Sunday Mālama: A Ma'alahi Persuasion for Calm

Preface ~ If this is your first visit to Managing with Aloha Coaching, you can read of our intention with Sunday Mālama here: Sunday Mālama: A Beginning. A trackback there will easily help you return here.

Two words and two phrases have invaded my thoughts quite a bit lately, and it is an invasion I have welcomed. Therefore, perhaps a description better to use, is to call them good persuasions.

The two words are simplicity and complexity.

The two phrases are “letting go” and “letting be.”

It is quite easy to choose one word over the other, one phrase over the other, but we don’t have to. We can choose not to, and let them be. I think the deciding factor gets to be trust in our own feelings, and how calm we can remain. Let’s see where this Sunday Mālama ends up for us, shall we?

Simplicity and Complexity

Ma‘alahi is a Hawaiian word I want to use more, folding it into my chosen habits. Ma‘alahi means contentment within simplicity and ease.

The word ‘contentment’ always brings two of the Managing with Aloha values immediately to mind for me. One is the value of nānā i ke kumu, to look to one’s source of well being. The other is pono, the value of rightness and balance.

“When a child is troubled but hesitates to tell her parents just what the problem is, the elders will often say “Nānā i ke kumu.” They are saying to find a place where you can sit quietly, and look within yourself for the source of what troubles you, for there you will also find strength within your inner spirit with which to deal with the trouble.” “Are you content? You may feel there is much to be done, however a feeling of contentment is possible when you feel the path ahead is one that is right for you, one where you will enjoy the journey. It may be a difficult journey, but because it’s the right one, it’s the best one, and you take it willingly, eagerly. Contentment dishes up feelings of being at peace, of being calm, stress-free and tranquil. For the moment there is no striving. The feeling and overall image of Pono is contentment. When you are Pono, all is right for you, and all you juggle in your life is in harmony and in balance. There is no inner conflict and no outside struggles that need be brought to resolution.” ~ from Managing with Aloha

Now I don’t necessarily think of complexity as a bad thing. I prefer to think of it as an indicator of what we may really want for ourselves, and just how far we’ll go to get it, and for how long. Creating more complexity can happen in a kind of meandering and patiently thorough search for something when we still can’t quite articulate what we want, or what it is we are searching for.

I do believe that ‘wanting’ is a good thing; it’s a part of your inside spirit calling out to you, to please pay attention to some need that you must have satisfied if you are to ever arrive at another end happy and unscathed — the end being a place where contentment is waiting for you. It can feel good, and very liberating to have braved that ‘difficult journey’ I referred to in that passage above from Managing with Aloha. Your sense of inner wanting can inspire you; it can move you.

Complexity can be a creative and beautiful process if we finish it well, being willing to let some things go, and let some things be. That is what I believe the contentment of ma‘alahi can mean.

However, what is finishing it well, and with both the personal well-being of nānā i ke kumu, and the balance and rightness of pono?

Letting Go …

For most of my life, perhaps up to the very moment of writing this, I have needed to have completeness. I have been able to let things go, but only when I felt I have completed them in some way that made sense to me. In turn, this created in me a very large capacity and tolerance for complexity; I could be a hard task master with big expectations. I’d very willingly jump through hoops, quite pleased with myself when I was being a good jumper. Worse, I could drag my staff and my family with me quite easily.

In her book Focus Like A Laser Beam, Lisa Haneberg brings another good word into the discussion surrounding letting go, and that word is ‘relevance.’ Her book’s context is laser beam focus in business, and we need to remain relevant in a business for so many seemingly sound reasons, understanding that relevance is a highly relational thing.

Further adding to the complexity of our business models, is that what is relevant today may not be as relevant tomorrow. Letting go becomes the crucial judgment we make, and our better judgment is an intellectual asset to a business; it’s an immensely valuable currency, this being able to let go of what is not working for our best sucess at precisely the right time. As business people our judgment is the talent which measures our capacity for the balancing act between discipline and the discernment of great decision making.

… and Letting Be

In comparison, I have come to realize that letting things be means they don’t have to make sense to me or to my complex ways of processing things. In a business, things I decide to just let be can be thought of as the “good fat,” sort of how you need the right amount of marbling in a great steak for it to taste its best. Further, things I decide to let be don’t have to be complete-and-right for the rest of the world, or complete-and-right for conventional wisdom, or complete-and-right for new innovative wisdom. They simply have to be right for me, and in my own head.

These days, I want to be simpler and less complicated. I want to let myself be.

I want my business plan to be simpler and less complicated; I want fewer steps, shorter checklists, and faster turns in virtually every task I level my sights on. I even want all my relationships to be simpler and less complicated, seeing only the good I know to exist in everyone.

And guess what? That requires a lot of letting go without making sense, accepting the simplicity of it all, and rejecting more and more complexity. Accepting acceptance, and letting things be.

It could be that my tolerance has decreased. It could be that I am feeling the march of time, with my impatience increasing … knowing myself as well as I do, this is highly likely, but it is also highly okay. How do I know this, that it is all okay for me? Two certainties help me just know. One that I still have capacity to fill, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Second, it is that magic feeling of calm that contentment brings.

It is a ma‘alahi persuasion for calm.

Mālama pono,
~ Rosa

Links which may help convey more of this Sunday’s story:

1. Mahalo to Joanna Young of Confident Writing for inspiring my final edit in writing this article for our Sunday Mālama today. As I wrote above, much of this has come from a week-long thinking process, but yesterday Joanna resurrected ma‘alahi from the farther recesses of my memory in a comment she left for me here: How do you unlearn complexity?
2. I am quite sure that somehow Nick Smith’s Life 2.0 essay called How to set a team on fire? did something for our Sunday Mālama today, though I’m not quite sure what. Perhaps his words were part of my more compelling complexities, for he has written one brilliant post worth about two weeks worth on most blogs.
   I immediately thought about The Daily Five Minutes when he wrote about conversation, saying, “Make conversation a first class citizen ... Look what happens whenever there's a major crisis and tools fails us.  We use conversation locally to co-create the most fantastic workarounds. Conversation alone, when we understand and trust the principles, works brilliantly.”
   All I know is that what Nick wrote in his essay represented the very best of my reading this week, and I encourage you to visit him today as well.
3. You can visit Amazon.com for both Lisa Haneberg’s book, Focus Like a Laser Beam, and for Managing with Aloha. Visit Lisa at her Management Craft blog.
4. Click on the photos for credits.

Comments

[Joanna Young]

What a thoughtful piece Rosa, and I am delighted to have helped you unwittingly with the final piece of editing :-)

For me the words "letting be" are much more peaceful, warmer, softer, contented than "letting go". "Letting be" is not dismissing, but giving space and permission for other things to go on in their own way, without you needing to give them your time and energy... and that's okay.

I think that does have something to do with the way our perspective shifts as the years go by - but I wouldn't necessary call that the march of time (which sounds a little negative), isn't it that we see things differently, a bigger picture, greater awareness of the stuff that really matters, and tolerance for the things that we can just allow to be?

I had to read the last paragraph twice because the first time I picked it up the opposite way round to the way you wrote it. I'd say that letting be was a sign that your tolerance is increasing. That your impatience is decreasing. You are focusing on the things that are the most important (to you, now) and being content to let the other stuff... just be.

Thanks again for your Sunday reflections, food for thought for all of us here.

Joanna

[Nick Smith]

Hi Rosa... first time here and what a treasure trove. And it's ironic that the first post I read is about simplicity.. this strikes a lovely chord for me.

We have such a habit of making simply things complicated and easy, sublime things difficult, don't we? That's why I love the way you base this blog around a set of principles - so simple and so useful. No need for different techniques or processes or schools of thought to be applied in different situation. Values are universally applicable aren't they? And values keep you centred in the present too. No matter what happens you know where you are coming from and then what is needed can be trusted to arise out of that knowing. Perfect!

I'm looking forward to exploring here and learning all about those Hawaiian values. Thanks Rosa.

[Rosa Say]

Joanna, you have such a gift for making whatever I write sound so much better! What a giving soul you are.

Welcome to MWAC Nick, I am honored that my reference brought you here. I have enjoyed reading your site, rich with your thoughtful perspectives. (As I recall, it was first via Dan Oestreich’s Unfolding Leadership.) Our values do indeed keep us wonderfully centered, and ultimately they will serve us best should we need any map in navigating our way through our complexities!

Mmmm ...I love that thought of universal calm through shared values.