Ganesha - our great friend and the keeper of obstacles
“The obstacle is the path.” ~ Zen proverb
On Sunday I was thumbing through the new prAna catalog and found this proverb. Obstacles tend to be things we want to jump over, crawl through, duck under, go around, or blow up into miniscule pieces. And with good reason – they prevent us from doing exactly what we want to do exactly when we want to do it.
Or do they?
What if we could find a way to weave our obstacles together like cobblestones that form a path up and away from where we are right now and on to the path we’re meant to take? Obstacles, just like triumphs, are teachers. And they are generous. They force creativity, give us grit, and usually necessitate the formation of partnerships and relationships to overcome.
My path has been loaded with obstacles of all shapes and sizes. They have made it difficult to navigate, and yet I am now a better navigator for having them on my course. I wouldn’t trade them; I needed their presence so that I could work with my yoga students with compassion, authenticity, and empathy. To make the decision to pursue Compass Yoga full-time, I had to face obstacles in the other areas of my professional life. If that other way had been free of challenges, I may have never found the courage to leap.
This is how life goes – in the moment, we don’t understand all of the change swirling around us. In hindsight, the pieces settle and we understand why the exact path we took was exactly the path we had to take. Those obstacles are the inflection points that caused us to take a necessary turn so that we could live up to our potential.
May your road and mine be littered with obstacles of real value!
Estimates now show that there are 70,000+ yoga teachers in North America. 70,000 people do exactly what I do. We all have roughly the same basic level of training and seek to do the same type of work.
On its own, a statistic like that could be enough to scare me into hiding. But here’s the real trick of inventing, whether you’re trying to invent who you are, a new business idea, or any new adventure:
We don’t need to reinvent the wheel – it’s a damn fine piece of machinery. What we really need to do is invent a new way to make it roll.
Yoga is my wheel.
I’m grateful for the 6,000+ years of yoga teaching lineage that is available to all 70,000 yoga teachers in North America. What I want to do with Compass Yoga in expand reach. I want yoga and meditation teachers to stand side by side with MDs, medical scientists, and pharmaceutical companies in the collective and collaborative pursuit of optimal health for all people everywhere.
For a long time I’ve defined that I make a living as a product developer and I make a life by writing and teaching yoga. My dual-life can get exhausting, and more than that, I think it’s wasteful. And I hate waste of any kind. But this dual-life, in the short-term, is the safe road. It helps me to hedge my bets without really make any bets at all. I’m having a tough time letting go.
As we begin to turn our attention toward the end of the year, I begin considering resolutions as a means of focusing my efforts for the turning of the calendar page. In 2012, my big ask of myself is that I figure out a way to bridge my worlds, turning how I make a living and how I make a life into one and the same.
One of the very happy side effects of meditation is how the mind becomes capable of time travel. Even now at the age of 35, I can imagine myself as a very old woman. And in that older me state, I can play out scenarios. If I don’t jump into Compass Yoga with both feet in 2012, I will regret not giving it my all. If I just play it safe, keep my head down, and find a way in the short term to be content with this dual-life, I’ll look back at 35 year old me and ask, “What were you so afraid of? Now time has passed you by. It’s too late. The window has closed.”
For over a year now, I’ve weighed the choice that scares me against the one that feels safer. Maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong. The Hero’s Journey is about choosing between two options that are equals, not between one good choice and one bad choice.
Perhaps these lofty life decisions are decisions in which we choose the fear we can live with over the fear we can’t live with. Faced with the choice of fearing the leap and fearing that my life’s purpose has passed me by, I’ll leap. Now the trick lies in helping my younger self understand that this is the reality of the career choice I’m wrestling with.
Time is often equated with money, but the two have relatively little in common. Money is replaceable – we can find a way to earn money through all sorts of avenues. We cannot buy time. We have no way of making up for it; we have no way of re-earning it. Once spent, it is spent for good.
In the coming months, I will make it a point to remember that how we spend our time is the greatest choice we make because time is the most precious resource we have. It is irreplaceable.
Lady Gaga performing "Marry the Night" on A Very Gaga Thanksgiving
“What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! / Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” ~ Goethe
Late on Thanksgiving night everyone had gone home and my parents were fast asleep. Phineas was cuddled up next to me snoozing, and I was pecking away on my laptop to draft a freelance writing piece. When I write, I usually have music or the TV on in the background. I flipped through the channels and saw that A Very Gaga Thanksgiving, Lady Gaga’s Thanksgiving special, was on. “Perfect,” I thought. “I love her empowering music and I won’t get distracted by a complicated storyline.”
So much for that idea.
I found Lady Gaga’s story incredibly compelling – her sense of family, the incredibly personal and unique inspirations behind each of her songs, and how she views real wealth. And there was one message in her interview at the end of the show that really stuck with me. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Her song “Marry the Night”, her favorite song on her new album Born This Way, is about the decision she made a few years ago to fully commit to her work. Lady Gaga decided she was “going to tear it up”, make her work her husband, and never look back. “Marry the Night” is the musical manifestation of that promise to her herself.
Inspiration will find us in the most surprising ways – a unintended conversation, an chance meeting, a Lady Gaga TV special. Eventually, we will find that we can’t fight our purpose forever. During my vacation last week, the signs of a new life taking shape were abundant and abundantly clear. There was no mistaking them.
I need to commit to the work of my life – my teaching through Compass Yoga and to my writing. On Thanksgiving night, a switch flipped. The fear of this leap didn’t disappear, but it somehow became inconsequential. It now feels like there is a greater force moving me forward, a gentle hand at my back, as if the night may have chosen to marry me and I must go along.
It’s my favorite holiday – no presents like Christmas, no question about plans like New Year’s. Just good food, friends, family, and napping. At least for the lucky among us. And if we are lucky enough to have these circumstances on this day, then we spend a lot of time being grateful for our blessings.
Do more than be thankful. Tell the people in your lives how grateful you are for their presence and why. Show up for them the way they show up for you. Listen, support, and extend to them. And then take a look in your community, see who isn’t having the happiest of Thanksgivings, who may not have or see a reason to be grateful, and listen, support, and extend to them.
We’re here to be of service to one another – set your sights on being the strongest link in the chain.
Happy Thanksgiving and thank you so much for being with me on this writing journey. I am grateful for you!
Occupy Wall Street Protesters in New York. Credit: CNBC
I knew this would happen.
The company that owns Zuccotti Park also owns the office building where I work. On Friday, about 40 protestors made their way to our front door. I’m not sure if they know the company I work for is housed there. Once they make the connection, I’m sure the protestors will be a daily occurrence at our door.
The protestors are spending a lot time and effort occupying different areas all over the country. Say “Occupy Wall Street” and every American knows what you’re talking about. The movement they have built on a shoestring is very impressive. Their digital megaphone is stretching across the globe, and here is a sad and sorry truth: banks, the target of many of these protests, hear the protestors but they aren’t really listening. They don’t have to and they won’t, at least not to conventional communication.
The only way to get through to banks is via money – it’s the only language they understand or even want to understand. Protestors, you need to talk with your wallets. Banks only respond to outcries that are framed in the form of federal regulation or an impact to their bottom line. They actually don’t care that you’re losing your home, struggling to pay your student loans, and barely scraping up funds to put food on the table. Individually, there are a lot of people within banks who care and feel paralyzed by the organizations they work for. I work for a bank and I spend a good deal of my time trying to get us to behave better. Most of the people I work with are living in fear that their job is the next on the chopping block. The banks themselves, as their own living, breathing entities, sadly are not the people who occupy the desks in their offices. They are another beast entirely.
Protestors if you want more than public sympathy and a chance to be heard, if you care more about actually creating change than you do about news coverage – and I 100% believe you do – then you’ve got two choices to change the banks’ tune toward yourmessage:
1.) Go Occupy Washington, the local offices of your representatives, and the lobbyists who get their attention by hitting them in their fundraising efforts. They can put federal legislation in place to make the banks change the way they do business. What gets regulated gets done.
2.) Stop supporting banks with your spending and savings. My sister, Weez, reminded me that Bank of America reversed the debit card fee they had planned to charge in response to the Durbin Amendment because so many people closed their accounts or threatened to do so if the fee was charged. Take your business to local credit unions, online banks like ING Direct who have more transparent practices and policies, and community financial development institutions (CFDIs). Cut the spending on your credit cards and stop buying their products and services. Your wallet is your microphone.
These two methods are the only kind of occupy movement – essentially occupying the banks’ balance sheets and strategic plans – that will truly be heard loud and clear.
Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic emblem that he weaved through most of his work
“Love is the virtue of the heart. Sincerity the virtue of the mind. Courage the virtue of the spirit. Decision the virtue of the will.” ~ The Organic Commandments by Frank Lloyd Wright
During a recent business trip to Phoenix, I made a quick stop at Taliesin West – one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous homes, on the advice of a friend. “It’s really something you should see,” he said. I expected Taliesin West to be a museum. I didn’t expect to be immersed so fully into his life. The compound remains a revered school of architecture, a working studio, and an ongoing experiment in sustainable design.
Enormously difficult, arrogant, and brazen, the only thing that overshadowed his infamous personality was his genius as a designer. He broke every rule and then some, personally and professionally. Extraordinarily, he had only two semesters of formal study at an engineering school. It’s reported that he left that second semester, contacted his mother, and told her he wouldn’t be returning in the Fall because he knew more than everyone else there. His prolific life proves he was right. (However, imagine the legacy he could have left if he had a bit more humility to save him the years of struggle in his 40s and 50s.)
And this brings me to the very point of this post. I am very hard on myself. Brian can often he found laughing out loud as I explain to him that at the age of 35 I should be more accomplished by now. This is somewhat related to the curse of fully understanding on such a deep level how fleeting and short life is. I sometimes wish that feeling would subside for just a day, but it’s never happened. It’s so engrained that my mind automatically and consciously charts time, and keeps pushing me to seek, find, and do.
As if sensing my constant internal struggle with time, my tour guide at Taliesin West started the tour by saying, “Mr. Wright’s legacy truly began after his 60th birthday, and he is best known for the work he completed after he turned 80. He worked until 5 days before he passed away right here in this home. So don’t worry. You have plenty of time to make your mark on the world, too.” I breathed a little sigh of relief and an audible thank you to Frank. He may have been a selfish, conceited old coot, but his ability to create exactly the life he imagined at every age is damn inspiring.
Frank Lloyd Wright used his youth and most of his adult years as a way of building mastery. He experimented and reinvented. He tried, failed, and tried again. He never gave up, never lost faith, and never second-guessed his own gut – even in the face of very staunch criticism and shunning by his colleagues and contemporaries. Perhaps we could all do with just a bit of his confidence, dedication, and determination – he did have plenty to go around.
Take it from Frank – now is always the best time for a new beginning.
To see all of my photos from Taliesin West on my Google+ account, click here.
From Inc Magazine - By Kimberly Weisul | Nov 17, 2011
Dear 38% of 18-34 year old American would-be entrepreneurs who are letting the recession get in the way of your start-up plans, I hear you! It’s scary to take your superficially safe day job and chuck it out the window in favor of your dream. If you’re dream fails, does that mean you fail? And if that happens, does that mean you will never get another job? Ever? Better to stick it out in a place that isn’t ideal, but could be good enough if we closed our eyes, ears, and hearts to our true calling, right? Think again.
You’ve heard about these statistics: how many great companies started in the wake of a recessions: FedEx, Microsoft, CNN, and the modern days of Apple. But here’s a stat that surprised even me – an eternal optimist about the potential of entrepreneurs: 54% of all Americans 18 – 34 want to start their own businesses. They don’t want to buy into an existing business or climb the ladder to a high position within an existing company. More people in that demographic are interested in working for themselves than are interested in working for someone else. It’s a remarkable statement and it’s cause for great enthusiasm and consumer confidence!
Now is the time to dream bigger than ever. 18 – 34-year-old entrepreneurs at heart, you’ve got loans to repay, retirement accounts to fund, and experience to build. Fine. I do, too. 38% of you aren’t beginning your entrepreneurial journey because of the bad economy. The lack of reasoning there is that the state of the economy has had very little to do with the success of the overall economy. You have no substantial reason to delay your dream.
Here’s what I really don’t want you to do: please don’t focus so much on climbing the ladder in the place you happen to be due to the Great Recession and place your entrepreneurial desires on hold. Find a way to make small steps forward:
Freelance in your spare time
Begin to lay the foundations for your own future as defined by you and you alone
Don’t use the recession as an excuse; use it as fuel to get going
Our illusion of safety inside another company exists only in our minds. You’ve got what it takes to at least give your entrepreneurial dream a shot. You owe it to yourself to try with everything you’ve got. I’ve been giving this idea a spin in my mind since seeing my friend, Rodrigo, a great pal from business school.
Rodrigo asked me how my yoga was going, what the business model is, and why I’m so passionate about Compass Yoga’s mission to help people with physical and mental health challenges. He could easily see my dedication to the idea.
And then I told him how much I care about our healthcare system and why I feel such an allegiance to his company, GE Healthcare. You see, GE Healthcare saved my mother’s life. Their imaging machines detected her breast cancer when it was smaller than a grain of sand. Her scans have been clean for 5 years. I’ll be forever grateful for the extra time they’ve given my mom and I. There’s no way to put a price tag on that kind of gratitude.
“If yoga doesn’t work out, give me a call, Christa,” Rodrigo said. “GE will want you.” I laughed and then he said, “I’m serious. Call me.”
And I knew in that moment that even if I jump tomorrow, out of corporate life with two feet into Compass Yoga, I’ll be just fine. The whole idea could go bust and I’ll still be okay because I’m skilled and I can tell an authentic story.
Rodrigo showed up with just the right message, at just the right time: now’s the time to give my dream a whirl and see what I can do. The worst that will happen is failure and I’d rather fail trying than wonder what I could have done if I’d had more guts.
It takes a long time to fly from Orlando to Phoenix. So long that on a recent business trip I had the time to read an entire book from beginning to end in one sitting. After seeing Bill Cosby on David Letterman, I ran out to get the book in prep for my cross-country trek. I love Bill Cosby so much that as a kid I named my dog after him. Compared to his famous Chocolate Cake and Noah’s Ark sketches, his new book, I Didn’t Ask to Be Born (but I’m Glad I Was),is a let down. And not because the stories aren’t good – they’re actually very good! – but because there are no words that can live up to his brilliant delivery that made his career. The same could be said of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. I like their writing, but I love their performances.
Some comedic authors can deliver on the page – the comedic siblings David Sedaris and Amy Sedaris immediately come to mind (maybe it’s all in the genes!) Tina Fey, Anne Lamott, and Bill Bryson have regularly made me laugh out loud with their honesty, wit, and turn of phrase. It’s hard enough to get the timing down in performance; getting it done on the page is even more challenging given that the reader controls the timing and cadence of the words. Nailing the delivery is almost impossible if you’re not the one delivering your own story in-person. And even for these titans of comedic writing, hearing them say their own stories out loud upped the degree of their humor. David Sedaris’s books make me laugh out loud, but seeing him on stage and then meeting him in person made me double over and laugh so hard I cried.
As a writer and serious hater of performance, I find this highly annoying. The mere thought of standing on a stage and having people stare at me causes me to break out in hives. Even as I’ve gained experience as a teacher and presenter over the years, I still feel like I’m going to be sick before each event. I continue to do it because I care a lot about the message, particularly if the message I’m delivering comes from my own experience.
I recently had lunch with my friend, Jeff, and I told him about my interest in taking a storytelling class at one of the New York improv theatres. He explained how wonderful certain storytelling classes are because they give the writers the opportunity to perform their own work. I casually glanced around the restaurant to make sure I could quickly locate the rest room in case I had a sudden case of early onset upset stomach. And by early onset I mean I haven’t even registered for the class yet much less gotten ready to perform. I dislike the stage that much.
I told Jeff I wasn’t really interested in performing my own work, and his off-the-cuff response was “Christa, no one tells the story better than the writer. There’s only so much that can be written down.” I’m sure my face dropped and I rolled my eyes, all out of fear. I knew Jeff was right and I realized in that moment that if I really want to take this class and get serious about live storytelling, then I have to face up to my battle with the stage. I hated Jeff for making that so obvious.
I hate his answer so much that for a few weeks I’ve tried to pretend he’s completely wrong and has no idea what he’s talking about. And then I read Bill Cosby’s book, which caused me to think about when I saw David Sedaris read from his books in person. And then there was no denying it – the delivery matters at least as much as the words on the page. Screw that up and even the most brilliantly funny story becomes unremarkable.
So I’ve been practicing my acting out. I read my posts aloud before I hit publish. I turn some into podcasts. And I’ll let you in on a little secret – my own stories, the ones I’ve actually lived, become more real to me when I hear them out loud in my own voice. I choke up, cry, laugh, and get angry. I feel the weight of the words in my mouth and their gravity on my shoulders. The performance of my stories, even just to myself in the mirror, has caused me to occasionally change some of the wording. Once I passed that milestone, I knew for certain that Jeff was right.
Delivery matters more than we realize. It is a high art.
Christa Avampato 