Brain Chemistry and Executive Function: Why short term goals are best

On this week's BlogTalkRadio show, I spoke about how important short term goals {STG} are for Tweens and Teens who struggle with Executive Function Dysfunction. If you listened in you know that I said "ditch the New Year's Resolutions and long term goals!" 

Author Monica Mehta writes in her new book, The Entrepreneurial Instinct: How Everyone has the Innate ability to Start a Successful Small Business,  that "The more times you succeed at something, the longer your brain stores the information that allowed you to do so well in the first place. That's because with each success, our brain releases a chemical called dopamine. When dopamine flows into the brain's reward pathway {the part responsible for pleasure, learning and motivation}, we not only feel greater concentration but are inspired to re-experience the activity that caused the chemical release in the first place." 


Makes complete sense, right? Don't YOU continue to do things that make you feel good? On the flip side, when we continually fail, or perceive failure, dopamine levels drop. When dopamine drops, we have difficulty with the following executive function skills that are KEY for achieving goals: sustained attention, meta cognition and goal directed persistence. We can now understand why our children, especially our Tweens and Teens, get into a vicious cycle of underachievement. They are already experiencing higher stress levels because of adolescence which can cause a drop in  dopamine levels, add in continued stress from perceived failures and dopamine is all but nonexistent. Hence, this leads to the difficulties with executive function skills that are necessary for setting and achieving goals. Interested in learning more about this? Check out the research study by MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory that concludes that successes, thanks to brain plasticity {still key in the adolescence years}, positively change our brain allowing more learning to take place. Failures show little to no changes in brain structure. 


The moral of the story? Help your Tween and Teen set STGs that will allow them to meet with success in a short amount of time. Begin with daily, then weekly, then monthly and eventually longer term goals {longer than 3 months to achieve}. Remember that in order to learn executive function skills that will help them for their entire lives, you must not set the goal for them but acting as their guide instead. Provide support however you can in the form of education and structure but let them do the rest. 

Need more help with goal setting? Be sure to sign up for our Executive Function Newsletter as we are putting the finishing touches on our "Help! How do I Set Achievable Goals?" webinar to be released in late January. Only our newsletter subscribers will get a discount code. 

Until next time, keep growing and blooming...

Jen