It’s Day 1 for June. Let’s follow up, by exploring the ALOHA connection to a good selfishness.
On May 2nd I wrote,
“I’ll be thinking of you come the 1st of next month. I know you can achieve this quicker than I did. Just set the goal, believing that your life is worth it, and it won’t elude you anymore.”
— The Victory of Continuous Celebration
The victory I’d talked about, was replacing my weekly reviews with monthly ones instead. It almost sounds trivial, unless you’ve been in my league of weekly review crazies at some time or another, and haven’t we all? It was a goal that had become quite important to me, because I knew that my working life would have to get significantly more manageable if I ever was going to achieve the monthly shift for benefit of the rest of my life.
I had to pare down, and I did.
When you pare down, you de-clutter, and you strip away your non-essentials. You willingly submit to the rub of the Brutal Questions:
“What should you be doing, and what should someone else be doing, and what shouldn’t anyone have to do at all?”
— The Victory of Continuous Celebration
The added benefit? A much clearer focus on what will remain your essentials.
This is where something I call A Good Selfishness comes in.
Selfishness is one of those words with a bad rep, and rightfully so if you think of it as most dictionaries propose: “A state of (noun) lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure (adjective).”
It sounds like a complete absence of MĀLAMA, doesn’t it. Unless you qualify it with ALOHA, as Alaka‘i Managers do.
We qualify everything with ALOHA, and we know that ALOHA is the value of unconditional love and acceptance of self and of others, both.
You get to a point where you have to reckon with that part about self, and attach it to something better than the dictionaries propose. The best thing you can do, is attach it to your good intentions.
Attach self to NĀNĀ I KE KUMU, the value of personal well being. As NĀNĀ I KE KUMU reminds us, look to your source, and get grounded there.
NĀNĀ I KE KUMU: This is the value of personal well being.
Literally translated, Nānā i ke kumu means “look to your source.” Seek authenticity, and be true to who you are. Get grounded within your sense of self. Keep your Aloha at the surface of what you do daily, and celebrate those things that define your personal truths. To value Nānā i ke kumu is to practice Mahalo for your sense of self: Do you really know how extraordinary and naturally wise you are? Find out. Become more self-aware. It’s the best discovery you’ll ever make, and it opens a tap to increasing personal wealth (beyond mere finances, wealth is a value too!)
In the Hawaiian culture, Sense of Place (MWA Key Concept 8) factors very deeply into this value, sense of place being defined as both the feel of a place, and the feel for a place.
Self is the feel of, and for, your personal sense of place, as sense of belonging and worth in our world.
It helps a great deal to hyphenate self with your goals or target nouns. I do it quite a bit within these pages, using words like self-assurance, self-coaching, self-management, self-leadership, and self-efficacy. Those are the words of A Good Selfishness, as is the biggie most in the self-development field will speak of, self-actualization:
From Wikipedia: Self-actualization is a term that has been used in various psychology theories, often in slightly different ways. The term was originally introduced by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one’s full potential. In his view, it is the organism’s master motive, the only real motive… Carl Rogers similarly wrote of “the curative force in psychotherapy – man’s tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities…to express and activate all the capacities of the organism.” However, the concept was brought most fully to prominence in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory as the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are fulfilled and the “actualization” of the full personal potential takes place.
Kēia lā. Let’s bring this back to today, and our in-this-moment opportunity.
Day 1 of every month can be about you if you open yourself up to the possibility. As far as Living with ALOHA is concerned, YOU are Job 1.
This is an awareness we have always had in our Managing with Aloha Value of the Month program, where Day 1 of each month is given to investing in our value immersion, a new value each month, something which only works the way it does (magnificently!) because it’s essentially an individual effort first, and a workplace effort second, though workplace culture will enrich its context significantly. Individual efforts in personal value-mapping is a best practice in strengths management (our Key Concept 7) and in skills mastery.
Day 1 for Job 1— SELF— will be when you decide it will be, and I hope you make that decision.
Have this be another way you Banish Your Possibility Robbers.
Call it self-actualization if you prefer, or A Good Selfishness as I do to include everything NĀNĀ I KE KUMU, for what I know to be sure, is that self can be a win-win, and ALOHA virtually guarantees it. Alaka‘i Managers who invest in a good selfishness are courageous. They are willing to explore all of themselves so they can be better, and be of best service to those in their care.
From Managing with Aloha (Chapter 17 preamble):
Nānā i ke kumu. Look to your source. Find your truth.
There is an inner wellspring inside all of us, and we will go to this inner well to get healthy. We find reason. We find heart. We find soul.
Nānā i ke kumu are words of encouragement, telling us to look inward to this source of well-being as our constant and our truth.
Nānā i ke kumu. Look to the source you have revealed, and let it inspire you. Let it energize you. You will not hesitate, and you will not falter.
You will Ho‘omau with renewed strength. You will be warmed by the Aloha of your own spirit. You will continue.
Postscript:
If you are new here, please be sure to read this posting on ALOHA for best context: What is the Aloha Spirit? It’s you! This one will be a good follow-up: Start with two words: “with Aloha”
Update: This article generated more conversation for us!
[…] is the investment in self we have recently spoken of: The more their mastery of self, the more they will hold their own when they compete, and when they […]