Holiday Zing-ing, inspired by Kūlia i ka nu‘u

I was very cheered by this message, emailed in response to my last post (Just 5 Over the Holidays, 2013)

“Rosa, one of the most useful things I’ve learned from your Managing with Aloha blog over the past year, is from your coaching on ‘verbing’ and attaching that ‘ing’ to our words of intent so that our intention becomes our active work in progress. It’s attentive, but also forgiving, allowing yourself to still be in the process of doing something, and learning it better as you do it, and I’m one of those people who must learn to be more present in the here and now, so ‘ing’ing everything helps me!

You mentioned using categories in the post, and while I’m still wrestling with my batch, I wanted to share my categories with you: I’m using your 5 favorites of living, working, managing, leading, and speaking — all with Aloha.”
— Robert

Mahalo nui for your sharing Robert, I am so pleased to know our MWA verbing has worked for you! And you are right — those 5 ing verbs are indeed my favorites.

You have also given me a pleasant morning of looking back at how they became so pervasive, and so wonderfully reliable for me and my workplace teams.

Reward of the Striving

Those 5 ‘ing’ing faves started with 4, and with one value in particular: Kūlia i ka nu‘u.

Kūlia i ka nu‘u is the value of accomplishment and achievement. The literal translation for Kūlia i ka nu‘u is “strive to reach the summit.” Those who have this value continually pursue improvement and personal excellence. For them, the most satisfying competition is with their previous selves: They consider their life and everything within it to be a work in progress, and they enjoy the effort. ‘Hard work’ is good work when it employs the energies of striving and reaching higher.

We also talked about the visual nature of managers last post, and the best way for me to visualize Kūlia i ka nu‘u has always been with mountain climbing, scaling living, working, managing, and leading as four sequential summits which get progressively higher, but also build upon each other, like a series of climbs which start from the same mountain ridge, one we would call Basecamp Aloha.

We called them the 4 Peaks for short, and some of you may remember this simple drawing from the early days of my Managing with Aloha workshops:

The 4 Peaks have also proved to be a useful way Alaka‘i Managers can sort the 19 Values of Aloha in an applicable way; which in particular are the current drivers of Living with Aloha? Which have maximum impact in your current Working with Aloha? …and so on.

Speaking with Aloha came a little bit later, connected to Key 5 of our 9 Key Concepts, on Language of Intention. It was connected to something Robert mentioned: Presence, as Kū.

E kū iho i hō‘ike na‘u;
I stand as a witness of me.

In the alo of Aloha, we focus on our demeanor, and ‘the outside of us, projected and shared with the rest of the world, as what can be visibly seen by others when it is a reflection of our inside — our ha, our breath of life fueled by self’s spirit.’ We Kū in our presence, aspiring to stand tall.

Yet to stand in stillness, as good as that is, is not enough. We humans are communal creatures, thriving with others.

To speak with Aloha, is what we as human beings can so naturally and easily do.
To speak with Aloha is to communicate, and add connection to our presence.
To speak with Aloha is to share our spirit with others, in grace and in kindness.

To speak with Aloha is to actively engage in another favorite verbing for me: Conversing. Conversation brings so many other good verbs to the party: Listening, Smiling, Understanding, Empathizing, Laughing, Collaborating.

We are works in progress.

So thanks to Robert, I am diving into another edit of my own holiday batch.

I like what I came up with yesterday and have already begun my work with it, but I tend to be quite wordy in my journaling (surprise, surprise, huh :) and I’ve got to shorten some of my phrases to get to the heart of each. What better, than trimming them and activating them with verbing!

In the spirit of full-on sharing with you as my extended ‘Ohana, here is another email that made me smile this morning:

“By the way. When first reading this,  thought you wrote ‘holiday bitching’.  Had to read twice.”
— Joni

So thankful you know me better, and do take the time to read me twice!

Here is some Archive Aloha on VERBING: Next-stepping and other Verbs. You can also take the tag in the footer to find more.