How have you changed?

Things are different.

The priorities that we had just a year or two ago have shifted. I am finding that many things that I once valued no longer matter quite as much. Take home ownership for instance. My wife and I recently moved into a wonderful home in a fantastic neighborhood. What I love most about it is that we don't own it. We're living in it until it sells. We're still homeowners, but only until the house we moved from sells. We, as many of us have discovered, recognize that the American Dream of home ownership ain't what it used to be. A home today is not an investment vehicle, nor should it be what defines your social and economic status. A home is a thing. What matters is what makes you happy. Believe me, I like to live well and enjoy the amenities and qualities that a fine home offers, but these are things. They just don't seem to matter that much anymore. Things are temporary. They may help in the pursuit of happiness, or at least we may think they do, but what I have discovered makes me happy is quality of time with family, friends, business colleagues and everyday positive experiences in life and in business that stay with you forever.

I am an avid boater, and in recent years, owned three boats (at the same time). As of about two weeks ago, the last of the three was sold. Technically that was my son's, and he just moved to Boston where he can't even park a car outside his apartment, never mind dock a boat. There was a time that boat defined him, was his social and activity center. But it's a thing. He was the first to recognize it.

I admit that I missed not spending the first labor day in a decade not out on the Lake, but my wife was quick to remind me that if I really had to be out on the lake, I could speed dial any number of friends who would be more than happy to meet me at the dock or rent a boat. I opted for none of the above, and instead we spent a great day listening to blues and eating barbecue at the park followed by a dip in the pool and a backyard cookout with friends.

Sure there are cycles, and I'm not an economist, but I feel like I am experiencing an evolutionary tidal shift in thinking. Do you feel it, too? I have begun to call it the "New Real". This is what I see as the developing focus for what I have dubbed AMERICA 2010: The Great Recovery.

We are all thinking a little differently than we did two years ago. We're thinking differently about things. And that will lead to new ideas, new businesses, new social trends and a general resetting of goals and how each of us define success and happiness. It's wreaking some havoc in the markets, where the consumerism of the past is no longer.

That's just more proof that it's not about things. So what is the NEW REAL for you?