Stage One : The Destination

If you aim at noth­ing, you’ll hit it every time.

In our post on cre­at­ing a roadmap for your stu­dent, we said to start with the end in mind.  But how do you choose a destination?

Ken Cole­man says that we should oper­ate in what he calls our “sweet spot”, that is the inter­sec­tion of our pas­sions and gifts. To help our chil­dren deter­mine a des­ti­na­tion, let’s help them fig­ure out their sweet spot. 

Remem­ber, lead­ing our chil­dren in find­ing a des­ti­na­tion for their roadmaps is a con­tin­u­al conversation. 

Here are some ques­tions that we can ask to help our child fig­ure out a destination: 

• What do you love doing?
  • This is not a pas­sion dri­ven ques­tion, but more a sat­is­fied ques­tion.  God has giv­en us unique gifts and inter­ests.  What has He giv­en you? Do you love work­ing with your hands? Learn­ing? Read­ing about new things? Do you like work­ing with num­bers? What do you find your­self being drawn to each time you’re giv­en free time? For exam­ple, when my chil­dren are giv­en time to pur­sue their own inter­ests, I can find my 15 year old son in 1 of 3 areas: read­ing, build­ing in the work­shop, or test­ing out a new creation.
• What are you real­ly good at?
  • This can be a hard ques­tion to answer for your­self.  So ask a friend.  What would your friend come to you about because he knows that you are real­ly good at it? 
• Out of all of the cours­es you’ve tak­en thus far, which was your favorite and why? 
  • We all have those cours­es that we don’t like, but what course do you save til the end of the day because it’s almost a reward? Or which course do you look for­ward to attend­ing and why? Be care­ful.  You may like your biol­o­gy course, but it may be that you real­ly like the peo­ple in the class or the fact that it’s in com­mu­ni­ty at the local college. 
• If you were giv­en a sin­gle day to do what­ev­er you want­ed, what would you do?
  • If all expec­ta­tions were removed from you, and you were giv­en the gift of a day, what would you do?  If you are a task ori­ent­ed per­son this could be hard to answer, but try to elim­i­nate all of those “need to do” tasks and focus on hob­bies, thing you do just for fun. 
• What skills are you inter­est­ed in developing?
  • Every task requires a skill.  What skill are you inter­est­ed in?  This could be some­thing sil­ly like want­i­ng to know how to jug­gle to some­thing seri­ous like learn­ing to type quickly. 
• Do you have any inter­est in going to col­lege? If so, what would you study?
  • Does the idea of col­lege scare you or excite you?  Do you see your­self doing well and enjoy­ing anoth­er four years of intense study? This ques­tion should be answered inde­pen­dent­ly of whether your desired pro­fes­sion requires col­lege or not. 
• Who is your hero? 
  • Of all of the peo­ple that you’ve met or stud­ied.  Whom do you respect the most? Why? What is it about this per­son that makes you want to emu­late her?
• Why are you pur­su­ing an education? 
  • Why are we here any­way? Are you doing these things just because you have to in order to grad­u­ate from high school and move out. or do you see the deep­er meaning? 
• If you could do any job in the world, what would it be?
  • If the world was your oys­ter and you could do any­thing you want­ed for a pro­fes­sion, what would it be? This one can be hard, because the sky’s the lim­it and it could seem unre­al­is­tic.  But the answer reveals some­thing very spe­cial about the person. 
• What are your finan­cial goals in life?
  • Let’s talk turkey.  Do you plan to get mar­ried? How do you plan to pro­vide for a spouse and chil­dren? Do you want to own your own home? Do you plan to bor­row mon­ey to buy a home? What about cars? Do you love the new cars? Then you need to make enough mon­ey to buy them.  What are your thoughts on debt? 

In truth, these ques­tions are part of our con­ver­sa­tions with our chil­dren through­out their child­hood.  Why not start dis­cussing them now? For out of the answers to these ques­tions, comes the destination.