CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Here we are with a brand-new slate -- 363 new days to come. It's the time we look at the year in review -- and the year in preview.

Some of you are making New Year's resolutions. Some have let this tradition go. And others may be trying to focus on just what you want out of 2011.

Check this out. The words "creation" and "reaction" have the same exact letters in them. If we can hold the thought at all times that our lives are either a creation or a reaction, we can continually remind ourselves to be creating, rather than just drifting along, according to Steve Chandler, author of "Reinventing Yourself."

Many of us can spend whole days reacting without even being aware of it. We wake up reacting to the news on the clock radio. Then we react to feelings in our body. Next, we start reacting to our spouses or children. Soon we get in the car and react to traffic, honking the horn and using sign language.

Once at work, we see an e-mail on our computer screen and react to that. We react to insensitive customers or co-workers who are intruding on our day. During a break, we react to a server at lunch.

This habit of reacting can go on all day, every day, if we're not careful. We become goalies in the hockey game of life, with pucks flying at us constantly.

There's another way of approaching life, though. You can design your own life game plan, and let the game respond to you, rather than the other way around. Sure, we all have to be open to contingencies. That's just it, though. Those can be the exceptions, rather than the rules.

Bill Walsh, the late former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, was viewed as eccentric because of how extensively he planned his plays in advance of each game, according to author Chandler. While most coaches have plays in mind and wait to see how the game unfolds, Walsh would pace the sidelines with a big sheet of plays that his team was going to run, no matter what. He wanted the other team to respond to him.

While his approach was quite unorthodox, Walsh won his share of Super Bowls. And all he did was act on the crucial difference between creating and reacting.

When your life itself becomes the subject matter of the creative process, a very different experience opens up to you, one in which you are involved with life at its very essence, says author, composer and filmmaker Robert Fritz. Fritz, who says we can create our lives just as we compose a song, write a book or create a film, offers an online course in "Creating Your Life" and an e-book titled "Your Life as Art."

Some pleasantly surprising side effects can come with this approach. As you take more responsibility for your actions (or inactions), you start to feel more in control of your life. As a result, you experience fewer instances of overwhelm -- or being pushed around by other people.

The choices we make for our thinking either motivate us or they don't. I'm all in favor of feeling our feelings and staying with them long enough to process them and let them flow through us. But the trick is not to let negative thoughts take over because we all know they can -- and will.

Because of current life circumstances, some of you may feel too discouraged to start on a new course of personal motivation. Or too angry. Or too upset about certain problems or people.

However, author Napoleon Hill (my husband John's favorite mentor) insists this is the perfect time. "There is one unbeatable rule for the mastery of sorrows and disappointments, and that is the transmutation of those emotional frustrations through definitely planned work. It is a rule which has no equal."

Once we start to focus on creating our lives -- rather than reacting to them -- "definitely planned work" becomes the next step on the path, according to Chandler in his book "100 Ways to Motivate Yourself." (I would add a note of caution that it's healthy to build in some bandwidth for spontaneity. If not, we could wind up being too regimented.)

One hour of planning saves three hours of execution, Chandler notes. Most of us, though, think we don't have time for planning. We're too busy reacting to yesterday's messes -- and cleaning them up -- that we enter the workplace or home setting and wander around aimlessly.

Deliberately creating our lives inspires the energy of purpose. Without it, we can suffer from a type of "intention deficit disorder."

A carefully planned day can take a third of the time than an unplanned free-for-all day takes, Chandler says, while relating a story about a sales manager whose success in life was moderate until he discovered the principle of definitely planned work. Now he spends two hours each weekend on his computer planning the week ahead.

"It's made all the difference in the world," the sales manager says. "Not only do I get three times the amount of work done, but I feel so in control. The week feels like my week. The work feels like my work. My life feels like my life."

Talk about creating your life, rather than reacting to it! It doesn't get much better than this.

Linda Arnold, MBA, is a certified wellness instructor and chairwoman/CEO of The Arnold Agency, a marketing communications company specializing in advertising, public relations, government relations and interactive marketing. Reader comments may be directed to Linda Arnold, The Arnold Agency, 117 Summers St., Charleston, WV 25301, or e-mailed to livelifefu...@arnoldagency.com.