Wayfinding

Huddle up

April 29, 2011 by Rosa Say

When you look at this picture, what do you see?

I see a place of great potential, possible anywhere you can surround a table, any table, with some chairs. With any seats at all… we seem to sit on overturned buckets and coolers quite a bit here in Hawai‘i!

I see the possibility of sitting down, and having all kinds of talking story discussions. I see having coffee. I see breaking bread. I see tearing out flip chart pages, and laying them flat where everyone can keep drawing on them, and keep talking about their images, words and ideas.

I see Wow! Projects starting to happen in a very natural way, pulling in the participants they’re meant to pull in, and others too, people pulled into the action by the energy magnet you have created… chairs get kicked back at times like those. They get pushed away so people can stand as their excitement propels them to their feet, and so more people can get closer, standing side-by-side, and not behind the gate-keeping protection the chair may have started with. A comfort zone opens up. It doesn’t matter if you were there in the very beginning, or jumped in later.

But there has to be that beginning. Someone has to start.
Why not you?

Don’t waste the potential of any table or circle of seats you have in your workplace.
Use them today.
Invite others to convene with you, to converse. To go wayfinding.

Do it right now. Why wait?

Ideas are fragile, and inspiration is perishable.
Conversation is easy.

Lovingly, The Weekend

February 5, 2011 by Rosa Say

Aloha Weekend, what shall we do today?

I often imagine that The Weekend is another person, or another relationship I have to/want to weave into my life. It’s never suited my Type A personality (or palena ‘ole coaching) to think of weekends as the days most normal people consider days ‘off,’ and it’s only been in recent years that I’ve been at all deliberate about shaping The Weekend into something else of relationship caliber, and a better alternative that would keep it special. Hō‘imi Interesting versus Easy To Ignore.

My parents had Monday through Friday types of jobs, but I don’t remember us doing much on weekends as a family. Saturdays and Sundays represent a big fat ‘church-ness’ in my growing up memories, and it was a good thing for me (though of course I didn’t see it that way back then.)

Living With The Pope

When I was growing up, ours was a family that went to church every Sunday without fail. My dad was the one we thought of as “the holy one” and we’d all call him “the Pope” when we were sure he couldn’t hear us (my mom was the one that started it).

For as long as I can remember, my mom was the one that did the flowers for the church every Saturday afternoon, and I honestly think that Sunday mornings were more of a vanity fix for her as the entire congregation “ooh”d and “aah”d over them. She deserved the accolades; she also had (still has) an extraordinary talent for fashioning any kind of flower a bride would choose into bouquets for weddings, and all was done in her volunteer time as her hobby.

That’s me and my dad at my wedding, and yes, my mom did the bouquet.

Dad made Sundays sacred. You wouldn’t describe them as a “day of rest” though; he kept us all busy. They were sacred in that they were about our faith, and about ‘ohana, our family, and about generally being as good as we could possibly be for the entire day. Sunday was the day that you made up for any slip-ups or indiscretions in the week before, and you fortified your character for the week ahead.

We also thought of Sunday as a kind of neighborhood and community day, for that was when ho‘omāka‘ika‘i; we went visiting. It was the day we’d get lectures on things like citizenship, civic duty and social responsibility, or charity, patriotism and history.

Sunday was the day that we learned values from our parents, just as they had learned them from their parents. We had modest scoops of value-learning every day, but Sunday was the day it came in droves, and you better be able to take it all in.
~ from some older writing on my old MWAC blog

In contrast, I fear weekends may be a big fat nothing for my own children” I don’t want to ask them because selfishly, I don’t want to hear the answer.

Hubby and I have never had Monday through Friday jobs. Our days off were whenever business was slowest, and never, ever the holidays, for those were when business was booming. It’s still like that for him. As for me, you run into a similar 7-day sweep when you’re self employed and mostly work from home, for working is something you never stop doing — and that’s honestly not a problem for me” it’s sort of like discovering that 6 or even 7 smaller health snacks during the day are actually better for you than those conventional 3 meals a day which leave you fat and yearning for naps instead of workouts.

However, blaming jobs and work habits is a cop-out. Both can change, if you choose to change them.

So these days, in coaching myself to shape better habits and be healthier mana‘o, kino, ‘uhane (mind, body, and spirit) I’m feeling a ma‘alahi calling back to making the weekends special in some way, and to forcing their separateness. (Best I can describe it, ma‘alahi invokes simplicity, and a calm persuasion toward contentment, even when it may require some kind of feels-right disruption at first to break inertia, for ease is a part of ma‘alahi too” so many western words for just one Hawaiian one!)

I’ve no definite plan in mind, other than wayfinding, and finding some other time to do my chores (which are still chores, though downsizing has gotten cooler). You?

That sounds good Rosa, play instead.
For starters, you can get outside…

Lovingly,
The Weekend

Verb your own story: Read , Write, Converse

February 1, 2011 by Rosa Say

It’s February 1st. Hey — Did you just groan?

This is the day the new year’s newness officially wears off, isn’t it. It’s the day the shine begins to look rather dull, perhaps even scratched. However that’s the ‘half empty’ attitude, versus the ‘half full’ one we can have instead” we can do better. Shall we take an accounting of how we’re doing so far with 2011 as our Year of Better Habits by counting the blessings?

I’ve shared bits here with you already, of clues which came up in January because we opted for wayfinding: Watching for ‘best clues’ has been so much nicer than committing to specific resolutions, don’t you think?

We started with a simple willingness to “break previously-set-up patterns of orientation” (love how Pat phrased that for us), did some book reading, tapped into playing tourist and revealing other spaces for inspiration to flourish, returned to our roots, and were even able to produce a brand new ebook (our values will always be our best clues!)

Do you feel as optimistic as I do?

I sincerely hope so. The best advice I can give you, is to count your January blessings too, no matter how small. Then articulate your own Language of Intention for the rest of the year to come, revealing the verbs which emerged as clues: Keep them shining and new with whatever vocabulary will capture what you now suspect will be your best habits. Words are powerful, and as storyteller Iain Thomas puts it,

“There’s no story I can tell you, that is as powerful
as the story you can tell yourself.”

In 2010 Take 5 Game-Changing was very effective for me. This year, I’m starting to feel goodness evolving within a Take 3 of exceptionally strong ‘verb words’ instead, wanting to Read more, Write more, and have more Conversations. While abundant within themselves (Palena ‘ole), each has such a distinctive and altogether pleasing pattern of wayfinding.

I’m feeling the humble yet promising beginnings to a very rich year.

Archive Aloha: Here’s a Take 5 of potential habit builders:

There’s no refrigerator space for inspiration

January 30, 2011 by Rosa Say

Here’s a new habit to groom for 2011, our year of better habits:

Make space for inspiration, and not in your refrigerator.

Add it to your language of intention.

It’s become my way to remember something I originally heard from Jason Fried of 37signals, when I heard him say in a podcast that “inspiration is perishable.”

You can’t bottle up inspiration. You can’t put it in a ziplock, toss it in the freezer, and fish it out later. It’s instantly perishable if you don’t eat it while it’s fresh.
~ Jason Fried

So true!

Inspiration is fragile and fleeting, and so you have to capitalize on it, and optimize it when you can whenever you have that chance. To simply capture it, say in a written note on a scrap of paper, or in a voice memo on your phone, usually isn’t enough for it to survive as true, earth shaking inspiration. You’ve let the moment pass, missing that window of opportunity where there was something more. You edited something which should have been allowed to run rampant for a while longer. Rampant, wild and free.

You can’t refrigerate a blue flame without smothering it.

The best possible time for inspiration to hit you, is when you have space in your life — in the day to day living of your life — to stop everything if you have to, so you can focus on that inspiration and nothing else. If it’s an idea, you can milk it for all it’s worth while your inspired thinking about it is shiny and new, fresh and still untapped of its greatest potential — however you usually get that full blown release to happen.

Some people need to talk it out, which is great, for it becomes this twofer where another person can get inspired too. Me? I have to be able to write it out, writing through a complete mindsweep until I feel mentally exhausted, but never spent, for those are the times I’m most energized and feeling like I’m on fire, and burning as hot and bright as I’ll ever burn — it’s the blue flame stuff: In most fire (because it can depend on the fuel too), the blue flame is the hottest, with the potential to tip into dazzling white fire, and it burns most efficiently.

So ask yourself this: When inspiration strikes, what do you do? Can you always do it? What must you change, from however your work atmosphere now exists, to make space in your day for your inspiration to run rampant, and for however long you need it to?

The part about making space in your day is important: KÄ“ia lā — it’s “about today, the here and now.” You can’t instruct your inspiration to only come around on weekends, or be satisfied with it only showing up once a month or so. Daily inspiration is what’s ‘Imi ola, and living your best possible life.

And have you tried to track it somehow, so you know when you’re likely to be inspired? It’s habit learning you have to incorporate into your trusted system or Strong Week Plan; you simply must. Books for example, always do it for me, somewhere within their once, twice, or third time coming.

It feels so delicious, to indulge in your inspiration!
I genuinely wish you blue flames, run rampant space, and no refrigerators.

The most unexpected triggers can inspire you.

It was this Beverly Hills.ish looking car for me a few days ago.

Sweet, sweet ride.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Archive Aloha: Here’s a Take 5 of potential habit builders:

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