How to Stay True to Your Ideas (Even When No One Gets Them) | with Keola Rapozo
The Story
Originality isn’t born from genius — it’s born from refusing to shrink your ideas to fit someone else’s comfort.
Keola Rapozo grew up on Okana Road in Kahaluʻu, backed by forest, a pillbox, and the kind of freedom only country kids know. Hunting, diving, bikes, and the mountains were his daily classroom.
Inside the house, something else was shaping him. His mom and stepdad ran a small craft business called Manaolana, handmaking Hawaiian cultural pieces to sell at fairs across the islands.
He laughs:
“My sister and I were pretty much child labor!”
He didn’t appreciate it then. But those long days sanding milo and cleaning kamani nuts planted early lessons in discipline, detail, and design.
As he got older, music cracked something open. Reggae. Hip hop. Underground backpack rap.
He would tell his friends:
“This is the illest music I’ve ever been exposed to.”
That curiosity showed up in his clothes too. While friends followed the local-boy template, Keola wore polos, bold colors, and rare sneakers. “You getting a little crazy,” they’d tease. But he kept leaning into what inspired him.
Through all of this, he was a full-time student at Honolulu Community College and a part-time worker at the Kaneʻohe Chevron. Two to ten p.m. shifts. And from eight to ten, when the station got quiet, he turned the counter into his studio. Pattern paper, rulers, measurements. Real work toward an invisible future.
The boys would clown him.
“Bro, what are you doing? Making patterns?”
But he kept going because something in him knew he needed to.
Years later, those same friends would tell him:
“Brah, I remember you making freaking patterns when we was clowning on you — and look at you now.”
His confidence didn’t come from being understood.
It came from choosing his path again and again.
And then came the moment that changed everything. Outside an art show, his friend René told him: “I’m not going to do it unless it’s with you.”
That was the night FITTED Hawai‘i was born.
The insight
Psychologists Michael Kernis and Brian Goldman spent over a decade studying what they call optimal self-esteem: a form of confidence built not from achievements, but from authenticity. Their research found that people who act in alignment with who they truly are, even when it’s risky or misunderstood, experience:
Higher confidence
Lower anxiety
Greater long-term satisfaction
Authenticity, they found, requires four things:
Awareness of your values,
Acceptance of your strengths and flaws,
Action that aligns with your truth,
and Honesty in how you show up with others.
Keola lived this intuitively.
Long before FITTED Hawai‘i, he made creative choices that didn’t match what local kids “were supposed to wear.” He designed, experimented, and expressed himself even when people clowned him for it. He kept going — not because it was cool then, but because it was true to him.
Psychologists call this the Courage Loop:
Every time you choose authenticity over approval, your confidence grows. Over time, that confidence reinforces more courage — and courage becomes your comfort zone.
Keola didn’t wait for permission.
He didn’t wait for validation.
He didn’t wait for others to understand his taste, his timing, or his vision.
He stayed aligned with who he was — and that alignment became the engine behind FITTED’s identity, community, and longevity.
the application
We all know what it feels like to dim parts of ourselves to fit in: to dress a little safer, dream a little smaller, or hold back ideas that feel “too different.” And it’s easy to assume that confidence comes first, and courage follows after.
Keola’s story shows the opposite.
He didn’t wait to feel confident before expressing his style, his ideas, or his creativity. He acted first, and the confidence came from those actions. That’s how authenticity works: every time you choose your true self over approval, you build a little more courage for the next moment.
Authenticity isn’t a personality trait.
It’s a practice.
And like Keola, when you practice it consistently, especially when it’s uncomfortable, courage becomes your comfort zone.
What We Can Steal
Choose authenticity over approval.
Each honest decision strengthens your courage for the next one.Lead with who you are.
Your identity is an advantage, not something to hide or water down.Act before you feel ready.
Confidence grows from showing up, not waiting for validation.Stand firm when others don’t understand.
Being early often looks wrong until it looks visionary.Choose evolution over approval.
When you outgrow the template, you make room for your true voice.
Mahalo for reading this week’s Mana‘o Bomb.
Next week, we’ll drop another idea from Hawai‘i. A story that sparks growth, resilience, and purpose.
Keep rising. Keep learning.