Knowing Mahalo through Appreciation
I have suggested to you that Mahalo can add up to another framework for appreciation, gratitude and thankfulness: To know, to become, and to share. Let’s dip into this a bit more, looking at them one at a time.
Today, Knowing Mahalo through Appreciation
From Webster - To value justly. Recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people and things. Within Mahalo - Know how much you have at this very moment. Understand how unique you are, and stand tall. Realize there is no one else who is the person you are. To live in appreciation for the richness that makes your life so precious is to simply live in celebration of your sense of self. Take nothing in this day of your life for granted. Take exceptional care of the aloha within you, for it is the breath of your life. |
From Webster ~~~ To value justly.
As a manager, trainer and coach, I am constantly preparing some form of teaching curriculum. I spend a good amount of time doing this, writing out my lesson plans, and then editing them continuously. As a presenter however, I use an outline and not a script, for it helps me to truly engage with my audience instead of lecture to them. I thrive on learning, gaining my strength from the process of it all, and presenting a lesson is much more enjoyable for me when I feel we are learning something together. I love the facilitation part within presenting, so it becomes this balancing act for me, where on the one hand I give, and teach as everyone expects me to, for generally people come to any presentation expecting to receive something versus give it. On the other hand, if I also co-learn with everyone in the room it’s a bigger win for both of us.
Therefore, just before I ‘go on stage’ and present, I ask myself a question, one I think of as a ‘keep this all in perspective’ question. By this time I have done so much preparation, that it’s easy to slip into talking myself into certain beliefs about my lesson plan. So this is a question that keeps me from presenting as a know-it-all would, opening me up even wider to the co-learning part of what I anticipate is coming. The question is,
“What do I think, what do I believe, and what do I know about this?”
It is a terrific sorting-out question for me, and if I ever use that word ‘know’ I find my subconscious kicks in, and I will collect more humility to serve me, often saying,
“I feel I know this to be true for me; what do you think?”
As a brief aside, this self-query works really well in parenting too. There is nothing quite like the completely innocent, unconditional acceptance you get from your own child when it comes to understanding that what we think, believe, and know can be three different things. It keeps you intellectually honest, and a bit more okay with what you don’t know. You are more likely to leave open space for someone else to step into so that you can keep learning together. You want your children to experience the learning, and so you have this added vested interest in not robbing them of that opportunity. My children’s youth would melt away in some of these moments for me; they seemed so wise. Beyond that, I found I could more easily respect their right to disagree with me too!
I now believe that this is my Mahalo connection to what Webster says is “to value justly.” My “recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people and things” truly helps me appreciate them completely, for I can also appreciate the full process that went with this continuum from thinking, to believing, to knowing — or appreciate what didn’t occur yet and needs some space — from me.
Within Mahalo ~~~ Know how much you have at this very moment.
Now after reading all of that, it may seem to you that I believe we truly know very little. Well, yes and no.
Yes in this context of learning I have shared with you, fully disclosing that I consider myself an insatiable learner. In the grand scheme of things, I do believe that we can only skim the surface of the learning available to us.
No in that there is something that no one can and ever will know more than you do, and that something is all about you. We are the experts on us.
You know how much you have at this very moment. You understand how unique you are, and you can stand tall in that knowing. You realize there is no one else who is the person you are, and there will never be another quite like you.
Your sense of humility may keep you from tooting sweetly about all of this at times, but these are things you do emphatically KNOW.
Appreciation is the ability we have to know those things that we alone have created for ourselves, and then stop long enough to savor them. Said another way, what we feel we truly know, is what we have created. We recognize their “significance and magnitude” as being of value to us because we are so fully aware of what we had to put into their coming to be; we lived through them.
Appreciation is a profound gift when we think about it this way, for it helps us know what is right with us instead of our focusing on what might be missing. Appreciation becomes this inbred human ability to be all we can be, appreciating the breadth of what is still possible. That is what we shall talk about next, with The Promise of Gratitude: Becoming.
Before this;
- Mahalo: 3-way Promise, 5-fold Learning
- The 3-Way Promise of Mahalo: Appreciation, Gratitude, Thankfulness
Still to come!
- Becoming Mahalo through Gratitude
- Sharing Mahalo through Thankfulness
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