Month: October 2011

career, failure, fear

Beginning: Facing Up to Fear, Failure, and Monsters

Christa Avampato
Scene from Monsters Inc. by Pixar

Earlier this week I mentioned the tough conversation that Brian and I had about my fear of just jumping into my own business full-time. Admittedly, I was in his office whining and trying to decision tree my way out of fear. His sentiments about my fear have echoed throughout my week in a variety of other experiences and reading. One week later, the key piece of advice from him that I keep coming back to is that taking a leap like this is always scary. There will never be a time when the fear subsides.

Fear is a part of the process
This same idea was framed up by Sean Duffy in his Talent Zoo post entitled “Seven Tips for Aspiring Entrepreneurs”. Though the title seems a bit dull and run-of-the-mill, I read it anyway and I’m glad I did. The article is loaded with sobering advice for anyone considering a jump like mine like this: “The dictionary says that an entrepreneur is someone who starts and manages a business or other enterprise with considerable initiative and risk.” The risk, and the fear associated with it, cannot be extricated from the work of heading off on our own. Fear and risk are bound up in the very nature of the work itself. In other words, get used to it! 

Sobering failure stat
But what if I fail? What if I hold my head up, look fear dead in the eye, and I don’t make it? Duffy lays out some statistics that first made me ill and then gave me hope:

A company’s chances of surviving its first five years in business = 20%
A product’s chances of surviving past launch = 5%
A company’s chances of ever reaching its long-term financial goals = 5% survival

This may be enough to cause us to throw in the towel before we even start. After all, the odds are steeply stacked against us, but there is some deeper meaning hidden in those numbers. These statistics actually helped me to set aside some of my fear. The great likelihood is that I will fail. It’s practically a given so there’s no sense in worrying about it. Whew – it’s kind of a relief to know this, isn’t it? If I do fail then I will be in good company. And still, I want to give it a whirl on the slight chance that maybe I’m stronger than the odds.

A one-sentence mission helps to release fear
I had coffee last weekend with my friend, Sara, who was in my yoga teacher training. She was also not having it with my decision tree abilities that are delaying my decisions about how to move forward in my career. “Didn’t you go to college and get all of these business skills to have something to fall back on?” I nodded. “Okay, then,” she said. “So try to do what you want. Talk yourself up!” I couldn’t refute that statement. She’s right.

I am a master planner but what I’ve done is plan my way right into plan B without even giving plan A a shot. With Sara’s prompting, I crystallized exactly what I want plan A to be in one sentence: “I want to buy into a holistic medical practice where I work with doctors and therapists to treat the whole patient.” From there, the fear started to dissipate not because I had successfully walled it off so I could walk peacefully around it, but because I just stood up and walked straight through it with my words. And in the process, it made my next steps clearer and more meaningful. Now, I have a concrete goal. (More on those steps in a later post.)

Fear takes a new form
I had been envisioning fear as this big, obnoxious monster whom I thought could be wrestled to the ground and contained. I imagined myself lassoing a big rope around its neck and tethering it to a tree so it couldn’t get to me. Fear is more slippery than that. There isn’t a way to keep it at a safe distance. It’s going to get us, and what really matters is how we face up to it when it is on our doorstep.

In my mind’s eye, I’m trying to put my fear in the form of Sully from Monsters, Inc., someone who looks very scary on the outside but on the inside isn’t so scary at all. I think of myself grabbing the furry hand of this fear monster and leading him along as we chart our course forward up over a grassy hill and on toward a brighter future, together. We can’t shake fear so we might as well befriend it and learn what it has to teach us.

business, economy

Beginning: Now I Know What Occupy Wall Street Wants and How I Feel About It

Christa Avampato

My friend, Amy, sent me a link to a The 99% Declaration put together by the members of Occupy Wall Street. After reading through it carefully, I understand what they’re looking for as well as their goal. And now I know for certain that I am not a part of their 99%. I’m not a part of the 1% either. I guess I am on my own, which is where I’d prefer to be.

Here is the link to the Declaration if you’d like to read it: https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/. Here are my concerns with it:

1.) I don’t like that they are suggesting that as an individual I would not be able to donate to the candidates’ campaigns whose ideals I support. I think that’s infringing upon my own individual freedoms.

2.) Many people in this country have retirement savings in 401Ks, IRAs, etc. that are made up of mutual funds and stock holdings. To say that I can’t have those savings if I or anyone in my immediate family holds public office is again infringing upon my rights to financially care for my future. Exactly what am I supposed to do with those holdings if I or someone in my immediate family decides to run for office?

3.) I am all for healthcare reform and change but single payer healthcare seems like a very scary thing to propose is such a sweeping gesture. Our healthcare system is quite complex and there are many countries with nationalized healthcare who are unhappy with their system as well. In the end, doctors actually don’t have to take insurance at all and wealthy individuals will just pay out-of-pocket for the best care, likely to the best doctors who would no longer be a part of the healthcare system because they couldn’t afford to practice in a single payer system. We’d run into the similar issue we have with public versus private education.

4.) Why should free market corporations subsidize all student loans? Individuals choose which debts to take on – I certainly did and I am responsible for those choices. There are deferment programs already in place which I have taken advantage of at times when I was not employed so I’m not sure why they think that is not an option.

5.) The recall of military personnel is based upon a great deal of top-secret information that we are not privy to for our own safety. While I do want the troops to come home, I also want to make sure that all of their efforts don’t fall apart and that our national and global security is not further jeopardized in the process.

6.) In general, our economy is moving toward more skills-based roles and away from manufacturing. Tom Friedman wrote an excellent article on this topic today that lays out his opinion on how to transform our economy: Imagined in America.

7.) They are implying the passage of embargoes against certain nations like China who manipulate their currency. This would be disastrous for our country, particularly in this recession. Again, Tom Friedman addressed this idea in his column today.

8.) The bank regulation they are proposing around lending does not allow financial institutions to take risk into account to make good business decisions. In short, if someone has a low credit score then it is tough to justify that banks should give them loans at a very low rate. What if they again cannot repay the debt they take on? Who pays then if banks couldn’t appropriately price for risk in granting the loan? I also think they don’t fully understand how regulated the banking system has become in the last few years since the recession hit full force. Much of that regulation is a very good thing but the side effect has been that it is much harder for those in lower socioeconomic brackets to get any credit.

9.) I absolutely think that they should form their own party and run candidates in elections. YES! Their last point all but says that this is what they intend to do. I think that’s a great idea and I hope they follow through with it. This is the way to have them voice their concerns about the system and become a part of participatory government, as well as to see the complications that are inherent in running an incredibly complex political, economic, and social system.

Get in the game Occupiers and don’t wait until July 2012. Now is the time to make yourselves heard and for others to consider your proposals in the upcoming election season.  

choices, movie, New York City

Beginning: Making Good of Everything That Comes Our Way

Christa Avampato
Manhattan at night. From http://www.destination360.com

I just finished watching the 8-part PBS series on the history of New York City. The PBS series on New York closes with former Governor Mario Cuomo quoting Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher. De Chardin said that, “One of the tricks in life is to convert everything into good.” You’re a sculptor and you have a stone with a scar in it. “So now you have to sculpt around that scar,” Cuomo says. “You’ve got to use that scar to make it part of whatever it is you’re going to produce that’s beautiful, and work with what you have. Play it as it lies. So whatever the circumstance, use it for good purpose.”

I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe we are destined to go through this struggle or that hardship as some sort of predetermined development. As free thinking, free feeling individuals who have a tremendous ability to adapt to new information and new circumstances, we create reason and meaning from life. We can make good, as de Chardin encourages us to do, as Cuomo encouarges us to do. Even from the most horrible, tragic circumstances, we can learn and grow and help others do the same.

This work of making good is not easy. I’m not sure that it really comes naturally to anyone. However, on the other side of anger, grief, embarrassment, and disappointment, there lies a vast expanse of possibility if we choose to see it. Every day, we have the opportunity to take a look at our lives, the good and the bad, and draw conclusions and lessons to carry forward into tomorrow. Making meaning of what happens to us and to our communities is our greatest creative act. We are literally willing meaning into being. This is where our stories are spun, where our gifts come alive, where in the act of inferring meaning in our days they become meaning-full. Go there.

choices, economy, money

Beginning: I’m Not Occupying Wall Street. I’m In It and Trying to Change It.

Christa Avampato

Photo from Occupy Wall Street
“Find a small stream in which your strengths can flow and then see if you can carve it into the Mississippi.” ~ Marcus Buckingham

I am conflicted about Occupy Wall Street. So conflicted, that I have been conflicted about writing anything on the situation other than a tweet here and there. I certainly support everyone’s right to speak their mind and raise their concerns. The frustration that has served as the fuel for the protest is widely understood and shared, by me and nearly everyone else I know. Yesterday someone asked me if I’ve been down to the protest, and when I said no, they were a bit surprised. Given my outspoken and scrappy personality, this movement seems like it would be a natural fit for me.

Here’s the rub: I can’t show up at the protests authentically. I work for a financial services company, I have an MBA, and though I grew up in a family of very few financial means, I pushed myself instead of the government or the economy to get my life on track. I never expected anyone to do anything to get me a job. I always felt fully responsible for my own well-being. The world never owed me anything, and never will, except the opportunity to try. My happiness and success falls squarely on my shoulders, and my shoulders alone.

Entrepreneurs
Steve Jobs and every other entrepreneur out there didn’t expect anyone to create jobs. They actually didn’t want anyone to give them a job. They wanted to build their own careers, their own companies. They wanted to invent the future, theirs and the world’s. Their futures were safer in their own two hands.

Thrifty People
Susan Gregory Thomas is a single mother who takes care of her family’s nutrition and personal needs on about $100 / week thanks to an oversized amount of curiosity, necessity, and a love for simplicity. To do so, she and her family went back to the land, reluctantly, in Brooklyn. She was a freelance writer who lost most of her income in the recession and had to reign in her spending in a serious way. Her story is inspiring and shows just how much we can do when the stakes are high and the options are few. We are far more resourceful and creative than we realize.

The only people I know who really make something extraordinary out of their days are those who roll up their sleeves and build it. I recognize that people feel badly about this economy and about our government. I feel badly, too. My days are not spent doing exactly what I want to do at every single moment. There is this pesky little matter of over-sized student loans that I really want to pay off as quickly as I can. I put myself through school twice, and my education is the very best investment I’ve ever made. And that investment has come at a price tag that I am responsible for paying. To do that, I have to delay my dream of working for myself for a bit.

Of course I’d like the situation to be different, but it’s not. Complaining about it doesn’t do anything except make me feel worse so I don’t complain about it. I made my choices and now I live with their consequences. I got myself a job that pays the bills and I work on my creative projects when I’m done with my bill paying job. It won’t always be this way, though for now this will do just fine. I can make short-term sacrifices for the sake of a long-term dream.

And that may just be the trick. We want short and long-term gain, in every area of our lives. Understood sacrifice is no longer a part of our national fabric. The moment we are made to make any compromises or trade-offs, the moment we are asked to be patient for anything we want, we are furious. I’m not sure how we can sustain this mindset, and there will certainly be pain in putting our economy back together. Lots of it.

It’s this very mindset, not big business, that got us into this mess in the first place. If we hadn’t been so eager to take on more debt than we can afford and if we hadn’t been more-than-willing to buy anything and everything that big business is selling, we may well have avoided this recession, or at least made it less severe. Now we are really in a tough place, and it is very painful to look in the mirror and say, “We are responsible.” That act is ALWAYS painful. Personal responsibility is a tough and often uncomfortable possession. We are looking for someone to blame, someone whom we can hold accountable for our unhappiness and our collective mistakes. And we are looking for someone to save us. The person we are waiting for is us; we must be our own saviors,

Banks, big business, and millionaires (even self-made ones) are easy, accessible targets. I’m not in agreement with the Tea Party or the GOP – I don’t think there is anything Un-American about Occupy Wall Street. I certainly think that big business prayed on our weaknesses and made their cheap, poorly made goods and services attractive in deceptive ways. But they didn’t force us to do anything. We chose where to spend our money and how much of it.

We are free thinkers and we make choices every moment of every day. Those collective small choices brought us to where we are today. And the choices we make going forward will determine how this whole thing shakes out. In no way do I mean to discourage people from joining Occupy Wall Street. Maybe their voices will raise a new and badly needed source of consciousness in government, in business, and in the minds of individuals.

But you won’t see me Occupying Wall Street. I’m inside the belly of the beast trying to make it more compassionate and raise its awareness from the inside out. There are a lot of people like me in financial services and big business trying to do the same. If we really want to change the financial system, we first need to understand how it operates. I’ve found the best way to do that is get in there, grab a front row seat, and then work like hell to make it a better place.

change, creative process, creativity

Beginning: Employ Your Creativity to Build a Better Life

Christa Avampato

Yesterday I spoke about my tough session with Brian this week. I had a tough week and somehow, despite my usually feisty demeanor, I let it get to me. It wore me out. I want to be working full-time on projects I am passionate about, that are of consequence, not just to me, but to the world. Not I straddle those two worlds, one foot in a place that pays my bills but gives me little in the way of meaning, and the other in my creative life, which provides my soul with so much nourishment and yet does little for my bank account. The straddle is more difficult than I like to admit.

And so the argument raged on in my mind last week – my need to be practical and grounded, and my need to care about the work in front of me. At the moment, those two things are not compatible in my life. It’s causing me to feel stagnant and exhausted for no good reason. And it perplexes me.

Brian listened to me, but rather than expressing his empathy, he recognized that I needed a dose of very tough love. “Christa, you are going to have to employ your creativity. Give yourself some boundaries, some guidelines, and tell your creativity that failure is just not an option. You have to find a way to care again, not about your present situation, but about the gifts you have to offer. If you don’t employ those with everything you’ve got, then you are losing and so is everyone else. You cannot hide from who you are.”

While I apply my creativity to my teaching and to my writing, I don’t employ it effectively in the design of my life. I’ve cooked up this hodgepodge of how I spend my time, each activity fulfilling some of my needs, but no activity filling all of them. There must be a better way, a way to feed my stomach and soul simultaneously, and no one else is going to build that opportunity for me. It is one thing I must wrestle through on my own and a non-answer, a holding pattern is no longer an option. A change is imminent, and I am the one who is going to have to usher it into being through my own creativity. 

change, choices

Beginning: You Can Change Your Mind

Christa Avampato

I went to dinner last night with a group of people and a friend of a friend of mine insisted that she has lived in New York City for 13 years and it is just impossible to be mindful here. Given my own experience, I had to disagree. It may be challenging to be mindful here, but it is certainly not impossible. Mindfulness is a choice. And if we don’t choose mindfulness, then what do we choose? To be mindless? How sad.

This brief, and rather uncomfortable, exchange prompted me to think of a picture recently shown to me by my friend, Allan. Take a look at the image at the top of this post. The world “investment”. Now look a bit closer and turn the picture 180 degrees. “Speculation” magically appears. The image is exactly the same; what you see depends upon your point-of-view, literally and figuratively.

Brian and I had a tough conversation this past week. I was lamenting my student loans and the time I’m spending every day doing things that help earn my paycheck but don’t help to change the world. He was not having it. He raised a number of topics and anecdotes that are each worth their own post. I’ll be sharing them with you in posts this coming week because they were so helpful to me, even though they were tough to hear. I think they may help you, too, particularly if you are contemplating a new, scary beginning. As I left his office, there was just one statement that kept ringing in my mind over and over again. “Christa, you’re free if you want to be.”

I just finished reading Nelson Mandela’s new book Conversations with Myself, a collection of his personal papers that he has decided to release now that he is in the twilight of his life. Of the 26 years he spent in prison, he continually said that his mind was very far from his cell. In his mind, his thoughts, he was always free, even though physically he was servicing a life sentence. This idea helped me to reason that if he could feel free, then any of us can, too.

Freedom is all in the mind, and the mind can be changed. We can be mindful even in the mayhem of New York City; we can see an opportunity as speculation or investment; we can either lift ourselves up or keep ourselves down with our thoughts. If it is change we seek, on any scale, then we must first go inward and change our own minds.

books, choices, decision-making, technology

Beginning: My E-reader Dilemma, Solved

Christa Avampato

I’ve changed my mind a hundred times on which e-reader to buy, that is once I decided I did want an e-reader. I love books, the feel and smell of them. I even like the feel of the weight in my hands, but not on my shoulders.

I just finished Conversations with Myself, a collection of papers, interviews, and letters from Nelson Mandela’s archive. At 480 pages, it is a hefty item to tote around on the crowded NYC subway to and from work. I looked around the car and saw everyone on their devices that slide easily in and our of their bags, no sign of trouble when flipping the page or holding it close to them as they navigated the too-small space between them and their closest neighbors.

I, on the other handle, was fumbling to such a degree that I just packed the book away in my overstuffed bag, where it barely fit. On my subway car, I was the only person with a paper book, a book I borrowed from he library! Despite that I make my living working in mobile technology, I was a relic of a time gone by. Books made out of paper? They call those antiques!

And now it was time to take a serious look at my decision tree. I have been comparing models of e-readers since the first Kindle was a whisper in the market. I took my friend, Susan‘s, advice from job searching and applied it to my e-reader decision. I stopped comparing models and considered my perfect e-reader, available options aside.

Here’s what I need, in order of importance:

1.) A comfortable reading experience – I spend so much of my day looking at shiny screens and I’m already worried about my eyes. I need a near-paper reading experience.

2.) Borrow library books – I love the New York Public Library and I’d like to be able to download e-books from the library to my e-reader.

3.) An electronic notepad – I do my best writing while I’m traveling and carrying my laptop with me is getting to be a burden. I don’t need anything too fancy – just a way to easily jot down my thoughts and upload them to my laptop when I get home.

Now that I knew what kind of e-reader I really wanted, it was easier to evaluate options. By getting clear on my needs, the clear answer rose to the top: meet my new e-reader, the new Kindle Touch, featuring e-ink, library book borrowing, and personal annotation capabilities (Kindle does one better on this last point by sinking all my documents across all of my devices.)

And this is just the beginning of what it offers. It will be ready to ship around November 21st and I can’t wait to get started on it. My shoulders are going to be so happy with this decision. Already I can hear them sighing, “It’s about time!” Indeed, it is.

business, career, yoga

Beginning: Moving Away from Welfare Yoga

Christa Avampato

Last week New York magazine ran an article entitled “Welfare Yoga” about the current state of yoga teachers and their lack of income sources. Below is the letter to the editor I wrote in response. The points raised in this piece further confirm that I made the right decision by turning away from the traditional studio teaching route; my gut steered me toward a brighter future by seeking to integrate with the traditional healthcare system.

“Dear Editor,

Thank you for your excellent piece “Welfare Yoga” on October 2, 2011. As a yoga instructor, I’ve been disappointed to see how the value of yoga classes in New York has been deeply diminished by offers through Groupon, Living Social, and other similar sites, as well as the less-than-savvy marketing efforts of many studios.

In many ways, yoga teachers have created the trend of cheap-to-free yoga to their own detriment. Now their own efforts have put them in the bind of people expecting free yoga and the studios not being able to keep their doors open. Rather than fixing this broken business model, an increasing number of studios are compounding the problem by generating their income through teacher training programs that produce even more teachers who compete for an ever-decreasing number of paying teacher gigs. It’s a vicious cycle that yogis are feeding at a dizzying rate.

Unfortunately, “karma” has been equated with “free” in the yoga world, and some teachers and practitioners have come to believe that all yoga should be free to everyone, regardless of the means of their students. We live in a world where eventually there is a cost for everything. In the case of yoga classes in New York City, the ones truly bearing the cost are the instructors who have to work several jobs in addition to (their often free) teaching so they can meet their own basic personal expenses.

Sadly, the only people we have to blame for this situation are ourselves.

Sincerely,
Christa Avampato”
economy, politics, Steve Jobs, success, Thomas Friedman

Beginning: The Secret to Everyone’s Success, a la Thomas Friedman and Steve Jobs

Christa Avampato

“The melancholy over Steve Jobs’s passing is about the loss of someone who personified so many of the leadership traits we know are missing from our national politics…He did not read the polls but changed the polls by giving people what he was certain they wanted and needed before they knew it; he was someone who was ready to pursue his vision in the face of long odds over multiple years; and, most of all, he was someone who earned the respect of his colleagues, not by going easy on them but by constantly pushing them out of their comfort zones and, in the process, inspiring ordinary people to do extraordinary things…There isn’t a single national politician today whom you would describe by those attributes.” ~ Thomas L. Friedman

This quote is excerpted from Tom Friedman’s immaculate weekly column in The New York Times. He has been perhaps the lone voice in our current policy debate who has been able not only to articulate our problems with laser beam accuracy, but to also formulate a plan of how to dig ourselves out. Friedman has been highly critical of both sides of the aisle – he’s not running for office, he’s not trying to make friends, and he’s not trying to support anyone’s agenda. He’s on our side – the side of people who are willing to buckle down and turn our economy around through our own volition. He’s giving a savvy and brutally honest voice to our concerns and worries, and also giving us a ray of hope that there actually is a way for ordinary folks to put our nation back on track toward a future that’s better than our present.

In the article he goes on to say that while it’s very easy to get caught up in what is being said – by Occupy Wall Street, politicians, and armchair pundits, “sometimes the news is also in the silence. “ What does that silence mean for us and for our communities, and for the many people who will come along after us? We need to put our own egos aside and consider what we’re leaving for them. My experience has been that the more frustrated people are, the more they shut down. Frustration leads too often to a feeling of power lost, and once someone feels completely depleted of power they have two choices: crawl into a corner or lash out.

Though I strongly disagree with the methods of Occupy Wall Street, I do understand their underlying emotional motivation. They are frustrated and feel like there isn’t anyone in policy listening to those concerns. Rather than slink off, they found others who have many of the same feelings. They have banded together in the hopes that their combined voices will be loud enough to stir change.

What they need to do now, what we all need to do, is what Jobs did so well – he didn’t like the future as it was so he invented his own and won people over to his way of seeing. As The Onion’s obituary of Steve Jobs so eloquently, if painfully, stated, “he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas.” That was his secret and his legacy. It’s a blueprint we can all follow.

business, nonprofit, yoga

Beginning: Compass Yoga Files with the New York Department of State

Christa Avampato

Compass Yoga has taken another step on the journey toward incorporation. A few weeks back our attorneys filed our Articles of Incorporation with the Department of Education. The Articles of Incorporation explained our reasons for being, and the board and I worked closely with the attorneys to get our objectives and the associated language just right. These Articles set the stage for the financial, governance, and programming structure. Get those wrong, and the whole mission is at stake. Luckily, our phenomenal attorneys have given us top-notch support from the get-go.

The Department of Education gets involved because our mission is primarily one of teaching and instructing. Yesterday I found out that we sailed through the review process and they have given their consent for us to move to the next step – filing with the Department of State. The Department of State will now review the articles and if all goes well, then will officially give the incorporation green light for Compass Yoga.

So many of you have generously offered your support and advice in this process. On behalf of the board, I am so grateful to each of you and wanted to share this exciting update. The adventure continues, and there will be more to come!