Motivational Team Talk
I was recently invited to do a motivational talk for a management team. In a time of low morale, I was thankful that they allowed me 20 minutes into their meeting time to bring some encouragement on gratitude, peace, and hope. And to be honest, this group was super engaged and had the biggest smiles on their faces on my screen!
I hope to do more of these, but for now, I simply listed my notes for the WebEx meeting below to give you an idea of what it was like, and for those friends to be able to refer back to as notes.
Even though it was just 20 minutes together, the truth #behindthebusiness is this took 2 hours of prep, 1 hour of tech/practice prior, and another hour by my team to logistically figure out how to get them all some chocolates! :) Grateful for this opportunity and the work that YOU all do!
Finding Peace With A Perspective Of Gratitude
Welcome in chat!
Hi and thank you for having me!
“Finding Peace With A Perspective Of Gratitude”
You can find more about the business, book, and my blog:
Instagram: @chocoleahawaii
www.chocolea.com www.chocolea.com/s/stories
www.erinkannouehara.com
Opening
Thank you ___ for having me and welcome!
In our short time together, I’ll share a quick version of my story to encourage you on how gratitude changed my perspective and gave me the motivation, hope, and peace that I continue to have despite all of the changes and challenges I’m going through. We are all going through something and have a story to tell. I’m not an expert, but I believe what I can share can really help you.
We will end with a few really practical simple steps you can start applying in life now too.
To start, I am grateful you have someone on your team cares enough to reach out to me to see if I can come and spend a few minutes with you. When you figure something out that has truly helped you, you really want to share it with someone else so it can help them too.
So today will be great! Thank you for your openness and attention as I give you my authentic story and heart.
Intro
I’m Erin Kanno Uehara. For content here’s a little about myself. I’m a local girl, born and raised in Hawai`i, with a big dream to...NOT own a chocolate business! It was never my plan to open a chocolate shop. My dream was and is to help make this world a better place by connecting with people and investing in relationships. It just so happens that through my work and chocolates since 2014, I have been very grateful for the opportunity to live out a mission of “Bringing peace to our world, one chocolate and now, one story, at a time.” I am the owner of a chocolate company, called Choco le`a, and now an author, blogger, motivational speaker, active volunteer in my community, a happy wife, a mother to a 6 year old daughter and 4 year old son, and today, simply your friend.
Pandemic Story
My business and family was growing for 7 years really fast and we were doing really well. The pandemic shut down everything for us and we lost 70% of the business, then the retail shut down made it 100%. The bills kept coming in, I lost my team, I lost my personal income, I lost part of my identity in work, I was struggling with my world as a full time mom of littles + distance learning, and truthfully at times I wanted to just give up.
I was willing to give it one last hooray of gratitude for the years of Choco le`a and live out our mission one last time, but I didn’t know how to do that without chocolates.
I gave away all we had left to first responders and that helped me feel grateful for them because despite what I was going through, I was safe at home with my family.
But with no chocolates, no customers, just now an email list of “chocolate friends”, 12K followers on social media, my heart and my journal.
Have you ever felt like you had nothing to offer, but still wanted to give something to others?
March 2020
I started emailing customers turned chocolate friends. My diary became weekly email campaigns to a blog page to eventually my book, “Bringing Peace To Our World, One Chocolate Story At A Time.”
Wrote 20 real and raw reflections and took photos from my phone to recap each week the:
Lesson Learned
Opportunity Now
Hope For Our Future
Not sure how all of you felt, but I felt waves of emotions from week to week. Maybe you even feel like that now.
In my book chapter #1 it reads, “Loss.”
As I wrote every week, people wrote back how grateful they were that I was so authentic and they didn’t feel so alone. They felt normal that they were experiencing all of this too and were encouraged.
But after 20 weeks, the pandemic continued.
So I began to write 20 routines to help me/us live our best life in the pandemic
Eg: Written November 9th, week #35 and routine #15 is “Give.” Lesson learned was we all had something to give. The opportunity was to give and in doing so, serving others was actually the hope for the future as is it helps you to feel more grateful.
So, I kept giving my time and resources to this book.
This was truly a lot of hard work. I wrote for 40 consecutive weeks + two crazy months figuring out editing, publishing, formatting, designing, printing, etc. until I was at 500+ pages and over one pound for a book. AND the financial investment for this book was greater than starting my business!
This does not mean you have to start a business or write a book. I think people, including myself, think too big and we get too overwhelmed. You can do a lot of great work right where you are with whatever you have to offer.
Business Now
In the pandemic, my attitude wasn’t always of gratitude and I asked God if I could quit. That’s sometimes what we think the answer is. But for some reason, He wanted me to stay where I was and work at it again and really work on myself.
Choco le`a has been growing again and this time a little slower, but with a firmer foundation, and a great hard-working team! We are in our original small space, are focused more on investing in deeper meaningful relationships rather than trying to do everything. We’re a hybrid part online and part an open shop and doing something new - book tour talks like this in the community.
It’s been an honor and privilege to be in business and I am grateful for it now more than ever after having gone through what I did and seeing how I could of lost everything and lost truthfully a lot and was still able to rise back up and to even a richer and more meaningful work world. We all can!
Now we do more than chocolates like talks like this to help encourage everyone wherever they are, with whatever they have, to do what they can to “Bring peace to our world.”
Application
How do you feel you can “Bring peace to our world,” when perhaps you are looking for peace within your own life?”
It starts with you.
Lesson Learned:
It starts with gratitude. It will help give you the right attitude and perspective.
Eg: Couldn’t travel. Grateful that I got to explore Hawaii and this expensive, but beautiful place we live and pay for every day. Discovered new local businesses, food, beaches…
Eg: Gyms, classes, and events shut down. Grateful I got outside daily for walks or hikes, reconnected with nature and for FREE, and got to know my neighbors.
Eg: Work is busy. Work was always and should be busy or there would be no work. Grateful for work and grateful for a paycheck.
Eg: Not enough people to do all of the work. Grateful for the people who show up next to me to do the work.
Eg: Other people irritate me. I am irritating and grateful others give me grace too.
Eg: My kids are always around. Grateful I am alive and have the chance to have them around.
Opportunity Now:
If you have a hard time being grateful, then the action to help you start is to give.
Give things away to people with less. Give time to people in your life who matter most. Give your talent to your work, your coworkers, customers, and the community.
Read the book
Mornings - Morning routine mindset to start with a grateful heart.
Values - Visualize or post-it note to help remind and attract more of what I am thankful and hopeful for.
Celebrate - Acknowledge even the small stuff
Learn - Keep growing from the hard times and be grateful for the lessons.
Give - Giving your treasure, time, and talent.
Morning Routine - Five bullet point gratitude journal
Eg: Specific small things.
Prep 5 bullets to set the perspective to look for things to be grateful for.
I invite you to join me at 5am!
Hope For Our Future:
There’s still hope. You still have a purpose. You are still needed. You are loved. And you can create a better future not only for yourself, but those around you, if you decide to find peace by changing your perspective to one of gratitude.
Closing
Thank you.
Happy to answer any questions.
I am grateful for you for sharing 20 minutes of your life with me.
It all starts with you. So thank you to all of you for bringing peace to your world, so together we can “Bring peace to our world, one chocolate, one grateful perspective at a time.”
