Whether success is defined as happiness, financial growth, humanitarian impact or something more, many of the most successful people in history credit the power of visualization as a key component to their achievement. In fact, the enormously successful and inspiring founder of Spanx, Sara Blakely has been quoted as saying that visualizing her own success was one of the critical factors to building her billion dollar business empire. Visualizing what you want to achieve provides your mind with a pathway that your actions can subsequently follow.
Okay, so read that last paragraph to your kids, and look at how they react. I’ll wait…………….. See! The reaction I got was a glassy look in their eyes followed by my nine-year-old asking me if I would make her a grilled cheese. Glad that soaked in. Hopefully you received a better response.
Telling kids about the power of visualization isn’t an easy task, yet it’s so very important for children to know that if they dream big, they can achieve big. So as an alternative, I decided to bake this concept into their brains. Here is the story.
My five-year-old was recently telling me about what kind of cake she wanted for her upcoming birthday. In great detail, she explained to me that it needed to be three tiers, “purpley-pink,” have hearts, circles, and a big sparkly six on top. So in the spirit of helping her learn how to visualize her goals, I handed her a dry-erase board and markers, then asked her to draw the cake she had described.
Five minutes later, this is what she handed me….
Next, I told her that if this cake was her goal, we would have to do a few things to make it happen.
- Research
- Work as a team
- Try our best
- Not give up
- Have fun!!!
So that is what we did….
In the end…. Molly got her cake. It wasn’t perfect, but it totally rocked!! Most importantly, I think by working through the concept of visualizing goals versus just talking about the idea, these kiddos will remember that if they dream big, they can achieve big.
For more birthday cake ideas from our blog, check out this link!
You rock! The love this lesson and if I was still teaching guidance lessons in my school, I would definitely steal this idea! I am so proud of how you are living your dream!
Thank you so much, Emily!!! Your support and encouragement mean the world!