Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

How to Fill up by Spilling

by

I’ve finished reading How We Decide, and the book I’m reading now is An Everlasting Meal, Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler. It’s one of those books that aren’t to be denied (nor should you). Rave reviews kept turning up across the world of my web browsing, seeming to ask me, “How about now? Are you ready for me yet?”

Go get a copy of your own. This book is a gem, and I recommend it highly. I’ll be buying it by the case so I can gift it to everyone I know.

The book feeds your soul as much as your tummy, probably more so. It’s a well-seasoned weaving of “philosophy and instruction into approachable lessons on instinctive cooking.” — that comes from the book jacket, and it’s a good description. The book appeals to those who aren’t chefs, but want to come to a good partnership with cooking because they like good food and want to eat it without too much fuss and bother. Respectfully and knowledgeably, yes. Professionally and elaborately, no.

That’s me, through and through. I know my kitchen intimately mostly because of keeping it clean; from a culinary perspective it feels like a foreign land even though I somehow raised a healthy family with its help.

But before I go too far down that rabbit hole, this post isn’t about cooking, or even learning to.

How to Build A Ship

Author Tamar Adler writes;

“There are times when I can’t bear to think about cooking. Food is what I love, and how I communicate love, and how I calm myself. But sometimes, without my knowing why, it is drained of all that. Then cooking becomes just another one of hunger’s jagged edges. So I have ways to take hold of this thing and wrest it from the jaws of resentment, and settle it back among the things that are mine.”

The chapter that begins with this paragraph is called “How to Build a Ship” and it’s about how Adler gets her inspiration back when it has momentarily slipped away.

As a quick but helpful aside, Adler says she has two loves: food and words. Her chapters are evocative in their announcements: “How to Light a Room” is about how herbs perk up food. “How to Live Well” is about understanding how wonderful the lowly bean can be. “How to Make Peace” is about how rice and ground corn (grits in the South, and polenta in Europe) are pacifists, because they “fill bellies and cracks in our meals, and they fill the cultural divisions in our appetites, which really, in the end, are the same.” This chapter got its name from a quote attributed to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood, and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

So Adler takes his advice, and does just that for us, as her readers and hopeful voyagers. She explains how she gets her love of cooking back when she needs to, and guess what? It’s the shortest chapter in the book (at least as far as I’ve read). It’s because love has a way of sticking around, staying close to you.

How to Weave Cloth Without Thread

For me, weaving is about making learning relevant and useful; a beautiful cloth can be anything you want it to be, and mine is Managing with Aloha.
[We talked story about it here: Learning and Weaving: The absorption benefit of your Personal Philosophy]

When I read Adler’s “How to Build a Ship” I couldn’t help but think about those of us who are managers, and how often — much, much too often — we’ll “drum up people to collect wood” or “assign them tasks and work” when we should be teaching them “to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

I think Adler is right about her hunch that we have to fall in love again:

“My answer is to anchor food to somewhere deep inside you, or deep in your past, or deep in the wonders of what you love… I say: Let yourself love what you love, and see if it doesn’t lead you back to what you ate when you loved it.”

For her, it’s about the eating experience as much as the cooking experience. It’s about being where food has made everything surrounding her more vibrant and alive.

The question I have for you then, is this: Exactly what is the managemeant experience that will continually refresh your own inspiration, always helping you get your mojo back?

To put it more simply: When are you completely, and beautifully, in love with being a manager?

If you rewrote Adler’s chapter for the work you do as an Alaka‘i Manager — for your Ho‘ohana — what would you call it?

How to Fill Up By Spilling

My choice would be “How to fill yourself up by spilling” because of the spirit-spilling of Aloha. Spirit-spilling is what the beliefs I hold within my Alaka‘i calling are all about: Alaka‘i Managers are those who help people work from their inside out.

When I have been able to do that for someone, I feel full. I’m tremendously full, feeling nourished and satisfied. I feel healthy, and as alive as I have ever felt.

If my day falters in some way, I’ll usually get my inspiration by learning from people, willing to accept whatever they choose to share with me. It’s my quickest way, and it’s virtually guaranteed.
I get my continued energy in creating partnerships with them, or some other weaving (making the learning personal, relevant, and useful).

I count my successes as the people I’ve left behind better than I found them. To see them grow, or irrevocably identify their own strengths, knowing that I helped in some way, is extremely rewarding to me.

Recalling my ‘how to’ (to relight the fires of inspiration) gets easy for me to do, because all I have to remember are names. Faces, and the little details of people’s stories will come flooding back into my consciousness, and I begin to smile, I just can’t help it.

Then The Craving ever-beneath The Calling begins all over again. I want to be part of more stories, and so I get on with my ‘ship building.’

Loving this book!

I’ll leave you to think more about your own ‘how to’ with a final quote from Adler;

“So I listen hard. I listen with the purpose of remembering. And this digging into sounds and into days I have heard and felt roots future meals in the unchangeable truths of past ones.”

“Let smells in. Let the smell of hot tarmac in the summer remind you of a meal you ate the first time you landed in a hot place, when the ground smelled like it was melting. Let the smell of salt remind you of a paper basket of fried clams you ate once, squeezing them with lemon as you walked on a boardwalk. Let it reach your deeper interest. When you smell the sea, and remember the basket of hot fried clams, and the sound of skee-balls knocking against each other, let it help you love what food can do, which is to tie this moment to that one.”

When has being a manager been its very best and most beautiful for you?
What do you remember about it?

How will you do it again?

What it means to “Look to Your Source”

by

“Look to your source, find your truth” is the short and quick English translation I most often use for a Hawaiian value called Nānā i ke kumu.

I have used the phrase “look to your source” as part of my own speech for so long now, I often neglect to explain it to others. The first time this oversight was called to my attention was by my editor for Managing with Aloha when he had asked, “Rosa, give us more. Exactly what is it you mean by that phrase, look to your source?” Up until the time of his question, this following excerpt from my book was missing; it’s now found on page 206:

When I hear the words Nānā i ke kumu, look to your source, it means I need to consider my emotional sense of place as well as my intellectual sense of reason.

When a child is troubled but hesitates to tell her parents just what the problem is, the elders will often say “Nānā i ke kumu.” They are saying to find a place where you can sit quietly, and look within yourself for the source of what troubles you, for there you will also find strength within your inner spirit with which to deal with the trouble.

There’s more. The chapter on Nānā i ke kumu is about 10 pages long, and I talk about sense of place, truth and authenticity, change and growth, vision and one’s personal philosophy of leadership. I ask you some questions about those things you consider your non-negotiables. And of course, we talk about values with Nānā i ke kumu, for today, managing with the values of Aloha is clearly my source and truth.

In the effort to truly understand ourselves, or to come to peace with the decisions we have made, we will often look to our personal values as our source, for it is our values which influence our choices and determine our behavior.

The question for each of us is this:

Which key values create our source, giving us the conviction of deeply rooted belief we will identify as our personal truth?

My additions to the chapter on Nānā i ke kumu worked out very well, for without doubt it has been the single chapter in my book that has surprised me most. I did not expect that so many readers would tell me it was one of their favorite ones, the one they found most useful to them personally. The most recent one it struck a chord with was Phil Gerbyshak; it came up in a review he recently did on Managing with Aloha:

“This [Nānā i ke kumu] is the chapter I just finished, and the one that will stick in my head the longest.”
– Phil Gerbyshak

However I do know that for others, the values connection doesn’t give them a complete enough answer because they are actively seeking to change their personal hierarchy of values as their lives change focus. During these times, it will come up in my coaching that people want some simpler answers to discovering their source of well being as they take their values assessment journey.

The analogy I use in the chapter on Nānā i ke kumu is the one I call the inner wellspring, and I find this helps many people, for we all have one. Imagine you have a fresh, pure artesian well ever bubbling within you; it nourishes you and refreshes you, and you take comfort knowing it will never, ever run dry. It keeps you feeling good. Feeling centered. It is your source. When you Mālama and take care of it, it takes care of you.

What does it look like? It’s different for all of us. I think we feel its effects more than we see it for what it is. The love of our family. The good health we take for granted. The faith we hold but rarely talk about. The friendships that allow us to be silly. We just have to learn to recognize our wellspring by allowing ourselves to feel good when it kicks into gear.

Sometimes, we get way too cerebral about things. We have to learn to give in to those times when what we think simply feels right. I’d bet that those are the times you have somehow physically, mentally, spiritually or emotionally “gone to the well” and taken a drink of your internal bubbling spring.

For me, having connected to some sense of place wherever I am is a huge part of my own wellspring. [I’ve written about this before; if you’re curious, take this link: Places, Feelings and Learning. Learning Serenity.]

Learning is another one. Give me a book I will take a new thought or idea from and I feel I have drunk deeply from my well. This weekend I read God’s Debris by Scott Adams and felt like I had gotten enough nourishment to cure a famine. I believe this comes from the wellspring of having clarity. How does one come to clarity? Consider these questions, and jot some things down for yourself:

-How do you think best?
-What are the circumstances that must be taken care of for you, your conditions for fertile ground?
-When is it that you get the most clarity of thought, where things are crystal clear for you?
-When can you have a conversation inside your head, and feel you are giving yourself good, sound answers, the kind of answers you will not hesitate to take action on?
-When have your actions sprung from thought decisions that are not up for negotiation? You are so sure of them; end of story.

My own example: The draft for nearly every single chapter of Managing with Aloha was written in my head on the early morning run I take each morning. The first draft of my entire manuscript was done in less than three months because it was early summer and we had perfect running weather.

However when you understand the answer to this for yourself, you can go to the well whenever you need to, even when you aren’t as healthy in every realm of your life.

When I am feeling less than fit for some reason, walking as my daily morning exercise (as opposed to running) has magnificent benefits. I’m not “in the zone” blanking out everything else in concentration, but now I notice more; I’m more observant. I’m more willing to let creative and completely crazy non-logical thoughts into my consciousness. When I walk I make sure I have a pen and a small notebook with me, for inevitably, I’ll sit on a curb somewhere and have to get things out of my head; thoughts start to bounce around in there like the silver balls in a pinball machine. It’s a different kind of thought process than when I’m running; more whacky and creative, but I am just as sure about things.

The best advice I can give you on this is to give in. Give in to recognizing those times things feel right and good. They are not as random as you may think.