Photo By:Carf

I like talking with children. Unlike adults, with children their dreams have no ceiling. It’s inspiring to listen to their goals and ideas. Kids start dreaming at an early age. They think about their future career, their wealth, their education, and so on. And their dreams can be huge.

When it comes to choosing a career, some will choose the characteristic police officer, fire fighter, or doctor. Others will choose Astronaut, Olympian, or President. If we’re talking about wealth, some will aspire to simply “have money”, while others will seek a business empire or the ability to retire at age 45 or younger.

As a parent, you have more control over whether or not your children achieve their dreams than we might think. For kids, parents are inspiration, motivation, and leadership.

You might think that your child’s dreams are unrealistic. That’s the negative adult inside you. No wonder so many kids in Dominica are failing at the secondary education level, because they’re presented with this unsolicited advice at an early age. These children grow up with this stigma that certain dreams are unachievable. You should believe in your child because they believe in themselves; and you’re probably the only other support they have.

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Lots of you are kicking off 2008 with New Year’s resolutions, but they won’t keep themselves. To achieve the goals you’ve set out of yourself in ’08, follow through each and every one of the next 365 days—with several free tools that can help you with just that. Track your progress and help inspire yourself to stick to your New Year’s resolutions with some of my favorite goal tracking web-apps and tools.

Choose Your Resolutions Wisely
Before use any of these goal trackers and resolution reminder systems, make sure you know exactly what you want to achieve. The idea is to set a SMART goal. For example whatever New Year’s resolutions should be:

• “Specific. Don’t just say “Lose weight.” decide to “Lose 12 pounds.”
• Achievable. “Be the perfect employee/mom/sister/spouse” is an admirable goal, but nobody’s perfect, no matter how resolved they are. Make your resolution something that’s possible—like, “Improve next year’s performance review by at least one grade.”
• Realistic. You’ve only got so many hours in the day, so make your goals realistic based on what resources and tools you’ve got on hand.
• Timely. Set goals you can reach at most within the next 12 months. Giving yourself a “deadline” of sorts will help you figure out where you should be when while tracking your progress.

Tools to Track Your Progress

Here are three free web-apps that can help you keep your resolutions for 2008.

Traineo (weight loss and fitness goals)

Track your diet and exercise in ’08 with Traineo, a social weight loss and fitness social site who’s idea is simple: join traineo for free and pick up to 4 friends or members of your family (who will become your ‘traineo motivators’) to receive weekly email updates on your progress towards your weight loss and fitness goals.

Daily Plate (weight loss goals)

The “Key” to losing weight is to burn more calories than you consume, so tracking how much you’ve consumed and how much you’ve burned is a huge step towards dropping pounds. At the Daily Plate, look up and track the caloric, fat, and carb content on the foods you consume and keep a fitness journal as well.

Mint (finance tracking)

If saving more money, getting out of debt, or sticking to a tight budget is on your resolutions list but Quicken and QuickBooks scares you, consider online money tracking webapp. Mint automatically sucks in your financial transactions, categorizes them, sends you email alerts, and helps you create and maintain a budget.

What tools are you using to manager your New Year’s resolutions in 2008? Let us hear ’em in the comments.

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