Rosa Say's Blog: Managing with Aloha, page 31

Trusting Your Intuition

You possess more wisdom than you realize. If the thought of claiming your wisdom feels a bit too presumptuous or arrogant to you, start by seizing better ownership of (and comfort with) your intuition.

Wisdom germinates in both knowledge and intuition.

Think of intuition as ability and product. Intuition is

1. An ability you can groom and master, and

2. A product of your ALOHA spirit-spilling.

This posting is a follow-up to: Like it? Might Love it? Run with it!

The “Run with it” conversation is one which happens quite frequently in my coaching conversations with managers, for people often need help in pulling the trigger. They’ll admit they get some good ideas, no excuses there, yet there is still hesitation in their next-stepping; they search for more self-assurance in knowing they’re making the right move.

Give yourself a break by being more reasonable about this. We can’t know about anything which happens in the future, not with 100% certainty, for so much can happen in the lead-up to that future. We have to trust with positive expectancy, and just go for it, knowing we will Ho‘ohana in the lead-up.

So how do you get that trust?

We’ll get it in two places, that is, in two different contexts. There’s self-trust, from within us, and trust of others, from the comfort of our surroundings.

The good news? Both are under our control. In Managing with Aloha, creating our Sense of Place intentionally is how we gain comfort in our surroundings. Let’s talk about self-trust, an integral part of our good selfishness, and another way we ‘do for ourselves’ before we can progress to serving others.

Believing in the inherent goodness of the Aloha Spirit (which we know to be yours to begin with) is like having your cake and eating it too. Once you trust in ALOHA spirit-spilling, you self-trust more easily. Spirit-spilling happens because you are filled up with an abundance of some kind — an abundance of good, and of the best kind. You overflow, and spill over as a means of sharing your best with others, and in doing so, your good begets more good.

Contrary to guessing about the future, you CAN know about this abundance within you as the full composition of your Palena ‘ole capacity.

As quick review, from the 9 Key Concepts, on Palena ‘ole (9th):

“We create our abundance by honoring human capacity; physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. When we seek inclusive, full engagement and optimal productivity, any scarcity will be banished. Growth is welcomed and change is never feared; enthusiasm flourishes.”

When you self-trust, you believe in your intuition.

First, some myth busting: Intuition is NOT magic.

Intuition is an ability. And we know what that means: An ability has the potential of being a skill we can master if and when we choose to.

From the Dictionary:

intuition |ˌint(y)oōˈi sh ən|

noun

• the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning : we shall allow our intuition to guide us.

• a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning : your insights and intuitions as a native speaker are positively sought.

From the Thesaurus:

1. He works according to intuition: instinct, intuitiveness; sixth sense, clairvoyance, second sight.

2. This confirms an intuition I had: hunch, feeling (in one’s bones), inkling, (sneaking) suspicion, idea, sense, notion; premonition, presentiment; informal gut feeling, gut instinct.

We welcome our hunches and inklings. The problem is, Thesauri descriptions like “sixth sense, clairvoyance, second sight” and worse, “sneaking suspicion” get us to think about magic or underhandedness. Shift your understanding, and think about intuition as a product. Intuition doesn’t appear out of thin air; nor do hunches and inklings. They’re the cumulative result of all your experiences, past and present. If there’s any magic at all, it’s scientific, in your biology as a human being, and in the way your brain can store and process it all for you, even when you aren’t mindfully concentrating on it.

This really isn’t that much different from how we think. We embrace thinking of all stripes, because it’s escaped any mystical, woo-woo connotation. Thankfully, we accept thinking as an ability, and don’t consider it to be magic. Intuition must garner the same level of our respect.

“To think, perchance, to dream.”

Have you ever really thought about how you think?

We do so in a variety of different ways; some of us pragmatic, others impulsive, some of us seriously deliberate, others happily sketchy and dreamy. These persuasions can occur in rapid progression within the thought processes of a single person’s ruminations. Some of us are fully cognizant of our values as we think, and others pointedly ignore them hoping for more objectivity or understanding (as I had described in Run with it).

The wisdom of our ancestry:

In Hawai‘i, many kūpuna (elders) will say there is a PONO reason our gut is at our physical center. Our heads and hearts must come lower; one must get out of the clouds and the other out of the clutches of others (getting us away from “the shoulds”). Second, the elemental feeling we get from the land under our feet must rise up and be held in higher esteem, for there is divine power in the ‘āina, and it is our sense of place. Third, we must care about others, but we can only do so when we care about ourselves first, and enough to connect to our own source, our ALOHA. So it is only natural that our gut (na‘au) is the true seat of our wisdom (na‘auao) and well being (PONO), for it is where all these things come together to center us with good balance.

This makes a lot of sense to me, because I experience it so much, and very gratefully so, with MAHALO as the ‘elemental’ grounding the kūpuna often talk about.

I have long realized that I am an emotional thinker: We all are — I just admit it now, and talk about it as my kūpuna encouraged me to. We all tend to start our deliberate thinking in a way we feel is logically intelligent and of mental capacity, but we’ll think best, completely and most clearly, when we can connect to the intuitive wisdom that emotions well up in us. It is then that we decide with deeply held conviction, feeling that we’ve been able to dig deeper into the inner wellspring of our past experiences — our knowing. We have to give in to our innate being, and let ourselves go, “running with it” inside first.

It’s okay to do so privately, wading through our own reckoning (private introspection is a good definition for what journaling is all about). We can be in love with our emotions, the good, the bad, and the ugly, for we can know they exist to teach us something we’re far better off knowing (more about our equally necessary self-restraint in a moment). There’s a lot of self-talk that happens in our heads, self-talk to be appreciated, but our head’s job is to actually stop thinking at some point, turn archiving over to the memory, and shift to listening to the rest of our spirit.

Intention and intuition aren’t magic, but if you believe in ALOHA, and in NĀNĀ I KE KUMU, looking to one’s source, they are scientifically sound concepts touched by sacred spirit. Inviolable.

This is not exactly the same as thinking with your heart, for the emotional heart is more of a wild card that can get away with discarding reason, and that kind of abandon is very unsettling to most people, managers in particular! The emotional thinking I’m referring to is the gut-level kind of thing the kūpuna speak of, where your heart and your head come into a kind of balance that they can’t achieve when left to their own devices. Think of it as our humanly sound intervention, where the wisdom of the spirit can bring all to PONO, our feeling of balance and rightness.

A self-coaching exercise in Intuition and Self-Trust

Don’t just take this from me. I sat, several times, with the kūpuna I’ve mentioned to have them school me in my beliefs too, in order to gain the mana‘o I can now trust in. Gain personal introspection: Be alone with your thoughts on how you think, and how you might want to affect your own mastery of this precious ability we all have.

You never want to get too lazy in thinking either, for there is a wonderful HA‘AHA‘A connection as well. Thinking is the humility muscle in your brain that lies somewhere between those left and right hemispheres many people talk about. Far as I can tell, there’s no learning without thinking. I call it the ‘humility muscle’ because it can handle that bully we all have inside us called our ego.

Answer these questions as you feel you can, and start by trusting in what you come up with: Know you’re tapping into the wisdom you already possess:

What kind of a thinker are you? What kind of a thinker would you prefer to be?
What choices do you make with what you read, listen to, and watch (inputs), and further, with what you respond to, fully knowing how they will influence you?
What kind of company do you keep, and which conversations do you willingly choose to engage in, because they strengthen you, and give you more energy?
How much do you allow your own self-talk to happen? If you are listening to music, or watching a show, and a thought comes into your head about a lyric or a scene, do you pause the gadgets and stop to think and capture, or do you allow them to drown out your own struggling voice?
If you were to start working with a coach like me, could you tell me how you think? Could you put into words a difference between your instinctive process, and your deliberately chosen one?
Can you think without self-restraint? Can you think with abandon and surrender? Here’s a take on self-restraint from novelist Walter Mosley, in This Year You Write Your Novel: He is talking about authentic writing, and we can give ourselves similar permissions at times, learning to trust in those moments our self-restraint will kick in as inherent goodness.

Learning how to write without restraint

“Self-restraint is what makes it possible for society to exist. We refrain, most of the time, from expressing our rage and lust. Most of us do not steal or murder or rape. Many words come into our minds that we never utter—even when we’re alone. We imagine terrible deeds but push them out of our thoughts before they’ve had a chance to emerge fully.

Almost all adult human beings are emotionally restrained. Our closest friends, our coworkers, and our families never know the brutal and deviant urges and furies that reside in our breasts. This restraint is a good thing.

The writer, however, must loosen the bonds that have held her back all these years. Sexual lust, hate for her own children, the desire to taste the blood of her enemy —all these things and many more must, at times, crowd the writer’s mind. Your protagonist, for instance, may at a certain moment despise his mother. “She stinks of red wine and urine,” he thinks, “And she looks like a shriveled, pitted prune.”

This is an unpleasant sentiment, to be sure. But does it bring your hero’s character into focus? This is the only question that’s important.” 
~ Walter Mosley

And lastly, choose to spill your spirit. Give in to the abundance, for surrendering to the thinking of your ALOHA will always bring you far greater clarity.

Ua ola loko ‘ao i ke aloha;

ALOHA provides life and learning from within.

If this link was shared with you, this article is posting number 3 in this conversation:

Day 1 for Job 1: A Good Selfishness
Like it? Might love it? Run with it.
Trusting Your Intuition
Intuition x9: Intuition in 9 Aloha business concepts

A Kamehameha Day Remembrance

Tomorrow, June 11th, is a State holiday in Hawai‘i. It is Kamehameha Day, the day we celebrate the man many believe to be the greatest king ever to rule our islands.

Kamehameha the Great was king between 1782 and 1819, and he is respected most for uniting our islands, and establishing the Kingdom of Hawai‘i in 1810.

We haven’t been a monarchy for over a century now, but the legacies of our monarchs live on, their stories told with admiration and reverence — yet another way good will survive within our values; we remember our best parts, so we can share them. We also want to claim our good, being able to say, “Yes, yes, this is us, KĀKOU.”

The Kingdom of Hawai‘i: 88 years in history

Prior to 1810, the Kingdom of Hawai‘i included the inhabited islands of Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe, Maui and Hawaiʻi (the Big Island).

The islands of Kauaʻi and Niʻihau were ruled by Kaumualiʻi, and residents there take much pride in pointing out their islands have never been conquered. King Kamehameha twice prepared a huge armada of ships and canoes to take the islands by force, and twice he failed; once due to a storm, and once due to an epidemic “which littered Kauaʻi beaches with bodies.” In the face of the threat of a further invasion, however, Kaumualiʻi decided to join the kingdom without bloodshed, and became Kamehameha’s vassal in 1810, ceding the islands to the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi upon his death in 1824.

Forty years later, Elizabeth Sinclair purchased Niʻihau in 1864 from the Kingdom of Hawai‘i for $10,000 in gold coins: Her family had sailed to the islands from the Pacific Northwest in search of a new homestead, and the Scottish homemaker, farmer and plantation owner supposedly chose Ni‘ihau over Waikīkī and Pearl Harbor! Private ownership of Niʻihau has been passed on to her descendants, the Robinson family.

Queen Lili‘uokalani was the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian islands. She felt her mission was to preserve the islands for native residents, however she was deposed by the advocates of a Republic for Hawai‘i in 1893. She would be forced to give up her throne five years later, when Hawai‘i was annexed to the United States in 1898.

— A summary taken from several Wikipedia pages and verified with my own collection of Hawaiian history books

Held firm, by ancestry, heritage, and tradition.

Kamehameha Day has always struck me as a day when it is simply good to remember one’s own history in the islands, remembering as one can. It is NĀNĀ I KE KUMU — a way we will “look to our source.” The older I get, the more there is to remember, and to think about. There is more to tell, and more good to perpetuate.

The more interesting the history — as is the history of our monarchy — the better the story! Hearing Kamehameha’s story over and over again in my life, has caused me to think of my own life in the same way — as a story, hopefully one that my descendants will love telling in the distant future too. Lifestyle can change, and constantly will, yet sense of place has a way of staying rooted in ancestry, heritage, tradition, and our very colorful ethnicity here. We don’t replace those things as much as we add to them; they represent our abundance.

While growing up in Hawai‘i, I thought of myself as more American than Hawaiian, as I daresay most Baby Boomers in our islands do. I was born in the Territory of Hawai‘i, and was in kindergarten when my home became the 50th State, and we lived on O‘ahu then, where a more cosmopolitan lifestyle was taking root, and rapidly. When we looked toward the ocean, we’d see Pu‘uloa from our house — Pearl Harbor. “The old men” of our neighborhood wore war stories like honor badges, and would talk about the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor all the time, to impress on us what it had meant to them, and should mean to us. All us kids had a story we’d heard from our grandfathers. If asked, we were expected to tell it with reverence, no detail left out, especially one of any ‘OHANA connection.

The future raced to the moon, and waged a Cold War.

One of my clearest childhood memories is of watching my science teacher cry when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. She was a Catholic school nun, black habit and all, and I had never seen one of them cry before. I remember her saying something like, “I so want you children to visit the moon!” and I had to ask my parents what she was talking about when I got home. She never actually told us Kennedy had died, just that something very sad was happening. At first we all just stared at her, watching her cry, shocked into silence. One by one, we started to cry too, because it just seemed like the right thing to do. Even the boys teared up. She sent us out into the playground saying class was over for the day, and we stayed there until it was time to go home, but nobody played.

As my brothers and I waited for our parents to pick us up, we hoped we weren’t at war. This was a time my dad had talked about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 — a lot. My grandmother too: She’d say that this was one of our problems in being Americans now, that we inherited bigger grudges and other fights which hadn’t started out being one of our fights. My parents would usually remind her that no one wanted to fight, and they’d send us out of the room, respecting her need to talk about it (my grandmother was a Russian immigrant).

My parents were teenagers when World War II ended, and my dad fought in the Korean War (1951-1953) before returning home to make my mom his bride. They had courted before he left: My mom would always tell us kids that our being born was their gift, that we got him to be different from his wartime struggles, and got him to be whole again, the way she once knew him, and that was what ‘OHANA did — family made you whole.

Dad served in the Viet Nam war as a civilian when I was in high school, and he relocated our entire family to Subic Bay in the Philippines to help with the war effort from there, and until the last of our American troops left Viet Nam in 1973. As you can imagine, I went kicking and screaming at the prospect of leaving all my high school friends behind, but like it or not, I was to be an American patriot same as my parents were. During my school breaks I candy-striped in the hospital on base, and I’d listen quietly to the stories of the POWs who had made it to us for care; part of my responsibilities was simply to let them talk, receiving it as well as I could. All of the kids in high school had jobs somewhere on base within the U.S. civil service program, for there would be nothing else for us to do whenever school was out of session. Subic Bay only existed for the war.

Once we graduated we were shipped home to relatives or to college. We could not stay. My parents and younger siblings would stay three years longer than I would, and while I missed them terribly, there was quite a bit home in Hawai‘i keeping good grasp on my attentions, at work, in college, and as part of the local community.

A Cultural Renaissance, round 2. Our values survive.

The Second Hawaiian Renaissance is generally considered to have started in 1970, drawing from similar cultural movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s (so-called to reference an earlier reexamination of Hawaiian arts and culture under King David Kalākaua in the late 1800s). In my own recollection of it, this Renaissance moved quite slowly and tentatively at first, and mostly flourished in Hawaiian music and dance those years. Fairly new to the country still, we largely liked being Americans, though we were increasingly careful about actually saying so out loud. What was the PONO way to do both, seize both opportunities, and be the good Hawaiian people we felt we could be?

So much turmoil. Even for me, living in Hawai‘i all my life but for that brief stint in the Philippines, and in a Hawai‘i still steeped in Renaissance thinking (a movement which has grown more fervent and certain), it is hard to imagine that we were once a monarchy, under the rule of the amazing Kamehameha the Great.

I would study more about Kamehameha as an adult, particularly in regard to leadership. How could I possibly learn about ALAKA‘I, the Hawaiian value of leadership without knowing more about Kamehameha the Great?

In Pauahi, Story of the Kamehameha Legacy, author George Hu‘eu Sanford Kanahele writes,

“No one surpasses Kamehameha the Great in leadership, historic achievement and lasting impact, or in having a transcendent vision for his people. He personified many of the qualities and skills that his people esteemed from ages past: physical prowess, fighting spirit, excellence and achievement, industry, integrity or pono, courage, discipline, wisdom and intelligence, or na‘auao. He demonstrated abiding faith in the sacred traditions, yet understood the forces of change; he brought about political stability and national unity; he maneuvered the ship of state skillfully through the turbulent seas of Western technology and commerce. Giants among men are recognized everywhere, so it is no wonder that this “Ka Liona o ka Pākīpika” or “Lion of the Pacific,” as Joseph Poepoe, the early twentieth century Hawaiian historian called him, has been ranked by foreign visitors and writers alongside Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and general Marquis de Lafayette.”

An exceptional accounting of King Kamehameha’s story can be read online at the Pacific Island National Parks’ site: Hawai‘i’s Greatest King, Kamehameha. Author and park ranger Greg Cunningham includes the story of how “Kamehameha might never have become king except for a twist of fate.”

Learning more will always add to a story. It becomes easier to see our heritage everywhere I look, and today, Kamehameha Day and the ways we will celebrate it is one of those reliable, and undeniably comforting times.

I do wish that all of you reading this could be here to celebrate with us. I will be outside most of tomorrow ignoring my phone and my computer, drinking in my sense of place, and enjoying this amazing place I call home. The child Kamehameha, was born only 36 miles from where I live, and you can imagine the celebration there! This is the story they proudly tell:

Kamehameha the Great fulfilled the prophecy of the birth of a male who would become the greatest of all chiefs in Hawai‘i. Kamehameha was born in the North Kohala area of Kokoiki, around 1753. Because of the prophecy, he was seen as a threat to current rulers.

Word went out to find and kill the baby, but the Kohala community conspired to save him. The future King was carried on a perilous journey through Kohala and Pololu Valley to Awini, a mountain area where he was raised until age 13. The village names of North Kohala commemorate events of that historic journey.

After he came to power, Kamehameha knew he could always count on Kohala to be loyal and help him, because they had been dedicated to him from the moment he was born.

In 1795, the prophecy came true as Kamehameha conquered the islands and united them in peace, becoming King Kamehameha I. Many Hawaiian residents in the area can trace their ancestry to the King.

North Kohala is proud of its connection to the King and reveres him as both leader and ancestor. This reverence is visible in the loving care with which the Kamehameha statue in Kapa‘au is maintained, and in the grassroots effort that creates a full day of ceremonies each Kamehameha Day.

— From Kamehameha the Great: A Rich Legacy in North Kohala

Like it? Might love it? Run with it.

One of the questions I often get about Managing with Aloha is, “How did you come up with it?”

I didn’t “come up with it” in the way many assume. Our values have been around as long as we humans have been, although I often think about how dormant they can be at times, waiting for us to tap into them. The way I see it, it’s much more accurate to say I packaged my specific interest about values in a certain way (19 values, 10 beliefs, 9 key concepts), made it personally useful in the field I thought of as my playground (business), and then decided to share it (as practice and philosophy). I saw how my discoveries and experiences could be useful for other people too, managers in particular.

That made me very, very excited about it. Even more than I was before. I began to see how Managing with Aloha could help managers seize personal responsibility for the profound effect they have in the workplace. Management might be hard work, but we could be sure our efforts were worth it: Managers could make a significant, positive difference.

Managing with Aloha is not a story of invention; it’s a story of fascination.

I would love to think of myself as an inventor, but I honestly believe I’m more of a learner turned curator.

Instead of invention, what I can tell you, is the story of how value-aligned living and working became part of me, and part of my life’s story. My book shares that story with value illustrated details.

Here’s the short version: All I really did, was get interested in values, take constant notice of how they worked their magic in human work, and allow my curiosity to keep setting itself on fire. I ran with my growing fascination, and never looked back. If there was doubt along the way, I ignored it, and ignored it quite easily, for my fascination was so much stronger.

I named it at some point, this ‘thing’ I was obsessed with studying and exploring, years before I even imagined writing a book about it. Naming my fascination was a shortcut in kaona (a ton of meaning accumulated in a few words), and the naming started as a set of locational experiences connected to my management style (Sense of Place) before I realized it had morphed into personal philosophy. I named my fascination to keep Managing with Aloha alive in my own head, and more important, in my own intentions — I was the only one who called it MWA for several years. When I started to actively talk about it with others, we gained the beginnings of our Language of We.

Getting an idea as a flash of brilliance is OVERrated.

It happens, for getting ideas is easy, it happens all the time.

If you have the self-discipline, conduct this experiment: For the next month, write down every single idea you have. You need the reporter’s objectivity too: Don’t qualify your ideas, and don’t judge them, just jot them down for the sole purpose of writing a list. At the end of the month, I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the pure number of ideas you came up with.

The exercise will just prove the point to you if you doubt yourself, for discounting our own ability to generate ideas seems to be some quirk of human nature. And you know what? It may be you’re just like me, where origin doesn’t even matter. The idea that ends up fascinating you, setting your creative and inventive juices boiling doesn’t even have to be yours.

The bigger, and more important question is, will you be the one to run with it?

Execution and follow-up is vastly UNDERrated.

Heck, pure stubbornness for no other reason than believing in something is underrated.

When I took notice of something I liked about values, I refused to let it go. At one point, I was likely the world’s biggest obsessive compulsive about a very simple concept: Adopting a value of the month. The first case studies I encountered in Hawai‘i were completely void of value-mapping: They were marketing ploys to produce and sell Hawaiian calendars and nothing more. Adopting a value of the month was a simple practice for most people, or a “nice idea” they’d learn about in passing, but not for me. I wanted to do it, speak it, wear it, own it, control it, team-direct it, and dominate it until I completely understood it.

Sounds strange to say it, I know, but I made myself fall in love with value alignment. I started by defining values my way, a way I could take ownership of. I’d make myself adopt values I didn’t even believe in that strongly, just so I could feel their behavior-driving immersion. I dabbled, and I would purposely experiment, playing with a mix of being gullible and being a contrarian. I mostly called it play, but I would be a willing guinea pig too, allowing values to influence my life come what may, and dealing with what happened.

If I was going to say that values are inherently good, I had to prove it within my own experiences, and thus believe it for myself. My immersion in values different from my own, became my way of learning empathy and seeking “to understand, rather than being understood” (Stephen R. Covey). Along the way, creation did begin to happen.

Stories of Lifelong Learning don’t come to an end.

As you know, I’m still pretty crazy about everything and anything connected to values-based management, those three somewhat stuffy words where it all started. To start stuffy is okay. To remain stuffy, and degrade to boring or mediocre is not okay, not if something will be this big a part of a life, and possibly, a life’s work.

I still have a Value of the Month program, just more focused, as tends to happen over time. Before, choosing a value like LŌKAHI meant all of it. Immersion. Now, I’ll choose a smaller chunk, like “The positive found in power” (page 106 in my book) and I will look for intersections with other values. There is, for instance, a very nice segue from KULEANA’s accountability transformation to this LŌKAHI concept of power as a positively charged effectiveness (self-efficacy). I totally accept values as cause now, and I’ve shifted to learning more about their effects: I’ve become more interested in the subsets and interplay of values — how they activate, intersect or blend, and how they flow from one to another in sequential behaviors.

Fascination begets more curiosity. Today, I see and hear values in everything, I just can’t help it. I encourage conversation as I do, because the sound of a person’s values talking out loud to me is truly beautiful to my ears, my intellect, and my soul. And I love it all: The perspective, and the intention I now have with understanding human behavior unconditionally has blessed me in countless ways.

Like it? Might love it? Run with it.

I’m just one example of how these stories can happen, and I want you to be another one.

Your story could be managing and leading in our workplaces too, where keen need remains, or it might be connected to something else. ALOHA curation (my even shorter kaona for my personal evolution with Managing with Aloha today) has substantial reach.

If you like an idea or a learning, don’t be too quick to let it go as a passing fancy. Indulge that first strike of fascination. HO‘OMAU, and persist. Stay humble, and interview others who are talking about it: Listen to their stories.

Devote enough interest to see if you’ll fall head over heels in love with the fascination which inspires you. You need not explain it or justify to anyone — not even yourself, not in the beginning. Go all ‘IKE LOA, and be a learner at first, being obsessively curious, to see if your own fascination catches fire.

If not move on. Like it? Might love it? is a process of exploration you can do over and over again. Running with it, is running with discovery and heightened emotion.

Be the one who runs with it. Rise above the fray, and take your stand. Ignore the naysayers and trust in your intuition, and own sense of inspired wanting. Satisfy the hunger your fascination creates in you. To satisfy that hunger is to feel incredibly nourished.

One of these days, you’ll find you have your own Managing with Aloha story. You will have “come up with it” too.

Postscript: I link my articles the way I do, for this very reason, to help you Run with it when a glimmer of fascination strikes. Resist skimming and scanning, and train your attentions with in depth study, for while all are welcomed here, I purposely write for those of you who are subscribers: We can continue conversations instead of constantly repeating them. When you hover over links their page title will pop up, so you know if that link leads to a page you have already read or not. Use the comment boxes here for your own dabbling and experimentation within community conversation, for we can learn kākou, together.

Key 3. VALUE ALIGNMENT:

Work with integrity by working true to your values, for your values will drive your best, and most desirable behaviors. Focus all efforts on the right mission and the right vision (yours!) for it honors your sense of self and brings compelling pictures of the future within your reach, making them your probable legacy. Whether for a business partnership or specific team, deliberate value-alignment creates a healthy organizational culture for everyone involved: When we want to collaborate and co-create, shared values equip and energize us.

Read more: The 9 Key Concepts of Managing with Aloha

The ‘But’s Which Work to Favor

When someone says, “yeah, but” we steel ourselves for their objections and excuses, no matter how tactful they are with the words which follow. We know they’re about to rationalize whatever we just proposed to them, and not in an affirming way, but to escape from it, and perhaps, to challenge us. This was something we talked about in more detail here: Banish your Possibility Robbers.

“Yeah, but”s are sneaky in the way they’ll creep into our language, and most of us aren’t aware of their negative tone until some brave soul will point it out to us. Once you’re aware of them though, your attention goes on high alert, and you’ll scrutinize each ‘but’ that shows up. I level this scrutiny on my writing too: ‘but’ begins to look like an inkblot on the page. Never imagined I’d be curious enough to actually look up the word one day, but I did!

But: a conjunction used to introduce something contrasting with what has already been mentioned.

The key word here is contrast, and that’s where I find ‘but’ working in our favor as the better culture builders we managers aspire to be. We don’t care for ‘but’ as a form of resistance, but we can love it as a form of simply shifting toward better:

Resistance digs in, from negative to negative.
Contrast shifts, and can take us from negative to positive.

There are two values which illustrate this well in our value-mapping: MAHALO and HA‘AHA‘A.

Evoke and elicit MAHALO.

MAHALO teaches us to weave more thankfulness, appreciation, and gratitude into our days. To evoke it, is to bring MAHALO to your conscious mind. To elicit it, is to bring MAHALO to your responses for others.

You can practice this in your self-coaching with the simplest MAHALO exercise there is: Gratitude journaling. Some people make it habitual, writing a top-of-mind listing of what they are grateful for at the end of each day. Science has shown this habit will affect your dreaming, and the quality of your sleep. Others write their lists first thing in the morning for the mindfulness and meditative quality it can bring to the day to come. Their practice is part of how they get dressed for the day, including a positive attitude as their very visible demeanor.

I’ve learned to go for ho‘o gusto, purposely evoking MAHALO when something has gone wrong in some way. This helps me rebound with gratitude.

I didn’t get what I wanted, BUT shift! This is what I do have!:_____________

I messed this up, BUT shift! This is what I did right!:_____________

This is not going to work for me, BUT shift! This definitely does!:_____________

Looks like I’ll be stuck here for a while, BUT shift! This is what I can do!:_____________

To appreciate and be thankful is a next-stepping strategy in shifting with positive expectancy. As we have learned, next-stepping is how long-term happiness can reveal itself in short-term actions.

Short and sweet, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

Evoke and elicit HA‘AHA‘A.

HA‘AHA‘A grooms humility, modesty, and respectfulness into our character. When we elicit it, humility, modesty, and respectfulness get woven into the responses we give to others — even when we have to say “no” to them. We stand our ground, and don’t change our “no” — we state it better due to our respect of another’s dignity, and we become clearer about our own reasons in the process.

To evoke HA‘AHA‘A, bringing it to conscious mind, is to be more open-minded in our thinking. We get less reactive and less impulsive. Instead of saying “yeah, but” right away (it is often an impulsive slip) we begin to say, “Tell me more.” We convey that we genuinely want to understand whatever is being proposed to us. We buy more time to think because we learn more to think about. We can be sure, because we make our decisions having more information. We strip away our assumptions, and give the other person that assurance that we’ve done so.

Again, we might still say no when the conversation is done, but we’ve had a more complete conversation, one in which we’ve held another person in higher regard. Remember: Ha‘aha‘a does not promote lowliness, reticence or a lack of assertiveness. We have been more careful, and that means we aren’t likely to regret our decisions down the road.

“Tell me more.” is another variation of Speak up, I’m listening. Keep both conversation boosters in your Language of We.

So don’t banish ‘but’ completely. Hō‘imi: Look for better, and find your best, with MAHALO and HA‘AHA‘A as the values which can guide you.

Continue your learning!

Related reading, if you are just joining our Managing with Aloha conversations:

Banish your Possibility Robbers — “Yeah, but” is one Robber, learn about the others.
Palena ‘ole Positivity is Hō‘imi— look for it — “Being positive” is a Palena ‘ole conviction: It is Key Concept #9 on Unlimited Capacity.
Myth Busting with Aloha — Learn to ask this question in your day-to-day workplace conversations with each other: “Why do you think that’s so?”

For more, do take the links selectively placed in this article. The tags and categories in the post footer are also clickable indexes designed to guide you in the sequential learning of ‘IKE LOA.

MAHALO:

Mahalo has almost become as universally understood as Aloha, and like Aloha, it is vastly underestimated. Many will often say Mahalo with lightness, to simply convey “thank you.” As a value, Mahalo includes thankfulness, appreciation, and gratitude as a way of living. We live in thankfulness for the richness that makes life so precious at work and at home, and we are able to sense our gifts elementally. Mahalo is the opposite of indifference and apathy, for it is the life perspective of giving thanks for what you have by using your gifts — and all of your gifts — in the best possible way.

The Blending of Competition and Camaraderie

I attended the Ironman 70.3 Hawai‘i this past weekend, fondly known here on the Big Island as The Honu. The race is an Ironman triathlon qualifier, starting with a 1.2 mile swim at Hapuna Beach (the ‘Au ‘Au Kai), which transitions to a 56 mile bike to Hawi (the Paikikala), and ends with a 13.1 mile run (the Holo Holo) on the grounds of the Mauna Lani Resort, finishing at the Fairmont Orchid’s Turtle Point.

It’s physically grueling under the best of circumstances, and to witness the human tenacity, strength and endurance of the athletes who participate on both the professional and amateur level is incredibly inspiring.

Raceday 2012 will go in the record books as the year The Honu was won by Lance Armstrong: Both Armstrong and 2nd place finisher Greg Bennett broke the previous course record set by Chris McCormack despite what most are calling “the toughest conditions in the event’s storied past.” (McCormack chose to compete in Cairns this weekend). Top female finisher Linsey Corbin set a new record as well, beating the time previously set by Michellie Jones in 2005.

Taking notice: A camaraderie of professional calibre

I try to make it to the event whenever I can. It’s convenient, just minutes from my home, and it’s smaller than the Ironman World Championship each October, achieving a much more intimate feel overall. The venue is spring-to-summertime beautiful, with the island feel you’d expect, and the event is quite remarkable in the professional partnership apparent between Ironman Hawai‘i, their partners, and the Fairmont Orchid as staging host. Event execution is exceptional, and I daresay spectator comfort can’t be beat!

No surprise then, that the field of athletes is always very impressive as well. Now in its ninth year, the Honu has matured from a local Olympic distance race of 227 competitors to an international 70.3 event that drew a record field of 1,980 triathletes this time. It’s a great event to be part of, whether as athlete, supportive friends and family (who turn out in good number, despite the expense), volunteer staff, or lucky spectator, as I was.

One of the things I consistently take notice of, is the wonderful camaraderie which exists among the professional athletes, before, during, and after the race. It is clear that they admire and respect each other, and no less important, they genuinely like each other. The Honu is a place to bear witness to HO‘OHANOHANO in action, when true professionals will “conduct themselves with distinction.”

Make no mistake, they are competitive, and they do compete against each other, with fierce determination. The stakes are clear: Only the top 50 male, and top 30 female pros in the Kona Pro Ranking system will qualify to race in the Kona Ironman World Championship. No one gets a free pass: Even Armstrong, who won the Tour de France each year from 1999 to 2005, is scheduled to race a 140.6-mile full Ironman event June 24th in Nice, France, in his quest to earn enough points to qualify for the world championship here on October 13th.

How do professional triathletes achieve this blending of fierce competition and genuine camaraderie?

Camaraderie is defined as “mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time together.” These athletes travel from event to event; they hark from all over the world, and their time spent together is predominantly while in competition. When I ask them about their experiences, many will say it’s their individual time away from the competition itself, and preparing for races which defines them; they claim their character gets groomed by regimen, and by how they train. It gives them a mental edge, not just a physical one.

It is the investment in self we have recently spoken of: The more their mastery of self, the more they will hold their own when they compete, and when they converse with each other. They will be able to be with each other, and put the competitive pressure aside, or in a place where it can better reside within them. Their “Language of We” isn’t a language of competitive success as much as one of shared effort in the work they have in common as triathletes — improving themselves enough to compete on a professional and international level.

The competition which seems more important to these professional athletes, is that which we speak of in Managing with Aloha most often: This appears with KŪLIA I KA NU‘U, the value of achievement within excellence:

Competition itself is not a goal

“The Alaka‘i Nalu became extremely committed to supporting each other as they pursued excellence. Kūlia i ka nu‘u is a reminder that competition serves no purpose if its only goal is to leave someone else behind. Kūlia i ka nu‘u reminds you to strive to be your best, not just better than someone else. It calls for some introspection, being sure that you are not your biggest obstacle. If you must compete, compete against your previous self; improve.”

You can see my 19-photo Flickr set of my day here. I settled for iPhone snaps with Instagram filters this time, yet I do believe they will share the feeling of my day with you. [These are from 2010, when Tim DeBoom won 1st in the field.] The official website of The Honu is here.

Start the conversation:

I share this with you today, as an example of the easiest workplace culture building there is. Events happen around us constantly, and what Alaka‘i Managers will do, is take notice of some value component within what occurs. They’ll be sure to talk about their observations with their team, as I’m doing with you here, and they’ll ask simple questions: What about us? What happens when we compete? Do you think our camaraderie is visible and admirable too? How are we like professional athletes, and how do we differ? What can we learn? What can we use in getting better?

They will ask people on their team to please, speak up, and be heard.

While at the Hualalai Resort, we called these conversation starters our ‘Ohana Mālama. Give a name to those talking story conversations that will be your own value-mapping culture builders. Then look around you, take notice of values in action, huddle up, and have your talks begin.

HO‘OHANOHANO:

Ho‘ohanohano is thought of as the value of respect and self-respect, for it teaches us to honor the dignity of others, while we conduct ourselves with distinction, honor, and integrity as well. Hanohano is a glorious dignity, and to Ho‘o is to make it happen! We honor the intelligence of others, and we seek to learn from them. We ourselves aspire to be as upright in character and as trustworthy as we can possibly be. Short and sweet, this is the value of good, and noble behavior.

Day 1 for Job 1: A Good Selfishness

It’s Day 1 for June. Let’s follow up, by exploring the ALOHA connection to a good selfishness.

On May 2nd I wrote,

“I’ll be thinking of you come the 1st of next month. I know you can achieve this quicker than I did. Just set the goal, believing that your life is worth it, and it won’t elude you anymore.”

— The Victory of Continuous Celebration

The victory I’d talked about, was replacing my weekly reviews with monthly ones instead. It almost sounds trivial, unless you’ve been in my league of weekly review crazies at some time or another, and haven’t we all? It was a goal that had become quite important to me, because I knew that my working life would have to get significantly more manageable if I ever was going to achieve the monthly shift for benefit of the rest of my life.

I had to pare down, and I did.

When you pare down, you de-clutter, and you strip away your non-essentials. You willingly submit to the rub of the Brutal Questions:

“What should you be doing, and what should someone else be doing, and what shouldn’t anyone have to do at all?”

— The Victory of Continuous Celebration

The added benefit? A much clearer focus on what will remain your essentials.

This is where something I call A Good Selfishness comes in.

Selfishness is one of those words with a bad rep, and rightfully so if you think of it as most dictionaries propose: “A state of (noun) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure (adjective).”

It sounds like a complete absence of MĀLAMA, doesn’t it. Unless you qualify it with ALOHA, as Alaka‘i Managers do.

We qualify everything with ALOHA, and we know that ALOHA is the value of unconditional love and acceptance of self and of others, both.

You get to a point where you have to reckon with that part about self, and attach it to something better than the dictionaries propose. The best thing you can do, is attach it to your good intentions.

Attach self to NĀNĀ I KE KUMU, the value of personal well being. As NĀNĀ I KE KUMU reminds us, look to your source, and get grounded there.

NĀNĀ I KE KUMU: This is the value of personal well being.

Literally translated, Nānā i ke kumu means “look to your source.” Seek authenticity, and be true to who you are. Get grounded within your sense of self. Keep your Aloha at the surface of what you do daily, and celebrate those things that define your personal truths. To value Nānā i ke kumu is to practice Mahalo for your sense of self: Do you really know how extraordinary and naturally wise you are? Find out. Become more self-aware. It’s the best discovery you’ll ever make, and it opens a tap to increasing personal wealth (beyond mere finances, wealth is a value too!)

In the Hawaiian culture, Sense of Place (MWA Key Concept 8) factors very deeply into this value, sense of place being defined as both the feel of a place, and the feel for a place.

Self is the feel of, and for, your personal sense of place, as sense of belonging and worth in our world.

It helps a great deal to hyphenate self with your goals or target nouns. I do it quite a bit within these pages, using words like self-assurance, self-coaching, self-management, self-leadership, and self-efficacy. Those are the words of A Good Selfishness, as is the biggie most in the self-development field will speak of, self-actualization:

From Wikipedia: Self-actualization is a term that has been used in various psychology theories, often in slightly different ways. The term was originally introduced by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one’s full potential. In his view, it is the organism’s master motive, the only real motive… Carl Rogers similarly wrote of “the curative force in psychotherapy – man’s tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities…to express and activate all the capacities of the organism.” However, the concept was brought most fully to prominence in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory as the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are fulfilled and the “actualization” of the full personal potential takes place.

Kēia lā. Let’s bring this back to today, and our in-this-moment opportunity.

Day 1 of every month can be about you if you open yourself up to the possibility. As far as Living with ALOHA is concerned, YOU are Job 1.

This is an awareness we have always had in our Managing with Aloha Value of the Month program, where Day 1 of each month is given to investing in our value immersion, a new value each month, something which only works the way it does (magnificently!) because it’s essentially an individual effort first, and a workplace effort second, though workplace culture will enrich its context significantly. Individual efforts in personal value-mapping is a best practice in strengths management (our Key Concept 7) and in skills mastery.

Day 1 for Job 1— SELF— will be when you decide it will be, and I hope you make that decision.

Have this be another way you Banish Your Possibility Robbers.

Call it self-actualization if you prefer, or A Good Selfishness as I do to include everything NĀNĀ I KE KUMU, for what I know to be sure, is that self can be a win-win, and ALOHA virtually guarantees it. Alaka‘i Managers who invest in a good selfishness are courageous. They are willing to explore all of themselves so they can be better, and be of best service to those in their care.

From Managing with Aloha (Chapter 17 preamble):

Nānā i ke kumu. Look to your source. Find your truth.

There is an inner wellspring inside all of us, and we will go to this inner well to get healthy. We find reason. We find heart. We find soul.

Nānā i ke kumu are words of encouragement, telling us to look inward to this source of well-being as our constant and our truth.

Nānā i ke kumu. Look to the source you have revealed, and let it inspire you. Let it energize you. You will not hesitate, and you will not falter.

You will Ho‘omau with renewed strength. You will be warmed by the Aloha of your own spirit. You will continue.

Postscript:

If you are new here, please be sure to read this posting on ALOHA for best context: What is the Aloha Spirit? It’s you!  This one will be a good follow-up: Start with two words: “with Aloha”

Update: This article generated more conversation for us!

Day 1 for Job 1: A Good Selfishness
Like it? Might love it? Run with it.
Trusting Your Intuition
Intuition x9: Intuition in 9 Aloha business concepts