Managing with Aloha Coaching

What are your Source-Bred Self-Respecting Essentials?

This is our last Tuesday with Nānā i ke kumu.

The last here on MWAC that is, for if you have read what we’ve done earlier this month, you know that Nānā i ke kumu, “Looking to the Source and Finding the Truth,” is an ever-present possibility for you; seizing it as a value at any given time is your choice.

I’m going to jump around in my wrap up today. It’s a wrap only in the sense that it ends our current month’s study, for I’m going to jump to some different explorations with Nānā i ke kumu and not repeat what we’ve already covered: We’ve done that enough, and the archives are always available to you.

We’ll take 3 Jumps: Questions, Essentials, and Truth, with all three as an exploration toward answering that question in my title:

What are your Source-Bred Self-Respecting Essentials?

When you think about Nānā i ke kumu, you can think about Questions.

Questions can make us fidget uneasily. Questions are demanding; they open up this void of expectancy that imply all this work to be done with figuring out answers.

Nānā i ke kumu can ask a lot of questions too, but here’s the wonderful thing: Nānā i ke kumu is just asking you to articulate answers that you already have somewhere inside you. You don’t have to find them as much as you give voice to them.

Nānā i ke kumu questions are asked with the intention of centering you, and helping you feel more grounded, complete, whole, and self-nurtured. They are asked to make you feel more comfortable, not less so.

The questions are about connecting to your self-respect in different circumstances via essentials that are source-bred for you. For after all, what is self-respect? It is the honoring of your sense of self. Thus the questions go something like this (pick any circumstance or context you like):

• Why are you feeling this way? Which of your values is this on a collision course with?
  (‘Going to the well’ with Personal Values.)

• What kind of work can you do with this so you’ll feel better about it?
  (‘Going to the well’ with Ho‘ohana —which expands on the word ‘work.’)

• What are you doing when you feel stronger and more confident, and what are you doing when you feel terrible? Think about your specific activities, not the adjectives about how you are doing them, i.e. what, not how.
  (‘Going to the well’ with Strengths.)

• There is something missing here… what is it?
  (‘Going to the well’ with the synergy of Values, Ho‘ohana and Strengths collectively versus partially.)

• Who else do I need to be in on this with me? Why do I feel like I’m going out on a limb here all by myself?
  (‘Going to the well’ with Connections.)

You try it. What would be a Sense of Place question for you? There are lots of possibilities!

What would be other kinds of Connection questions that have to do with your different relationships, or with capacity you’ve got begging to be filled?

When you think about Nānā i ke kumu, you can think about Essentials.

Isn’t ‘Essentials’ a great word? It happens to be a sensational Nānā i ke kumu word, for your source and your truth are in fact just that —essential to your sense of well-being.

Listing Essentials is where you can get wonderfully wild and rebellious with me. You may be thinking, “Sneaky Rosa, you said you weren’t going to repeat what we’ve already covered, and those were all ‘Go to the Well’ questions in the last section.” Fine, you caught me. So here is your chance to stretch out toward your desired cliff edges. No parameters from me; what are your essentials?

Without them having to fit in my ‘Go to the Well’ parameters, or any other kind of structure, just answer the question at a gut level:

What is Essential for you and your sense of well-being?

Need a bit more help? I called ‘Essentials’ sensational… you can think sense-sational, and fill in these blanks: I feel my essentials are fulfilled when I can see __________, when I can hear __________, when I can taste __________, when I can smell __________, and when I can touch __________.

Sometimes my personal Essentials are quite productivity driven. I think about them as three things I must do every day so the day doesn’t feel completely wasted in my definition of it:
(Personally I thrive with a bit more structure... I will design it for myself when others don't impose it on me!)

1. I must respect the ‘hard landscape’ of my calendar (a GTD hold-out for me which means I have to honor any appointments I’ve made)
2. I must fulfill any ho‘ohiki due today (I must keep any promises I’ve made to someone)
3. I must get this Job-1 thing done today (job, task, project… 1 consequential thing that is Ho‘ohana connected. I don’t need a lot of lists: I just want to nail the 20 that gets me the 80.)

Another way to think about your Essentials is that they might be peculiar to you, but in the way that peculiar is good! It’s individually quirky but it works for you. In other words, what has to happen to make you feel like you are hitting the ground running and never behind? How do you need to take care of you in the way that no one else will? How do you normally operate when things are full steam ahead, and what’s going on when you just can’t get it out of first gear?

Those are your makes-you-run-well Essentials.

Leave your doubts at the curb.
Photo by xtrarant on Flickr.

When you think about Nānā i ke kumu, you can think about the Truth.

Considering how obsessed we human beings get with THE TRUTH, it’s somewhat unsettling to realize that the truth about anything can be a highly subjective thing. I know I wrote this somewhere in my book, can’t find it at the moment, but quite easy for me to remember: My dad would say something repeatedly to me and my brothers anytime we took an argument to him for arbitration:

“Well, the way I’m hearing this, there’s your side of the story, there’s his side of the story, and there’s the rest of the truth. Who’s gonna tell me about that part?”

“The rest of” were his consistent, brilliantly chosen words. He never accused us of lying about anything; however he was clearly teaching us about the lies of omission, and he was forgiving us in his certainty that we blundered unintentionally when our emotions got in the way. My dad was a very, very smart man. He was also extremely skilled in discovering the truth. Every. Single. Time.

And we wanted the truth! Even though we knew what he’d say every single time in the process, we knew the result might be different, and the result was an answer: It was illuminating, that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. My dad made it safe for us to blunder our way through the dark until we emerged to the light that was the whole truth and not just part of it. We needed his help and we welcomed it.

This might be my favorite thing about Nānā i ke kumu; this is the value that helps us identify our truth, knowing that OUR truth is not subjective at all, it is the right truth about us and for us. Our truth loves us and wants us to be healthy. Our truth allows no self-deception if there is to be any self-respect whatsoever. We may get away with lying to others at times, and with telling others those lies of omission, but ultimately, we can never lie to ourselves and get away with it.

That may be uncomfortable sometimes, but wow, it is essentially, and without question a beautiful thing.

It’s a Nānā i ke kumu thing.

And that, my Ho‘ohana Community, concludes our October study on Nānā i ke kumu. I hope to see you back on November 1st for a brand new month, and new value study: We will learn about Ho‘omau, the Hawaiian value of perseverance, persistence, and continuity.

We will Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.

~Rosa

Want to learn more? These were not written specifically with Nānā i ke kumu in mind, but I bet you will discover the connections now that we have completed this month’s study!

Suggestions from the Archives of Ho‘ohana Publishing:

1. To Rock ‘n Roll in Biz is to Fly in the Face of Convention. “I don’t have to do it that way!” ... “That is 1000% correct, you don’t.”
2. Always Find Your Doubting Thomas. I know what you might be thinking, “Easy for you to say.”
3. Ho‘ohanohano: Learn to Bask in the Compliments You Get. This is some of the best advice I ever received.

A Truth-Fed Philosophy of Leadership

There are some eternally nagging questions that get thrown at you when people know you are a coach who tackles management and leadership. One is about the difference between them (I’ll add a management versus leadership link at the end) and another is, “Are you one who believes leaders are born or made?”

My favored response is with another question, “Well, what do you think, so I know more about why you’re asking?” It’s the coach in me; their response helps me give them the answer that is best for them individually, and within their context. It saves us time, and cuts to the chase —their chase. Whichever they chose, “I think leaders are born to be leaders” or “I think leaders are made, and shaped by their experiences” I will usually respond, “Well then, let’s go with that,” and I’ll continue the dialog from that point on.

What do I think? I think the answer is, “Both.”

I believe that we all are born with the potential and the capacity for leadership, and that harnessing our potential and filling that part of our capacity is one of the choices we make.

I also believe that leadership is an evolution and a growth process (thus you can say leaders are made), and I have often stated my preference for learning management first (i.e. Managing with Aloha as the 3rd mountain peak of Kūlia i ka nu‘u, striving to the summit of excellence), and then growing into leadership thereafter (i.e. Leading with Aloha as the 4th mountain peak: Live, Work, Self-manage, Self-lead.) I believe that management is great training for the empathy that leaders will need; management is largely about relationships and the connective tissue we have with other people.

In contrast, leadership is largely about you as the leader; it’s about your idea, your dream, and your imagineering of the best-possible future your vision can deliver. A lot of people will now get shut out in the pursuit of your leadership vision because you can’t afford to carry along the naysayers and detractors. When you were a manager you were much more tolerant and forgiving; you sought to be much more inclusive, and you believed heart and soul that was what great managers had to believe. Inclusiveness sounds great (the value of Kākou is all about inclusiveness), but to an intensely passionate leader, inclusiveness can also mean watered down messages and mission creep.

This takes us right back to Nānā i ke kumu, the value of source and truth.

When your heart gets set on fire about something, and you decide you are ready to be a leader, my advice to you is this: Go to the well. Go to your source, and find your truth. Make damn sure that your leadership idea is somehow connected to your source and truth, and that each fortifies the other.

From a previous Tuesday Coaching Essay on Nānā i ke kumu ~ Go to the Well Let’s get “Go to the Well” to be a short but sweet mantra for us. Think of a well as a place you go to so you can drink deeply of the most refreshing, rejuvenating water possible, readily available for you whenever you need it. It’s water that quenches the thirst of your source and your truth. What’s in your magic water? Your Personal Values, for they drive your behavior —your best-possible, self-attuned behavior. The truth of your Ho‘ohana, your intention with doing worthwhile, and self-led work (versus the work of someone else’s plan). Your Strengths. Your source and your truth is about what is absolutely right with you, about every strength which individually and collectively help you feel vitally and forcefully strong. Your awareness of all these first three things as solely about YOU as a complete package, and as a very, very good one, and then... Your Connections. Life is not a solo proposition; we human beings were not meant to live alone. Our connections in life have to do with relationship, with sense of place, and with our profound capacity as human beings: More about these connections in Go to the well.

It’s called ‘certainty.’

It gets manifest as integrity and authenticity. People say you lead with your “true colors.”

It gets illuminated as confidence and value-alignment. People say you are consistent and utterly predictable, steady and sure.

Maybe more important than anything else, it gives you energy, tenacity and resilience so you can persevere no matter what objections may be thrown at you.

When the idea you are championing as a leader is source-fed and truth-fed in Nānā i ke kumu, you will not need to collect followers who agree with you so you can be sure you are right; you will already know you are right. You can then seek to partner with followers who will challenge you for the sake of collaborative synergy; you want to Ho‘ohana (work intentionally) with the open-minded contrarians who are going to help you grow your idea even bigger and better (so you can grow to be bigger and better too.)

Next Tuesday: Our Nānā i ke kumu study continues. A quick review on what we have done so far:

• Day One Essay: Nānā i ke kumu: Look to your Source, Find your Truth
• 1st Tuesday: Where is this “wellspring?” Your Ho‘ohana and your Sense of Place
• 2nd Tuesday: How Nānā i ke kumu Helps You Embrace Change and Growth
• 3rd Tuesday: Right here! A Truth-Fed Philosophy of Leadership.

We Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.

~Rosa

Want to learn more? I have had some feedback from long-time readers asking me to connect the dots back to some of our older lessons, especially for when my Tuesday-to-Tuesday publishing schedule presents them with windows of opportunity for more journaling. This postscript is in response to that request.

Suggestions from the Archives of Ho‘ohana Publishing:

1. As promised: Management versus Leadership (Link will take you to Say Leadership Coaching: Right click to open in a separate tab or window and remain here.)
2. The Role of the Manager in Managing with Aloha: The case for a better way to work. More within this article on the Live, Work, Manage, Lead progression as well.
3. The Manager’s Responsibility for Leadership. Is to create clarity where it may not yet exist.
4. Self-Leadership in 1 Sentence. And more about that choice we make which I referred to here.
5. The Self-improvement Targets of Self-Leadership. A freshening up of one of the most popular articles I have ever written, The Twelve Rules of Self Leadership.

How Nānā i ke kumu Helps You Embrace Change and Growth

One of the things we’ve said about Nānā i ke kumu is this:

“What the value of Nānā i ke kumu says to you, is that within YOU is all the personal truth you need, both source and capacity to learn.” (If you are just joining us, Nānā i ke kumu is the Hawaiian value of source and truth, and you will find a more complete definition in my Day One Essay for October.)

Today

I’d like to look at “both source and capacity to learn” in another way, as constants (source) and as change (capacity to learn). At any given time, and with any given effort, we are working on one or the other: Either we are

• Working to maintain our healthy constants, or

• Working to effect a change we desire.

Further, it is in effecting a desired change that we experience our most elevated experiences with learning.

Are you okay with Change?

Are there certain proverbs or quotes which became aha! moments for you when you first heard them? This was one of mine:

“People do not resist change; people resist being changed.” —organizational change pioneer Richard Beckhard

That made so much sense to me!

It made sense both in my own experience with when I vigorously resisted change and when I embraced it.

It made total sense when I thought about those successes and failures I’ve had in trying to champion changes that others resisted accepting no matter how good I thought the change sounded, for aha! it just didn’t sound that great to them.

Said simpler, it wasn’t their idea, and they thought it was a lousy idea.

The worst possible Change? To your Constants

Over time —over many frustrating hours logged as a well-intentioned manager— I came to realize that there is a certain kind of change that we resist most of all, and that is the change that in some way threatens to violate our constants.

What are our constants? Our constants are those things connected to our source: Our constants are those things we depend on to keep us centered, grounded, whole, and feeling healthy. When I list them they will look familiar to you…

1. Your Personal Values, for they drive your behavior —your best-possible, self-attuned behavior.
2. The truth of your Ho‘ohana, your intention with doing worthwhile, and self-led work (versus the work of someone else’s plan).
3. Your Strengths. Your source and your truth is about what is absolutely right with you, about every strength which individually and collectively help you feel vitally and forcefully strong.
4. Your awareness of all these first three things as solely about YOU as a complete package, and as a very, very good one, and then...
5. Your Connections. Life is not a solo proposition; we human beings were not meant to live alone.

Yep, they are the same things we talked about last week that wait for you when you find you must “go to the well.”

This is not to say that these things cannot and do not change; they can, and at times they will. Changes in your source are profound and fundamental however, and in fundamental change there is always learning (more on that coming up!)

Choosing Embraceable Change

Now there is a difference between the water of a well you drink from to feel nourished and replenished, and the water of a well you board up or drain because it’s become stagnant or tainted, isn’t there.

Change can be partial and incremental:
You drain the tainted water, and you board up the well to deal with it later, who knows when.

Change can be complete and significant:
You clean and refurbish the old well, and you make it so the water it holds will be nourishing for you from now on.

In either instance, you are the defining factor, and you are making a choice.

Either instance can be a decision you are entirely happy with, and thus ‘embraceable.’

It’s all about you making a choice, your choice.

Choices, by Akuppa on Flickr

You Choose, or I’ll Choose

Sometimes you are the only one who cares about that well (the one that needs to be changed). However, (and get ready, you’ve heard this before too…) we human beings are not meant to live alone, and more often than not, others have an opinion about that old well too. If you don’t deal with it, you might find that they will.

If you beat them to it in proposing and acting on your well-improvement program, it’s initiative, and you’re being proactive.

If they beat you to it in proposing and enacting their well-improvement program, it’s their initiative, and you may be put in a position of being reactive. Accept or resist.

Choose to Learn

And then, wonder of all wonders, there is learning.

Their idea at first.

However you like it! Their idea = Your room for greater capacity, where none of your true constants and sources are being threatened.

Better yet, perhaps room for capacity where you constants are elevated and fortified.

You are not just a follower who has decided not to buck the change.

You are a learner who wants to embrace and own the change, folding it into your evolving and growing source.

Nānā i ke kumu at its finest hour of collaborative learning.

You are the wellspring.

Shall we review?

These are the words I want you to remember in October, making them a) Part of our Language of Intention this month, and b) Your personal affirmation. Say this with me: I will look to my Source to find my Truth. (Day One Essay) I will Go to the Well when I need to. (Last Tuesday's Essay) I will embrace Change I Choose, and I will Grow. (Today's Essay)

Next Tuesday: Our Nānā i ke kumu study continues with A Truth-Fed Philosophy of Leadership.

We will Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.

~Rosa

Want to learn more? I have had some feedback from long-time readers asking me to connect the dots back to some of our older lessons, especially for when my Tuesday-to-Tuesday publishing schedule presents them with windows of opportunity for more journaling. This postscript is in response to that request.

Suggestions from the Archives of Ho‘ohana Publishing: These have to do with this idea of enlarging your capacity for growth.

1. Palena ‘ole: Discover your 4-Fold Capacity Create abundance by honoring capacity; physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.
2. Kākou work is “just more enjoyable.” Is there job re-engineering going on where you work?
3. In Search of the Ultimate Freedom How much have you thought about your freedoms, and the different ones you have? This one also talks about the process of journaling ~ it’s a twofer!

Where is this “wellspring?” Your Ho‘ohana and your Sense of Place

ALOHA ~ ~ ~ Have you newly arrived here at Managing with Aloha Coaching? Thank you for clicking in! Each month, we adopt a Hawaiian value to study together in a universal way, thus the tagline you see up top: Value Your Month, Value Your Life. I publish a new coaching essay here every Tuesday. They are essays, longer than most blog posts, and though you can read them through once in less than a Daily 5 Minutes, they are intended to give you a full week’s worth of Ho‘ohana-inspired self-coaching. This month we are learning about Nānā i ke kumu: Look to your Source, Find your Truth. Begin here: Day One Essay for a quick introduction. We’ll wait! Welcome! ~ Rosa Say

Our Value Study: Nānā i ke kumu. This is 1st Tuesday.

Last Tuesday, we defined Nānā i ke kumu through its’ literal root words, Nānā and Kumu.

• We learned that when we string those root meanings together, what the value of Nānā i ke kumu says to you, is that YOU —your mind, body, spirit, your all of you —is your best possible source to respect and honor as your teacher; within you is all the personal truth you need, both source and capacity to learn.

• We learned that Nānā i ke kumu is not selfishness or ego; it is self-attuned learning and living.

We called Nānā i ke kumu a wellspring. Today, where, and exactly what IS this “wellspring?”

Get the most out of Nānā i ke kumu with Value-Alignment

To start, we need to make this immediately personal for you, and the best way to do that is with value alignment. Step one is to know which values you claim as your personal ones.

During the month of September, I offered up a quick values-choosing exercise within our work to write a Ho‘ohana Statement draft for ourselves. If you are newly joining us, or if you had decided that you could not do the full-immersion Ho‘ohana study last month, I would encourage you to just go back to that one part of values-choosing: Read the entire posting titled, Writing a Ho‘ohana Draft part 1: Your Intention and Your Personal Values, and do the exercise.

It will not take you long at all, and most important, it will help you set your intention for the month to come, and we know how powerful intention is, don’t we! Your intentions focus your attentions, and your attention may be the most valuable “transactional currency” you possess.

From our Day One Essay for this month: Nānā i ke kumu: Look to your Source, Find your Truth: “Nānā i ke kumu is a value which brings clarity to your other values: It is a kind of lens through which you can see what most rings true for you instinctively.” “The Nānā i ke kumu reward is one of grounding and contentment; it helps you feel all is right in your world. The value of Nānā i ke kumu asks us to “look to your source, and find your truth” recognizing that Aloha gives us each an inner wellspring; we go to this inner well and drink from it to get healthy in our best way possible, body, mind, and spirit.”

Go to the Well

Let’s get “Go to the Well” to be a short but sweet mantra for us.

Think of a well as a place you go to so you can drink deeply of the most refreshing, rejuvenating water possible, readily available for you whenever you need it. It’s water that quenches the thirst of your source and your truth. What’s in your magic water?

1. Your Personal Values, for they drive your behavior —your best-possible, self-attuned behavior.
2. The truth of your Ho‘ohana, your intention with doing worthwhile, and self-led work (versus the work of someone else’s plan).
3. Your Strengths. Your source and your truth is about what is absolutely right with you, about every strength which individually and collectively help you feel vitally and forcefully strong.
4. Your awareness of all these first three things as solely about YOU as a complete package, and as a very, very good one, and then...
5. Your Connections. Life is not a solo proposition; we human beings were not meant to live alone.

I have long thought of our connections in life as having to do with relationship, with sense of place, and with our profound capacity as human beings:

• We connect with other people (Relationship)
• We connect with places (Sense of Place), and
• We connect with ideas (Capacity). Our ideas stem from many different causes; they come from our intellect, they come from our emotions, and they come from our spirit. They come from the first two; from other people, and from our places.
  (From the Archives: “Inspiration” is ‘in-spirit.’ Thus Inspiration is Aloha, and Palena ‘ole: Discover your 4-Fold Capacity.)

Therefore, to connect with your source and your truth within Nānā i ke kumu this month, you may want to reflect on your connections: Journal about them in your morning pages, or each night with your gratitude journal.

As promised today, I want to talk a bit more about one in particular, Sense of Place. But before I do, let me give the last word on connection to my friend, author Michael Stallard. In the introduction to his book, Fired Up or Burned Out, he writes:

We Must Connect with Others to Thrive

The more we [the principals of E Pluribus Partners] reflected on our own experiences and the more research we conducted about what makes people and organizations thrive, the more [we] became convinced that it came down to this: connection. Our connection with others in our organization keeps us fired up for long periods of time. Connection meets basic human psychological needs for respect, recognition, belonging, autonomy, personal growth, and meaning. When these needs are met, we thrive. Research shows that when connection is present, organizations are more productive, more innovative, and more profitable. Our lives, including the time we spend working, are enriched… conversely, the lack of connection will gradually burn us out. Organizational environments where connection is low or absent diminish our physical and mental health.

—Michael Lee Stallard, Fired Up or Burned Out
(meet Michael at his blog, and do consider getting his book, it’s a gem, especially if you are fired up about reinventing your workplace culture.)

Photo Credit: welly wellly welly welly well on Flickr by 顔なし.

Nānā i ke kumu: Look to your Source, Find your Truth

Ah, I so, so love this value!

I’ll let you in on a not-so-secret confidence: I will often decide upon our value of the month based on my own needs at any given time as well. I want to work on it with you, just as we have done over the past few weeks with Ho‘ohana. I want to empathize with you, yes, however I also love the thrill of collaborative work itself, and with getting things done, and I believe that the best way to do so is with the power of value-aligned work.

I’m not totally selfish, for armed with the world view that I strive to keep close by my side, aware of the pulse of the day, I do look for needs that I suspect we may share, and those kinds of feelings are pretty pervasive currently (the special edition to my newsletter yesterday, and your reactions to it were telling).

Third, I will look for connections to the values that we have most recently learned about, and Nānā i ke kumu connects magnificently with both Ho‘ohana (September) and Alaka‘i (August). You will also find it connects perfectly with any kind of transition where we look for new beginnings, and January of 2009 is a new beginning that we will soon share universally. If you invested your efforts to designing a new Ho‘ohana for yourself in September, you may feel that you are in a new beginning right now (Bravo!) and if so, I promise you; you will LOVE Nānā i ke kumu!

Look to your Source, Find your Truth

Nānā i ke kumu is a value which brings clarity to your other values: It is a kind of lens through which you can see what most rings true for you instinctively.

The reward of Nānā i ke kumu-aligned work, is one of grounding and contentment; it helps you feel all is right in your world. The value of Nānā i ke kumu asks us to “look to your source, and find your truth” recognizing that Aloha gives us each an inner wellspring; we go to this inner well and drink from it to get healthy in our best way possible, body, mind, and spirit.

If you would like to review Aloha, I would recommend a visit here: Aloha in a Love Affair with Writing.

These are the words I want you to remember in October, making them a) Part of our Language of Intention this month, and b) Your personal affirmation. Say this with me: I will look to my source to find my truth.

Nānā means to look for and observe carefully; to pay attention to what you are truly seeing. Stop here for a moment, and think about what we just learned in September about INTENTION and ATTENTION: Color your understanding of the nānā-inspired, careful attention with the intention of your personal Ho‘ohana. I will wait for a moment as you reflect.

Review Attention and Intention in the context of Ho‘ohana HERE.

There are two meanings for kumu, both of which lend rich meaning to this value. Kumu is the word for foundation, basis, and origin, thus, ‘source.’ Kumu is also the word for teacher or guide, thus Kumu alaka‘i is an admired model, one who leads with good example (Remember our value study this past August? Alaka‘i is the value of leadership.)

Therefore, when we string these meanings together, what the value of Nānā i ke kumu says to you, is that YOU —your mind, body, spirit, your all of you —is your best possible source to respect and honor as your teacher; within you is all the personal truth you need, both source and capacity to learn.

And this is important: Nānā i ke kumu is not selfishness or ego; it is self-attuned learning and living.

When you can connect Nānā i ke kumu with your Ho‘ohana, you will have self-attuned work in your best-possible life (‘Imi ola), and you will have self-leadership (Alaka‘i). Very, very exciting stuff!

Take one step back, so we may go two steps forward

One Step Back:

Because of the timing of this week’s calendar, I do not wish to bombard you with an overly long Day One Essay today. If you have not yet taken the time to read my special message to you yesterday and the Ho‘ohana wrap-up which accompanied it, I’d like to leave the week to come with more space that will encourage you to do so. Here are those titles and links once more:

1. The Bailout Failure need NOT be Your Failure (on Talking Story)
2. Finalizing your Ho‘ohana Statement into Workable Form: To get the most out of Nānā i ke kumu, arm yourself with your Ho‘ohana.

Two Steps Forward:

We have four Tuesdays in the month of October, and this is how I am now anticipating we will spend them:

• Tuesday, October 7: Your Ho‘ohana and your Sense of Place
• Tuesday, October 14: Embracing Change and Embracing Growth.
• Tuesday, October 21: A Truth-Fed Philosophy of Leadership
• Tuesday, October 28: What are your Source-Bred Self-Respecting Essentials?

There is one more thing you can do today: Celebrate being part of the Ho‘ohana Community!

Hau‘oli la hanau elua – Happy Birthday Joyful Jubilant Learning!

Today is the 2nd Birthday of Joyful Jubilant Learning, our sister site dedicated to the lifelong learning initiatives of our Ho‘ohana Community. Click over and share in the celebration there.

We will Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.

~Rosa