One of the most important things in the world is friendship. In order to have friends, you have to be a friend. But how can you be a good friend at school?

Listen — Listen when they are talking. 【小题1】. Sometimes it’s not necessary for you to have anything to say; they just need someone to talk to about their feelings.

Help them — If your friend is ever in need of something, be there to help them. You should try to put them first, but make sure you don’t do everything they want you to do. 【小题2】. Have a little extra money in your pocket in case they forget something they need.

【小题3】— Try to make something for your friend to help make them feel better in hard times. Making cards and encouraging them are among the nicest things you can do for a friend. Marilyn Monroe, a famous US actor, once said, “I often make mistakes. 【小题4】. But if you can’t stay with me at my worst, you are sure not to deserve to be with me at my best.” Always remember this! If you don’t want to stay with your friends when they’re in hard times, then you don’t deserve to be with them when they're having a good time!

Make plans — Try to make plans with your friends. Go shopping, go for ice cream, have a party, go to a movie and so on. Take time to know each other even better by doing something you both enjoy. By planning things together, you both can have a good time. 【小题5】.

In choosing a friend, one should be very careful. A good friend can help you study. You can have fun together and make each other happy. Sometimes you will meet fair-weather friends. They will be with you as long as you have money or luck, but when you are down, they will run away. How do I know when I have found a good friend? I look for certain qualities of character, especially understanding, honesty and reliability (可靠).

Above all else, I look for understanding in a friend. A good friend tries to understand how another person is feeling. He is not quick to judge. Instead, he tries to learn from others. He puts himself in the other person’s place, and he tries to think of ways to be helpful. He is also a good listener.

At the same time, however, a good friend is honest. He does not look for faults in others. He notices their good points. In short, a friend will try to understand me and accept me.

Another quality of a friend is reliability. I can always depend on a good friend. If he tells me he will meet me somewhere at a certain time, I can be sure that he will be there. If I need a favour, he will do his best to help me. If I am in trouble, he will not run away from me.

When I meet someone who is reliable, honest, and understanding, I know I’ve found a good friend!

“First we make our habits,then our habits make us.”——Charles C.Noble

It’s such a simple concept,yet it's something we don’t always do. It’s not extremely difficult to do, and yet I think it’s something that would make a world of difference in anyone’s life. Break your goals into habits,and focus on putting those habits into autopilot. My belief is that having one goal to focus on is much more powerful than having many goals.

I try to turn my goals into habits,and in doing so,I put my goals on autopilot. Turning a goal into a habit means really focusing on it,seriously,for at least a month,to the exclusion of all else. The more you can focus on it, the more it’ll be put on autopilot. Let’s look at my marathon goal as an example. I was just starting out in running,and l had the brilliant idea to run a marathon within a year. But in order to achieve that goal,I broke it down into two habits：

1.I had to make running a daily habit.

2.I had to report to people in order to have accountability(责任)—I did this through family,friends and coworkers,through a blog,and through a column in my local newspaper every two weeks. With this accountability,there’s no way l would stop running.

The accountability habit took a couple of months,mainly because I didn’t focus on it too much while l was building the running habit. But it stuck,and for that first year of running,I would report to people I knew and blog about my running every day and I would write a column every two weeks for my local paper.

Once those two habits were firmly fixed,my marathon goal was pretty much on autopilot. I still had to do the work,of course,but it didn’t require constant focus. And eventually,I ran the marathon. I was able to achieve this because,all year long,I had the daily running habit and daily accountability habit. I put my marathon goal into autopilot,and that made it much easier--instead of struggling with it daily for an entire year,I focused on it for one month and was able to accomplish it while focusing on new habits and goals.