Whatever your goals are, here are some tips to help you make the changes you desire:

1. 
   Write down your goals.
   
   
   
   • 
     Now that they are written, describe your resolutions in a way that you can easily visualize them.
   
   
   • 
     Make sure they are in the present tense.
   
   
   • 
     Put everything in the positive. For example, instead of saying, "I do not yell", say "I am calm and kind."
   
   
   
   


2. 
   Now add all the reasons you can think of for having these goals — every possible motivation you can think of.  What benefits will you receive as you work to accomplish them? What will be different once you have met your goals?


3. 
   Record how you will achieve these goals. Break down each goal into the steps that are necessary to achieve them. 


4. 
   Review these goals daily until you have acheived them.  Recording yourself reading these goals can help.

Following these guidelines can help you make this the best year yet.

One

Someone screamed my name.

I opened my eyes and saw nothing. When I tried to breathe, hot, thick air choked me. My throat burned.

In the darkness, I remembered: Amy.

It had only been six weeks since her pale skin had been painted with mortician's make-up and her lips permanently positioned into a smile. Six weeks since her aquamarine eyes and chocolate-brown hair had disappeared forever under six feet of ugly dirt. Six weeks since I had held her cold hand against me and told her I was sorry.

Now in spite of the late summer heat, four heavy blankets lay atop me, trying to warm me from the chill of her death. I shivered as I remembered that night. Amy had been driving her dad's cherry red sports car to my house, talking to me on her cell phone and laughing. Another automobile had sped past a stop sign. The driver was drunk. I remember hearing Amy laugh.

Then just before the cold, hard metal smashed her car, she had screamed.

Other memories began to surge from their prison where I had hidden them. Memories of cop cars and an ambulance. Memories of her family crying. Then memories of my mother curled up on our living room couch a year and a half earlier, sobbing, her arms wrapped around the Bible.

I jumped out of bed, not wanting to relive anymore nightmares.

My method of escape was turning on the light and doing push ups. When I could no longer raise myself from the ground because my muscles were too weak, I rolled onto my back and began doing abdominal crunches. On the fifty ninth crunch, my alarm clock buzzed. That sound usually annoyed me, but this time I smiled when I heard it.

I did two more crunches, then changed into shorts and a T-shirt. The rest of my morning preparations included gargling some mouthwash, running my fingers through my hair, and donning a baseball cap before shouting down the hallway to my grandmother that I’d be back by lunch.

I had almost reached the garage door when I turned around and grabbed three granola bars from the pantry. Then I ran outside and hopped on my bike. I was supposed to be early to our club's service project to clean a widow's yard.

When I arrived, everyone else was already there: Erin, since she organized the whole thing, as well as Sara and Annie, two of her best friends. The guys included Mark and Steve – who both ran cross country with me – as well as Dave and Jake. All of us were seniors and members of “Generation S”. “S”, of course stood for “service”.

“Look who decided to show up” Jake called out as I leaned my bike against a tree. “Glad you could make it.”

“Yah, Mr. Everyone-Better-Show-Up-On-Time?,” Mark added. He picked up a stone near his feet. “Let's throw to see who does what.”

The rest of us searched for our own loose rocks. Then we took turns tossing them at a crack in the widow’s driveway. Jake's rock landed closest to the crack without going past it so he got to choose first.

“I'll weed that area over there.” He pointed to the dirt and grass on the far side of the driveway.

“You're the tallest,” countered Erin. “Why don't you prune the trees?”

“I'll help you,” offered Steve, whose height of six feet, two inches made him only slightly shorter than Jake.

Jake agilely climbed an aluminum extension ladder that was leaning against a tree for support, and began cutting away branches. Steve was more cautious; he stood on a couple of two-by-fours laid across the steps of two wooden ladders to form a walkway.

Erin and Mark decided to help me wash down the home's exterior walls while Dave, Sara, and Annie were left to trim the bushes, clipping all the branches that made them look like blobs or amoebas instead of plants.

I dragged the hose from the backyard and screwed it into the faucet that was on the far side of the house. The widow, who I learned was named Edith Taylor, brought out some brushes and a bucket that we filled with water. Erin poured in some soap.

While I sprayed the wall with the hose, Erin and Mark scrubbed it. Soon I dropped the hose by a tree and joined them, dipping my brush into the bucket of soapy water before using it to attack the dirt-covered bricks. The bucket's water quickly turned opaque from the mud we were adding to it.

Erin offered to get the hose so that we could refill the bucket.

While we waited for her, Mark asked me, “How do you think Jason LeSue? will do this year?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “But he did great last night: thirty yard pass for a touch down!”

As I finished my statement, Mark looked away from me, shaking his head. I turned to follow his gaze and saw Erin pointing the hose at us, a wicked grin on her face. An instant later she squeezed the trigger on the nozzle and water shot toward us.

I rushed against the spray of water, heading straight for Erin. Right before I reached her, she let go of the hose and ran toward the tap to turn it off.

Remembering the full bucket nearby, I grabbed that and chased her. As she finished tightening the key in the off position, I tossed the bucket's water at her, drenching her.

She shrieked in mock horror, "How dare you!"

"You started it," I laughed back.

Mark, only mildly wet since I had taken the brunt of Erin's attack, shouted at us, "Hey, why don't you two call a truce and help me finish this wall, huh? I don’t want to miss my show."

"We're coming," I yelled back. Then, putting on a grin as sinister as Erin's had been, I added, "But only after I get Erin back some more."

With that, I immediately lunged for the cute, strawberry-blond in front of me, holding her in place and tickling her at the same time.

"Sto-o-o-o-p." She laughed out in multiple staccato syllables. “He-he-he-he-lp.”

It wasn't long before Annie and Sara rushed over to aid her, the former trying to free Erin from my grip and the latter doing her best to tickle me. As I wriggled against Sara's tickling, Erin slipped free from my hold and began to tickle me too. Annie quickly joined in.

"Not fair!" I struggled to speak in between my laughs. "Three against one."

Mark came to my rescue by yelling, “I don't want to be the only one working here. Get your rears in gear!" The girls stopped tickling me and Sara and Annie walked back to the bushes they had been working on. I cautiously turned the water back on and filled the bucket. Then Erin, Mark, and I started scrubbing the wall again.

When we could finally see the true color of the paint, we helped pick up and bag the clippings that cluttered the yard, then started on the leaves Dave and Annie had raked into piles. Annie hadn't brought gloves, so I let her use mine, which wasn't smart. The sharp thorns of the acacia tree pricked me enough times that I would have cursed if Erin hadn't been nearby.

Among the clippings were some dried, hardened oranges from last year's crop. Steve picked one up and began playing catch with Jake until Jake accidentally crushed the orange. After wiping the powdered rind off his hands, he grabbed another orange, yelled, "Catch," and threw it underhand to Annie. Annie threw it to Erin, who tossed it back to Annie, who threw it to me. Pretending to be a great pitcher, I cocked my body, raised my right knee, and fell backwards as Mark suddenly tackled me.

Helping me back up, he chided, "Come on, Tommy. You've got to be prepared. Jason LeSue? would never let himself be sacked like that."

Rubbing my head where it had hit the ground, I replied, "He must have been sacked sometime."

"Not while he's played at Mountain View."

"That's only because his team members guard him."

"Are you saying that if you were guarded, I couldn't tackle you?"

"That’s right.”

"Even if I sicked these girls on you?"

I stood silently with my arms folded across my chest. "Jason would never squirm. He just looks the opposition in the face and laughs."

"Sounds like you want to be like Jason," Steve said, picking up a rake and walking towards us.

"Wouldn't you?”

Sara joined our group. "If Jason had any taste, he'd be dating me."

"No offense, Sara, but Jason's got lots of taste," retorted Mark, "His wardrobe is right out of GQ magazine."

"Which is exactly why he should be dating me," Sara grinned.

"What do you think about him?" I asked Erin.

She shrugged. “I don’t see him helping us out, do you?” Picking up a half-full garbage bag, she added, "We're almost done with the yard. Let's finish up.”

“You're just jealous because Jason's never asked you out,” Dave teased Erin. “Admit it. Deep down you're in love.”

“I am not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I'm not.”

“You wouldn't deny it unless you were.”

Erin shook her head and walked toward one of the last piles of clippings. I followed her.

Ten minutes later we had finished the yard and were inside the widow's house, washing our hands. The woman we had helped gave us orange juice and cinnamon roles hot from the oven. They were large and glazed with extra clumps of cinnamon. After I finished mine, I had to wash my hands again.

When we were all done, I offered to walk Erin home. She accepted.

Her house was on the other side of an elementary school, so we crossed through its play yard. Clouds with gray linings filled the sky and the wind blew cooler than usual, foretelling rain; but we walked slowly anyway. I was in no hurry to leave Erin, which is why I was pulling my bike along side me instead of having given her a ride. Besides, we had already gotten wet once that day and rain couldn’t do much worse.

As we neared the swings, I grabbed one and said, “I’ll push.”

Erin smiled and sat down. She wrapped her arms around the chains and lifted her feet into the air. I pushed her a few times, then sat in the swing next to hers. As her swing slowed, I said, “That yard looks a lot better. How did you find it?”

“My mom. They get their hair done at the same place.”

“Not many people showed up today.”

“I know. We need more people to come to our activities.”

“Speaking of activities, are we still on for next weekend?” I jumped out of the swing and turned to face her.

She dug her heels into the sand to stop her swing. “Your dad works in advertising, doesn’t he?” she asked.

“Yah. What does that have to do with our date?”

Erin stood and started walking toward her house. “Why don't we ask him for help?

“Help?”

“Yes. To get more people to come to our club.”

“He wouldn’t help us.”

“We could ask.”

“He’d say no.”

“You could at least see if he’d help. You never know.”

"Even if he said yes, he wouldn’t do it. He tells you one thing and does another."

"Well, like my dad says: life hands out no silver dishes; simple wishing grants no wishes. If something's wanted, a result desired, sweat and toil are required.

“Oh look, dandelions!" Erin raced ahead of me to a patch of unmown grass, picking a dandelion with a white head and blowing the seeds away. When I reached her, she jerked another dandelion from the ground and rubbed its soft fuzz under my chin.

"What are you doing?" I asked, stepping away from the weed in her hand. "That tickles."

"I'm seeing if you're in love. I read once that if the white stuff sticks to your chin, it means you're in love. Did some stick?" She stepped closer to me, bending her knees and twisting her head slightly to look under my chin.

"I can't tell,” she said. “Hmm, I'd better make sure.” She rubbed her hand under my chin to check for dandelion fuzz. I squirmed away.

"I told you, that tickles,” I protested. “By the way, tag; you're it." I tagged her on the shoulder then ran across the playground to the drinking fountain. She chased me. Dirt had collected in the white, porcelain fountain, and its water was hot, but we didn't care. We both gulped the water, then crossed the street and headed west. As we reached her house, she brought up my dad again.

“The vice principal told me that if our numbers didn’t increase soon, he’d close down the club.”

“But school just started. Of course more people will join.”

“But what if they don’t? If your dad helped us, we’d for sure get enough members.”

“He won’t help us.”

She put her hand on her front door. Her red fingernails were bright against its white paint. “Do you still want to go out with me next weekend?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t . . . ”

“There are plenty of other boys who’d be willing to talk to their dad.”

“You’re manipulating me.”

“I’m simply encouraging you.” She opened the door and stepped inside. Turning back toward me, she asked, “Please?”

“No.”

“What?”

“I said, no.”

“I’ll just have to tell Dave I’m available Saturday after all.”

What type of girl was this? She'd already said yes to the date. When I asked her out I hadn't said, “Hey, do you want to go to the movies if it snows on Saturday, the planet Mercury's in alignment with Jupiter, and I don't find anyone else to go with?”

So why was she adding conditions now?

I stood silently, gripping the outside door frame. She was leaning against the inside frame, waiting for me to respond, our fingers almost touching.

Slowly, she leaned away from me. I stared blankly at her, my internal defenses causing a stupor of thought. I wanted to say something to convince her she should go out with me instead of David, but I couldn't come up with a reason. Dave was taller, smarter, and drove a car to school. If I were her, I'd choose him, too.

Instead of speaking, I stood there like a mute mannequin until she softly said, “Bye,” and closed the door. A minute later I moved my hand off the hard doorframe and protested by saying “Erin!” But of course, she couldn't hear me.

Two

Salty sweat burned my eyes as I ran through the Sonoran desert in 120-degree weather. This was the third cross country race of the season and my chance to stop Erin from going out with Dave. It would also determine whether or not I stayed on the Varsity team. Coach had promised that anybody who fell below nineteen minutes two races in a row would be dropped to JV. I couldn’t let that happen. I'd been too slow last week and I wasn’t about to repeat the bad performance.

I stuck out my tongue and licked even more brine from my lips. Hearing a noise, I chanced a look behind me, then sped up slightly, intent on maintaining the distance between myself and the runner following me. I picked out a shadow maybe one hundred yards in front of me and ran toward it. As I approached, I raised my eyes and chose a new goal farther up the trail – the shadow of a century plant.

Tall birds with long, black tail feathers silently fled from the surrounding brush as I charged by. On my right and left, the desert vegetation flashed past: mighty saguaro, dingy sagebrush, prickly pear, and palo verde. I doubted their thorns and bristles could hurt me more than the lack of oxygen hurt my insides right then.

Yet still I ran. I had to.

Leaping over a small ravine and following the trail to the right, I glimpsed another runner ahead of me. By his stride and the up and down way he pumped his arms, I knew he was Ty, one of Red Mountain's best. If I could pass him, I might be able to place.

I pushed myself harder and winced as my right side cramped up. Pain didn’t matter. Pain was only temporary. What mattered was beating nineteen minutes and winning this race.

"You can do it! Can do it! Do it! Do it!" I chanted in my mind.

I was closer to the runner now. "Place! Do it! Place!"

I did not allow myself to think. I only looked at the runner's back, focusing on the red of his uniform. Like an angry bull, I raced towards that red, relishing the thought of victory. That's what was important: victory. I had to win. I had to show Erin I was good at something.

The landscape roughened with loose stones, untrimmed plants, and an uneven trail. As I charged the runner ahead of me, he disappeared like a matador's cape flung away from a maddened bull. I glanced backward but couldn't see where Ty had gone. As I continued to run, I looked back a few more times, trying to find Ty, but daring to turn my head for only a second each time, which meant my time for actually searching the landscape behind me was less than half that.

On the fourth or fifth turn, I thought I saw his shoes. I risked taking an extra couple of seconds to examine the surrounding area. Not seeing anything more that would tell me what had happened, I focused once again on the trail ahead of me. After all, it really didn't matter why he had fallen, if indeed he had. For all I knew, he had stopped to catch his breath. The fact that he wasn't ahead of me anymore only made it easier to win.

If he had twisted his ankle, he could limp his way back to the base camp. And if he really did need help, someone else would stop to assist him. If not, I could always tell his coach what happened after I finished the race. What could I do for him, anyway?

Even as I tried to convince myself to keep heading toward the finish line, I turned around, foolishly hoping that I could figure out what had happened quickly enough to somehow make up my lost time. I didn't let myself think about the inevitability of losing my position on the varsity team.

When the trail started to curve slightly to the left I could see some of Ty's legs extending from his shoes. The rest of him was hidden behind some bush-like cacti. As I passed those thorny barricades, I saw the rest of Ty's body. He was lying face down, one arm caught underneath him. Nearby, a smear of red liquid shone from the limb of an avocado-colored cactus.

I turned Ty over, noticing scrapes on his arms and a large gash in his left leg where the cactus must have sliced him. He didn't seem to be breathing.

Another runner approached and passed us without stopping. I looked closer at the cut in Ty's leg, worried about blood loss. Sand was mixed with the blood on his thigh. He wasn't bleeding profusely, thought, which was a good thing since I didn't have anything to create a tourniquet.

The sun, however, was glaring onto his outstretched body, so I pulled him toward the relative shade of a palo verde tree while a competitor ran by. Seconds behind him was another runner in a yellow uniform who yelled, “What happened?” as he neared us.

“He passed out. Get help.”

He nodded and ran off the trail to take the direct route to the finish line and the coaches. A few more runners zoomed past me and Ty, their shoes clopping on the desert dirt.

I was jealous. I wanted to be the one leaving; I could have used the injured runner as motivation to finish the race even faster. Instead, I stayed where I was, fanning Ty with my hands. Other runners looked at us with curiosity as they approached, slowing down like cars on a freeway watching an accident, then speeding up as they passed.

Besides having moved Ty into a little shade and fanning him, I didn't know what more I could do. I had never earned my “racing accidents” merit badge. I did realize that my hands were poor instruments of wind creation, however, so I figured that maybe I could find some plant to use as a fan to cool Ty while we waited for help.

I walked away from the trail looking for something suitable. Maybe something light and feathery, or some yucca leaves that had fallen.

After a few steps I found some clusters of course, brown and green grass, two or three feet tall with leaves ranging from a quarter to a half inch wide. Not seeing anything else close by that would work, I leaned over to pull some out. As I yanked, unsuccessfully, I heard a rapid clacking sound like the sputtering of an old movie film. I pulled again and cut my palm as some of the blades slid along my skin. I was going to need a stick or rock to help me dig up the plant. Keeping one hand gripped around the grass, I used my other hand to pick up a rock with a pointed edge. When I was almost ready to pound the stone into the ground, I heard the sputtering sound again. There were no cars nearby, and no machinery. Having grown up in Arizona, and given my current geography, I had a pretty good idea what the sound must have been, and I wasn't excited about it.

Slowly, I looked up, doing my best not to move any other part of my body. The noise stopped for a moment, then started again. As I scanned my surroundings I saw what I was hoping I wouldn't see: slightly to my right and a few feet away in the shade of a small boulder was a coiled snake with its tell-tale rattle sticking up and waving like a battle flag. Below the rattle were characteristic white and black stripes. Dark brown scales outlined a diamond pattern along the snake's body.

I held my breath. The snake's black tongue shot in and out of its mouth, paused, then shot out again, moving up and down as though fanning itself. It looked calm and peaceful. But I knew better. I could understand now why snakes had a forked tongue: it was a sign that they were deviously evil.

I loosened my grip on the plant but kept the rock in my hand in case I needed it for protection. I thought about throwing it in order to distract the snake – and then running – but worried that any movement I made in the snake's direction might cause it to attack.

Keeping my body bent, I slowly moved one leg sideways to the left and slightly backwards, directly away from the rattlesnake. Then I slid my other leg to join it. Again, I slid the first leg. Then I simultaneously rotated my body, straightened up, and extended my other leg back as far as it would go. Hoping I was out of striking distance, I slowly walked backwards until I was maybe fifty feet away. Then I circled around to where I had left Ty.

He was going to have to survive without a fan.

A few minutes later the yellow-clad runner I had sent off returned with the Red Mountain coach. They brought a towel, ice, and four water bottles.

Ty groaned. I looked down at him. He was grimacing with his eyes closed and had turned his head to the side. The bleeding looked like it had completely stopped.

His coach stooped to examine his runner. “Ty, it's Coach.”

Ty opened his eyes. When they focused, he murmured, “I can’t move my legs.”

“You just need to cool down and get oxygen to them,” his coach encouraged him. “We're going to help you sit up, okay?”

Ty closed his eyes and nodded.

The other runner and I carefully raised Ty's shoulders off the ground while his coach hooked his hands under Ty's armpits. Then all three of us gently moved him into a sitting position.

“Give him some water,” the coach instructed me. I opened the bottle and poured water into Ty's mouth while the coach supported his back. After a couple of swallows, Ty shut his mouth and shook his head.

“Drink it,” commanded his coach.

“I don't want it.”

“Drink it, anyway.”

Ty opened his mouth and I poured the water. He grimaced, but swallowed.

The coach turned to the other runner. “Wrap that towel around the ice and put it on his neck.” The Mesa High runner obeyed the coach's command.

“Now breath deeply,” the coach directed Ty.

There wasn't much to do while we waited for Ty to recover except to stand so that our shadows covered him. Occasionally he'd open his mouth and I'd give him another drink. No one spoke for a few minutes.

When Ty began to fidget, his coach asked, “What happened?”

“I don't know.” Ty cleared his throat. I handed him a bottle and this time he poured the water himself. “I started zig zagging back and forth on the trail.”

He closed his eyes, exhaled loudly, and continued, “I fell a couple of times.”

“You probably suffered from heat stroke. Can you feel your legs now?”

“They hurt.”

“Good. Do you think we can move you against the tree?”

Ty nodded.

His coach rotated and dragged him so that his back was resting against the palo verde tree. Turning to us, he said, “Why don’t you join your teams?” We nodded and jogged toward our base camps, not bothering to follow the trail. By now the men’s race would have ended anyway, and the girls would have started running. That meant I was relegated to the junior varsity team. If I ever talked to my dad again, he’d never let me hear the end of it.

My teammates who weren’t cheering for the girls or warming up for the JV races were stretching and talking under a blue tarp set up to provide shade. Water bottles littered the area. I grabbed a fresh one from the cooler, took a swallow, and kicked a nearby rock. Cool water from the bottle splashed onto my hand. I kicked the rock again and replaced the cap on the bottle.

By this time stretching was probably worthless, but I pulled my left foot up behind me anyway, balancing on my right foot and feeling the sweet torture of quad muscles stretching. Mark slapped me on the back and said, “Didn't even finish the race, huh? Does this mean you’re running JV next week?”

I pushed him away and laughed. “Yeah, guess so.”

Walking from under the tarp into the sunlight, I stretched my other leg and hoped Coach would be merciful given the circumstances. If he wasn’t, well, I wasn’t planning on talking to my dad anytime soon anyway. Without the win today, I doubted I'd be dating Erin anytime soon, either.