The first time I took my plane up (by myself), I had a very clear plan of what I wanted to accomplish. Knowing what you want to do is very important. I also used a trick I learned in my flight training, visualize over and over what you're going to do. Imagine things going wrong and know how to correct them. Do this over and over...while you're watching tv, trying to fall asleep....
Here is what I wanted to accomplish on my first flight.

1) Take off with a lot of speed.
2) Shallow climb with shallow turns until I was up quite high.
3) Determine the stall characteristics of my plane at altitude.
4) Decend and practice approaches (If an approach looked good, I planed on setting it down for a full stop landing) MAINTAINING SUFFICIENT AIRSPEED WAS A HUGE GOAL HERE. There was no way I was going to stall.
5) Land the plane, nothing fancy. Just get it down in one piece. Oh, and a big mental note I kept going over and over during my approaches, "no sharp turns".

Everything worked great and I still have my plane all in one piece. Good luck!