Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

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We see what we want to see

March 8, 2012 by Rosa Say

“We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brains” What we see is only what our brain tells us we see, and it’s not 100 percent accurate.”
— John Medina, Brain Rules
— and my Dad, a coupla decades earlier: Can you see with your ears?

And we feel what we’re meant to feel

“For too long, people have disparaged the emotional brain, blaming our feelings for all of our mistakes. The truth is far more interesting. If it weren’t for our emotions, reason wouldn’t exist at all” When we are cut off from our feelings, the most banal decisions became impossible. A brain that can’t feel can’t make up its mind.”
— Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide

Initially, vision can trump all other senses

Most people flying into our Keahole Kona airport here, on the west side of the Big Island, are surprised in a rather unsettling way. They hope they haven’t made a mistake.

The approach to the coast is fairly barren, and the airport runway is surrounded by the stark nothingness of black lava fields and ugly invasive fountain grass. The lava plain is fairly new in geographical measurement (1801); greenery hasn’t seeded and rooted in any triumphant way yet.

If you’re a returning resident, it’s secretly fun to watch the faces of first time visitors peering out the windows. You can see them thinking, “But this is Hawai‘i! Where are the coconut trees? Where are the flowers? Isn’t this the tropics?”

It’s secretly fun because you know what will happen: We who live here are happy for them, and for the experiences we know they’ll soon have.

I always want to tell them, “You’ll see, just be patient.”

And I want to coach them: “Once we land, be a courageous explorer. Go off the beaten track, and get lost in the feelings here. Converse with the locals, and ask them to share their aloha with you. Talk story. Share yours too.”

Swirling turbulence

To us, this landscape is beautiful. It’s not barren at all. As the maxim goes, “Looks are deceiving.”

The Big Island is the kind of place you have to explore further, so you can learn about it more fully. Once you do, feelings tug pretty quickly, and quite deeply. You fall in love, and you fall in love hard. To do otherwise doesn’t seem possible.

But that’s okay, for you no longer want it to be otherwise. Feeling deeply is wonderful.

It’s the same thing as when you feel the Calling of Alaka‘i Managemeant.

You’ve got to explore that calling, digging deeper, and allowing it to get personal.
You’ve got to make connections with the people who surround you — especially with those you work with, and doubly, triply so with those you are supposed to ‘manage.’

If you can open up, and allow yourself to get a little vulnerable, you discover all kinds of things in the partnerships you create.

Thank you for reading Talking Story. If this sounds good to you, you’re in the right place. Start digging for the calling of Alaka‘i here, and for managemeant here. You need not go too far back.

You might like this one too: The instinctive, natural selection of wanting

Purchase Managing with Aloha at Amazon.com in hardcover, or in the Kindle Store.

Nature’s watery treasure chest

March 16, 2011 by Rosa Say

After a tsunami, you have to believe that nature knows best. Her message is not always kind, and pain can be severe, especially when human life is lost, and our sense of place seems irreparably changed.

Healing within conversation

This posting is an on-going conversation a bit off the beaten path of the normal here, however it is soul-feeding testament to the ‘talking story’ we do!

  • If you’re newly arriving on Talking Story, you may want to read this post first: Waiakauhi Pond will heal. We will too. And a note…
  • The update I tucked in the comments there, was further updated on my tumblr, Ho‘ohana Aloha: What Hawai‘i’s seaside fish ponds can teach us.

Nature’s watery treasure chest
At the edge of an anchialine pond at KÅ«ki‘o

Kekaha replenishment fashioned beautiful

A blog post by Joanna Paterson reminded me about Wordles, and I popped these words into the “Create” box there to see what would come up.

This came from my earliest days working at the Hualalai Resort, and were shared with us there in an orientation session sometime in 1996. It was plainly printed, text only, on a sheet of copy paper that I have always kept folded within the book I have called In the Lee of Hualalai, written by Jocelyn Fujii, just because it has always belonged there with the rest of my Hualalai history (the book has turned into a kind of filing cabinet for me). So I’m sorry to say that I cannot give original credit where credit is due for this passage, though I have referred to these words very often: I find the simplicity of it so beautiful and compelling, both in word choice, and in the lifestyle described.

“Ka‘Å«pÅ«lehu: The ancients revered this land, this ahupua‘a called Ka‘Å«pÅ«lehu on the slopes of the mountain they named Hualalai, in the region of Kekaha. The kaha lands, Kekaha was called: waterless lands brimming with other riches, coveted by the chiefs of old. Reading the signs of the ‘Eka wind that called forth the canoes for good fishing, and the powerful Mumuku wind that warned them to stay home, the ancients knew when to fish for aku and ‘ōpelu along the bountiful shoreline. From coastal ponds fattened by the upland rains, they harvested tiny red shrimp called ‘ōpae‘ula. With the ‘ōpae‘ula they fashioned balls of chum that attracted the ‘ōpelu for harvests to sustain their people. In a continuous exchange up, down, and across the ahupua‘a the villagers of Ka‘Å«pÅ«lehu exchanged fish and salt from the shoreline for the taro, breadfruit, and sweet potato grown by the upland dwellers. In turn they grew hala and loulu and wove their fronds into mats, hats, and containers that they carried up the mountain on trails they had built, stone by stone. Thus was the ahupua‘a, a land division sweeping from mountain to sea, a major cultural, environmental, and economic unit of the traditional Hawaiians.”

“Because the conservation of natural resources was foremost in the Hawaiian mind, fishing grounds were never depleted. The catch was shared among villagers, and fishing was prohibited during spawning seasons to ensure ongoing abundance and replenishment. We, as those who now occupy this land, invite you to share in the mutual responsibility of sustaining and maintaining beautiful Ka‘Å«pÅ«lehu. Our natural resources are precious and fragile, and we can Mālama kahakai together, kākou.”

Here is the wordle I got.

If you read down the center of it, you get:
Rains carried ongoing harvests
Fragile environmental resources
Sustaining major fishing
Good land, shoreline riches
Coveted sea, called natural

and also, summing up,
Kekaha replenishment fashioned beautiful

Gentle coexistence
Pond ecosystems coax forth gentle coexistence

I hope I live to be an old woman, able to see more change, yet tell old stories too

I was able to speak with my friend David, steward of Waiakauhi Pond, and he shares that the eldest of the kūpuna (Hawaiian elders) he has inquired of, remember that Waiakauhi was indeed open to the sea before the tsunami of 1946, and only became the anchialine pond we knew of in recent years since then.

It is a more comforting thought, that the ocean has reclaimed her, as a mother reclaims a wayward child, never having stopped loving him, and always knowing that her kuleana na mālama loa, her enduring responsibility with teaching him from a place of love and care, will never stop, no matter how old he gets.

For my part, I now think of a favorite quote from George Bernard Shaw. No matter the emotions I go through, I’ll reach deep into them as they happen. I’m with Shaw, who said, “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die.”

So much beauty remains

The yellows of Kauna‘oa and a Pohuehue leaf
The yellows of kauna‘oa and a pohuehue leaf

The kauna‘oa is the stringy orange atop the green pohuehue morning glory. A parasitic twining vine with thin, leafless stems Kauna‘oa kahakai translates to ‘the beach orphan vine.’
When the strands are twisted, then twined over each other, they form Kauna‘oa, the official lei of the island of Lana‘i.

Pohuehue beach runners
The pohuehue beach runners; our Hawaiian morning glory

Kohekohe as Mea Ho‘okipa
Kohekohe as Mea Ho‘okipa, sedge as host to a snail

Waiakauhi Pond will heal. We will too.

March 13, 2011 by Rosa Say

In the course of my own short lifetime, I believe that one of my most important lessons learned has been Sense of Place, the feel of a place, and perhaps more significantly, our feel for a place. I believe that our sense of place is as intrinsic to the quality of our lives as family, health, mindfulness and spirit, those oh so necessary elements of our personal well-being, because it’s about our sense of belonging somewhere.

I’ve also learned how fleeting sense of place can be, physically. Living through brush fire, earthquakes and tsunamis have been highly emotional chapters of my history, and they have taught me that not even that “solid earth beneath our feet” is long-lasting: It can change instantly, and dramatically.

Afternoon Reflections
1. Waiakauhi Pond, at Hualalai

I’ve been visiting our coastal areas these past three days, in the aftermath of the Sendai earthquake and tsunami which also reached our islands, realizing how much of our shoreline will no longer look the way it once did. It’s hard to explain why I feel so compelled to visit these places and see the damage, for mostly I just sit somewhere for a while and cry. All I can tell you is that it’s just what you do when these places have defined your home.

Like so many of you are experiencing, I’m sure, my emotions have felt like they’ve been shredded, tumbled in the surging waters. On the one hand, I cannot begin to imagine what the people of Japan are going through despite all the news coverage enabling us to share in it: To say so would be a lie, for their devastation is just too large to comprehend without being there, personally affected by it. On the other, I feel such a strong bond to them, for we both are island people. We understand how our earth must shift sometimes, and we know how a swell becomes not wave, but surge.

Beach erosion
2. Natural wave erosion at Uluweluwelu Bay, KÅ«ki‘o

Respect and unstoppable awe curbs any anger — and so completely, that gentle softening (that there’s no anger at all) feeling strange, and strangely right at the same time. But we are not stone; we’re human. We have to feel something… So I cry, and I pray, just letting both things happen, allowing myself to be human as feelings run the gamut without understood reason. I can’t control them, and I’ve stopped trying to. Giving in, just like our shoreline had to.

I started taking some photos of the damage, but I had to stop; they were too painful. Not sure what I would do with them anyway.

So these, instead, are photos of places as I’d captured them before Friday morning’s tsunami, knowing they will one day return to their beauty again, changed certainly, but resilient. For after all, I had taken them in a sense of place created for me, for us, after the tsunami of 1946… sense of place starts again, and now.

Tropical stripes
3. ‘Anaeho‘omalu Bay at Waikoloa

Heliotrope Row
4. Kikaua Point Park

Village roof lines
5. A hale at Kona Village Resort

Coconut grove at Ku‘uali‘i fishpond
6. Coconut grove at Ku‘uali‘i fishpond

Once upon a fishpond
7. The fishponds of Kona Village Resort

Lagoon reflections
8. Shoreline reflections at the Four Seasons Hualalai

Sunset Silhouette
9. Sunset at the Four Seasons Hualalai at Pahui‘a

Local request
10. Within the Milo Tunnel at ‘Anaeho‘omalu

Prepping for Ho‘ohana with Financial Literacy

February 9, 2011 by Rosa Say

Have you heard this before? “Do what you love, and the money will follow.”

Well, I don’t buy it. It would be great if the world really worked that way, but I think it’s bad advice without a common sense plan to back it up.

Most of us are not hunters and gatherers who can easily live off the land. We live in societies of more varied enterprise. Like it or not, we need financial currency of some kind to support the lifestyle we choose to have in those societies.

Ho‘ohana is the Hawaiian value of worthwhile and intentional work, and it is second only to Aloha in the Managing with Aloha philosophy. I usually hesitate to do this, but if I had to impress upon you the relevance of the MWA 9 Key Concepts, I’d prioritize them this way:

1. Aloha — love and respect of self and others, in everything
2. Ho‘ohana — work as what you do, not ‘job.’ It’s that sweet spot where your talents, strengths, and daily inspiration with both all intersect in the work you get done
3 and 4 together: Sense of Place and Value Alignment — your sense of rightness and belonging in the world, having a good grasp of the first two (Aloha and Ho‘ohana)

Thus as much as I speak of Ho‘ohana here, within Managing with Aloha and as a major influence on virtually all the writing I do, my bares bones advice to those asking for it has been this:

Best case scenario, work on your Ho‘ohana and your financial literacy at the same time: You must be able to finance your passions, whatever they may be.

If you feel you must prioritize one over the other, learn to finance your life, for there’s more to living than working.

For example, when I have the opportunity to speak to them in MWA presentations, I ask both high school and college graduates to release their parents and any other benefactors as soon as possible, and support themselves. Can you imagine if everyone in the world did that with fierce cunning and determination? There would be far less need for welfare and the other ‘compassionate assistance’ we give the ‘less fortunate.’ There would be far healthier ‘civil responsibility’ woven into our communities everywhere.

Yes, it’s a tough love stance within my Aloha, I know. Take another look at that definition I listed for Aloha above: The part about self-love, and self-respect is absolutely critical. Financial literacy is knowledge which fuels your confidence and self-esteem: It will fortify you to know you support yourself wisely, and live within your means rather than depending on others to finance you.

I was once asked for a checklist on financial literacy, but I think this one question covers everything I’d put on it:

Are you living within your means, and are you confident you can sustain it?

When you answer “yes” that’s the best foundation for Ho‘ohana you’ll ever have.

Postscript:
Business Thinking with Aloha
is the ebook I had written for high-school and college graduates entering the workforce for the first time, and choosing the world of business.   It has more of my writing on this concept of financial literacy in workplaces shaped with Aloha. You can purchase it via Smashwords (in several digital formats) or Kindle.

For more on why writing BTWA became so important to me:
Read about our ‘Lost Generation’ in the Archives: Share your Sense of [Work] Place
It’s a problem we have yet to solve.

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RSS Current Articles at Managing with Aloha:

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