“Help! I can’t come up with my Ho‘ohana.”

I was in the Honolulu International Airport one evening waiting for my flight back home when a young man walked up to me and said, “Excuse me; aren’t you the one who wrote Managing with Aloha?”

I looked up from the newspaper I was reading and smiled at him, but before I could say anything, he sat down in the chair next to me and said, “I can’t come up with my Ho‘ohana.”

It’s something I get asked about all the time. If you have been trying to come up with your Ho‘ohana too, be sure you check in with MWAC for this week’s Tuesday Coaching installment: Writing a Ho‘ohana Draft part 2: Enjoy the How-To of your Values.

The draft we are working on this month is a personal one, and that’s usually my first tip: Start with the personal, and the professional will fall into place for you where it should. If you try to articulate your Ho‘ohana only for a particular job or career, you rarely will get the full picture – you are much more complex than that – a good thing! You have more capacity to be explored, and your job is just part of it, even when you have a job you absolutely adore.

I did… and I am not in that job anymore. I love my work now just as much (much more), because exploring my Ho‘ohana personally – selfishly even – helped me discover more of what I could learn to offer others. Those new ‘offerings’ have made my life so much richer, a true win-win proposition.

Conversely, if you now struggle to love, or even like the job you have right now, working on Ho‘ohana personally helps you focus on the elements that are strictly under your own control, opening up windows that frame what you can do about it. 9 times out of 10, frustration in a job can come from factors that are outside your scope of influence – at least that’s what we tend to think. It’s a natural self-protective mechanism to shift blame and fiercely protect our self-worth; in a way, it’s healthy. However focusing on others is not what Ho‘ohana is all about; you have to focus inward and on you.

So if you feel like that young man I met in the airport, please be sure to check in with MWAC today. If you have not visited MWAC before, you may want to start with the mid-month recap I did here on Talking Story first; there is a deliberate Language of Intention I use with the words ‘work’ and ‘job.’

And don’t let the whole date thing stop you just because we are in the last two weeks of the month: Everything on MWAC is designed for self-coaching and self-paced progression. You can start it at any time (and go back to it at any time :) Isn’t the internet wonderful?

Here is some extra-credit reading about this bit – “you are much more complex than that – a good thing! You have more capacity to be explored…” –

Palena ‘ole: Discover your 4-Fold Capacity.

MY MANA‘O (what I believe to be true) ~ ~ ~ ALOHA is about you living with authenticity in a world populated with other people. We human beings were not meant to live alone, we thrive in each other’s company. Aloha celebrates everything that makes you YOU. HO‘OHANA is about you making your living in our world in the way that gives you daily direction and intention and leaves you with a feeling of personal fulfillment every day —not just when you have accomplished large goals.