Category: change

change, opportunity

Step 246: Opportunity is Where You Are

Christa Avampato

“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.” ~ John Burroughs

I’ve spent most of my life looking forward, seeking out new opportunities, professionally and personally. At times, I’ve even toyed with the idea of chucking an ordinary life and going back to my gypsy theatre ways. My former boss, Bob G., once said to me, “You know, if you stick around long enough, everything changes.” It explains why he stayed at the same company for 25 years. The amount of change and growth that happened during his tenure was staggering.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how right Bob is. A city, a job, a relationship – they are all changing in small ways every day and it’s only when we look back along an extended period of time that we see the cumulative effect of continuous change. If we can tap into the direction of change and get ahead of it a bit, we can find opportunity wherever we are. that’s not to say we should never move – I am a big proponent of movement and growth. What I’m reconsidering if whether movement is the only way to experience change.

My friend, Sharni, writes a blog with the tag line “The grass isn’t greener on the other side, it’s greener where you water it.” Brilliant. Opportunity does lie out there in the great beyond and we should absolutely pursue it, but we can actually grow opportunity right under our own two feet, too.

celebration, change, community, discovery, experience, friendship

Step 217: 5 Ways the World Seems Small to Me

Christa Avampato

“”It was crazy how small the world truly was. It was a matter of opening up to it.” ~Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

My niece, Lorelei, could spend an entire afternoon singing “It’s a Small World.” She lives in Florida and when my sister and brother-in-law take her to Disney World (which happens often), she immediately asks to go on that ride. She loves all of the music, the different scenes, and the boat ride. For my niece and her generation, the world is small and growing smaller all the time.

The quote above from Let the Great World Spin, a remarkable read that I highly recommend, got me to thinking about all of my own small world examples. It still amazes me that in a city of millions, the many circles I run in merge and overlap so often. Some fun examples:

1.) My friend, Amanda, found me through my blog after we went to Penn together (graduated the same year) and lived in the same city (D.C.) for two years. I probably saw her out in the world countless times, though our writing actually lead us to one another. Our friend, Sara, found me through a mutual friend and as it turned out she lived in D.C. at the same time Amanda and I lived there, and her and Amanda have remarkably similar circumstances in their personal lives.

2.) People have a habit of recurring in my life. Even separated by many miles and years, old friends pop up in the most unlikely places and I always laugh when I learn that our paths have run so close together without even knowing it. My favorite of these is my friend, Jeff, who shows up as my little guardian angel right when I need him most – for example, when I’m job hunting (he helped start my career in professional theatre) or completely lost in Amsterdam (I ran into him on street corner when completely at my wit’s end.) We barely talk between those instances and yet it he never feels like a stranger to me.

3.) Twitter, Facebook, and blogs of every variety make it easy to find out pack. I love that geography no longer limits the relationships to begin, build, and keep. Let people talk about information overload – for us information junkies, Twitter creates a dream-come-true candy store.

4.) Books build bridges across time and space. I love that the writing of people who lived centuries before me have stories that resonate with me. And I feel such a gratitude toward them for writing it all down. Those experiences keep me writing, in the hopes that centuries from now someone may read something I wrote and think “here’s a person who gets me.”

5.) I love confluence and synchronicity. I love the feeling that rises up when something unexpected happens to me and I understand why. Steve Jobs said that we only understand our lives and how they unfold by looking backward. I agree. When I reflect on my own history, even when it seemed so random in the moment, a reason for every circumstance always appears clear as day. This realization makes tough times easier to manage.

What experiences make you feel like we live in a small (or big, as the case may be) world?

change, creativity, feelings

Step 211: 5 Ways to Improve Concentration

Christa Avampato

“Through meditation and by giving full attention to one thing at a time, we can learn to direct attention where we choose.” ~ Eknath Easwaran

A lot of people want our attention. Take a walk stroll through Times Square without any sense of urgency, and your mind will start spinning with the dizzying number of companies and brands who ask us to pay attention to them amid the chaos. In New York City, distraction takes up residence in every nook and cranny. We spend a lot of energy and time just trying to focus. I’m sure residents of other cities have the same challenge. Not an impossible task, though certainly a difficult one.

The list below details 5 things that help me focus amid the turbulence of New York. I first moved to New York at 22, left, came back, didn’t last long, left, and came back again. In this 3rd stretch, I have lived here for over 3 years – a personal record of staying put in one city. Recently, the winds of wander have come knocking. While in Florida on vacation, I actually contemplated packing it all up (especially since I no longer have that many belongings), and heading for new pastures, even if not necessarily greener ones. Then the Universe, did a funny thing – it made it very difficult for me to physically get home from vacation. Absence, even short and fleeting, always makes me long for New York. The Universe has a deep wisdom and a wicked sense of humor.

5 ways I stay focused here in New York:

1.) Yoga helps. Really. I have a bias here because I am a yoga instructor. Though I got into yoga to reduce stress and anxiety. It gave me the lovely and unexpected side effects of increased creativity and the extremely ability to focus when needed. I don’t use yoga, nor do I teach yoga, to help someone balance all of their weight on their pinky while up in some crazy balance pose. I use it to decompress, and that works for me.

2.) Meditation helps, too. I hated meditation for a long time. I actually thought the whole idea of it bore a striking resemblance to The Emperor’s New Clothes. I spent many years as a critic of meditation without ever giving it a fair shake. Then with my yoga teacher training, I had to have a daily meditation practice as part of the program. Even for just 5 minutes. That regular practice did the trick. Now I have a meditation buddy from my yoga training – we don’t meditate together. We just check in with one another each week to keep one another on the meditation path. No I actually feel the effects of meditation, even during moment of increased stress. It taught me how to calm down and gave me a pathway to a peaceful, restful mind.

3.) Choose your neighborhood wisely. I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. People ask me why and my answer never wavers. I like to go to crazy, but I don’t want to live in. There are far cooler, more happenin’ neighborhoods, no doubt. The restaurants in my neighborhood are decent, I have a Whole Foods and a branch of the public library around the corner, and live very close to two huge parks. That meets my requirements. I also live alone on a high floor and have some outdoor space in a quiet building. Those two things remind me just how lucky I am to live where I live. Crazy lives a short cab or subway ride away – good enough for me.

4.) And choose your friends even more wisely. About a year ago, I gave up on negative people. I had a lot of them in my life. People who never get to happy and cannot be happy for others. I serve as blood-in-the-water to those types of people because I have an extraordinary flair for listening to hard luck cases that want no help or improvement. Now I focus my time on those people in my life who give me more energy than they take, people who create and dream and grow. It had made a world of difference.

5.) Get a coach or therapist. The old joke goes that everyone in New York goes to therapy because we are all extraordinarily screwed up. Truthfully, everyone, everywhere can benefit from therapy. We all have issues and challenges and an unbiased opinion really, really helps. I see a social worker who acts more as a life coach than a therapist. If you want his name, I will gladly referred you. He helped me to gain more confidence and pursue a life that excites me. I also recently interviewed Will Meyerhofer, a lawyer turned therapist, for an upcoming freelance piece. He works on a sliding scale and has oodles of integrity and talent. Check him out at http://www.aquietroom.com/.

What did I miss? What helps you stay sane in this crazy world?

change, choices, courage, discovery, encouragement, frustration, gifts, gratitude, loss, opportunity, yoga

Step 201: Obstacles as Path

Christa Avampato

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” –Alfred D. Souza

I keep thinking about the idea of “the path of least resistance.” I don’t know what that path looks like. I work and work and work, and eventually a pathway opens, but never constitutes taking the easy road. This quote helped me put this idea in perspective. When I think about the things I’m most proud of in my life, they all resulted from overcoming obstacles. It wasn’t always a fun journey, but the results were worth it.

I’ve written about Ganesha, the Hindu god of obstacles, and how much I learned about him during my yoga teacher training. Some people have interpreted his role as a remover of obstacles. That view is mostly right. It needs the addition of “removed of obstacles on our life’s path.” Sometimes, as Alfred Souza so eloquently states, obstacles need to be placed in our way to help us realize our path.

There’s no shame in having obstacles; there’s no need for us to bemoan their presence. They can be our reasons to be grateful. They show us our strength, and if we can recognize their gifts and their reasons for being, we can often find our way around them.

change, future, yoga

Step 193: Changing Course

Christa Avampato

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

“Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.” ~ Patricia Alexander,
American educational psychologist

Thomas Jefferson and Patricia Alexander talk to us about worry and its cohort, fear – that nagging little voice in the back of our minds that has us concerned with circumstances we cannot control, imagined scenarios, or thoughts akin to “what makes you think you can do (x)?” I’ve had this ill of worry since I returned from Greece. Greece and the Greek people I found to be a beautiful; the yoga retreat fell short for a variety of reasons – the biggest being that I just didn’t fit with the school of thought being promoted. The yoga, as defined by the retreat, was not my yoga.

I’ve been on the worry path wondering, “now what do I do? How do I move forward? Or worse yet, do I not move forward at all?” After a number of conversations with friends, the worry has subsided. I won’t move down the path I thought I was going to be on. I’m hopping off that train and looking for a new road. My yoga doesn’t exist where I thought it should be. It’s out there somewhere – destination TBD. I’m not standing still, just making the conscious decision to move on.

It’s hard to leave the nest, the nurturing home that felt right yesterday, and today which I recognize is not my own. For the next little while, I’m going to try out a few different styles and follow my gut to find what’s right for me. My friend, Laura, and I have talked about planning a retreat in the near future, the kind of retreat we’d like most to be on, because we don’t need permission any more to “do”, just the will to give it a go. Details to follow.

Worry can paralyze us – it has certainly paralyzed me for the past week. I slept a lot, talked to friends who could help me reason through my disappointment and disillusion, and considered how the future may take shape, a different shape than I’ve been planning. At the moment it’s a tiny speck out there in the distance. The next few weeks, I’ll be trying to bring it closer and more into focus.

change, choices, education

Step 190: Structured Flexibility and Flexible Structure

Christa Avampato

“At the moment of commitment, the universe conspires to assist you.” ~ Goethe

This morning I had a terrific meeting with Dudley Blossom, the head of the Marketing Department at LIM College where I’m going to teach a class this Fall entitled “Guerilla, Viral, and Social Media Marketing.” We were tossing around ideas for the syllabus, getting it all down on paper. My first draft netted out at 6 pages, about 4 pages too long. To do that much editing, we needed to go back to the basics. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

This subject is so interesting because just when people think they’ve pegged the future of social media, there’s a beautiful disruption that takes content creators, consumers, and trend analysts in a new, never-seen-before direction. The way that the social media world exists today may be turned on its head by the time we wind up the semester in December. Still, we need to give students a sense of direction and give ourselves a way to change direction if the market warrants it.

What we need for this class is structured flexibility, or flexible structure. Social media, like yoga, like writing, like performance of any kind, needs to live in this in-between world. We have to be able to adapt on the fly. The more I think about my life and its directions, the more I see that I’ve been working on the skill of adaptation for many years, from so many different angles. A millieu of commitments made and commitments changed. As my friend, Amanda says, “You can choose 1 side or the other of an argument, but sitting on the fence is the weak position. And know that if convincing, contrary evidence is presented to you, you can change your position.”

I’m taking Amanda’s sage advice, and applying it to my syllabus for the LIM class and my life in general. Choices, and conviction behind those choices, do have a magic to them.

The image above can be found here.

change, luck

Step 167: More on Luck and Chances

Christa Avampato

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.” ~ Brian Tracy

“Playing it safe isn’t really safe at all,” Brian is fond of telling me as we work on charting a course for my life going forward. “The safe road just gives us the illusion of safety.” My yoga teacher tell me this, too. Safety is a little trick our minds use to help us get from day-to-day. If we actually came to grips without how much uncertainty we have in our daily lives, we’d have one long and major meltdown. The safe road is actually the one paved with the chances we took in our lives.

When I younger, I used to throw caution to the wind on a daily basis. I didn’t have a lot to lose back then. My chosen profession as a theatre manager was wildly unstable, I had hardly any savings, and I was used to living a life where I scraped by every month. Truth be told, I was kind of proud of my ability to scrape by. I thought it made me resilient and tough. I thought it was at the root of the definition of self-sufficiency, something I always wanted.

And then somewhere along the way, the elusive safety seduced me and made me more practical. Rather than getting an MFA, I got an MBA. Rather than following my heart after I finished graduate school, I followed the scent of a stable paycheck, a regular work schedule of 9-5 Monday to Friday, and a job title that many people respect. Now my career makes sense to others, but it doesn’t make sense to me.

A few weeks ago, Laurie Ruettimann, author of the blog PunkrockHR, wrote a post about making lists: q to describe what you would love to do for work, what you might do for work, and what you absolutely will not do for work. I think her post was addressing me personally. She hit some sore points that I’ve been turning over in my mind but have been a little frightened to articulate. I think it’s time to stop being so frightened. These lists are lens to evaluate new opportunities, and a tool to see differently should be celebrated, not feared. So here are my lists:

What I would love to do:
Writing and editing
Create products and services that are meaningful to people and the world
Research
Do some traveling
Teach
Support charitable causes
Yoga

What I might do:
Work outside
Work with kids
Fundraise for a nonprofit
Make coffee

What I won’t do:
Have a rigid schedule
Work in a gray cubicle
Collect a check without much meaningful work to do
Wait tables

These lists aren’t complete, but they’re a good start. Time to take more chances, be more active, and show up more often, even if I don’t know where it’s all leading.

change, choices, decision-making, dreams

Step 156: Take What You Get or Make What You Take

Christa Avampato

“It is–as we see it–our life. To live … or lose. To form … or allow to be formed.” ~ Tom Peters

Tom Peters has knocked it out of the park this week with his quotes. I wonder if he and I have some secret psychic linkage. Someone once said to me that I have two choices in life: be a narrowcaster or a broadcaster. I think about that choice a lot. Tom Peters says the same thing in this quote. Either form your own road or hop on a road that someone else formed, not for you, but regardless of you. Said that way, I don’t have a choice. I have to go my own way. That’s my nature and I’ve got to be true to it.

I don’t begrudge people who take someone else’s road and do well. I kind of envy them. That must be an easier path than the one I’m choosing to build. I just can’t stomach it. In the very depths of my gut, it feels like the wrong way to spend my days. Brian tried to tell me that yesterday. “The safe road is actually not safe at all,” he said. I sort of believed him at the time.

And then I woke up this morning with a great big illustrative light bulb over my head. Of course I have to build my own road while I’m walking it. One brick at a time. One foot in front of the other. My own instincts as my light in the dark. Would I really be happy any other way?

adventure, change, choices, decision-making

Step 155: Crossing the Chasm

Christa Avampato

“The word … is REFRAMING. Taking a task … and turning it into something-that-makes-a-difference.” ~ Tom Peters

Today, crossing the chasm means more to me than the gap between early adopters and mass appeal as explained by Geoffrey Moore in his excellent business book by the same title. I have two very competent halves: my logical, fiscally responsible side who has done an excellent job of helping me strive, survive, and thrive, and the daydream believer side who must make a difference in the world by doing spiritually meaningful work. Between them exists a very wide gap and I spend a good deal of my energy making the leap on a daily (and sometimes more than daily) basis. To use Tom Peter’s sentiment, I want a better frame.

Where else could I put this energy so that it better serves the bridging of this divide? How can I live my work and work the way I live? Fully. Passionately. Deeply giddy about dreaming and even more giddy about rolling up my sleeves and physically birthing those dreams into the world.

I refuse to believe that these are the idle words that an idyllic life represents and that few can actually achieve. I know that the two can reconcile. And actually, they must reconcile. The chasm has grown too wide for me, and rather than putting my energy into jumping further every day, today I started to build the bridge. Here we go…

The photo above can be found here.

change, yoga

Step 143: The Last Class

Christa Avampato

“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else. I’ve felt that many times. My hope for all of us is that ‘the miles we go before we sleep’ will be filled with all the feelings that come from deep caring – delight, sadness, joy, wisdom – and that in all the endings of our life, we will be able to see the new beginnings.” ~ Fred Rogers

My birthday falls under Pisces, the final sign of the zodiac. Pisces enjoy endings, resolutions, and projects completed. Today marked the final day of our 200 hour teaching training at Sonic Yoga, a happy-sad day as my friend, Vivian, called it so eloquently and accurately. We look forward to the time that will now be open again on our calendars, and at the same time have tears in our eyes that exactly the way we have all been together for the last 3 months will never be again.

As a closing ritual, we all lit candles, and one by one, stared into each others eyes with the silent gesture of Namaste, “the light that is in me honors the light that is in you.” We so rarely have these moments with others in our daily lives. We don’t acknowledge one another in that profound way nearly enough, and in our world today we so desperately need that mutual honor, respect, and support.

I found all of those things in abundance in Sonic’s teacher training. 23 women gathered together for 3 months, with incredible teachers, to pay tribute to one another’s light. We laughed, cried, worked, and played together. It is a rare and precious gift to join a community so filled with joy, one that recognizes the beauty baked in to each of its souls in a unique and stunning way.

I tried hard to think of a way to say thank you enough, to the students and to our teachers. For someone who nearly always knows exactly what to say and when to say it, I found that the silent gaze into the eyes of each person conveyed more authentic gratitude and love than any phrase I could have uttered. The best way to honor the gift of this training is to pay it forward with wild abandon.