Month: August 2009

calm, health, meditation, peace, stress, yoga

My Year of Hopefulness – Stop the World, I Want to Get Off

Christa Avampato
This week has been a roller coaster. My stress level was up and down every other hour, so much so that at one point I was physically dizzy. I was joking with my friend, Denise, who was having a similar week, that my theme song should be “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.” Then she reminded me that should be the theme song not just this week but every week.

To reduce stress and keep myself in check, I practice yoga, run, meditate, and breath. I back away from stress slowly, keeping my eye on its source so that it doesn’t sneak up on me again for a repeat performance. I think of it as a very hungry grizzly bear, something to be handled with extreme care and to diffuse by almost any means necessary.

I keep looking for ways to cut stress from my life, as if it’s some disease. The moment it rears its ugly head I want to banish it. This week I tried to appreciate stress’s occasional appearance in my life. It puts a fire under me to get something finished. In my effort to diffuse stress, I actually max out my productivity to get the job done. Stress often leads me to some of my most creative work. (I wish some scientist would do a study on stress’s effect on creativity.)

This isn’t to say that I crave stress, seek it out, or love opening up my front door to see it glaring down at me. It’s true that when it arrives, I hang my head a little low and quietly curse under my breathe “not again!” However, after a minute or two, I sit up straight, roll-up my sleeves and get to work. In the case of stress, there’s no way past it except through it. While the temptation is to step off the stress merry-go-round, there are a lot of learnings and value to be derived from its occasional visit. Our challenge is to manage through it so that it doesn’t set up camp and make itself at home in our everyday lives.

calm, commitment, yoga

My Year of Hopefulness – Problems and Answers

Christa Avampato

“If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it.” ~ J. Krishnamurti

So often we look at problems and answers as two separate entities, as if they have their own independent existence. I’ve been thinking about this recently with an education program I’m working on. I have specific problem I’d like to solve, and a specific need I’d like to meet. Reading this quote today I realized that I’ve approached the challenge backwards – I’ve been so focused on finding a solution that I haven’t spent enough time with the problem and all its layers and complexities.

Living with problems can be uncomfortable, so our desire to jump to a solution as quickly as possible is only natural. I’ve been practicing yoga for 9 years and one of the practice’s central tenants is learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I’ve found that the best way for me to achieve this is to focus on my breath rather than on the part of my body that might be uncomfortable in a pose. I apply this in other areas of my life as well – sitting in an uncomfortable meeting, standing in a hot, crowded subway, coping with a bad headache or other illness – I just keep focusing on my breath. It helps.

Another, less conventional practice that I am experimenting with is giving problems a physical structure. Meditation does not come easily to me. I like being active so sitting still and concentrating is some times a lot to ask of myself. I do notice that when I’m able to do it, it has great benefits. So I keep trying. Meditation is particularly helpful when I am trying to sort through a problem, though most of the problems I handle are abstract, without structure. During my meditation I imagine how the problems move around in the world, how they impact the places and people they effect, and then consider ways in which those effects can be countered. It’s complicated, and again not a natural method of dealing with problems, though I find this process helps me sit with problems that need my attention.

There’s no silver bullet here. Having problems and challenges is an uncomfortable condition, and will always be. What we can do is make slow and steady progress to ease the discomfort. And in that purposeful progress forward, it’s my hope that we will find the long-term solutions we seek to remove all our challenges.

change, creativity, ideas, innovation

My Year of Hopefulness – Trying to get up that great big hill of hope

Christa Avampato

For a few weeks I’ve been going about my little routine called life. In one particular area, which shall remain nameless, I have been a little stuck. I was just going with the flow, or rather I was letting the waters stagnate. Sort of strolling along with my Bruce Hornsby attitude, telling myself “that’s just the way it is.” Truthfully, that’s the way it was because I let it be.

Fighting a battle, particularly one that’s uphill, is a tough activity to sign-up for. It’s exhausting. It’s painful. It’s frustrating. And a lot of times it doesn’t do any good at all. However, if we spend a lot of time on that battleground and we continually choose to stand at ease, then we get left behind, cleaning up what remains, which often isn’t a whole heck of a lot.

Today I decided I had stood around long enough. Yes, this is the way it is but it doesn’t have to be always be like this. And no one is going to fix it for me. Why should they? They have their own battles to worry about. I signed up for the gig, I took on the mission, and now I had to make sure I wasn’t wasting my time.

So away I went, crafting and planning and convincing that I could clearly perceive a better way forward, and am willing to put my time, energy, and talents into the new venture. I have no idea if it’s going to go anywhere. Tomorrow I could find myself still frittering away at the bottom of the hill. I do know that if I stand around twiddling my thumbs any longer, I’ll be at the bottom of that hill for a long time to come, and I’d have no one to blame for that except me. Might as well plant my stake in the ground and see who I can get to rally around it.

The image above can be found here.

business, career, entrepreneurship, Examiner, health, social media, women

NY Business Strategies Examiner – Interview with Lissa Rankin, Founder of Owning Pink

Christa Avampato

Meet Lissa Rankin, an artist, writer, gynecologist, mother, and all around bundle of positive energy. I met Lissa on Twitter, and once I read her brief bio I knew that I had to feature her in this column.

Lissa has made it her mission in life to help others get their mojo back, and particularly to empower women to do whatever and be whoever they want to be. To foster this mission, she created the company Owning Pink, a place where women can connect and support one another in their pursuits. Owning Pink offers classes, workshops, and mentoring to further these connections.

A courageous, empathic, inspirational role model, Lissa is exactly the kind of person this world needs more of.

For the full interview with Lissa, click here.

child, high school, letter, school, student

My Year of Hopefulness – First Day NY

Christa Avampato

A friend of mine from college recently invited me to join a Facebook Group for First Day NY, a program that looks for volunteers to sponsor New York City children for their first day of school. I signed up immediately and today received some information about the child I’ll be sponsoring. She’s 14 years old (and I assume heading into 9th grade), wants to be a nurse, and loves language arts. My mission is to get her a backpack, a first day of school outfit, and an age-appropriate book based on her interests.

It’s been so long since I thought about the first day of 9th grade. I started high school that year and I remember being so nervous. All my same friends from middle school went with me since my town only had one set of schools. There were kids who were so much bigger and smarter than me. They played sports and ran clubs. How would I find my classrooms? Would boys like me? And the dreaded cafeteria, every 14 year old girl’s nightmare. The movie Mean Girls comes to mind.

The other piece of my mission for the child I’m sponsoring is to write a note of encouragement. “We would like your child to know someone out there cares about their success…with this note you can offer a window into the world of opportunity that awaits them if they always do their best and stay in school.” I’m not ashamed to say I teared up a little upon reading this instruction from First Day NY. This is more than just a backpack and some clothes for a 14 year old; it’s a signal to her that there are people out here cheering her on, people who believe in her potential.

As I think back, 9th grade is the time when I realized that if I worked really hard, I could go anywhere and do anything. That year opened up a new gateway to the whole rest of my life, and how I thought about my purpose in the world. And now I think I have the beginning to my note of encouragement…

If you’d like to get involved with First Day NY, please visit their website: http://www.firstdayny.org/

dreams, legacy, memory

My Year of Hopefulness – Judged by the heart

Christa Avampato

“When you meet a man, you judge him by his clothes; when you leave, you judge him by his heart.” ~ Russian Proverb

This quote reminds me of a recent discussion I had about legacy building. The discussion got me thinking about what remains of us when we leave and how what we want to remain effects what we build right now. I can’t say for sure what specifics I’d like to be remembered for, what one or two things I’d like to build during my time here that will last well into the future. I can say that there are certain sentiments that I hope will be a part of my legacy.

I hope that I am remembered as someone with great heart and compassion and empathy, someone who always considered walking in the shoes of others before passing any kind of judgment. I’d like the words “concern” and “commitment” to appear numerous times in my history. That my integrity remained intact through challenging and easy times. Someone who had dreams and pursued them, while also encouraging and fostering the dreams of others.

I’d like to look back on my life with no regrets, no missed opportunities, having gained and lost in large amounts because I was always willing to take a leap of faith. Someone who remained hopeful in the face of despair, calm in the presence of tension, always looking up even when circumstances at eye level were dire. Having done the very best with what I had, maintained grace and kindness and wonder. That this world be a happier, more peaceful, creative place because I passed this way. Most of all, I hope that I am remembered as someone who rose to my potential while also reaching down to help others rise, too.

There’s a lot of pressure in the world around us to look, feel, and act a certain way, pressure to conform and take the journey that’s the easiest, safest, and most secure. Just because a path has very little resistance doesn’t mean it’s the right path for us. Finding our calling, building our legacy, takes more effort than just following the easy road. It involves knowing who are, and more importantly, who we are capable of becoming. It involves listening to the heart as sincerely as we listen to the mind.

creativity, dreams, friendship, imagination

My Year of Hopefulness – Imagination as reality

Christa Avampato

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” ~ John Lennon

I read this quote from John Lennon on my friend, Col’s, blog. She’s in the midst of some tough circumstances in her life, and her beautiful, honest writing about it is courageous to say the least. I highly recommend it for a daily dose of inspiration.

Reality sometimes gets a bad rap. “You’ve got to be realistic.” “Come back down to reality.” “Wait until reality sets in.” Awful. Any time someone tells me I have to do something, that I need to go back down somewhere, or something is going to invade and set in, I shutter. Why can’t our lives be like we imagine them to be? Who decided my reality for me, without my consultation?

Without imagination, we get a reality we don’t want. We could take Lennon’s sentiment one step further and say our reality is actually defined by our imagination. What kind of job do we really want to go to everyday? What kind of relationships and friendships do we want? Where do we want to live, what do we want to do, and who do we want to be? It’s all possible.

I’ve been having so many conversations with friends recently about the shape they’d like their lives to take. The one common question that is the root for them all is “do you really think I can do this? Can I really make this happen?” And my response is always the same. A) of course you can and B) no one else is going to make your life happen the way you want it to happen. It’s a personal commitment to go out there and get everything in life you want. Our imagination is the only limitation.