As kids our parents tell us how to act, what to eat, even when to do our homework. But as we start taking charge of our own lives, many of us decide to make changes — stuff like eating right, being more environmentally conscious, or doing better in a sport.

If you’re like most people, the easy part is knowing what change you want to make. The challenge is figuring out how to get there and sticking with it.

Some helpful hints in crating a positive energy and coming closer to your goals can be:

1. Make a journal, write down what your achiving, why you want to make this a goal, and some ways that YOU can help yourself. When your finished, show a parent or your best friend, getting others involved you will create a support team, influences from outside will guide you along and keep you interested, and its someone you can go to talk about challenges that you may come to face, or accomplishments you have made.

2. Make it beautiful! Create a collage, something bright showing what you love, the goals you want, (example: if you want to be a hair stylist you can include things like different hair styles, your fave styling products, or if your wanting to train harder or better to be on the high school football team, create pictures of your fave college players, colors, teams. And hang this where you will see it everyday, and put yourself in that motivated mode.

3. Do it for YOURSELF!  Your goals should be for you, about you, and benefit you! Doing something for someone else, like your boyfriend wants you change something for HIM, that’s not who you are. Someone who shares any relationship for you, should be happy with the person you are! These goals and achievements are for your personal benefit, bettering yourself, because you want to. It’s the greatest feeling, especially when you’ve finished your goal,  and you look back at the learning process and relize that it wasn’t that hard, and your ready for another one. Its building your personality complex, becoming a young adult.

Specific, realistic goals work best. When it comes to making a change, the people who succeed are those who set realistic, specific goals. “I’m going to recycle all my plastic bottles, soda cans, and magazines” is a much more doable goal than “I’m going to do more for the environment.” And that makes it easier to stick with.

It takes time for a change to become an established habit. It will probably take a couple of months before any changes — like getting up half an hour early to exercise — become a routine part of your life. That’s because your brain needs time to get used to the idea that this new thing you’re doing is part of your regular routine.

Roadblocks don’t mean failure. Slip-ups are actually part of the learning process as you retrain your brain into a new way of thinking. It may take a few tries to reach a goal. But that’s OK — it’s normal to mess up or give up a few times when trying to make a change. So remember that everyone slips up and don’t beat yourself up about it. Just remind yourself to get back on track.

Love your life, be happy with the choices you make, be positive and stay well! Your youth only comes once, and is gone before you know it. Take the time that you have, make your goals and go for them, you should have a wonderful support team, and you will make progess, and you will be on the way to a better you, a self-motivated you, someone YOU can count on, and others can count on too!