I’ve been invited to speak to my daughter’s 4th-grade-class this morning. One of her teachers reads this site and was inspired by my countdown of the remaining weeks in the year. She’s been talking with her students about finishing strong this year and having them come up with some goals and habits for themselves.

Fourth-graders are not my typical audience, except for my daughter who hears me way too much. (I think she still thinks I’m pretty cool for now, though. Don’t know how much longer that will last.) Maybe there’s not too much difference between college students and 4th-graders. Both groups seem to have an eager, appealing, puppy-like quality about them that gets hidden by some of them in the early teen years. And both 10-year-olds and 20-year-olds seem open to new possibilities in a way that people my age rarely are.

I’ll be curious to hear what goals these 9- and 10-year-olds have come up with for the last few weeks of the year. I’ve not got any prepared presentation or slides to show. I plan to hear what’s on their minds and talk through the process of creating routines and building habits to craft their lives into becoming who they want to be.

And I’m drafting this in order to help me think through what exactly I want to say. I’ve been stuck trying to think of how to approach these kids, and the best way I know of getting unstuck is to just write, to get moving in some direction even if it’s a wrong one.

I want to leave their classroom today with these kids having a clearer understanding of their own power to shape their lives and some strategies to take action right away. And I hope we have some fun talking about possibilities and new ideas and how to be more awesome.

I’ll report back on how it goes and what these kids are dreaming of to finish the year strong. Counting today there are only 43 days left in 2014. Let’s make these last six weeks the best weeks of the year.