Month: November 2012

gifts, happiness, love, peace

Leap: For the Happiness of Others

Christa Avampato

“One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: The only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.” ~ William Carlos Williams, American poet and physician

In this season of gift giving and buying, the idea of “it is better to give than receive” runs through my mind. The follow-up to this idea is “it’s best to give and to receive because when you receive, you give someone else the opportunity to give.”

For many of us, receiving is difficult. In order to fully receive, we need to leave our hearts open. We must let ourselves be vulnerable. On occasion, we receive from others because we have asked for help and support – another tall order for many of us who take pride in our independence and strength.

I am someone who once believed I was an island. I often felt like one not because I wanted to, but because I needed that toughness, that independence, to get through my days. It’s not true anymore, though old habits die hard. Every once in a great while, I still catch myself closing off at exactly the moment when I should remain the most open and receptive. I reverse course quickly but it’s not without effort.

If this sounds familiar, here’s what’s helped me: I know the joy I feel when I serve others. It brings a deep peace and purpose to my actions. It’s one of the very best feelings that I know and I try to bring it into my life every day, even several times a day if I can swing it. I want everyone to share in this feeling, to get that same sense of giddy happiness that comes from giving to others. Every giver needs a receiver.

It’s wonderful to be an angel to someone, to provide them with exactly what they need at exactly the moment that they need it. But angels come in many different forms. Sometimes, to be angel to someone else you need to be able to receive what they have to give, what they have to offer. Your sincere smile and thank you is exactly what they need to feel valued, appreciated, and useful. And we all want to feel useful. We all want to feel like we matter.

This holiday season you only need one recipe to feel the happiness that we all deserve: let others matter. Give and receive in equal quantities. Play both roles. Appreciate others and allow others to appreciate you. Love and be loved.

fear, happiness, love

Leap: Don’t Hold Back

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.” ~ Barbara De Angelis

Put yourself out there. In your relationships, in your job, in your community. You have nothing to lose. Things may not go the way you want them to go and you risk a bit of embarrassment or disappointment. Here’s what’s certain: if you hold back and don’t do something you want to do you will most definitely be disappointed. Worse than that, you’ll have regret. A lot of it.

If you care about something or someone, show it and say it. Make it known. I’d rather be rejected 100 times over than caught up in my shell out of fear. Sometimes we think we’re saving ourselves by holding back but what exactly is it that we’re savings ourselves from? A life fully lived? Learning? Authenticity? Joy?

Here’s the rub: everything we have, everything we feel is temporary. As far as I know, when our crack at life is over, we can’t take any of it with us. It will all fall away. With that in mind, I do everything I can to be as happy as I can as often as possible. I’ll risk some sadness, I’ll actually take the risk of a lot of sadness, in order to have a shot at a life full of meaning, purpose, and service. And I do what I can to bring others along, too.

I’ve lived in the land of holding back and I’ve lived in the land of loving, and I’ll tell you this – loving is always better.

adventure, learning, time, work

Leap: Even Hell Has Something to Offer Us

Christa Avampato
Wisdom from a bottle cap, courtesy of Pinterest.

“If you’re going to go through hell I suggest you come back learning something.” ~ Drew Barrymore

As I approach the six month mark of my freelance life, I’m continuing to interview for additional contract work. Last week I was at an interview where someone commented about my ill-fated timing of joining a financial services firm in August of 2008. I joined 5 weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed and hell broke loose in the financial markets. I was given two months, $200,000, and told to get a product out the door to customers by Thanksgiving or I would be fired. (These were my VP’s actual words. I’m happy to report he’s no longer with the company wreaking havoc.)

To be clear, it was an awful time for everyone. Whether you lost your job or kept your job, no one was having fun. In that moment, I had to make a choice. I could be terrified of joining the deep ranks of unemployment or I could vow to learn something amidst the chaos and uncertainty. Through no planning on my part, I had a front row seat to the recession whether I liked it or not. It was a tremendous, if strenuous, period of personal and professional growth.

In the depths of the recession, I sowed the seeds that ultimately allowed me to try my hand at this freelance life. Without that time of great difficulty, I might still be whiling away my time in cubicle land simply out of comfort. This isn’t a bad thing; it just isn’t the right thing for me. The discomfort I experienced in that job caused me to build a new plan. I am meant to walk a different path and it isn’t better than working at a big corporation. It’s only better for me.

I wouldn’t wish those days on anyone. There were times that I went to bed crying only to wake up with an even heavier heart. To get through that time, I actually wrote out a list of the positive things about my job and taped it above the lock on my front door so I would actually go to work instead of hiding under my bed. It was a short but poignant list that included items like “you’re getting a paycheck” and “you have health insurance”. Yes, it had actually come down to that, and it was depressing to say the least.

I don’t tell you this because I want you to feel badly for me. I was fine then, I’m fine now, and no matter what, I will always be fine. I tell you this story because I don’t want you to feel alone, ever.

Maybe you’re going through hell now, right this very moment. Maybe you’ve gone through hell several times over. Maybe your days of hell have not yet arrived. As far as I know, everyone who’s ever lived has had at least one royally awful day in their lives. I think when we’re born into this world, we sign some type of contract that requires at least a brush with hardship at some point. It’s a raw deal, I know. I feel your pain, literally and figuratively.

I don’t want to go all Pollyanna on you, mostly because it drives me crazy when people do that to me. You know the type – the people who think that if they don’t talk about tough times that somehow they’re immune to them. (To make lemonade, you actually do have to acknowledge the lemons.) But I do want you to hear a very honest and straightforward truth – without darkness, we never fully appreciate the light. We can’t. Our screwy, beautiful, human minds need contrast in order to drive toward understanding. I wish it weren’t true but I didn’t build the human mind so I refuse to take responsibility for any craziness except my own.

I can extend a very sincere “I hear ya” in your direction. The whole world’s gone crackers. It’s going to continue in that direction and we’re going to get caught in the cross-fire. Some of that’s not our fault and some of it is by our own design. It doesn’t matter. We’re all in it together and while we’re hanging around in this plane of existence, we might as well learn all we can. At every moment, there’s a teaching available to us, some wisdom that is meant for us. Our only job is to tap into that, take note, and use that knowledge at a future, to-be-determined date.

Learn, learn, learn. It’s the only way to keep your sanity, sense of purpose, and stamina. And if we’re going to get to a better tomorrow, we need those three things in great abundance.

creativity, food, work

Leap: The Gravity of Food

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

I can’t stop cooking.

I walk into the produce department at Whole Foods or Westside Market and I breathe easier. My kitchen and its humble tools beckon me away from my laptop. In the past week I’ve made my own chicken stock from scratch for the first time (it is so much better than stock I buy), whipped up a hot and hearty bowl of soup with items I had on-hand, made an entire meal courtesy of my grill pan, and saved some sad-looking apples from the fate of the trash can by quickly turning them into homemade apple sauce.

On Wednesday I was very early to a meeting by Grand Central Station due to an easier-than-expected commute and found myself wandering through the gourmet food market. I couldn’t get enough of all of the interesting hand-made, hand-cut, hand-mixed goodies. For the first time in a long time, I consciously felt all of my senses fully engaged and activated. As my senses opened up, so did my heart. I could have stayed there all afternoon. I was swooning over local food products as if I had a teenage crush. It was….wonderful.

Food memoirs are among my most treasured reads because there is so much history, mystery, and emotion literally folded into the foods we eat. Food and recipes connect us across generations, time zones, and cultures. They are our tie to the past and our gateway to the future.

As I think about future passion projects, I’m wondering how I might position my love of and fascination with food into my professional work. There must be a way. While turning that thought over in mind, I’m going to toddle back over to my stand-up kitchen to see which ingredients are jumping up and down saying “Pick me! Pick me!” Who knows…I may even bake a pie.

adventure, goals

Leap: The Goal of Life

Christa Avampato

I love the sentiment behind this piece of art I found on Pinterest. It’s a mark of a life well and fully lived if at the end our journey our only thought is “WooHoo! What a ride!” That’s certainly the sentiment I’m hoping for.

adventure, creativity, dreams, work

Leap: My Five Month Anniversary of Pursuing Career Magic

Christa Avampato
Taken by Christa Avampato in the West Village, New York City

I snapped this photo last weekend in the West Village in New York City. It struck me that this simple piece of sidewalk art is exactly what I’ve been doing since I left my corporate job 5 months ago today. I’ve diligently kept my eye on doing work that matters and takes full advantage of my experience in and passion for education, health, and service.

This road has not been easy. I’ve turned down a number of very tantalizing opportunities in order to stay true to my mission to live a life of my own design. I’ve cobbled together a string of work opportunities that light me up, that have me jumping out of bed in the morning to get going, and over the next week I’m hoping to add a few more. Despite juggling multiple priorities, doing joyful work has actually made me feel more at ease with my calendar. Somehow, time has expanded.

I once heard someone say that happiness is a warm comfort on a cold night. When I put myself to bed each night, I toss up a silent prayer into the Universe that goes something like this – “Thank you, Universe, for the opportunity to add to the greater good, to do exactly the work I want to do, and to rest safely and securely in the knowledge that today my efforts went toward crafting a better world so we can all have a brighter tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I do know how lucky I am, how blessed I am. So long as I have breath in my lungs and beats in my heart, I want to keep moving in this direction.”

For 5 months, this prayer has been answered every day without hesitation. And that is its own kind of magic.

sports, yoga

Leap: Join Me Tonight for a Free Yoga Class – Yoga for Cyclists (and Aspiring Cyclists!) at Eastern Mountain Sports

Christa Avampato
Road cyclist via Shutterstock Photo: Vaclav Volrab

Tonight at 7pm I’ll be helping cyclists (and aspiring cyclists) work out the kinks caused by logging long miles on their bikes. If you’re active, you’ll benefit from this class! Come on down to Eastern Mountain Sports Upper West Side location in Manhattan, 2152 Broadway between 75th and 76th Streets. The class is free and open to the public.

Yoga is an effective way to prevent injuries and shorten recovery times for cyclists. I will lead you through a sequence of yoga poses specifically crafted to benefit cyclists to improve posture, increase flexibility, and build strength. You will also learn several breathing techniques as well as a meditation technique that will enhance focus and endurance.

In addition to the free class, you will be able to take advantage of an exclusive shopping deal that night: 20% off Eastern Mountain Sports merchandise and 15% of all other brands.

I’d love to see your smiling faces so I hope you’ll join me!

choices, decision-making, dreams, meditation, yoga

Leap: Everything is Difficult

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Have you ever shied away from doing something because you thought it was too difficult or because someone else told you that what you wanted to do was too hard? This pesky thought creeps into any and every crevice of doubt – about our careers, relationships, passion projects, and any time we are considering a change of any kind. It is the enemy of good decision-making and the only appropriate response to this thought is a loud, strong “Get out and stay out!”

It’s all tough. Everything you want to do in life has challenges. If you are waiting for the seas to part and the obstacles to disintegrate you are wasting your time and undermining your own strength. The path of least resistance that we hear so much about never said anything about a complete lack of resistance.

For a long time I lived with this conflict: I face a lot of challenges in my life and then in yoga class I hear that we shouldn’t struggle because life is supposed to be easy. Then a clear nuisance revealed itself to me. Life is challenging. We are almost always in the midst of difficulty. However, even a troubled road can be traveled with ease.

We can soften around obstacles so that we can navigate our way around them. We can move our attention inward when we need to replenish ourselves after a long day of work. Life may be filled with struggle but that doesn’t mean we have to be strugglers and take on all of the stress and anxiety that comes with that. To travel a hard road, we need strength, courage, stamina, and resilience – all the things that yoga and meditation provide.

So you go right on choosing your deepest, most passionate dreams, regardless of how hard it will be to bring them to life. Be confident in the fact that everything worth doing requires an effort of some kind. The trick is to also find the ease that lets you enjoy the journey and keeps you motivated to stay the course. Need some help with that? Contact me – my pep talks will make that pesky voice of self-doubt head for the hills.

meditation, worry

Leap: Meditation Makes the Mind Whole

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Worry divides the mind.” ~ Max Lucado

Worry is an invention of the mind. What we worry about rarely ever happens. It’s our brain’s way of preparing us for the worst. And while it is helpful to be prepared, there’s a balance to be struck. We don’t want to underestimate the possibilities and not be ready for a situation, and we don’t want to overestimate unfortunate circumstances and drive ourselves into a hysterical mess. Worry is only useful if it helps to keep us safe and a divided mind is no place to seek refuge.

There are some people who place greater value on the right or left brain. The left brain is our analytical powerhouse. The right brain is our creative genius. We need both to live a fully actualized, authentic life. Our days are richer when we can see the big picture and the intricate details. Meditation brings it all together. In fact, I’ve found it to be the only method that brings it all together in an efficient and useful manner.

There are many methods of meditation – observing the breath, the Ham-Sa kriya, object gazing, sound meditation, walking meditation, and the list goes on. The goal of all of the methods is to get us to recognize our own individual existence in relation to the greater universe, and to understand the two are actually one.

We are whole in and of ourselves and we are whole as one giant and beautiful mass of energy and potential. The only trick to meditation is the desire to experience that unity and then to root it back down into our living so that we can share it with others.

experience, humor, time

Leap: We All Start From Zero – A Lesson From My 90-year-old Yoga Student

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Every child begins the world again.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

On Thursday mornings at 10:30am, I teach a Chair Yoga for Seniors class. And these seniors aren’t the newly retired. Most of them are in their 80’s and 90’s and they are as spry as can be. I’m hoping that by teaching this class, a bit of their well-aged spunk will stick with me when I’m (God-willing) their age.

One of these students came up to me last week with a question.

“I’ve got a bit of a nagging injury,” Muriel said to me.

“Okay. What’s that?” I asked, assuming it was something that is common with arthritis or something similar.

“Well, my upper arm around my shoulder area has been hurting for the last few days.”

“Did you sleep on it funny or hit it on something recently.”

“Well, I started playing ping-pong at this place just down the street a little while ago and I’m really getting into it. I’ve played every afternoon for the last week and I think I may have overdone it.”

I had to laugh at myself. Here I was thinking she had some symptom of aging and it’s actually a sports-related injury. I should have known better with this group of active seniors. Muriel is especially effusive about my class. A few weeks ago, she let me know that the meditation portion of the class has been transformational for her.

“I cannot believe how easily peace settles into me now when I’m meditating. I’ve never felt this peaceful in my entire life, and I’ve been alive a long time. I wish I had known about this earlier!”

I was very proud of Muriel and her sore muscles. “Muriel, this is wonderful. This means you’re building strength in your arms, just like when you go to the gym!”

“I’m actually very excited about this ping-pong. It’s so good for me. Check this out,” she said as she flexed her biceps and asked me to feel them. There was a definitive muscle there. “Can you believe it? First time in my life I’ve ever had muscles in my arms. It took me this long to build them!”

I gave her the advice to alternate ice and heat and give herself a bit more rest to heal her shoulder.

“Do you play ping-pong, Christa?”

In truth the only version of ping-pong I’ve ever played is beer pong. “No, I’ve never played proper ping-pong before,” I replied.

“Well, we will have to play some time. I can teach you. When I come to class next week, we’ll set a date and time. This will be marvelous! But we’ll have to get there early in the afternoon when they open. Otherwise, there’s a crowd. And don’t worry, we can play downstairs where it’s less crowded so you won’t feel self-conscious as a newbie.”

And with that, Muriel got her coat and made her way outside into the big, bad world. I thought about Muriel all afternoon and the deep, beautiful lesson she taught me during our conversation.

At every age, there are new experiences waiting for us. Too often, we think old age equates with decline. For my seniors, this couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re bringing newness into their lives all the time – whether that’s through taking a yoga class or building biceps at 90-something years old.

Golden years can certainly be golden. It’s all a matter of perspective, attitude, and the courage it takes to try something new.