“There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter the way you meet them.” ~ Phyllis Bottome
Challenges and difficulties abound in our lives and in the world. We can run from them for a while, but they’re patient. They will wait us out with dogged determination. They never get tired. They never give up. They are relentless.
Eventually, we have no choice but to get moving, to chip away at them bit by bit until they reach a manageable size. This work of whittling is incredibly important. Do not underestimate it.You may think you aren’t doing enough; you make think that you are one person fighting to turn a much larger tide. Don’t give up. Something amazing is about to happen.
You have to start somewhere and the miraculous thing is that once you start to work on a challenge, you will find that there are other people in the world working on the same difficulty. You can then join forces and the whittling begins to move faster. Many hands make light the load. And there’s no shortage of loads in this world that need more hands, and hearts. Find the one that draws you in and just do your part. I promise you that it is enough.
Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford as George and Louise Jefferson
It wasn’t until much later that I realized how revolutionary his character of George Jefferson was at the time. While he was making all of us laugh, he tore down social barriers and prejudices that existed for centuries in this country. A black entrepreneur who wasn’t intimidated by anyone, least of all his prejudiced white neighbor? That was a revelation, particularly to have it showcased on network television. His co-star, Isabel Sanford, was the first (and so far, the only) Black actress to win a Lead Actress Emmy Award (for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 1981.) Clearly, we still have a long way to go.
A South Philly native, Sherman Hemsley passed away from natural causes on Tuesday. His bravery and strength, his ability to creatively challenge the conventions of his time through his own performances, has cemented his contribution in the performing arts. As my sister, Weez, so beautifully said, “He finally got that deluxe apartment in the sky.” R.I.P. to another Trailblazer who is gone too soon.
Thanks to my friend, Trish, for sending me this photo this week!
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”~ Anaïs Nin
Today is that day for me. After many months of thinking about taking the leap into full-time entrepreneurship, I’m ready to go. My desk is clear, my email inbox is empty, my to-do list is done, and I’ve said all of my good-byes (which are really more see-you-laters.) Now there is nothing left to do except leap. June 15th will be forever etched in my mind as the day when I chose to be free, the day I chose to take the leap and build my wings on the way down.
I had an incredible run during the toughest economy we’ve ever faced. For 4 years I had a front row seat to the economic crisis – its unraveling and its knitting back together, albeit more loosely and in a different form. I met some of the very best people I’ve ever encountered, and some of the worst. I learned from all of them and will be forever grateful to each for helping me to find this new path, my path. I leave my corporate job with a lot of heart for the company and the people, and even more gratitude.
As Milan Kundera so brilliantly wrote, I now understand what it means to experience the unbearable lightness of being. That is exactly how I feel – as if I don’t even need wings, as if the wind will just rise up and allow me to float to the other side. It’s so empowering to take my future into my own hands. I feel like I could just tear my dreams right out of the sky and plant them here on Earth. Like Adele, I could set fire to the rain. Freedom feels that good.
And to all of you, I owe an enormous thank you. Ever since I started this blog 5 years ago, ever since I set the New Year’s resolution 6 months ago to make this leap, you have been cheering me on and offering up your own stories – through comments, emails, tweets, texts, and conversations online and off. I wish there was a way to adequately say thank you. There isn’t. The best I can do is make the most out of this new road and take you all right along with me.
Perhaps I have a serious case of rose colored-glasses but I actually think I look younger since giving my notice at work.
Tomorrow will be my last day at my job before jumping off the cliff to work for myself. I keep waiting to bolt upright out of bed in a total panic. A funny thing keeps happening: the closer I get to the goal, the more solid I feel in the decision. I’ve never felt so sure of my path and I have to admit that there is a lightness creeping into my being. I’m walking taller; my mind and heart are opening in ways I never thought possible.
After so many years of looking around for the perfect job, I finally understand that creating that job is up to me. It’s empowering to be firmly in the driver’s seat and to have an unexplainable trust in the wisdom of the Universe to work out the details. All I had to do was commit, show up, and be prepared to take the journey. Come along with me – I can’t wait to see what lies on the other side.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”~ Arundhati Roy via Daily Good
Do you hear that? It’s the sound of change whispering in your ear and it’s not taking no for an answer.
One unexpected consequence of taking a leap into the new future of a career by my own design is that I now want to take everyone I know right along with me. Since giving my notice at work, the overwhelming number of responses have fallen into the following 2 categories:
1.) “I wish I could do that.”
2.) “I want to do that, too. Can you help me figure out how? I need some inspiration.”
My answer to #1 is, you can. My answer to #2 is, yes of course I’ll help you. I’ve also been so pleased to hear that so many others are planning their own leaps and are on the path to launch in the not-too-distant future. I couldn’t be happier for them because I know what awaits and while that carries its own risks and stresses, it’s pretty damn amazing to feel the flood of creativity that follows the leap.
The new world of how to merge our greatest passions with how we earn a living has been around for a long time but she is gaining steam now thanks to technology and our own evolution. She’s heading your way. Be ready. (HINT:Chris Guillebeau‘s new book $100 Startup will help you prepare for this brave new world of work. Review coming soon…)
“Sometimes when things are falling apart, they may actually be falling into place.” ~ Marilyn Monroe
I went to meditation class on Monday night and settled in to my seat as I’ve done many times before. Nothing seemed unusual about the beginning of my practice but I was in for a roller coaster of surprises. This is a short story about riding the wave, never giving in, and committing to the long haul.
In a couple of weeks I’m meeting with an accountant to get myself set up as a corporation as I transition into doing more freelance work. I need to come up with a name for my company and I’ve been running up against a wall because of some underlying angst. Since making the leap last week, I’ve been wrestling with how to reconcile my professional interests in product development, writing, and teaching yoga under one corporate roof. I hoped that my meditation class would bring about some inspiration.
As soon as I settled down and closed my eyes, I knew something was wrong. In less than a minute my eyes were tearing up and tears were rolling down my face. My whole body began to feel very heavy and weak, my legs were falling asleep, and I started to feel dizzy. I stretched my legs out in front of me and pins and needles started firing from my feet to my knees. I took a long forward bend in hopes of re-grounding myself. It helped a bit, but not much. I contemplated leaving the class but decided to try to breathe through it. And I’m so glad I did.
With each breath, I felt myself releasing something that was old and stale, something that needed to be sent out to pasture and never heard from again. I’m not even quite sure what it was. Maybe old perceptions of myself or the world, maybe fear and anxiety, maybe a hard shell that had outlived its protective purpose. Underneath, I could feel the green sprouts shooting up, struggling to break new ground, reaching for some air and sunlight. A new day was dawning.
Change is hard. It hurts. It’s scary ad int’s uncomfortable. But if we are willing to hang in there and do the work to cross the chasm, something amazing is waiting for us on the other side and that something is us. We are making our way to exactly who we are meant to be and once we arrive home to our own authenticity, we will look back and realize that all of that work was worthwhile. The journey is long and arduous. It’s full of surprises, good and bad. Don’t turn back. Breathe, and keep going.
“What saves us is to take a step. Then another step.”~ C. S. Lewis
A lot of people take about the day they made a change, a big decision, a new commitment.
But what about the day after? Do they wake up panicked by what they’ve done? Does their conviction grow each day after? Here is how I felt: just fine. Oddly fine.
Sometimes people fear staying too long in a situation that no longer suits them. I believe in my case I stayed just the right amount of time. I got my finances in order, my direction became clear and focused, and then leaping was the next logical step.
There were certainly moments of trepidation and fear. I’m sure there will continue to be these moments. They do pass. I just take another step, and keep going. Today is that second step, the second step on a new path. Of course it will feel rocky and of course I will feel unsure. It is new. It doesn’t know me. And I don’t know it. Yet. But we will grow together.
“Happiness can only be found if you free yourself from all other distractions.” ~ Saul Bellow
If we sit down to write out our goals, how likely is it that we would list “be happy”? The great majority of us want to be happy. I’ll go so far as to say that’s the whole point of having goals. When we talk about wanting our lives to have meaning and to be purposeful or when we work on following our bliss, happiness is the root goal.
And yet, we get distracted. We list a million other tasks and goals that we think will bring us happiness but we don’t focus on just being happy. It’s as if that goal is not lofty enough or it’s too self-indulgent. I’m dropping that hang up. When someone asks me why it is that I’m making such a big shift in my career and in the way my life is structured, my reply will be very simple – because it makes me happy.
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.”~ Mahatma Gandhi
Yesterday someone asked me what situation in the world bothers me the most. My answer rose up immediately – I hate to see people give up on their dreams before they even try to make them come true. It’s an answer with a very personal angle. Prior to my decision to take a leap and work for myself, I epitomized exactly the situation that bothers me the most. If I wanted to see a change in the world, I needed to be that change, too. I had to set the wheels in motion to leap, for myself and for others.
We are our greatest creation. The lives we build are works of art that should be constructed thoughtfully, passionately, and purposefully. We are not depots that accept any and every train that pulls into the station. Our days and the people, places, and events that fill them are choices. Our choices.
Right now I am deeply engaged in the process of transformation. While I’ve been thinking of this time as something special and finite, Gandhi’s quote reminds me that every day we are remaking who we are – physically, mentally, and emotionally. I know that we each have the power to transform the world, but that process begins internally, not externally. We need to embrace personal change before we can generate societal change.
So have a look around. What is it about the world that really bugs you? Now take a look at your own life and see if in some small way the thing in the world that you detest actually resides within you. Root it out. Once you commit to personal change, change will begin to happen all around you. When you take up the act of personal transformation, everyone who comes into contact with you will begin to transform, too. That’s how we start a revolution, a revolution of consciousness. Light it up!
The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about Google’s efforts to increase mindfulness among its employees. The story, Ok, Google, Take a Deep Breath, featured Chade-Meng Tan (Meng), an engineer at Google and the creator of the Google team course, “Search Inside Yourself.” I clicked the link to watch a sample class on YouTube and I was both disappointed and annoyed.
Meng explains that he wanted to see a dramatic shift in world towards peace. Given the company’s policy to let all employees work on personal areas of research for a certain percentage of their work hours, Meng decided that the best investment of his time would come from figuring out how to generate world peace. It’s an insightful idea. What I hated about it was his conclusion that to get individuals and companies to care about world peace, we have to help them understand what’s in it for them. Meng went on to explain that no one is going to create peace just because it’s a good thing for society. They have to get something out of it on a personal level before they care about peace. We need to tap into people’s individual needs that make the objective of world peace an inevitable by-product.
Gross.
I hate that conclusion. Is that what we’ve amounted to? A collection of 6 billion bodies who only care about themselves? I stewed on that as I ate my lunch, determined to prove that though Meng may be a very bright engineer, his conclusion on how to bring about peace was unfounded.
I couldn’t. I got more annoyed.
Thankfully, my post from yesterday on the value of having our personal philosophies unsettled was still top of mind. Why did Meng’s conclusion, one that I had a hard time refuting, bother me so much and what could I learn from it? Could I apply it to my own work? Was I already subconsciously already applying it to my own work?
A New York Times column that Thomas Friedman wrote for after 9/11. In it he explained that, “If you don’t visit a bad neighborhood, it will visit you. “ In other words, get out there and do something that’s good for you and good for others. The trick we have to benefit individually as much as we do collectively in order to get community efforts and acts of goodwill to be sustainable.
Environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility really took off when companies realized they could benefit financially and in terms of customer and employee loyalty. In these efforts, the win-win is what tipped the scales. We are beginning to see these same seeds planted in healthcare. Our current healthcare system is no longer sustainable, so we are beginning to see more emphasis on preventative health measures that give people a way to be well before they ever get sick. The same is true in education. We are beginning to see a proliferation of new channels for learning because entrepreneurs realized that they could profit from disrupting the traditional education system.
In all these examples, the answer to the question “what’s in it for me?” came into balance with the answer to the question “why is this good for society?” We need both side of the equation to really make an impact. Thanks, Meng, for stating the cold, hard facts, for not letting us let ourselves off the hook, and for showing us that we can make a positive impact on humanity by truly understanding humanity.
Christa Avampato 