 

And the Plan is when you develop the action strategy to overcome each obstacle. 

Here’s an Example which you can use when explaining it to your young adult: Imagine that your wish (W) is to get into better shape. The desired outcome (O) is to feel healthier and more energetic. However, an internal obstacle (2nd O) might be your tendency to procrastinate or choose to play video games in the evenings instead. By acknowledging this obstacle, you then create the plan (P) to overcome it, like scheduling workouts in the morning when your gaming friends aren’t online. You can easily see how this approach turns the obstacle into a catalyst for developing better habits thus achieving the goal.

Essentially WOOP allows them to acknowledge and confront their obstacles, and come up with a plan to overcome them. 

I love this model for young adults or anyone just getting into the practice of goal setting because it considers our own real-life challenges, the personal roadblocks that each of us have, and it makes us responsible for overcoming them. This actually teaches another life skill, which is problem solving, because it forces us to think through obstacles and figure out solutions to handle them. 

There’s another model called SMART, which I get into in my upcoming course, but SMART which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound is specific, highly structured, and can feel somewhat overwhelming, especially if you’re new at this. 

WOOP is simpler, it has less steps and it’s ideal for beginners. It’s also more personal, because everyone has their own unique obstacles that get in the way of their own goals. I think it’s a great introduction to goal setting and I’ve been practicing this for years. 

What’s really important is how easy WOOP is for you to teach because it’s more conversational. You can easily guide your young adult through a WOOP session by asking them to share their wish or goal, their ideal outcome, any obstacles they might foresee, and the plan they need to put in place to tackle those challenges. I’m sure you’ve had conversations with your young adult where you’ve asked them what do you want to do when you get older, or what do you want to study in college.  For those young adults that know, they seem to have a plan. But when they don’t know, it’s pretty painful to watch your young adult stare blankly at you or worse, get angry at you for asking. This approach breaks it down for them and makes it easier. 

It's not too rigid, but its not too vague either. It’s the perfect way for you to get things going, just by having a very supportive, non-threatening and encouraging conversation. 

There’. It will really get them thinking about what they want, what holds them back, how they can achieve it. Earlier I gave you a simple example of how to explain it to them. But here’s another scenario, more applicable for you.

Let’s take Jake, he’s a 23-year-old who’s been living at home since graduating high school. He’s been trying “air quotes” to find a job but feels both overwhelmed and unmotivated. Truth is, he wants to start applying but keeps putting it off because he’s worried about rejection. He doesn’t say that out loud of, but his excuses, and behavior are so telling. His parents aren’t sure if he’s lazy or procrastinating, but really he’s just paralyzed with fear. So, they decide to teach him the WOOP method as the way out of this rut. I’ll break down the steps.

Jake’s wish is to land a job, even part-time job to start building experience and earn his own income.

Jake imagines the outcome; feeling proud, feeling worthy, feeling more independent because he he’ll have some money in his bank account. He visualizes himself being able to buy things without asking his parents for help and he feels more optimistic about his future.

Jake knows that his biggest obstacle is his fear of rejection. Every time he thinks about applying, he gets discouraged, despondent and feels like he’s just not good enough. These thoughts stop him from even looking at job postings. We all know, it doesn’t take much more than that. At this point, I want every parent listening to this, to understand that the mental head space that your young adult is sitting with, is a big part of what is stopping them from moving forward. Not lack of desire, or laziness. But an inner voice that is questioning; what if nobody wants to hire me, what if I’m not good enough?

Let finish this off.

Jake sets a plan, with his parents help. Each morning, he will spend a set amount of hours job hunting. He will commit to applying to at least 2-3 a day. Whenever he feels uncomfortable, thinking he might be under qualified, he reminds himself that every rejection brings him one step closer to his goal. Plus, with each rejection, he gets to improve his interviewing skills. 

Years ago, I was teaching a course on handling rejections. There isn’t a single person on this planet that enjoys being rejected so I always had a very captive audience. I began with this analogy. There’s a barrel of 1000 oysters. You are told that in one oyster, just one, there is a stunning blue pearl that has a value of over $250,000.  Would you be willing to shuck all of them, the entire barrel, in order to find that one pearl? Of course you would. But how would you feel every time you shucked an oyster, and it was empty? All that work, and it was for nothing. You could feel discouraged. For a moment, you would. But then, you could say to yourself, I am one more shuck closer to finding that pearl that would change my life. And that attitude, that perspective, keeps you going. 

This shift is key. Rephrasing failure especially for young adults is critical because they think that everything comes easier to everyone else. But by understanding that failure or in this case rejection is actually part of the job application process, will give them a new way of perceiving it. Rejection is normal and is something that everyone goes through. 

This is also where resilience comes in. Powering through rejection. Overcoming failed attempts. Which is another reason why it’s so important to teach this skill to our children, so they learn to keep going, regardless of what hurdles get in their way. Failure is not an option. But modifying is. 

Here are 5 important takeaways from todays episode that I hope you share with your children: 

1.      True failure isn’t falling short of achieving a goal—it’s in never stepping forward in the first place. 

2.      Disappointment doesn’t come from mistakes; it comes from letting fear keep us on the sidelines, never daring to try. 

3.      By never trying, we might protect ourselves from the sting of failure, but we pay a far greater price: the loss of the lessons we might have learned, and the chance to unlock our true potential

4.      In the end, the real regret isn’t in the moments we stumbled, but in the chances we never took. And lastly number 5.

5.      It’s only when we do things that are uncomfortable, that we give ourselves a shot at something greater.

I sincerely hope, even if you don't see yourself as a goal setter, that you recognize the immense value in helping your young adult develop this crucial life skill.

It will do so much more than provide them with direction—it will help them feel less anxious about their future, more prepared to take the next steps, and more confident as they reach their goals.

At its core, goal setting and future planning can turn your adult child’s dreams into real achievements and create a life filled with purpose and isn’t that what we all hope for?