A-#1

Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

I'm not sure if she does anymore, but your mother had a poster with this quote in her classroom.  I believe this is the most important thing I can ever teach you:

Know who you are and choose who to be.

This requires a very keen observational skill which you then have to be able to use on yourself.  It seems very few people on this planet have this skill in general (which is probably why such shows like Psych, House M.D., Monk, and others are so popular, they center around a character like none other which is essentially a person who is hyper aware of their surroundings), and even fewer use this skill on themselves.

You're not really a psychic are you         You actually are an OCD freak...
You just have keen observation skills          And you have keen observations skills

Too often I see or hear about people not seeing someone's actions as who they are, or their personality or character.  Whereas everyone makes mistakes, either in a moment of weakness or just in a moment of thoughtlessness, at some point a repetition of those actions indicates a character defining trait.  A repetition of action is the definition of habit.  I might make a slight edit to the aforementioned quote, something along the lines of indicating that actions aren't always based on words; you can do something without saying anything, but actions are still rooted in thought.  At least, they should be.

Every action you take needs to have been "observed" first.  That is to say, a thought pops in your head, you need to observe that thought and decide if that's something you actually want to act on.  The vast majority of people act without thinking.  Now, I'm making the distinction here of using the term "observing" in lieu of "thinking"; thinking is a form of thought, thoughts can happen without your intervention:
Let's say you're in a store and you see a watch that is super cool, so naturally you want it;
You've got some money saved up, but it's not enough to pay for it;
The thought of just putting the watch in your pocket and walking away may just pop in there (much like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man did);
If you didn't "observe" this thought, you would end up stealing (which I know by now I've told you not to), but most people do observe this thought and decide against it, or some people decide to go through with it.  Very few people steal without "thinking" about it.
The point is, when I say observe your thoughts, that's when most people say "think about what you're doing."

Sorry Venkman, I guess I wasn't observing my thoughts.

Now I know, especially when you're young (I love the 're contraction, it could mean "you are" or "you were", so I'm relatively safe from knowing if you'll read this when you're younger or older), you're going to have a ton of observe-less/thoughtless actions; by the time you're a 10 or so, your observational abilities will be essentially ineffective.  You could intend to observe every single one of your thoughts, but it's just not going to happen.  Such is childhood.  Bill Cosby jokingly called it "Brain Damage."

This ties directly into the Golden Rule; in order to treat others as you would want to be treated, you have to be mindful of your actions, as well as what you want.  In order to know what you want, you have to know yourself.  And you need to do this with every action you take.  Most people will apply the Golden Rule in major places like seeing someone in need on the side of the street.  But I'm saying you need to apply that to every aspect of your life.
You find yourself at a cross walk and you have the right-of-way, so you start to cross;
A car comes up and wants to turn right, but since you have the right-of-way, he has to wait for you;
You need to observe that the driver is waiting on you, put yourself in the driver's shoes and think, "What would make me happy if I were that driver."
Hopefully you'll come to the conclusion along the lines of hurrying up across the street instead of taking your time, because you would appreciate it you were driving your car waiting on someone crossing the street and they hurried up.  Now, are there going to be situations where hurrying up isn't going to be the outcome?  Sure, maybe you're helping an elderly person across the street; maybe you're hauling a ton of stuff and hurrying up would be painful.  The point is, you observed your surroundings and saw an interaction between yourself and someone else; you thought about what you would like if you were in the other person's situation which requires knowing yourself; you consciously acted on those observations.