Back in 2006, Joyful Jubilant Learning was born as one of those things which simply seemed meant to be. I didn’t have a grand plan with JJL as the culmination of my strategy; it just happened in a fabulous way, and I was smart enough to listen to those who were in our very persuasive Ho‘ohana Community at the time. Bless you; you still are very persuasive in my life. (Those semicolons are for Brad.)
Holiday Bookends
The October 1 date of our JJL birthday spoke to me with a very strong and compelling voice, adding a must-be-meant-to-be agreement to my decision with starting this blog (this was my first post here: Eleven Things). October 1 is my Beginning Bookend, and sharing it with JJL was a very pleasing prospect.
Ever since I became a mom (my eldest is 25), I have had this heightened awareness of the fall and winter holidays of our calendar year, instinctively knowing I would have to cope with them better, designing them better for my children and my employees. The visual design in my mind’s eye were bookends.
October 1 has been my beginning bookend for the season which would include business planning for the following year, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. My ending bookend has been whatever Sunday marks the middle point of January. I will Begin with the End in Mind (Stephen R. Covey’s Effective Habit influence) and this visualization: That Sunday’s Ending Bookend is my day of rest and celebration, propping up my feet and patting myself on the back for another Ho‘ohana Story Year well done. (A glass of robust red wine completes the picture.)
The alternative was awful —and hardly graceful: Holiday stress, and going through the motions with what should add considerable joy to your life. Yes, my Ho‘ohana Story Year is inspired by a “should-ing” I embrace. New mothers-slash-managers revere a demeanor of grace. So do older, more seasoned ones.
A Ho‘ohana Story Year
As a quick review, this is what the signature value of our Ho‘ohana Community (within which JJL plays a crucial leading role) is all about. This is our language of intention when we say, think, and feel Ho‘ohana:
Ho‘ohana: The Hawaiian value of intention applied to worthwhile work, with ‘work’ defined as whatever you wish to achieve. Work is a bigger word than ‘job,’ and includes it. When you decide on what your Ho‘ohana will be, whether for the coming months or as a new career path, your intention becomes purposeful, and it creates clear focus for your attentions. Passion becomes practical and achievable. Choosing Ho‘ohana as a personal value is a way to work on your self-leadership coaching.
From: October’s Ho‘ohana on Talking Story – Sweet Closure
Organizational culture-obsessive that I happen to be, it began to make perfect sense to me that when I combined my personal-and-professional mission driving of Ho‘ohana with my Holiday Bookends, what would result would be an ongoing saga of sorts. They would blend as a mini yearly story of my Ho‘ohana Year, packaged quite nicely with a third concept that I had begun to refer to as “sweet closure.”
Very appealing to me as a lifelong learner as well. Imagine the early chapters of the year before October! Now this could be graceful.
A Managing with Aloha theme: Sweet Closure
I love our JJL themes. LOVE them. They give me a combination of monthly focus and fun.
In 2009 I put the web-public version of my MWAC (Managing with Aloha Coaching) Value Your Month, Value Your Life program on hiatus to concentrate on other projects. JJL became even more mission-critical to me as a result of that decision. The learning this blog represents, and all of you as my chosen and dearly loved community are important to me, and you have been vital in my Ho‘ohana Story Year.
Shall we take a quick trip down our 2009 Jubilation Way? These titles alone will serve as instant associations for some of you (See all the teaser-excerpts on the Day One category page): What did you learn within each of these months?
JJL January 2009: Learning Joyful Eating
February: Love is All You Need
March: A Love Affair with Books 2009
Aloha ‘Apelila (Spring in April)
May: Learning from our Habits
June 2009 and the Learner’s Progress
July 2009: Communicating As Learners Do
A JJLer’s August: Summer Learning
September: Learning the Joy of 9
October Learning: “Anyone can light a candle”
So you might be wondering, what happens within the bookends? Especially if you did read through this list slowly, mentally answering that “what did you learn?” question in your RFL-groomed recall.
In two words, Sweet Closure is what my October will be all about. My Ho‘ohana Story Year for 2009 needs a really good, fairy tales do come true kind of ending. Writing this trio of posts to begin October (Day 1 for JJL, Day 1 for Talking Story, and this one) has been a big part of setting my Ho‘ohana intentions in motion.
If you would like to learn more, and join me with new bookends of your own, I invite you this month to consider my “Sweet Closure” theme on Talking Story in conjunction with the one we have here where “Anyone can light a candle” to the celebration. I feel they go together exceptionally well. You need not follow my posts there all month long, but you will want to read the one I posted yesterday: October’s Ho‘ohana: Sweet Closure.
We can be graceful together!
Does this concept of a Ho‘ohana Story Year appeal to you?
What other elements of STORY weave into “annual learning” as framed by our October theme?
In the three months we have left in 2009, how would you write your fairy tale ending?
Photo Credit: When I looked for a photo for this posting, this one, called “Wonderment” seemed to be a good representation of grace to me. This is Photo Art by Patrick McDonald, on an original photo by Jason Nelson.
Rosa Say
About the author:
Rosa Say is a manager, writer and workplace culture coach who looks for as much Sweet Closure in her Ho‘ohana Story Year as she can possibly engineer. Rosa is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business, and she is the managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning.
Talking Story is the blog where Joyful Jubilant Learning was conceived as a Ho‘ohana Community learning forum in September of 2005, and it is still considered to be the mothership.
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Rosa, being mindful of where we are can be a challenge with so much media and data points swirling about us. Taking stock of where we have been before we go forward is the mark of a skillful and together person. You continue to be an inspiration!
The listing of all the JJL topics this year, was it only this year? So much indeed has gone by already and the fourth quarter is now upon us. Thanks for the reminder! I need to check my bookends.
Rosa,
I have admired your ability to frame the year so well, every year I’ve known you. So this year, I’m hoping to tag along and frame the end of year and holiday season with deliberate intention – totally ‘on purpose’. These words of yours sang to me:
A demeanor of grace is definitely what this older, very seasoned Mum reveres and seeks! Thanks for the inspiration you continue to always be to me…
You know Steve, I think one of the wonders of the internet is that it can still feel so intimate in places though it is so vast in scope and reach. And then, within a single place – such as JJL – it can start to get big again, too big to keep our arms around. I think our monthly themes serve to give us these chapters or navigational mile-markers which are very comforting.
You are very welcome Káren, and my goodness, if there is anyone who teaches me more and more about having a demeanor of grace it is you! So perhaps it is one of those things which appears more effortless the more we actually work on it?
Oh Rosa, thank you! I think that is one of the most powerful, and nicest things anyone has ever said to me. Grace means so very much to me, and yes, maybe it is because it’s so important and something I focus on, that it appears more effortless. Or maybe it’s just that I’m a lot like a duck – on the surface I’m floating serenely around, but underneath the water, my feet are paddling madly :)
There is definitely something in your post here that’s been calling to me ever since I read it yesterday. I have a feeling I’m going to have to write once it’s finished percolating…
Oh Káren I can so relate to that being like a duck! Must share this picture with you if you have not yet seen it: http://talkingstory.org/2009/09/aspire-to-be-appreciated/
It was one of those surprises when you load it from digital camera to computer, that we could see his feet under the water.
I absolutely love the thought of you “percolating” after reading my post: Mahalo nui loa ~ thank you so much for the compliment :-)