Author: Christa Avampato

The short of it: Writer. Health, education, and art advocate. Theater and film producer. Visual artist. Product geek. Proud alumnae of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (MBA). Inspired by ancient wisdom & modern tech. Proliferator of goodness. Opener of doors. Friend to animals. Fan of creative work in all its wondrous forms. I use my business skills to create passion projects that build a better world. I’ve been called the happiest New Yorker, and I try hard to live up to that title every day. The long of it: My career has stretched across Capitol Hill, Broadway theatre, education, nonprofit fundraising, health and wellness, and Fortune 500 companies in retail, media, entertainment, technology, and financial services. I’ve been a product developer and product manager, theater manager, strategic consultant, marketer, voice over artist, , teacher, and fundraiser. I use my business and storytelling to support and sustain passion projects that build a better world. In every experience, I’ve used my sense of and respect for elegant design to develop meaningful products, services, programs, and events. While building a business career, I also built a strong portfolio as a journalist, novelist, freelance writer, interviewer, presenter, and public speaker. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS.org, Boston.com, Royal Media Partners publications, and The Motley Fool on a wide range of topics including business, technology, science, health, education, culture, and lifestyle. I have also been an invited speaker at SXSW, Teach for America, Avon headquarters, Games for Change, NYU, Columbia University, Hunter College, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The first book in my young adult book series, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was acquired by a publisher and launched in November 2017. I’m currently working on the second book in the series. A recovering multi-tasker, I’m equally at home in front of my Mac, on my yoga mat, walking my rescue dog, Phineas, traveling with a purpose, or practicing the high-art of people watching. I also cut up small bits of paper and put them back together as a collage artist. My company: I’m bringing together all of my business and creative career paths as the Founder of Double or Nothing Media: • I craft products, programs, and projects that make a difference; • I build the business plans that make what I craft financially sustainable; • I tell the stories that matter about the people, places, and products that inspire me. Follow my adventures on Twitter at https://twitter.com/christanyc and Instagram at https://instagram.com/christarosenyc.
change, fear

Leap: Don’t Look Down

Christa Avampato

This past week, I started to ask for more practical advice on making my leap – different financial planning tools (personal and professional), health insurance, etc. These items and the options they present take a good deal of planning and preparation and I wanted to start to collect as much data as I can from people whom I deeply respect and admire for the leaps they’ve taken in their own lives.

One of the very best pearls of wisdom I got had nothing to do with the practical nuts and bolts I am investigating, and yet it affects every decision I make in my leap. My friend, Tre, said, “Don’t look down.” It stopped me in my tracks because all of a sudden I realized that all I’ve been doing the last few weeks is looking down, and my fear is getting the best of me in the process.

When we’re about to do something scary, it’s natural that our focus directs to the fearful outcome. And then we begin to lose our confidence, doubt our convictions, shrink from opportunity. The cost seems too great to go after what we really want and what we’re afraid we can’t have.

Pick up your head and look forward. It’s the only thing that’s going to help us balance our fear with a sense of possibility. And that possibility is the only thing that makes the fear worthwhile.

sports, yoga

Leap: The New York Giants Take Up Yoga in Preparation for the Super Bowl

Christa Avampato
New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning (10) stretches during practice for the NFL Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis February 2, 2012. The New York Giants will play the New England Patriots on February 5. REUTERS/Jeff Haynes

That’s right – the Giants are getting in their Warriors, Down Dogs, and a few Sun Salutations as they prepare for their victory today in Indiana. Actually, they’ve been getting their yoga on all season long thanks to their yoga teacher, Gwen Lawrence. Building strength, gaining flexibility, and honing focus – all benefits of yoga, all needed by pro football players under a tremendous amount of pressure to perform.

So today as you watch Eli Manning pull that football back by his ear in search of the perfect pass to lead his team to victory, you can be sure he’s in that zone of pure concentration and his yoga practice helped him get. See what it can do for you, too, by heading to a free Compass Yoga class. We’d love to share the gift of the practice that help Eli and his teammates perform so well.

Go Giants!

adventure, career, work

Leap: Go Against the Tide of Bland

Christa Avampato
Photo by Alice Lily

“Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?” ~ Mark Twain

Brian has been counseling me now for several years about my confusion around people who phone it in, people who just take what life gives them, shrug their shoulders, and deal with it. Life happens to these people. I meet them, talk to them, and try to understand how they can get through life without ever really figuring out what this life is meant to be for them. Bland is a flavor that’s just fine for them. I think they’re missing out, and that we’re missing out on the benefit of their special gift. They think I try to hard, care too much, and set myself up for constant disappointment with my high standards.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When I get to the end of my days, I want to look back and enjoy all of the interests I got to explore all over again. I want to appreciate the value that I brought to the world and feel the warm glow of knowing that many lives were made better because I was able to help them. That’s a tall order, and it’s not something that happens through low expectations. It happens for people who are willing to go out on a limb, push toward the edge, and do the work that lights them up with a sense of passion and purpose.

Life hands us a lot of garbage, a lot of opportunities to do things that just don’t matter. Put those aside. That’s not your work to do. Demand excellence. With a bit of creativity and a lot of courage to follow our convictions, there is so much good work to do in this world. And we have the ability to do get it done. Don’t settle.

teaching, yoga

Leap: Reflections on My Yoga Beginning at ISHTA

Christa Avampato

“Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.” ~ Rumi

This week I began the next leg of my yoga teacher journey with ISHTA. Just entering the studio and taking a seat in the back of the room, I felt a vibration there, an energy of the highest order. It’s a place of supreme acceptance, growth, possibility, and support. It is no accident that on a day when every hour at work seemed to break me down, I would walk into this studio and find the beginnings of another way. One of my fellow teachers termed it as the idea of “a return to wholeness.” And that’s exactly how I felt in that space and in that time, whole.

What I am going through in my 9-5 is a form of tapas, a wringing out or burning away, so that I am ready to absorb the energy of a new place, a place better suited to help me operate at the peak of my authenticity. The warm glow of the lights created the perfect balance with the cool cerulean door at the back of the ISHTA studio where we were all huddled together for our first class.

Wendy Newton, our ISHTA teacher, encouraged us to recognize that our only job in this training, and even in life, is to do our practice, the one that opens us up to yoga so that we can be receptive to our teaching. And this teaching is meant for us, and only us, and it is different for everyone. We are each here on this planet, at this time, to learn something quite specific, and our yoga can lead us to that place. It is a particular teaching, taught in a particular way, that suits our particular soul through this leg of the adventure. We must go in search of it, while also slowing down enough to let it find us.

Rumi, I have found my way to the other side.

business, career, creativity, job, journey, work

Leap: Stop Digging Trenches

Christa Avampato

“The only explicit lesson I got from my father was when I was not doing very well in school, and he had a little chat with me and said, “You know, there are people who work for me who dig trenches, and there are people who are professionals, and if you keep going the way you’re going, you’re going to be digging trenches for the rest of your life.” So that shook me up.” ~ Harry West, C.E.O. of Continuum, an innovation design consulting firm

Harry West was featured in the New York Times on Sunday in their corner office section, a weekly features that attempts to get inside the mind of a top executive. Harry’s statement above hit me like a punch in the gut. My education is what saved me, what lifted me up out of the situation I grew up in, and made my studies, travel, and the life experiences I treasure possible. Though I the hard lessons from very lean times are always with me, on occasion I need to remind myself that I am now on much more solid ground. At one point, I had to dig trenches because I had to start somewhere and there were few options for me. That’s not the case anymore. I’ve done my fair share of trench digging and it’s time to put down the shovel.

I don’t mean this to say that I’m done working hard. I hope I’m never done working hard, and if it ever looks as if I’m letting up on my relentless pursuit to go further, I hope you’ll force me to snap out of it. At some point, we need to pick our heads up, take a look outside, and find the thing that lights us up. Life is so incredibly short. We’re here for just a handful of years and we can’t spend it all in the trench.

The point of digging trenches it not to perfect that craft – it’s to lay the ground work for something that homage to the light within you. Learn what it feels like to dig one, and dig one well, and then figure out why on Earth that trench was so important in the first place. There must be something you want to build that makes good use of it, that wraps up your experiences and makes meaning of them. No one else can do that work – only you. Get after it.

creativity, design

Leap: How to solve a problem with the style of designer Marc Newson

Christa Avampato
Marc Newson

This weekend, the New York Times Magazine featured Marc Newson, the most well-known and prolific living industrial designer. Though I’ve been a fan of his work for years, I never knew much about his back story or design methodology. If anything, we seemed to me to be someone who operated on his own plane, operating from his own inner compass rather than through anything he learned in school or through his childhood. While this perception is largely correct, he opened up to journalist Chip Brown about the mechanics of his mind and creativity.”The way I work is to try to get the idea out of my head,” said Newson.

Beginning Friday night, I started to wrestle with an idea for a yoga and meditation workshop I’ll be giving in March for 160 hospice volunteers at MJHS. I consulted books, my teacher training materials, and personal experience. Nothing seemed to strike me as inspired or valuable enough for this incredibly opportunity. So I took Newson’s advice and I forgot about it.

Sure enough on Sunday morning I woke up brimming with ideas. All of a sudden the world of possibility cracked open, and I came up with ideas for this workshop as well as how to craft a set of workshops that could be offered in medical school, healthcare conferences, hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, schools of social work, and yoga studios. I’m all for focused effort, but sometimes it helps to just take a break and have faith that the answer will rise in its own time.

creativity, entrepreneurship, opportunity

Leap: The opportunity habit

Christa Avampato

“For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.” ~ C.S. Lewis

In this economy, it’s easy to look around and see miles and miles of space lacking in opportunity. But what’s really happened is that the opportunity of today has a different face than the opportunity before this latest recession touched down. We cannot look for it with the same methods, in the same places, and with the same lens.

The opportunity before was often found in big companies, in big cities, and by following the rules outlined for us. Get a pedigree education, go into a corporate training program as a well-respected company, and climb, climb, climb. Now, the greatest opportunities are discovered within our frustrations, solved by our imaginations, and brought to life with our own two hands.

I flip through the New York Times every day – online version during the week, paper version on the weekend – and mark, snip, and save everything that has some kind of future relevance for Compass Yoga. I do the same with a ludicrous number of magazine, websites, newsletters, and any number of social media channels. Leads on sources for potential funding, programming, partnerships, and smarter ways of working are piling up. And the more I find, the more there are.

Creativity is addictive, endless, and constant, if only we begin to trot down the path to solve something that bothers us with a solution that benefits the greater good.

change, economy, gratitude, hope

Leap: The blessing of the recession

Christa Avampato

“Lasting change happens when people see for themselves that a different way of life is more fulfilling than their present one.” ~ Eknath Easwaran

I’ve been thinking a lot about lasting change. We’re much more often faced with changes that happen in fits and spurts, drop by drop. On occasion we get a chance to experience rapid, dramatic change. It throws us for a loop, confounds and confuses us, until we again find our way back to shore footing. But that rediscovered shore footing is often on different ground.

It’s often said that it takes 30 days of consistent, consecutive effort to create a new habit or break an old one. We’ve been in this tough economy, with its sometimes crushing and sometimes liberating lessons, for over 4 years. Our way of thinking about our future has been radically transformed. It’s taught me that an income earned from one source is the definition of instability. It’s taught me that bringing new people into our lives, having new experiences, and consistently pushing ourselves to learn something new are the surest ways of staying relevant in changing times. It’s taught me that my future is safest in my own two capable hands.

I think about my life pre-December 2007 and my life now. I’m shocked by the difference in me and in the world. And though these intervening years have been challenging on so many levels, I’d go back and live them all over again, exactly the same way, because I’m more in love with life now than I have ever been before. Life’s tough, but we’re tougher, and better off for having learned the hard lessons of this time. We’ve learned to value the now, in every moment.

adventure, choices, decision-making

Leap: Your Path is Up to You

Christa Avampato

“Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking.” ~ Antonio Machado

A path is a nice idea. We see it laid out before us, unfolding one glorious step at a time, and all we have to do is go along for the ride. Paths I’ve found are rarely given. They’re made. We make them so by paving them ourselves.

This can feel paralyzing at first. If everything is up to me, then where do I begin? How do I know what to do first, second, and third? What happens if I get lost or run out of energy? What if the way I’m heading is not the way I want to go?

And here’s an unappreciated truth about way-finding in life: we all start at zero. No one in this world was ever born walking. We spent time learning to roll over, pushing ourselves up, scooting, crawling, walking, and running. No one knows what you should do. There are examples and models that you can learn from, maybe even borrow from. But no one has ever lived your exact circumstances at this moment in time. You get to choose where, how, and with whom you spend your time.

You are an original by design, and so is your path. Create it.

choices, creativity, decision-making, stress

Leap: The Monkey Mind and The Inner Sage Can Walk Together

Christa Avampato

When we’re in a funk, it can be tough to pick our heads up and re-energize. When we’re down and out, sometimes it feels easier to stay that way. And for a while, I think that’s true. Every once in a while we do have the right to wallow a bit when something doesn’t go our way. The opportune word is “bit”.

Throwing a pity party
I have a friend who gives herself exactly 24 hours of serious self-pity when true disaster finds its way to her door – she turns on the music she only listens to when she really needs to bawl her eyes out, pours herself a stiff drinks, dives into a carton of ice cream, and lets herself feel truly crummy. And 24 hours later she is required to pick herself up, dust herself off, and leave the house. No excuses.

That’s how I felt last week on a particularly low day. I didn’t follow my friend’s course of action, though I have absolutely no qualms with it. Having lived with insomnia for many years, I give myself the chance to have one night of less than fantastic sleep. I’ll let my challenges toss and tumble through my mind at any speed they wish and I don’t stand in their way. As a yoga and meditation teachers who often focuses classes on taming the monkey mind, that skipping, jumping, frantic mind whirr we can all find ourselves in from time to time, I could stop the mania and get some rest. The monkey mind gets its way for one night and one night only. And here’s why:

The monkey mind has a voice…
When we’re unsettled, rattled, and confused, there’s a reason for it. Usually we’re reacting, understandably, to some past experience and our minds are trying to equate our current situation with a past situation in order to search for solutions. There are a lot of valuable lessons in this process – the monkey mind never forgets the emotion caused by feeling unsettled and with good reason. In its own special way it is trying to protect us, spare us from past discomforts. Let it play its part.

and it’s persistent.
If you don’t let the monkey mind have its say, it will eventually force you into listening. Think about a child who doesn’t get enough exercise. He will wind himself up and up and up until he finds a way to release his energy. So let him go run around in the park and give his energy a productive outlet. Keep him cooped up inside and he’s likely to start developing all kinds of unfortunate behaviors and feelings. And he should. Stress needs to be exercised so we can get past it. Mind chatter is no different, and if you listen closely you’re likely to find some small kernel of truth that begins the process of reinvention.

What comes of chatter
In my case, my properly exercised mind chatter transforms into fearlessness. I attempt to decision-tree my way through just about every challenge I face. “I could do this or that, and this action will lead to this consequence, and that action will lead to that consequence, which means I’ll need to….” You see what I’m saying.

So I let my inner decision-tree maker have her fun in the sun. She smooths out the sandy surface, gets out a stick, and goes to town etching her branches in the sand all the way down the beach. She gets one night to crank it all out and then the next morning that tide of reason is coming in to soften it up and wash the worry away. And then she toddles off to bed, spent but in a good way. She said her piece and wrote out all her fears. I listened carefully, and then I moved forward.

The meditation that was a long time coming
It took a long time for me to develop this tool, this imagery, and use it in my daily meditation whenever I feel any sense of anxiety. For many years, I knew nothing but a monkey mind and then for several more years I tried very hard to get her to shut up. Neither approach worked. The balance – energy and peace – is so much more valuable and in moments of high stress I remember that the stress is there for a reason. It has a purpose. It has something to teach me. We can take the concerned many of the monkey mind and distill them down to the vital few of the inner sage. Give the two the chance to walk together.

That’s how decision-making works best: lay it all out on the table, no judgements passed. The real heart of the matter is hidden in there somewhere. Give yourself the chance to explore your thoughts, really peel each layer back, and see what you find. The truths buried in there may surprise you.