That is, first things first: we need to take care of ourselves.

There is so much rightness about having aloha be at the core of the way we manage ourselves and others, for the word aloha breaks down this way:

Alo: your demeanor and presence

Ha: the very breath of life

Aloha refers to the spirit within; it is the steady breathing of your life, the voice of your soul. Aloha can be literally translated as “the breath of pure life within you”. A person’s alo (ah-lo) is their presence, and their ha (hah) is their breath while it is still pure, meaning it has not yet been exhaled and mingled with anything else.

—from the Managing with Aloha manifesto

One of my favorite coaching correlations is the oxygen mask instruction on airplanes so familiar to sky travelers: It really doesn’t matter how brave or noble you may be; should an emergency happen and the cabin pressure plummet, your own oxygen mask must be on before you can have a prayer of helping anyone else.

This past week, remarkable business coach Leah Maclean, author of Working Solo, put together a great series which asked the question, How important is a healthy lifestyle to your business success?

Leah starts by saying;

These days I am making conscious choices about how my business intrudes on my lifestyle and vice versa and enjoying it (this would have been an interesting surprise in days gone by).  My personal philosophy is that my ability to sustain a focused effort on my business is strongly influenced by the quality of my overall health and well-being.

But that is just my opinion …..

And wonderful coach that she is, Leah hunts down some other viewpoints. It seems like the answer to Leah’s question is obvious, but I enjoyed reading what everyone had to say about it, and I think you will too. As you do, ask yourself what you’re doing about your own mālama and self-renewal.

Spend some time with Leah and her contributors:

Chris Barrow – The Business Coaching Company.
Snippet: A healthy lifestyle isn’t in the slightest bit important when considering your business success. If it were, then the world wouldn’t be full of overweight, chain-smoking, drunken, exhausted "business successes", spending money on external thrills and spills as a compulsive addictive disorder to anaesthetise their desperate existence. Read more.

Todd Storch – Business Thoughts.
Snippet: The biggest benefit of my "healthy lifestyle" as it relates to business? The answer would have to be mental sharpness. Read more.

Chris Owen – Pink Apple.
Snippet: The answer to this question is a no-brainer in some ways.  Perhaps the more tricky question is how. Read more.

Yvonne Di Vita – Lip-Sticking.
Snippet: While health is important to everyone, and women — I think — view it as vital to all we do, it’s the most ignored part of the average person’s life. We take our health for granted — we overdose on caffeine, sugar, and TV, and wonder why we’re shakey,  muddle-headed, and confused. Read more.

Karen Wallace – The Clearing Space.
Snippet: One day I hope to have my business to a stage where it will run itself on a basic level while I am away.  But my business at the moment is ME. Read more.

Rosa Say – Yes, I contributed too! Mahalo Leah for asking :-)
Snippet: In my coaching, lifestyle is addressed at the onset, normally with the writing of professional mission statements; I’ve lined it out for my contribution to Leah’s series. Read more.

Andrea Lee – Multiple Streams of Coaching Income.

Snippet:  Everything is energy, and if you are stuck in business in a given area, somehow, some way, the key to unlock it is in the other areas of your life, call them ‘lifestyle’ if you like. Read more.

Matthew Homann – The Nonbillable Hour.
Snippet: I’m going to turn the question around a bit and suggest it is more important to run your business so that it can support your healthy lifestyle” Read more.

Leah will be posting her own wrap up soon, so visit her main page to catch it: Working Solo. And once this post drops off the main page, remember that you can always find Leah in our right column listing for the Ho‘ohana Community Online.

A related series of posts are in the July 2005 dated posts of the Monthly Ho‘ohana category: our July Ho‘ohana was called Here’s to good health.

The Hawaiian values most associated with health are Mālama (Care and Empathy), Pono (Rightness and Balance), and ‘Ohana, the human circle of Aloha we are so well advised to surround ourselves with.

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