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What do you know to be sure? Hō‘imi ola.

January 1, 2012 by Rosa Say

Aloha dear friends, Hau‘oli Makahiki Hou — Happy New Year.

Good endings help us create good beginnings

I sincerely hope that 2011 ended with ma‘alahi joy for you (contentment), as it did for me. I am flush with the lush generosity of Mahalo (an elemental gratitude) as I sit and write this for you.

We were able to get our entire family together for a week-long Christmas celebration — quite the feat as we now live in three different cities with an ocean and quintet of job scheduling between us. The best gift I received wasn’t wrapped in bright paper and tied up with ribbon (though those were quite fabulous too); it was that strong surge of confident optimism one gets from spending giving time in the arms of ‘Ohana — family, and those you care most about in your world. We didn’t talk about it with each other explicitly, but I know we all ended the week feeling that the coming year will be good to us, and good for us, and that we’ll be good for it too. It will be our Ho‘ohana intention no matter the path of our lives.

This weekend has been blissful in another way, with a welcome abundance of quiet spells filled well, mostly with reading. Having both Christmas and New Year’s Day and their eves on consecutive weekends is the very best blessing of a calendar’s turning, don’t you think?

One of my husband’s gifts this year was an iPad2, and guess who has been using it most? It wasn’t something I had coveted, for I’ve been quite happy with my digital arsenal as is (MacBook, iPhone and Kindle if you’re wondering), but once I had the iPad in my hands I just had to play with it, and experiment!

Sidebar” it used to be that we’d “take a digital holiday” and mean that we were taking a break from our email, our blogs, and the nascent dabbling we did in social media. Now however, our app-crazed advancements have given us ‘digital degrees’ in a whole rainbow of possibilities (and quirks). Observing how a single choice can so dramatically affect our lifestyle habits is quite the fascination for me. What will morph from toy to new learning, and maybe to obsession? What value is at play, and thus, can be better revealed?

Did you ever think of apps that way, that they can awaken those assorted, still untested bits of your sleeping spirit?

One personal example for me is the app Fooducate: I now scan every barcode on a new purchase before I decide to buy packaged foods. The value at play for me is surely Mālama, and taking care of my own health with each food choice, something vitally important to me. No one wants to die of course, and neither do I, but I am someone who wants the direct route when my time arrives: I’ll eagerly bypass any physical care-getting in my waning years which just prolongs the inevitable.

A New Year brings so many new choices! Does it bring you focus? Intention?

So far, the apps rule with my iPhone, and I’m finding that the iPad is fantastic for reading web-based publishing (I’m sticking with book reading on my Kindle), and I yearn for some of the bloggers who have called it quits and have moved on. However there are so many new writers to be discovered, and where I use the iPad most is within my Google Reader.

Thus my ‘blissful weekend.’ Despite the never-ceasing yay-nay debates on setting resolutions, I absolutely love reading those blog entries where writers of all persuasion reflect on their old year, and then pen their Ho‘ohana (best work) and ‘Imi ola (best life) intentions for the coming year. They inspire the Aloha yearnings in me too: I can’t help but do the same thing — think about what I valued most in the past year, and what I intend to value most in the year to come.

Are you doing something similar, and reflecting too? I hope so.

Rally your gratitude and let Mahalo fortify you too.

Nānā i ke kumu, and look to your source. Grab your quiet time, then refresh and rejuvenate.

Be deliberate, and make your choices as you know are best for you and your life.

Ho‘omau: Persist and persevere — be downright stubborn about making your life the best it can possibly be.

That possibility is your birthright as a human being. Quite wonderful.

My value for 2012 will be ‘Imi ola

I am still reading, still journaling as I do, and still sorting out my listing of intentions, editing them for best focus. This is a process I relish as the yearly gift it is, and I am taking my dear sweet time, savoring it.

What I have already decided, and can share with you on this early day in a shiny new year that is Ka lā hiki ola (the dawning of a new day, and the value of hope and promise) is this, an eagerness for me: My value-driver that will crown any and all lists I may make will be ‘Imi ola, “best possible life” in Managing with Aloha, the value that drives proactive mission, clear vision, and creative change.

What I know to be sure, is that 2012 is a year I want change — big change, and best-life change — and I’ll engineer it so it does happen.

I don’t want to imply any dissatisfaction with 2011, for I had a magnificent year, one that pleased me immensely. It served as a tasty bite of the bigger change that is possible for me, and so in 2012 I’m stepping it up and going for more with gusto!

I’ll share my progress with you as time goes by and things shift and take better shape, but for now, let’s focus on you.

What do you know to be sure? Hō‘imi ola.

Is there anything you know to be sure for you at the moment you read this? Seize that thought, and ask yourself what value is driving you being so sure. (Remember that the Managing with Aloha values are listed on the blog sidebar if you want to skim over them as reminders or triggers.)

Some gentle coaching: Only do this with your positive thoughts. Replace any negativity with ‘on the bright side’ thinking, and steer every shred of your being toward optimism: Hō‘imi ola. (Use the 3 Secrets of Being Positive.)

Please know I do wish you blessings this year, and that they’ll magically rain down upon you with a delightful wonder. However the person who manages their life with Aloha knows those wishes are an added bonus, don’t you. You know that you can make life happen in the way you want it to, and that your values will always help you, guiding you toward your own Aloha vitality.

I am so happy to know we have found each other to share that slice of sureness. Thank you for reading, and giving me part of this, your own day for Ka lā hiki ola.

We ho‘ohana kākou. Much aloha to you,
Rosa

From last year: Ignore the Resolution Bashers
Also in the archives: Be Proactive; Values by Choice as Your Habit

As shared on Work is not a job:


“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” – T.S. Eliot

Does Social Media Qualify as a Deliberate Input?

September 17, 2011 by Rosa Say

Yes and no. You, as the user of social media, have to make it high quality, so it becomes a ‘yes.’ If not, as a social media ‘reader’ you are being influenced however a particular platform organically happens, and you’re leaving its inherent ‘wisdom of the crowd’ to chance.

(If you don’t use or care about social media, feel free to skip the rest of this post.)

If you are a social media user, you may have noticed that it was missing from my list of Deliberate Inputs shared two days ago. That too, was deliberate on my part, for I’m currently re-thinking my own time given to using social media, and I’m in the process of tweaking the accounts I do use. One by one, I’m slowly questioning and reviewing all of them, starting with the ones you see linked for you up in my Talking Story header (LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter). It’s turning out to be a longer process than I’d anticipated, however it’s good to discard auto-pilot regularly, question your habits, and think these things through.

You remember that bit about habits don’t you? (The Riddle.) You are your habits, so make them good!

At the bare minimum, ‘tweaking usage’ in social media means two things to me: How I listen at a platform, and how I speak up (updates).

You may recall this starting for me back in July, when I removed the Managing with Aloha group from LinkedIn, and took a digital holiday (I’ve actually been taking several of those holidays!) As of this writing, LinkedIn is simply an online business card I’m keeping current for others who might look for me there, and nothing else; I’m not actively using it in any meaningful way. I do continue to update Tumblr, Twitter, and Flickr.

Blackberries

And then there’s social media’s newest darling, Google+: A good amount of cheering can be heard from its growing legion of fans. VC Fred Wilson for one, has written “Why I’m Rooting For Google+”. The whole Circles thing is intriguing to me as opposed to ‘friending’ (more on that momentarily), and to those of you who have sent me invites, mahalo — please know they are on hold for me, for I don’t want to jump into a new ballgame until I’ve done the sorting out of my old ones as I’m about to explain. While I’m on the subject of account choices, I still don’t use Facebook, and I’m not planning to.

Social Media requires deliberate intention

First of all, we users have to understand that free social media platforms aren’t actually free: We may not pay for them with currency, but we do pay with our clicks and updates. Here’s a short post by Marco Arment commenting on Twitter, where he explains that users shape developer ad targets: We aren’t a platform’s customer. We’re their research team.

Adding ‘apps’ to the mix, is another way we might use a platform with someone else’s influence added onto it as another layer” However, as Patrick Rhone asks here: Isn’t the web enough? In my own usage I’ve discarded the apps I’d tried out before (an example would be Hootsuite for Twitter), and gone back to a web-only/platform-pure practice, using my smartphone apps only when I travel (or for other reasons that aren’t connected to social media: Killer Apps).

The arguments can be made: “But I like the social conversations, and the online stretch across geographic boundaries.” And, “Isn’t the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ timely, and thus something I should pay attention to?” Social for social sake is very valid: I wonder about those things too, not wanting to levy my judgments too quickly, particularly in regard to crowd-sourcing (for as you know, I prefer face-to-face or voice-to-voice conversations, and talking story here on the blog). Twitter in particular, handily beats most news media in alerting me of events as they happen. And I readily admit there’s an element of pure play with social media, which is certainly not a bad thing. Stowe Boyd once said, “Twitter is about hope and love, although the casual observer might miss that completely.”

So, let’s get that hope and love, and the deliberate optimism of positive expectancy. We, as users, can tweak our usage enough to make it truly useful and relevant to our more fervent interests: We can program social media to be deliberate versus distracting (or distressing). There is no doubt that social media can be incendiary: So what kind of fire does it start for you, and are you okay with the burn of that fire?

For instance, one way I believe social media ‘programming’ to be broken, and horribly so, is with ‘friending’ and ‘following.’ In my opinion, both words have been tarnished within the framing of social media, for they’ve become quite the numbers game, and are more about marketing, broadcasting, and a dysfunctional attempt at branding visibility (i.e. manufacturing popularity perceptions.) So within my current tweaking, I’ve largely discarded the ‘friending’ association of following in favor of better curation instead, so my social media streaming will influence me in the best possible way when I am reading those streams, and listening in. As Maria Popova (aka the brain picker) explains:

Twitter is quickly evolving into a superb way to discover fascinating content you normally wouldn’t have, by following interesting people who tweet with great editorial curation. The key, of course, is exercising your own curatory judgment in identifying said interesting people.

I feel the same way about Tumblr (listening), and continue to love using Ho‘ohana Aloha for my finds (speaking up) when Twitter’s 140 characters just won’t do.

So to wrap this up, if you think of yourself as one of my friends — in what the word is supposed to actually mean — and I’m not following you, please don’t be offended, for I’m no longer associating my friendships with social media, but with interesting curation, following (and un-following) in a way which may seem random to you: Don’t read anything into it, for even I can’t adequately explain the roads I travel when my value of ‘Ike loa kicks into high gear! I just slip-slide into that slick rabbit hole of joyful learning and enjoy the journey.

Play is Serious Business

I’m trying to speak up in a more interesting way of ‘editorial curation’ for others too, and tweet or tumble what I think will be interesting to anyone following me. If you follow me, and I haven’t followed back, it’s because I just can’t keep up with the numbers game on social media, nor do I want to. You’ll have to get my attention in another way (and that usually happens with great conversation.) I demand the same from myself, and do not expect followership from you simply as reciprocity, for at its best, following is not a passive activity, is it. I love playing around with numerology and measurement, but social media is not a factor in that study, not for me.

Any more thoughts on this?
Let’s talk story… I was thinking the weekend was the best time, if any.

We talked about learning curation last summer too, quite the delicious concept… I wonder what it is about these 3rd quarter months that triggers it.

And as a postscript… might there be such a thing as an unlearning curation? This gem was on my Tumblr dashboard this morning (hattip Tanmay Vora):

“Creating a ‘learning organization’ is only half the solution. Just as important is creating an ‘unlearning organization’. To create the future, a company must unlearn at least some of its past. We’re all familiar with ‘learning curve’, but what about the ‘forgetting curve’ ”“ the rate at which a company can unlearn those habits that hinder future success?”
~ Dr. C. K. Prahalad

Good Morning Austin
Good Morning Austin by Thomas Hawk, on Flickr

Deliberate Inputs

September 15, 2011 by Rosa Say

Somewhat connected to my last posting, [ Must I work this bit alone? ] and to noticing, I’ve been tweaking the old brainwaves lately with more reading, for reading is a big part of what I think of as my “deliberate inputs.”

We need to feed our intellect with deliberate inputs similar to the way we eat to feed our bodies; we choose healthy foods that are nutritious, and foods that fortify us and fill us with energy.

These days, the old brain is hungry, craving some hopeful, positive ideas and solutions.

Good food starts with good ingredients:

Batter Mix To Go

Perhaps more today than ever before, my deliberate inputs are often chosen for their optimism, for negativity pulls me down into a gloom I prefer to stay far, far away from. Now this doesn’t mean I choose to dwell in a Pollyanna world, for I can read about bad news too. It’s the aftermath of the hearing or reading, and the follow-up in my own attitude which matters. We can learn from everything, whether the good, the bad, or the ugly — we have to choose our aftermath, and use our positive brainpower to shape it.

How you go forward will define your future, and the person you’ll be in that future.

For instance, within my deliberate inputs these days (for they constantly evolve) are:

  • The Daily Five Minutes and other conversations (always ‘MWA job one’ with me)
  • Reading more essays by ‘thought leaders’ (I’ve been culling my RSS feeds). I’m a big fan of blogs: People who blog write to think, and they set a great example in the sharing of virtual conversation
  • Book reading. I’m a way bigger fan of books — the good ones are hard to write; they package a lot of substantial thought process, and they pull in more research
  • Writing for its physical triggering connection (writing as a way of thinking things through)
  • Gratitude journaling for Mahalo-living, and to keep up my positive expectancies
  • ‘Imi ola Change Choosing — always important for me: Focus (in goal-setting) is another word for Intention
  • Weekly Reviews so I’m balanced between what I study, and what I actually do accomplish
  • Television only via DVR’d selections. News read online or in Sunday paper editions
  • I look for biographies and documentaries: They are ‘Ike loa’s ‘learning from people’ and from their experience

As electioneering ramps up here in America, I get very concerned about what Bill Davidow has called “Life in the Age of Extremes.” There is much ‘other possibility’ within the extreme polarity of being Republican or Democrat in ideology. We must all be working on our own Deliberate Inputs to interject more hope into life.

Being hopeful, can be a direct result of Ha‘aha‘a, the value of humility, and the way we’ve spoken of ‘finding decisions’ here at Talking Story: Can you see with your ears? How open-minded are you, and how willing are you to weigh the opinions of others? Much of it is about proactive listening, so you can choose to live with a greater confidence — it’s a confidence that you’ve uncovered and discovered the best answer, because you’ve gone looking for it. It’s cultivating an optimistic attitude which will align with your values, keeping positive expectancy in your life.

So much of this starts with being very choosy and deliberate about your own inputs.

I strongly encourage you to sit with this as a writing exercise of your own. I gave you a current listing of what I think of as my Deliberate Inputs: What are yours?

Listen well to be well, and start with good, healthy ingredients.
Rosa

Postscript: On the reading front, if you’d like to come with me, and follow the rabbit trails of my finds, remember to check in with Ho‘ohana Aloha, my Tumblr — that’s where I tend to clip them.

Bonus Links: Read what Dan Oestreich has to say On Finding Confidence. He also wrote about polarity recently, in Contribution to Society.

Writing Elsewhere; Sunday Review 9 and Learning Links

June 10, 2007 by Rosa Say

Here’s your sporadically-published current issue of the Talking Story Sunday Blog-Paper:

20070509newspaper_2

Our headliners! Cliff and Kathie Dias:

I am so proud of Cliff and Kathie of our Ho‘ohana Community! This was shared by the Hilo Tribune Herald: Alum gives $1M to St. Joe.

Cliff mentions his value-based education in the article, and their generosity truly speaks to their values of kuleana (responsibility) and alaka‘i (leadership).

From yours truly, writing in other places lately:

These two, written for the Managing with Aloha movement, offer suggestions on our Ho’ohana for June; KÅ«lia! Break thrÅ«!

  • Writing is a Skill the Successful Master
  • 5 Requirements in Learning to Lead

Over on Joyful Jubilant Learning, we are still going strong with our Learn to Lead with Your Strengths project; could that possibly be something you choose to break through with this month? Both of these posts also offer a free eBook generously done for us by David Zinger on the Trombone Player Wanted film series.

  • JJL LP2 Post14: Step 6— Build Strong Habits
  • Learning Project #2: Have we Learned to LEAD?

In the Ho‘ohana Community Section of today’s blog-paper:

GoldenmicWe have kicked off a brand new interview series at JJL called Jubilant Learners. Check out both the intro featuring Benjamin Bach, and the first interview with Phil Gerbyshak:

  • Brand New Series! Jubilant Learners Speak Up!
  • Why it’s Great to be a Geek, and other Joys of Learning

Be sure to cruise the Recent Posts listing of JJL, for we’ve had terrific articles there lately, contributed by HC authors EM Sky, Greg Balanko-Dickson, and David Zinger. June is off to a great start.

Right here at home, I have completed a loooong-overdue update to our Ho‘ohana Community page. We are up to 105 web-links, filling nine full pages if you were to print it. If you are ever online and wondering where you should click next, our Ho‘ohana Community offers you some bountiful aloha company, so bookmark this if you haven’t already done so.

  • Who is the Ho‘ohana Community?

This is also not the time to be shy: If I have missed including your link here (you talk story with us here, on Managing with Aloha or JJL, and have a web presence), speak up and let me know! No blog of your own and want to test the waters? This is written on our community page too:

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