An early Christmas Gift to say Mahalo, thank you.

In my last Sunday Mālama essay I had written,

I’m trying to figure out how I can give great gifts without any shopping at all, giving them only by creating something that people will welcome much more gratefully. I want them to be gifts from the heart that you cannot hold in your hand, or wrap in a package.

More at Sunday Mālama: Please don’t shop for me!

This will continue to be the challenge I give myself before Christmas arrives, and what better place to start, than right here with you and our Ho‘ohana Community!

Learning to Give, and to Act

For this Sunday Mālama, I have an early Christmas gift for all of you who are reading Managing with Aloha and MWA Coaching. It is a gift to help you invest in yourself by using the site well: A new  template I have created for you to use month-to-month through the New Year in our 5-Beat Rhythm.

What is using the site well? Reading for self-coaching, and using actions taken in your learning to live, work, manage, and lead with aloha.

There is absolutely no doubt about it: ACTION is key.

MY MANA‘O (what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~ A LearnED in 5: Once you have tested certain actions, --- 1 and you have determined that they do work well for you, --- 2 the best gift you can give yourself is --- 3 commitment to the self-discipline it takes --- 4 to turn those actions into new habits. --- 5 Why? Good habits = automatic pilot with good behaviors. “I am your habits” is the answer to this riddle: “I am your constant companion. I will push you forward to success or I will drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command. 80% of what you do, you might as well hand over to me and I will do it promptly and I will do it correctly. I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me. Show me what you’d like to have done, and after a couple of lessons, I will do it automatically. I am the servant of all great people. Alas, I am the servant of all failures as well. All who are great, I have made great. All who are failures, I have made failures. I am not a machine; but I do work with the precision of a machine and the intellect of a human. Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I’ll lay the world at your feet. Be easy with me, and I will destroy you!” “Who am I?”

You turn your new actions into new habits with repetition. Behaviorists will tell you that doing virtually anything every day (or every same-type of situation, such as clicking to the same site first every time you turn on your computer) for anywhere from two weeks to 21 days will create a new habit for you.

21 days is less than a month.

That means that by starting today, investing in our self-coaching here on MWAC, you could create at least 12 new, good, value-aligned, aloha-filled and ho‘ohana connected habits for yourself by this time a year from now.

That would be a pretty fabulous gift to give yourself next Christmas!

However it is the ACTION. For instance, in my example above, that simple click you must take to that same site is a repetitive action. Saving that site as your start page which automatically appears when your computer turns on is a one-time hack, and like all hacks it’s a shortcut that does not create a habit for you. In fact, it helps you forget. If there is a glitch in the program and the site disappears, you’ll have to hunt for it if you didn’t bookmark it.

Taking Action with our 5-Beat Rhythm

One of my habits as author of Managing with Aloha Coaching, is writing about our monthly 5-Beat Rhythm for you (This was the Kākou recap, and this was for Mahalo). I do what I ask you to do, and in the last two months I started playing around with a template for my own actions taken, slightly revised from the more structured discipline I use within my executive coaching services. I have turned the template into a free coaching tool as my early Christmas gift for you.

Take a look: Click the red download button below for your MWAC 5-Beat Rhythm Worksheet. It’s in pdf form, however you can select and copy it to a Word doc or upload as a Google doc etc. if you prefer to write and save your notes electronically.

Use it with me this month with our new December Tradition, the Twelve Aloha Virtues. You can start on Beat 1, page 1 today, using yesterday’s Day One essay. I shall be sharing more about my personal effort as examples for you in the days to come.

Merry Christmas! We Ho Ho Ho to Ho‘ohana!
~ Rosa

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A bonus click: Learning to Give and Learning to Receive is our December theme on Joyful Jubilant Learning - that would be an excellent feed to add to your stocking too!

Comments

[David Zinger]

I like the 5 beat rhythm worksheet. Of course it would be 5 wouldn't it Rosa!

[tim]

Rosa:

What a wonderful PDF download you have created! I am starting to realize more and more what a great ONLINE personal coach you are. Not only is your writing a wonderful motivator toward personal growth, but you are putting valuable TOOLS in the hands of your readers.

Mahalo - enjoy the Sugar Bowl!!

[Rosa Say]

Aloha David. I know that 5 is a fave number we share! I like the thought you’ve shared before about what’s most natural to count off on one hand. It’s just so perfect for rhythm to me: In music and dance you hear more about 3-counts and 4-counts “… and a 1,2,3 … 1,2,3 …” and I think of that 5th count as the one you add to really seal the deal in learning and make the key difference happen.

Wow Tim, I am “tooting sweetly” right now – I’m taking your comment as quite a big compliment, for you are the undisputed king of the download in my book! You have hit on the reason I switched the focus of my online coaching here to MWAC and away from the more general “talking story” on my first blog, to truly concentrate on coaching and freely giving the right tools to those in our community I realize I may never have the opportunity to help in person. What I offer here will never be exactly the same as the value-add of my SLC services, but working on both helps me learn to be a better all-round coach. The message of Managing with Aloha deserves it.

Mahalo for your comments guys, the feedback means a lot to me.

Dear readers, more on “tooting sweetly” if you take the link to my name in this comment: You’ll meet Aaron, someone I do coach virtually!

[Rosa Say]

By the way Tim, April and I were talking about the Sugar Bowl earlier this morning. (take the link to my name in this one.)

As a proud alum, I couldn't resist adding the Hawaii Warrior logo to my December Ho‘ohana ‘Ōlelo sent out this morning! This whole season in collegiate football has been a fascinating case study in how sports achievement affects our communities and culture. Small tidbit: One news story in the islands over the weekend was about how those who screen tee-shirts cannot find the green and black of the Warrior colors anywhere, and are down to white and grey as their only remaining choices ... everyone is wearing the logo or Colt Brennan's number 15 - many just writing the number in on one sleeve with a black Sharpie!

The next goal I am rooting for at my old alma mater is that they begin to star in academic excellence and creating a great environment for all students as much as they do for their athletes. Aloha in abundance, Kākou …