I’m trying something new here on Saturdays – a recap post to link together the week’s learnings. I started doing this a weeks ago for my own benefit and then thought it might be beneficial to others. So, here goes:
1.) We are free if we choose to be 2.) If you feel stuck, put your creativity to work to imagine your way out 3.) We can’t shake fear so we might as well befriend it and learn what it has to teach us.
With all of the news reports piling up that are continually causing us to rethink and reconsider our plans, long-term and short-term, it is easy to feel bogged down and to second guess our abilities. I watched a documentary this week that reminded me so powerfully that the real trick of life is to make good of everything that comes our way. Even from the most horrible, tragic circumstances, we can learn and grow and help others do the same.
From http://kidologist.com/2010/11/“In Buddhism, there’s a really beautiful sentiment about strife: The souls that love us the most are the ones who are our greatest adversaries in life.” ~ Brian
Can we be grateful for really difficult circumstances? And I don’t mean being able to articulate sayings like “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” or “every cloud has a silver living”. I’m not asking if we can adopt the idea of “chin up”, “look on the bright side”, or “see opportunity in every difficulty”. I want more than that.
Brian and I have started to talk about the possibility of actually being grateful that my childhood home was in a near-constant state of distress. This isn’t making lemonade out of lemons. This is about actually wanting the lemons. I’m not there yet, but the idea is something that I could never even conceive of before now. If it were in my power, I would go back and change my circumstances. I would roll the dice again, knowing that my life as it is now would not be the same had I grown up in a house with less trauma. I’m still too angry, even after all these years, to let that dream go just yet. I still feel cheated.
I feel that I am moving toward transcendence, very close to being able to release the guilt, shame, remorse, and yes, anger. In order for me to fulfill my dharma, and in turn to release my father from his in this lifetime, I’m going to have to move beyond forgiveness. There is more work to do after forgiveness. In order for both of us to be truly free, I will eventually need to bid my dad’s spirit a fond farewell with a sincere thank you for teaching me exactly what my soul needed to learn, exactly when I needed it. That’s a tough thing to imagine coming to fruition, but I’m going to give it a try.
“You know the rule: If you are falling, dive. Do the thing that has to be done.” ~ Joseph Campbell (given to me by reader, MJ)
“If you have a financial safety net, you’ll always be able to walk away. And that in and of itself will prevent you from having to walk because you can be brutally honest about what you need to stay.” ~ Margaret Heffernan
Being truly honest in the workplace is difficult. Companies have these nasty little things called performance reviews that they can and often do lord over us to get us to fall in line. That is until you just can’t stomach the party line anymore. Some of us have lower tolerances for this than others. Mine is extraordinarily low to nonexistent. Everyone I’ve ever worked with will attest to this, and all of them will say that I am very straight-forward. My favorite description that one of my team mates used a number of years ago to describe me is “tough and fair.”
My mounting frustration at work over the past few months is plainly obvious, to me and to others, and this has been intentional. Authentically, I have to let others know when something just isn’t working. And finally I just decided something had to change, or I had to walk – or dive as Joseph Campbell would say. I am just done with the current situation, and during my mid-year review this week I expressed that. No anger or cynicism. Just a simple statement – “I’m done.” It needed to be said for my own health and the health of the whole system.
This kind of statement is alarming to most because a) few people speak that plainly at work and b) it takes a lot for most people to get to this point. It was a risk certainly, though with Margaret Heffernan’s brilliant advice and my saving abilities, I have the luxury, and I mean luxury to the highest degree for which I am very grateful!, to be able to back it up. I can walk if I need to or want to, and so I can lay out very clearly why improvement needs to be made quickly or we need to part ways.
I had my doubts about whether anything could or would be done in enough time, though I was pleasantly surprised to show up today and find that a shift was put into place overnight. I have some strong beliefs about improvement – 1) it’s a continuous process, 2) it’s always possible, and 3) it’s important to give people a chance to try. It’s incumbent upon us to lay out our frustrations clearly and succinctly, with possible solutions. It’s incumbent upon leaders to get to the bottom of those frustrations and try to solve the systematic problems that cause them. And if those leaders show a genuine effort in trying to improve, I think they deserve a chance to give it a whirl on our behalf. A former boss of mine once told me that it’s important to let people apologize for their mistakes. I’d extend that same kind of sentiment to improvement, too.
So, we’ll see how it goes. We’ll see if the change sticks and if this situation can be turned around, at least in the short-term. Clearly there is something for me to learn in this latest twist in the story. I promise to keep you updated.
“The important thing, it seems to me, is that we believe in the possibilities of one another.” ~ Feo Aladag, Director of When We Leave, to Cinema Without Borders
The dream
In the dream I was seated in a very dark room, so dark that I actually wasn’t able to see anything. I didn’t feel frightened or alarmed in any way. It was as if I was just sitting cross-legged on the floor and with my closed eyes had blocked out all the light. There was a very clear voice, not my own and not belonging to anyone I recognized. The only thing I was certain of is that the voice was male.
Very clearly and calmly that voice said to me, “You’re not as penned in as you think.” I started on why I need to keep my day job with the fact of my pesky student loans right at the top of the list. Then the voice asked me to really think about that reason and see if it’s true. And just like that, the dream ended and I woke up.
A lesson from my younger self
I thought about my students loans. While the total dollar amount is higher than I’d like, the monthly payment is lower than my student loan payment was when I first graduated from undergrad in 1998. And what did I do in 1998? I went running off to New York City to chase a crazy dream of working on Broadway shows. I didn’t move here, get a day job, and chase my dream on the side. I went for it, both feet in. It was difficult, I struggled, and there were plenty of days when I wondered what I was really doing. When those days hit, I just buckled down, showed up, and kept going because moving forward was the only thing I knew how to do.
Maybe the voice in my dream had a point. Maybe it is time for me to let go of the guideline that I have to pay off my student loans before I can leave a stable day job. If we want to live extraordinary lives, then we can’t spend all our days living our dreams on the side. The only box we are really in is the one we build around ourselves; we’re not as penned in as we may feel. We have to believe in our own possibilities and the possibilities of one another.
Change is Unavoidable
I spend my weekdays at a company that needs transformative change. It’s a lot to ask – the company has been around for over a century and is in the financial services space. There are a lot of very well-intentioned people there who are extremely intelligent and talented. The trouble is that those people either A) don’t want to rock the boat or B) have a hard time cutting through the bureaucracy of a siloed, hierarchical organization. The even larger trouble is that movers and shakers are not rewarded at this company; at best, they’re given titles that have words like “special projects” in them and at worst, they’re made so frustrated by the system that they leave for greener, or at least flatter, pastures.
Day Job Status
I think I’m in group B and I might be in the frustrated camp, too. (Yes, yogis get frustrated, too, and I think it’s a healthy emotion that should be aired in order to get through it. Some at my company disagree.) As I was out walking Phin yesterday, I started to think about all of the companies that I interact with regularly and greatly admire – Google, Apple, Netflix, Disney / Pixar, Amazon, media outlets that were founded as network television and newspapers. I realized all of them had a glaring commonality: their new lines of business were in great opposition to their existing lines of business. Courageous individuals within these companies saw the future of their industries, wanted to play a key role in that future, and so they championed new ideas, even if those ideas seemed contradictory to the ideas these companies were founded upon.
Frustration Takes a Holiday
With that insight, my frustration with my day job melted. I realized that I just won’t be there that much longer unless some hefty cultural changes quickly make their way through the chain. As Brian always tells me, “Christa, you don’t get to decide when you’re done. One day you wake up and you have to make a change in that instant.”
Can You Change Fast Enough?
Change is a constant hum under all of our daily activities. There’s no escaping it, personally or professionally. The best we can do is be out ahead of it and be able to roll with it once it arrives. There are companies that do that; there are individuals who do that. It’s not easy work, but they are the ones who survive and thrive in the long-run. While I work for someone else as Compass Yoga gets off the ground, I’d like to be with a company that understands that our demise is imminent. It’s just a question of whether that demise happens to us, or with us.
I hadn’t heard about the doomsday movement set to begin today, 5/21/11, until my pal, Jennilyn, sent around an invite for a dance party celebrating the last day of the world. My immediate response was, “If the world is coming to an end, I’m going out dancing.” Still, I’m taking this moment in time to log some of my favorite quotes about meaningful living, and hope that 5/21/11 begins a different kind of movement for all of us, one of rebirth and renewed purpose, rather than the beginning of the end:
“You have to be proud of yourself because sometimes you’re all you’ve got.” ~ that poet from the comics, Denis the Menace
“You have to prepare to be lucky.” ~ Joan Ganz Cooney, Founder of the Sesame Workshop
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear,our presence automatically liberates others.” ~ Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
“If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you.” ~ Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace
“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.” ~ Mister Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers
“Happiness is a warm puppy.” ~ Charles Schultz via his famous character, Charlie Brown
“Courage means being scared to death…and saddling up anyway.” ~ John Wayne
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’.” ~ Mary Anne Radmacher
“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.” ~ Robert Frost
“Become the sky…Walk out like someone suddenly born into color…Let the beauty we love be what we do…There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” ~ Rumi
I plan to be here tomorrow because my work is not yet done. I hope you’ll join me.
I love having an inside scoop – Sam Odio and his stellar team at Divvyshot built such an elegant solution for uploading photos that Facebook just acquired them. Well done, Sam and company!
“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” ~ A. A. Milne
“Judgment stops thought.” ~ Mr. Dietrich, my 9th grade English teacher
My 9th grade English teacher, Mr. Dietrich, was an odd guy, and at first I thought he was a terrible teacher. He did a module of lessons with us that had nothing to do with English. Because I loved English, I was irritated. I expected to be writing and reading classics. Instead, he taught us life lessons that 20 years later are still top of mind for me.
Instead, we learned about the work of Salvador Dali (he always paints mountains into his works). He told us we should get as far into a novel as we can upon first reading so we get engaged quickly and finish it. He encouraged us to read every time we’re waiting in line (to this day I always have a book with me). I still remember the definition of a quaff because of the funny way he explained it – it’s when you wake up at 1:00am and think you could drink a gallon of water. He challenged us to lie in bed motionless, and see if we could tell where our toes are without looking. (We have no idea where they are until we move them – welcome to the idea of the mind-body connection.)
The most important lesson I learned in that class is that judgment stops thought. So as crazy as I thought he was to teach us these things in English class, they’ve stuck with me all these years and I think about them and action them in my life on a regular basis. My first impression of Mr. Dietrich was wrong – he just may have been the best high school teacher I had. He wasn’t a weed; he was flower. I just needed to get to know him.
I’m a fairly good judge of character, though some times I get it wrong. I trust some people too readily, and don’t trust others enough upon first glance. There are times that these missteps have caused me to miss out on someone really incredible, and there are times when I’ve been deeply hurt by people who turned out to be different than I first imagined them to be. Most of the time, I keep Mr. Dietrich’s advice about judgment close to my heart. His lesson of withholding judgment as long as possible serves us well. It leaves our minds open to different scenarios and possibilities, allowing us more time and evidence to make a sound decision.
Now that I think of it, I owe Mr. Dietrich a card to thank him for showing me that English class was more than just reading the classics and writing essays. He taught me some enormous life lessons that have stuck with me 20 years later, that I’m sure I will be putting to good use for another 20 years into the future. If we can withhold judgment when we glance at the weeds of our lives, I’m confident that many of those weeds will turn to flowers. And maybe a few of those flowers will show their weed-y side sooner rather than later, saving us some heartache down the line. The important thing to remember is that to truly know something or someone we have to give it more than a first glance. Sound judgment requires more than a first impression – it requires a second chance.
On the cartoon Popeye, Whimpy is a character who always has a hankering for a hamburger. His most famous line, which he repeats often, is “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” He loves his burgers, but he never seems to have the money to pay for them when his craving strikes. And he always seems to find some kind soul to give him the burger, with the promise of paying later on.
Today when I went out to get my sandwich at lunch time, I felt a bit like Whimpy. I ordered without realizing that they don’t take American Express. I had only brought my Amex cards along with me and left the rest of my wallet at my desk. I told the man behind the counter that I wouldn’t be able to take the sandwich.
“No worries. You take the sandwich now and just pay me later.”
“Huh?” I said.
“Take the sandwich, enjoy your lunch, and bring me the money later,” he repeated.
“Really?” I asked.
“Really,” he said.
This man had never seen me before – I rarely go to this cafe for a sandwich. Of course I brought him the money as soon as I finished my sandwich. He didn’t seem surprised to see me. I thanked him, and told him that he made my day. He just smiled humbly, and wished me a good weekend. It was nice to be reminded that there’s still such a thing as trust among strangers. And I think the world is better off for it.
Since Saturday, my mind has been a giant whirlwind of Sanskrit, anatomy, sacred Hindu texts, new technologies, and economic headlines. With my yoga teacher training underway and closing out my second week at my new job, I feel like my mind is gaining mass at an alarming rate. It sounds like I should be exhausted when in fact I’m skipping around my apartment at nearly 11PM. I feel myself radiating.
This feeling of lightness, of boundless energy, comes from living out in the world what I feel in my heart. When we live what we love our life’s activities builds up our stamina and creativity. They give us more than they take away. We become a product, a temple, of happiness. And I gotta tell ya, it feels pretty darn fantastic.
So, yes, by training and trade, I am a product developer. In life, we are all product developers. The products, our hearts, souls, minds, bodies, want and need to be developed. For me, that meant getting a new job doing work I love and finally getting to that full yoga teaching certification I’ve wanted for a number of years. And once those two things are complete, I’ll find something else. I’ll take a class on collage. I’ll improve my Spanish. I’ll continue my quest to make a difference in public education. I’ll learn to play the piano. Product development is a deeply personal, never-ending process. And that’s the real beauty of it – there is always more to do, more to learn, more impact to make, just around the bend. Keep going.
Christa Avampato 