Goal Setting

Adolescent Girl Life Skill: Setting life goals

General Adolescent Life Skills: Increasing Internal Self-Control  

In many communities, girls are often not taught to take pride in their skills and qualities or encouraged to reach goals. Educating girls on setting life goals for themselves and creating plans to reach those goals helps them realise their own value. Whether they are educational, career or family goals, objectives help girls focus and gain control of their behaviour and actions, make healthy decisions and improve their confidence and self-esteem. Girls are frequently conditioned to believe that what is possible for their lives is limited: to be married off, to be someone’s wife and become a tool for reproduction.

By learning to set small goals and reach them, like juggling a football 10 times or running a kilometre without stopping, girls learn, through sport, that the possibilities of developing skills and reaching goals are endless. Girls start to believe that they can accomplish and achieve objectives by working hard and putting their energy into it. Good coaches and facilitators can help girls transfer this skill off the field, by showing them that the possibilities that exist for them are numerous and not limited to what society tells them their roles should be. A girl can learn that there isn’t a big difference between working hard to run a certain distance and studying hard to pass a certain exam and continue her education.