What words do you use to define yourself? Have you ever given it much thought? Do you unthinkingly accept and buy into the assessments and expectation other people have pinned on you? What we believe about ourselves affects our actions and our actions impact the direction and quality of our lives. Let me give you an example.

As a country, we are knee deep in a recession. The government’s solution is to get us to open up our pocket books and spend more money. So they are proposing to give us money to spend it on services and things, but primarily on things. They reason that we are a nation of consumers for and about consuming, and that ramping up our spending will solve our economic woes.

I’m not an economist and this blog post is not about solving the nation’s financial crisis. I am, however, asking you so stick with me on this analogy as we look more closely at how accepting generalizations about ourselves can be a waste of our potential and even harmful.

“We Americans are so used to being referred to as ‘consumers’ that we comfortably fall into that role and do so conspicuously,” wrote reader Tom Krohn in his recent email to columnist Michelle Singletary of The Fresno Bee. His point was that it’s not just our spending habits that need to change but how we define ourselves as a nation that needs adjusting. We have gotten so used to thinking of ourselves as consumers, that we nod in mass agreement when the government says what we need to solve this economic crisis is more consuming.

As Singletary points out in her newspaper column, “According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, consume means to do away with completely; destroy; to spend wastefully; squander.” Oops! What Krohn is saying is that maybe we need to think outside the box about our values and our focus in order to open up greater possibilities to re-energizing and re-developing our economy.

And that is my point to you. The definition of who you are will overtly and even covertly direct your behavior. So do you live by who you truly are, or are you held captive by someone else’s definition of you? Are you boxed in or do you have room to grow and flourish? Have you ever even given it much thought? Introspection and self-awareness are good things, and there is no better time than the freshness of the new year to turn the looking glass on yourself.

So take a moment to write down a minimum of ten words that you would use to describe who you are. Re-read and assess how truthful you were about yourself. Do you like what you read? Does anything need to be enhanced, changed or just completely deleted? If you are perfectly satisfied, then I ask you to be deeply honest with yourself. Humans are like sharks, if we don’t keep moving and growing, we die. I am not suggesting that you be highly critical and smash your self-esteem. I am just asking you to remain open and aware to what new personal growth and opportunities may lie ahead

My February newsletter will complete this topic (for now) on rethinking, renewing and refreshing.  Please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already done so.  Happy New Year!

(Note: Michelle Singletary’s column, We’re Defined by the Way We Shop, appeared in the January 4, 2009 issue of The Fresno Bee newspaper.)

New Year’s Resolutions. Here we are a couple of weeks away from New Year’s Day and already many of us have broken, or at least compromised our resolutions for doing things differently. While we may be sincere at the time we crafted them, we often sabotage the process and therefore our success by setting unrealistic goals to be achieved through ineffective methods in an unattainable time frame. I’m not trying to discourage you from desiring and working towards change; I’m trying to inject a bit of a reality check into the process.

Any kind of successful resolution has to align with your value system. If you don’t completely buy into the resolutions you have set for yourself, then you are inviting failure into the process.

Any kind of successful resolution has to be broken down and achieved in manageable increments. Sure, there are some of you who can bluster your way through, and some resolutions (like quitting cigarettes) may require an all or nothing approach. But for the most part, you are inviting discouragement into the process if you try to bite off more than you can chew all at once.

Any kind of successful resolution has to be pegged to attainability. It’s great to dream big but in doing so don’t undermine your success by setting a goal that just isn’t feasible. You don’t necessarily have to throw the baby out with the bath water ~ perhaps you need to modify or rethink the original resolution.

Any kind of successful resolution has to be made public. Yes, you need accountability for your actions so in those moments of weakness, you have a partner to help you over the humps.

So go ahead and make those resolutions. That’s the beautiful optimistic nature of new beginnings in a new year. But do it in a way that you won’t look back in a few days, weeks, months and ask yourself, “What was I thinking?” or “I’m such a loser.”

I love a fresh snowfall. It covers a multitude of ugliness and bareness in a beautiful mantel of fresh white. Even the process of snow falling is beautiful and serene as the white flakes blank out the sky and drift silently down from heaven. It becomes all about the snow, and once this exquisite gift has been delivered, the clouds recede to reveal a blazing sun shining in a brilliant blue sky while the land rests in protected peace. Have you ever noticed how quickly the birds come out after a snowstorm and sing their delighted songs exclaiming the beauty of the day, the provisions from the sky and the promise of life renewed?

It is fitting that the new year comes in winter, a time when we think of life as dead or dormant. (I realized that some of you may be living in climates where snow is nonexistent at this time of year or ever, but that doesn’t prevent the analogy from applying to you, too.) for some plants, winter is too hard and they die. But if you know anything about plants that thrive in cold climates, they need the dormant time of winter to rest and recharge for the burst of activity in the coming spring. It takes a lot of energy to produce leaves and flowers, and renew the cycle of life.

We, too, need a time of dormancy ~ not complacency nor denial nor regression but a time of reflection, planning and renewal. A time for a physical, spiritual, mental and emotional check-up, tune-up and balancing out.

So while you contemplate what the new year may bring, visualize the covering of snow over your past year. Think about what lies underneath. The failures, disappointments and pain remain, that cannot be changed, but what also lies below the surface of the fresh snow is the beauty, potential, joy and hope of all that is you and your days ahead. You can wallow, wither and die in the history of your past, or you can be dormant for this season as you prepare for the annual renewal of your life.

This month we celebrate the beginning of 365 new days. 365 chances to live differently. 365 moments to give and receive love. 365 opportunities to create purpose and direction. 365 times to experience joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control and abundance. 365 days to live beyond ourselves.  (See January 1, 2009 post on the negative way numbers can impact us.)

It is fitting that a fresh start takes place after a month of being thankful (November) and a month of giving (December). We have had time to reflect over our past year, bask in the warmth of new memories, experience personal growth from the not so pleasant ones, be thankful for what we have and to give to others from that abunbance. We have the opportunity to start afresh by building on our past and opening ourselves to the future.

So what does your future hold? Have you given it much thought? Are you stuck in the fear of tough times? Are you optimistic and willing to make a difference in the quality of your life?

Have you ever noticed how numbers dominate our thinking? We literally live by numbers. Hold old are we? What is our height? Our weight? How long have we been married? How many marriages? How many children do we have? Where are we in the birth order of our siblings? What is our house worth/ number of bathrooms and bedrooms/ square footage? How much do we earn? What year is the car we drive? How many trips have we taken? And on and on.

What’s that all about? Have we reduced the definition of who we are and our value to humanity to a series of numbers?

Would we feel different if we didn’t know our birth date? How wealthy would we be if we didn’t fix a number to our sense of abundance? How healthy would we be if we simply ate right, exercised and didn’t focus on the scale in our bathrooms?

Do you really look at the core of who you are rather than where you fit in the numbers game?

In this new year, it would be a good time to ask yourself: How do I determine my self-worth? How do I allow others to place a value on me? How do I define happiness/ contentment/ success/ belonging? If all your answers come up as numbers, then perhaps it’s time for a paradigm shift. It’s just a thought.