Mahalo: 3-way Promise, 5-fold Learning

Our value for the month of November 2007, is presented in Chapter 16 of Managing with Aloha;

                   

            

Mahalo Thank you, as a way of living. Live in thankfulness for the richness that makes life so precious. ~ Mahalo means thankful living. ~ With Mahalo, we give thanks for every element that enriches our lives by living in thankfulness for them. We relish them. We celebrate them joyously. Mahalo is the value that gives us an attitude of gratitude, and the pleasure of awe and wonder. ~ Say “thank you” often; speak of your appreciation and it will soften the tone of your voice, giving it richness, humility and fullness. People need to hear it from you: Say, Mahalo nui loa. Mahalo is the value of appreciation, of gratitude, and of thankfulness. Living Mahalo is a life of living within gift.

Do you have a number? I don’t mean your phone number, I mean a number that resonates in some way, and seems to work magic for you.

For Dave Rothacker, Mr. “Most Excellent Book Reviewer” in our Ho‘ohana Community, it’s 51. Dave just celebrated his birthday last month, and he wrote,

“My age today is the same number as the number that has been throwing itself at me for going on two years now. There hasn't been one day that has gone by when this number hasn't appeared in my day -since the end of 2005. Usually it is a couple of times. One day last week it was ten times before 2pm.”

I’d say his 51st is going to be a great year for Dave!

  For many of us, key numbers in the double digits may have come from our sports jerseys in school. Mine was 33, my volleyball number for 3 years, and for the longest time after that, I seemed to think about things in 3’s, as with our value of the month, Mahalo, and it’s 3-fold richness of appreciation, gratitude, and thankfulness. I still do at times. For instance, in our Sunday Mālama over the past month, we looked at MWA3P, the 3-way view that workplace productivity is woven into Managing with Aloha, helping to create great organizational cultures.

  Right now however, as many of you have noticed and commented on, my number seems to be 5. At Joyful Jubilant Learning, our sister site in the Ho‘ohana Community dedicated to learning (‘Ike loa), I recently shared the 5 Steps I take in my Weekly Review. Five has been working for me as a learning number ever since that I-love-what-my-employees-teach-me! day when I came up with the Daily 5 Minutes® (D5M).

In my book, the D5M shows up in the chapter of learning because of its core intention to know each other well, and our employees in particular, ever mining for those aha! moments they can share with us. To “Take 5” is part of my self-talking language of intention, meaning to distill my learning in 5 take-aways I will always keep with me, whatever course or discipline I may be studying at the time.

This sensibility and work-ability of the way I approach my learning is just one of the many things I am grateful for this month. I am grateful that I was blessed with a brain that does these kinds of things for me, making sense of my world in a somewhat organized and reasonable fashion, and running the rest of me in its automatic and wondrous way that a brain can. I don’t question it, I just say thank you every day so it feels appreciated. I believe that simple act of saying thank you – yes, to my own brain – gives it this mahalo fuel that keeps it working for me, day in, day out.

For those of you who may have been following my value of the month program in a step by step, chapter by chapter manner, please don’t feel I am throwing a wrench into the works by skipping from Kākou, a full 7 chapters ahead to Mahalo. Sometimes the best thing we can do is nalu it (go with the flow), and align our favorite values with the cadence of the season. Mother Nature’s wisdom is another kind of unquestioned magic we can be thankful for.

This “3-way Promise, and 5-fold Learning” is the Language of Intention in my title, and I hope you will join me, making it a Kākou message for you this month too:

November’s 3-way Promise of Mahalo is appreciation, gratitude and thankfulness. In our study of this value, we will explore all three here at Managing with Aloha Coaching all month long— rich promise indeed!

November’s 5-fold Learning also has to do with Mahalo. It is the theme I will live within for my writing on Joyful Jubilant Learning this month, and I will be joined in that focus by all our community contributors there. If you do not yet subscribe to JJL, please do so; this will be a fabulous month to start!

      Try this Mahalo Action Step this month:
Give yourself a Daily 5 Minutes at the end of each day during November. Just before bedtime and your sweet dreams to come, write down everything you feel grateful for in that moment, or as happened for you that day. You may fall into your own number of 3 things, or 5 things, maybe even 7 or more, but stick to the 5 minutes, and see what naturally emerges for you in the rhythm of your own attitude of gratitude. And then, as you turn off the lights, say thank you to that brain of yours.

An update: Tim Milburn just reminded me about his 5x5s Worksheets. He left his comment at my JJL posting about the 5-Step Weekly Review, and as I printed out his template, I decided I would personally use them this month for this Mahalo Action Step I have suggested to you!

Join me; Tim has just made this easier and more playful yet creatively thought-provoking for us (you will see what I mean when you see his template). Print 15 of Tim's sheets to have a 5x5 for each day of the month, then cut and bind them into a November Gratitude Journal. Mahalo nui Tim!

Mahalo. Thank you for reading today. This November, Value your Month, and Value your Life, right here with us on Managing with Aloha Coaching.

Let’s Ho‘ohana,
~ Rosa